LNUC Concurrences, Linnaeus University, June 14-16, 2018. Sweden
Global Challenges: Borders, Populism and the Postcolonial Condition is an interdisciplinary conference that brings together scholars in Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, History and Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies. Confirmed keynote speakers are Dominick LaCapra, Carolyn Dean, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Gurminder Bhambra. The conference considers current global challenges in the light of the international development of the past 10 years. 2008 was the time when the invasion of Iraq ground to a definitive halt, the global financial crisis unfolded, triggering a tactic of austerity in many western nations. At the same time, 2008 was the year of Obama’s first presidential campaign and, shared among transnational activist groups, a critique of what was understood as a general moral and economic failure of the West.
From the vantage point of the present moment, some crucial questions arise: What happened to the liberal hopes of a moral horizon that were expressed in 2008? In view of the Trump presidency, the rise of populism and facism, massive refugee and labour migration, what has happened to the European project, and to globalisation. What does the construction of new intellectual and physical borders mean for humanities and social sciences scholarship? What new ways of thinking about society, sovereignty, and the human and non-human animal, have emerged and what new critical venues do they offer humanities and social sciences research? How does the long history of colonialism still inform present society?