Autumn School

Sit­u­at­ing Soft Author­i­tar­i­an­ism Between Geopo­lit­i­cal Com­plex­i­ties and Every­day Prac­tices Young Inter­na­tion­al Schol­ars Autumn Research School (YIS­ARES) 2022

The Russ­ian government’s war against Ukraine has exposed mul­ti­ple dimen­sions and geopo­lit­i­cal fault­lines of con­tem­po­rary author­i­tar­i­anisms: The sys­tem­at­ic hijack­ing of state insti­tu­tions and accu­mu­la­tion of wealth through the extrac­tion and cap­i­tal­iza­tion of gas, oil and coal clear­ly stand out as indis­pens­able pre­con­di­tions for Russia’s neo-impe­ri­al­ism and mil­i­tary pow­er. The inva­sion has been accom­pa­nied by the dis­sem­i­na­tion of state-steered lies, dis­in­for­ma­tion and eth­no-nation­al­ist nar­ra­tives. The rem­nants of inde­pen­dent media and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion are threat­ened by a sub­or­di­nat­ed judi­cia­ry. And on a glob­al scale the acqui­es­cence of Chi­na and India to Russia’s inva­sion indi­cates bol­stered alliances between author­i­tar­i­an and soft-author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments. Some pun­dits pre­dict a geopo­lit­i­cal con­fronta­tion between an author­i­tar­i­an block and seem­ing­ly re-con­sol­i­dat­ed “West”. The reluc­tance of many post­colo­nial states to sup­port Ukraine fac­ing this attack by its impe­r­i­al neigh­bor con­tributes to cur­rent­ly emerg­ing geopo­lit­i­cal complexities.

Dur­ing this autumn school we will take the emerg­ing geopo­lit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties as entry point to explore and sit­u­ate these forms of soft author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment anew. We ask whether the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion impedes a fur­ther shift towards polit­i­cal rhetoric and inter­ven­tions hol­low­ing out demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­ce­dures and insti­tu­tions. Or does it per­haps offer new oppor­tu­ni­ties for the tac­it intro­duc­tion of more author­i­tar­i­an leg­is­la­tion, the mobi­liza­tion of hate speech and the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of pub­lic life? What forms of transna­tion­al net­works and rela­tions of author­i­tar­i­anisms can we observe?

In dif­fer­ent the­mat­ic mod­ules we will exam­ine some of the legal, admin­is­tra­tive, dis­cur­sive and dig­i­tal prac­tices with which democ­ra­cy is under­mined in detail. We will look at how illib­er­al dis­cours­es are nor­mal­ized, insti­tu­tions hijacked, laws rewrit­ten, and zones of excep­tion cre­at­ed. We will ask in which way these prac­tices and dis­cours­es real­ly man­age to cov­er up their author­i­tar­i­an inten­tions and deceive their cit­i­zens? And, final­ly, we will explore the forms and scales of vio­lence here­by engendered.

Through­out the whole autumn school, we will also revis­it the dif­fer­ent con­cepts that have been devel­oped to exam­ine the recent con­junc­ture of pop­ulist, anti-lib­er­al and author­i­tar­i­an trends inside nom­i­nal democ­ra­cies. Do we still dis­pose of the right vocab­u­lary to ana­lyt­i­cal­ly dis­sect the con­tem­po­rary moment? Or do we need to adjust our con­cep­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal toolset to make sense of author­i­tar­i­anisms in exac­er­bat­ed geopo­lit­i­cal complexities?

The Young Inter­na­tion­al Schol­ars Autumn Research School is orga­nized by the Research Group “Soft Author­i­tar­i­anisms” at the U Bre­men Excel­lence Chair Prof. Dr. Shali­ni Ran­de­ria, the U Bre­men Research Project “Daten­poli­tiken und Autori­taris­mus: Dig­i­tale Ver­flech­tun­gen und demokratis­che (Un-)-Möglichkeiten”, the Research Train­ing Group “Con­tra­dic­tion Stud­ies” and the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Research Plat­form “Worlds of Con­tra­dic­tion” (WoC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men. It is fund­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men and WoC.

Dates and Application

27–29 Octo­ber 2022, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men
Venue: online
Dead­line for appli­ca­tions: 10 July 2022

We invite appli­ca­tions from out­stand­ing MA-stu­dents, PhD-can­di­dates and post­doc­tor­al researchers in polit­i­cal and social sci­ence, anthro­pol­o­gy, cul­tur­al stud­ies, geog­ra­phy, lin­guis­tics, law, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions or relat­ed disciplines.

Find all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion here: yisares.uni-bremen.de