Resisting Current Barbarisms

In times of polarisation, deep political divisions, environmental crisis, and declining trust in democracy, multiple forms of resistance against today’s “barbaric” political and economic forces are not only necessary but imperative (Stengers, 2015). We cannot sit back and watch the rise of far-right ideologies, wars destabilising regions, the spread of hoaxes and fake news, while billionaires manipulate social media platforms—promoting extreme dichotomies and eroding the very possibility of dialectical discussions, the cornerstone of democratic societies. Meanwhile, the far-right disguises itself in the rhetoric of anti-establishment resistance, co-opting the language of marginality to advance exclusionary agendas. How did we get here? How do we confront these challenges? Instead of waiting for catastrophe, we must actively shape new futures by resisting barbarism in everyday life, a concept that, as Isabelle Stengers (2015) argues, demands both opposition and the simultaneous imagination of other ways of living.

The guest lectures engage with these topics as well as questions and are meant to make visible translocal alliances and networks of doing otherwise.