Event overview
The ‘Borders’ of Trauma and Abjection from European Nationalisms to Alt-Right Memes
Since the beginning of the current crisis of neoliberalism, we have seen an intensifying concurrency of demands for the heavier policing of migrant populations, and an accompanying rise in racist and sexist violence and discourses validating it. From Greek politics to Brexit to the US elections, we can observe popular discourses crossing fluidly from the purportedly ‘rational’ defence of (often ‘working class’) citizens’ interests to narratives of national humiliation and grandeur, conspiracy theories, misogyny and neo-Nazi tropes. In this talk I present my (in-progress) exploration of the relationship between the traumas produced by the crisis and the forms of (self-)abjection conveyed in the emergenct cultures of hate on the political right.
NB: Because of the subject, some of the presented imagery will be highly offensive. My aim is to analyse critically, and certainly not to endorse, these representations.
Bio: Dimitra Kotouza is a lecturer in sociology at Middlesex and a member of the Mute editorial collective. Her Doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Surplus Citizens’, analysed forms of collective action and ideologies in the Greek crisis. Her current research focuses on the psycho-politics of popular reactionary responses to the crisis.
Sources:
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Postone, Moishe. ‘Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to “Holocaust”’. In Germans and Jews Since the Holocaust: The Changing Situation in West Germany, edited by Anson Rabinbach and Jack D. Zipes, 302–14. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1983.
Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Theory and History of Literature, v. 22-23. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Tyler, Imogen. Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London, UK: Zed Books, 2013.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Mar 2017 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm |
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