It has become a cliché to say that we live in an age of crisis. In recent years, figures like Adam Tooze have argued that we now face so many overlapping and interacting crises that it makes more sense to refer to our present age as one of “polycrisis.” Others, like Nancy Fraser, argue that the multiple crises we face, disparate as they may seem at first, nevertheless share common systemic causes and are part and parcel to a “general crisis” of global capitalism.
Yet the political consequences of this proliferation of crises remain uncertain. Though our political institutions have been burdened by crisis for some time, there appears surprisingly little will for progressive transformation. Numerous emancipatory movements, from Occupy Wall Street, Syriza, and Podemos to the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, have come and gone with little lasting impact. Instead, the main drivers of change come from the far right, in the form of authoritarian populism, resurgent xenophobia, conspiracy theories, and assaults on democratic and knowledge-producing institutions.
This Open Panel invites theoretical, conceptual, and comparative discussion on the politics of crisis in contemporary capitalism and democracy. We invite papers on a variety of topics, including but not limited to:
– “Crisis” as a political concept and the limits of crisis discourse;
– Crises as moments of opportunity, revolution, or political innovation;
– Critical engagements with contemporary theories of crisis, including ideas of “polycrisis,” “permacrisis,” “metacrisis,” “general crisis,” and so on;
– Crisis tendencies of capitalism and capitalist institutions;
– The relationship between crisis, democratic legitimacy, justice, and political transformation;
– Democratic or authoritarian modes of crisis governance, or “crisis” as a form of governmental rationality;
– The relationship between crisis politics and fascism, authoritarianism, or reactionary movements.
