Political Imagination Laboratories

Political Imagination Laboratories

 

Our Political Imagination Laboratories aim to explore and interrogate the shifting political imagination of contemporary social movements. Inspired by both visual and ethnographic fieldwork about activism, each Political Imagination Laboratory brings together anthropologists, filmmakers and activists in a small, collegial gathering to a mix of film screenings, roundtable discussions and work-in-progress expositions. 

All past Political Imagination Laboratories took place at University of Perugia, Italy, and have been organised by the team of the ‘Peasant Activism Project,’ in cooperation with the network ‘Anthropology and Social Movements’ of the European Association of Social Movements (EASA) and ‘Controsguardi – International Festival of Anthropological Cinema.’

 

Background of the Political Imagination Laboratory

Exploring Shifting Imaginations

The fragmentation and autonomisation of many contemporary political struggles seems to reflect the end of far-reaching alternative political horizons, the end of the hope that an alternative society can exist. What should we do? How should we think? Where can we find inspiration? Yet, these questions remain vital for the contemporary political imagination.

The apparent advent of the end of meta-narratives hides the often de-facto naturalization of the neoliberal trajectory as the only possible universal experience. But has the future ceased to be a promise, as common-sense goes? Many contemporary political thinkers conceptualize social justice as micro-political struggles for difference or as the recognition of particular ‘identities.’ Along these lines, ethnographic research focuses on power dynamics less embedded in state sovereignty but rather in micro-political dynamics of governmentality in every-day life, biopolitical experiences or infra-political resistance. Thus, universal claims for justice stress small steps and gradual change, attempting to establish, cultivate and affirm forms of life that play with the imagination of alternatives, a concrete utopia.

Peasant movements for land allocation, indigenous requests for recognition often appear as an expression of micro-political struggles over identity politics. At first glance, many forms of contemporary activism seem less concerned with visions of a new society or with the establishment of a new ‘hegemony’ of any kind. Yet, social movements continue to extend the horizon of what can be thought and done.

For example, we witness a new wave of neo-rural and peasant movements able to re-invent key-concepts of neoliberal ideology, such as the replacing of the idea of ‘consumer’ with ‘co-producers,’ and ‘competition’ with ‘solidarity’ as a carrier of innovation, and so forth. Moreover, the post-anarchist search for autonomy and insurrection poses new questions: The different local expressions of world-wide occupation movements, from the ‘Indignados,’ LGBTQ+-struggles for open identities, Occupy Wall Street to the Tahir-Square gatherings seem to partially revitalize ideas of universal justice. Can these tendencies shake the stasis?

 

Past Events 

Please see our homepage for the programs of past events:

https://www.peasantproject.org/political-imagination-lab

 

Who is Who

Organizing Committee

Christine Hämmerling, University of Göttingen

Alexander Koensler, University of Perugia (coordinator)

Marion Näser-Lather, University of Innsbruck

 

Advisory Board of the Laboratory

• Stefano Boni, University of Reggio Emilia, Modena
• Konstantina Bousmpoura, Ethnofest - Athens
• Piotr Goldstein, German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin
• Cahal McLaughlin, Queen’s University Belfast
• Paula Serafini, Queen Mary University of London
• Sarah Ruth Sippel, University of Münster
• Timothy D Weldon, University of Münster
• Siobhán Wills, Ulster University
• Filippo Zerilli, University of Cagliari