Event Date: 20 March 2015
Day one (Canterbury)
Ng03 Lecture Theatre
Newton Building
Canterbury Christ Church University
North Holmes Road Campus
Canterbury CT1 1QU
The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and the School of Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church University present:
Postpolitics and Neoliberalism
Politics is dead, dying, or changing into something new. The word ‘ideology’ has become a term of abuse, associated especially with the ‘utopian’ old left. Commitment and belief have become ‘tribalism’ and ‘dogma’. Technocracy, pragmatism, and single-issue campaigns are the order of the day. As the public tune out and turn away, politicians perform increasingly desperate acts of self-abasement. Anti-Westminster mavericks are on the rise. Everywhere there are calls to shrink the state.Yet a politics that exists outside the theatre of the state has yet to be imagined.
As the 2015 election fast approaches, this conference will explore the ideological, cultural, linguistic and historical dimensions of the contemporary postpolitical moment, and its relationship to neoliberalism. With participants drawn from academic, writing, and campaigning backgrounds, the conference will bring together a range of approaches in order to grasp the enduring subtext of the all-consuming and all-erasing daily news churn.
Programme:
Day one (Canterbury)
Eliane Glaser (CCCU and Birkbeck) – Welcome
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Keynote Lecture – Erik Swyngedouw (Manchester) – Insurgent Cities: Post-Politicization and the Spectral Return of the Political
Chair: Eliane Glaser
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Session One: Paradigms and the imagination
Neal Lawson (Compass) – Politics for and by the people
Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation) – Paradigm shift or bust
Panel Questions:
Chair: Jim Butcher (CCCU)
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1200-1300 – Session Two: Democracy and emancipation
David Bates (CCCU) – ”The Political” and Emancipatory Politics – Reflections on Laclau and Mouffe
Lars Cornelissen (Brighton) – Rethinking neoliberal de-democratisation
Panel Questions:
Chair: Darren Ambrose
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Session Three: Rereading the ideologically ‘neutral’: urban planning, education, and cyber-security
Owen Hatherley (writer) – A Bit Of Development Is Always Good’: Planning, politics, indifference and boosterism in the British city
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Chris Carpenter (CCCU) – To what extent is Educational policy under the coalition government (2010-present) ideologically ‘neutral’?
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Andre Barrinha (CCCU) – Ideology, neoliberalism and cyber security
Chair: Bojan Koltaj (CCCU)
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Session Four: Morals, ethics and theology
Jim Butcher (CCCU) – Care, responsibility and the politics of ethical lifestyle
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Joe Bennett (Birmingham) – The politics of moral talk
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Bojan Koltaj (CCCU) – Can Theology Really Redeem Politics?
Chair: David Bates
