Emergencies of Authoritarianism

Authoritarian, right-wing populist, and fascist tendencies are currently gaining strength all over the world. The task is not only to analyze authoritarianism critically, but also to respond to it politically. For this purpose, this project proposes the novel concept of Emergencies of Authoritarianism. Emergencies implies emergences, the development of authoritarian tendencies out of their “normal” latency and enabling conditions. We adopt a critical perspective that analyzes local trajectories in their transversal global entanglements and complex interactions in order to avoid both methodological nationalism and Eurocentric bias. At the same time, emergencies imply urgencies: they demand an immediate response. Authoritarianisms cannot be reduced to past times, nor to distant places, but can emerge, with new victim groups, anywhere.

Over the coming years, the project will organize workshops and conferences at different locations around the globe and present its results in various publication formats. As a transnational network with equal partners from the Global South, we work closely with non-academic actors such as NGOs, cultural institutions, and journalists, using locally generated knowledge to develop robust responses to the threat of authoritarianism.

The project team is coordinated by Judith Butler (Berkeley), Robin Celikates (Berlin), Daniel Loick (Amsterdam), and Zeynep Gambetti (Istanbul), and involves Debaditya Bhattacharya (Delhi), Gisela Catanzaro (Buenos Aires), Denise Ferreira Da Silva (New York), Rosaura Martínez (Mexico City), and Eva von Redecker (Berlin). “Emergencies of Authoritarianism” is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (Germany).