Workshop “Theorising Destituent Power”
International Workshop
Theorising Destituent Power
26th of November 2024
Room B.112.C – Library Building
School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon
Keynote Speakers:
Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen)
Luhuna Carvalho (Lisbon)
The workshop aims to bring together various perspectives on destituent power in order to expand on theories of resistance, refusal, rupture and disavowal. Exploring alternative radical approaches that broach substantive change is an utmost imperative, especially if we consider the gap, perceived by Colectivo Situaciones between the altered topography of twenty-first century political life and the traditional paradigms of revolution. The Invisible Committee point to an ongoing rupture already induced from the seeming collapse of the constituted liberal world order. Thus, it is apt to theorise novel ways of addressing a persisting and variegated political crisis.
A heretofore relatively underexplored dimension of political and societal transformation, destituent power rejects the fundamental idea of the constituent power that must exist in a necessary dialectical with a form of constituted power(s). It stands as a potential challenge to Western political ontology as a whole, while proffering an interruption to the circularity of political ‘change’.
Program
9h00-9h30 Greeting and Introductory Remarks
9h30–10h40 Lecture – Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen): The Refusalist International
coffee-break
11h00–11h30 Eric Eggert (University of Cologne): Use. Notes on the Ontology and Praxis of Destitution
11h30-12h00 Irene Viparelli (University of Evora): Revolution in Biopolitical Capitalism. A Neo-Workerist Perspective
12h00-12h30 Zachariah Tailor (University of Lisbon): The Temporality of Destitution
12h30-13h00 Alice Romagnoli (University of Macerata): Reimagining Emancipation Beyond Politics – Destituent Forces in Contemporary Struggles
[Lunch]
14h00-14h30 Tamara Caraus (University of Lisbon): Perestroika as Destituent Power
14h30-15h00 Albano Pina (University of Beira Interior): Division as Foundation – Machiavelli’s Instituent Dissensus
15h00-15h30 Sjoerd van Tuinen (Erasmus University Rotterdam) – Multiplications: Towards a Political Mannerism
coffee-break
15h50-16h20 David Ventura (Newcastle University): Untimely Figurations of Refusal in Édouard Glissant’s Thought
16h20-16h50 Inês Cisneiros (NOVA University Lisbon): Lost in Institutionalization – Democracy and the Constitutional Moment
16h50-17h20 Irene Vasai (University of Pisa): Benjamin en la calle: On How to Destitute (And on What to Desire After)
17h40-18h50 Lecture: Luhuna Carvalho (Lisbon): The Four Destitutions
[19h30 Dinner]
Organizer: Zach Tailor (Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon)
This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDB/00310/2020.