A globális válságok és a biopolitika - szekciók a Magyar Politikatudományi Társaság XXVI. Vándorgyűlésén

A Magyar Politikatudományi Társaság XXVI. Vándorgyűlésén, amely 2021. június 3-4. között online került megrendezésre a Debereceni Egyetem szervezésében én vezettem  A globális válságok és a biopolitika című panelt az alábbi összetételben.

1. A globális válságok és a biopolitika

Szekcióvezető: Antal Attila (adjunktus, ELTE ÁJK Politikatudományi Intézet; koordinátor, Politikatörténeti Intézet Társadalomelméleti Műhely)

Beléptünk a válságok korszakába: a globális kapitalizmus visszatérő gazdasági és pénzügyi válságai, az Európai Unió véget nem érő válságai, a globális klíma- és ökológiai válság, a menekült- és bevándorlási válság és legújabban a koronavírus okozta járványügyi, gazdasági és társadalmi válság határozza meg a mindennapjainkat. Ezek a jelenségek korántsem újak, azonban a 21. század első évtizedeiben értünk el egy olyan periódusba, amikor egyrészt megerősödött a különféle válságok intenzitása, másrészt egymásra rakódott a válságok hatása. Abban a tekintetben ugyanakkor egészen biztosan fordulópont következett be, hogy immáron „biopolitikai válságokról” beszélhetünk: vagyis a rétegződő válságok olyan mértékben érték el az emberi mindennapjait és kezdték el azokat hihetetlen mértékben befolyásolni, amire a társadalmak nem voltak felkészülve, felkészítve. Meg kell említeni azt is, hogy a biopolitika abból a szempontból is meghatározza korszakunkat, hogy a sokféle válságot kezelni próbáló kormányzatok már jó ideje rájöttek arra, hogy politikai szempontból elsősorban a válságok megoldása, hanem azok átpolitizálása, generálása a kifizetődő. A kormányzatok mind a válságok megoldásában (például: globális megfigyelési rendszerek, a pandémiával együtt járó szigorítások, rendkívüli jogrend bevezetése), mind azok további generálásában (például: a menekült- és bevándorlás ellenes kampányok) alkalmaznak biopolitikai eszközöket. Sokáig a főáramú politikatudomány és társadalomtudományok nem minden tekintetben támaszkodtak a kritikai megközelítések, így a biopolitikai elemzés tárházára. A szekció célja a biopolitikai megközelítés és elemzés hazai recepciójához való hozzájárulás. A szekció a lehető legszélesebb értelemben kíván foglalkozni a válságok biopolitikai sajátosságaival, ezért minden olyan absztraktot befogad, amely a politika- és a társadalomtudomány, a természettudomány eszközeivel tekintenek rá a globális válságokra, és azok biopolitikai aspektusait mutatják be.

2021. június 4.

09.00-10.20

1.1. A biopolitika elméleti és történeti aspektusai

Antal Attila (PhD, adjunktus, ELTE ÁJK Politikatudományi Intézet, koordinátor, Politikatörténeti Intézet Társadalomelméleti Műhely): Létezik-e demokratikus biopolitikai alternatíva a kivételes állapotok időszakban? 

Marosán Bence Péter (PhD, adjunktus, BGE Külkereskedelmi Kar Nemzetközi Kapcsolatok Tanszék): Klímaválság és kapitalizmus. Egy ökomarxista javaslat. 

Nyiri Szabolcs (egyetemi hallgató, Debreceni Egyetem, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem): A panoptikon rizomatikus elemzése. Avagy a tekintet normalizáló hatásának deleuziánus olvasata.

Pap Milán (tudományos segédmunkatárs: Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem, Államtudományi és Közigazgatási Kar Molnár Tamás Kutató Központ): Államszocialista Panoptikon. Megfigyelés, gondoskodás és társadalomtudomány a Kádár-korszakban.

10.30-11.50

1.2. Gazdasági és koronaválság, digitális biopolitika

Csath Magdolna (D.Sc., kutatóprofesszor, Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem): Globális átrendeződés és a magyar gazdaság lehetséges mintázatai.

Krasz Péter (doktorandusz, ELTE ÁJK Politikatudományi Intézet): Digitális biopolitika.

Teknős László (PhD, adjunktus, Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem, Rendészettudományi Kar, Katasztrófavédelmi Intézet): Az EU polgári védelmi mechanizmus COVID-19 helyzettel kapcsolatos válságkezelésének elemzése, értékelése.

Az általam tartott előadás diasora elérhető az Academia.edu oldalamon.

Rosa Luxemburg and Her Ideas - Conference in Chicago

From April 27-29, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office will co-host a gathering of the International Rosa Luxemburg Society. The confrence title is: “Rosa Luxemburg and Her Ideas: Engaging the Left and Impacting the World. It takes place at the historic UE Hall in Chicago, Illinois.

I am having a lecture with the title:

Anti-war Theory and Activism in Permanent State of Exception

The paper is available from here (the final title has been modified a little bit).

The program is the following:

FRIDAY, APRIL 27

8:30am-9:00am  Light Breakfast

9:00am-9:30am  Welcome and Housekeeping
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Albert Scharenberg & Ethan Earle

9:30am-10:15am  Memorials
In Memory of William A. Pelz: Axel Fair-Schulz
In Memory of Narihiko Ito: Ottokar Luban

10:15am-10:20am  Short Break

10:20am-12:15pm  Panel 1: Reports on International Research
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Univ. Calcutta, India (Retired): “Evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg: An Examination of Changing Perspectives of International Scholarship”

Ma Jiahong, University of Peking, China; Post-doc Researcher at IISH, Amsterdam, Netherlands: “Review and Prospect of Chinese Study in Rosa Luxemburg”

Axel Fair-Schulz, State University of New York, Potsdam, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg and the November Revolution: Recent Trends in Historiography”

Uwe Sonnenberg, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany: “Report: Events Organized by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung on the Centenary of the German Revolution 1918/19”

Chair: Mario Keßler

12:15pm-1:00pm  Lunch

1:00pm-2:10pm  Panel 2a: Race, Class, and Movement Building
Peter Hudis, Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, IL, USA: “Racism and the Logic of Capital: A Marxist-Humanist Assessment of the Relevance of Luxemburg’s Thought for Today’s Struggles Against Racism”

Valentine Eben, Univ. of Minnesota, USA: “A View from Indymedia Africa: What would Luxembourg Say About Today’s Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Revolution?”

Chair: Michael Löwy

1:00pm-2:10pm  Panel 2b: The Private Rosa Luxemburg
Helen Scott, University of Vermont, Burlington, USA: “‘Like a Flash from Eternity’: Rosa Luxemburg on Literature”

Rory Castle Jones, Swansea Univ., Wales, UK: “‘All the Hidden, Bitter Tears’: Family, Identity and the Shaping of Revolutionary Red Rosa”

Chair: Helen Boak

2:10pm-2:15pm  Short Break

2:15pm-3:25pm  Panel 3: Rosa Luxemburg and Colonialism
Alyssa Adamson, Stony Brook University, NY, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg and Decolonial Political Theory”

Sandra Rein, University of Alberta, Canada: “Rosa Luxemburg on Colonialism: Why It Still Matters”

Chair: Lorraine Cohen

3:25pm-3:40pm  Coffee/Tea Break

3:40pm-6:00pm  Panel 4: Luxemburg and Other Female Socialist Thinkers
Andreas Stuhlmann, University of Alberta, Canada: “‘The Ghost of Rosa Luxemburg’: Hannah Arendt on Undogmatic Judgment, Spontaneity, and Revolution”

Eleni Varikas, Univ. Paris 8/ Saint-Denis, CNRS, France; 2018 Visiting Prof. at Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt and the Question of Plurality”

Franklin Dmitryev, Chicago, USA: “Revolutionary Intercommunication between the Ages: The “Dialogue” between Rosa Luxemburg and Raya Dunayevskaya”

Dana Mills, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK: “Going Ahead in 1893: When Eleanor Met Rosa”

Chair: Sandra Rein

6:00pm-6:05pm  Short Break

6:05pm-7:45pm  Keynote 1: The Contemporary Significance of Rosa Luxemburg’s Socialist Feminism
Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Chair: Ankica Čakardič

SATURDAY, APRIL 28

8:30am-9:00am  Light Breakfast

9:00am-10:40am  Panel 5: Discussions on Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital (1)
Inderjeet Singh, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala, India: “The Accumulation of Capital in the Era of Imperialism”

Andrew Kliman, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY, USA: “Luxemburg’s Theory of Capital Accumulation: Still Influential, but Still Wrong”

Bradley Mayer, San Leandro, California, USA: “Primitive Accumulation Inside and Out“

Chair: Ingo Schmidt

10:40am-10:45am  Short Break

10:45am-11:45am  Panel 6: Discussions on Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital (2)
Lin Haochao, Wuhan University, China: “The Inevitable Rise of Opposing Individual Freedom in Modernization: Based on the Theory of the Accumulation of Capital”

Ankica Čakardič, Univ. Zagreb, Croatia: “Rosa Luxemburg and the ‘Woman Question’: From the Theory of Accumulation to Social Reproduction Theory“

Chair: Ma Jiahong

11:45am-12:00pm  Coffee/Tea Break

12:00pm-1:10pm  Keynote 2: Women in the German Revolution, 1918/19
Helen Boak, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK

Chair: Alyssa Adamson

1:10pm-2:00pm  Lunch

2:00pm-4:00pm  Panel 7a: Marxist Thinking
Julia Killet, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Munich, Germany: “Rosa Luxemburg’s Advice to the Socialist Movement (Considerations by Luxemburg Biographer Paul Froelich)”

Mario Keßler, Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany: “Ossip K. Flechtheim, 1909-1998: Editor of Rosa Luxemburg’s Works and Pioneer of Research on Communism in Germany”

Zhang Meng, Wuhan University, China: “Reflection on the Relationship between Rosa Luxemburg’s Thought and Marx’s Theory”

Paul Zarembka, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA: “Luxemburg, a Stable ‘Materialized’ Composition of Capital in the U.S. and Its Implications”

Chair: Albert Scharenberg

2:00pm-4:00pm  Panel 7b: Rosa Luxemburg’s Activities in the Socialist Movement
Arunas Vysniauskas, University Vilnius, Lithuania: “Rosa Luxemburg and the Polish ‘Mosaic’ in Lithuania”

Reiner Tosttorff, Univ. Mainz, Germany: “Between Bockenheim, Hanau and Frankfurt: Rosa Luxemburg’s Rhein-Main Connections”

Ottokar Luban, Berlin, Germany: “The Spartacus Group in the German November Revolution 1918/19”

Chair: Rory Castle

4:00pm-4:10pm  Coffee/Tea Break

4:10pm-6:00pm  Panel 8: Party and Leadership
Chris Cutrone, School of the Art Institute, University of Chicago, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg and the Party”

Lorraine Cohen, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg’s Theory of Leadership: An Alternative Approach”

Edward Remus, Ronald Williams Library, Northern Illinois University, Chicago: “American Bernstein, American Luxemburg: Views of the SPD’s Revisionist Dispute and Great Schism from the Socialist Party of America, 1900-1918”

Henry Holland, Hamburg, Germany: “Beyond Nationalisms: Spontaneity and Working-Class Organization in Scotland, 2012-2017 Through the Lens of Luxemburg’s Dialectic“

Chair: Kaveh Boveiri

6:00pm-6:05pm  Short Break

6:05pm-8:00pm  International Plenary: Chances for Socialist Solutions of Current World Problems?
Erek Slater, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Chicago; Michael Löwy, Brazil; Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, India; Ankica Čakardič, Croatia; Jiahong Ma, China; & Ingo Schmidt, Canada

Chair: Peter Hudis

SUNDAY, APRIL 29

8:30am-9:00am  Light Breakfast

9:00am-10:45am  Panel 9: Luxemburg and Lukács and Gramsci: Interpretations and Evaluations
Kaveh Boveiri, Univ. Montreal, Canada: “Lukács’s Reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s Conception of Totality: A Reappraisal”

Sevgi Doğan, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy: “Analysis of Intellectual Movement as Political Action Through Gramsci and Luxemburg“

Daniel Egan, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA: “Rosa Luxemburg and the Mass Strike: A Corrective to Gramsci’s Critique”

Chair: Ethan Earle

10:45am-11:00am  Coffee/Tea Break

11:00am-12:45pm  Panel 10: Socialist Internationalism Versus Imperialism
Michael Löwy, Univ. Paris, France, Visiting Prof. at Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA – Rosa Luxemburg and Internationalism

Attila Antal, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary – Anti-war Theory and Activism in Permanent State of Exception

Ingo Schmidt, Athabasca University, Canada: “Hilferding, Luxemburg & Lenin on Imperialism: Variations Amongst the Classic”

Chair: Bradley Mayer

12:45pm-1:00pm  Closing Words and Farewell
Peter Hudis, Ottokar Luban & Albert Scharenberg

Biopopulism - The Biopolitical Frameworks of Neopopulisms

The next week seems to be very busy: between 9-11 November 2017 I will participate at Northeastern Political Science Association 49th Annual Conference in Philadelphia, PA. I am going to have a lecture concerning the biopolitical implication of contemporary populism. You can find the abstract of my lecture here and the draft paper on the Academia.edu.

Biopopulism - The Biopolitical Frameworks of Neopopulisms

This paper is a part of my research project investigating the political theoretical (Antal, 2017a; 2017b) and historical (Antal, 2017c) backgrounds of contemporary populism (neopopulism). I shape populism as a historical phenomenon and elaborate it in the context of Laclau’s theory. According to my hypothesis the populism has entered in its new phase using biopolitics and the discursive implications of biopower (the tools of propaganda, mass media, and moreover nowadays the post-truth, post-factual politics, fake news techniques). This phenomenon can be called, because of its biopolitical implications, as biopopulism which is using biopower to achieve biopolitical objectives. Harsin recognized the biopolitical nature of the post-truth systems: “The proliferating truth games extend biopower into psychopower – managing not simply ideologies, discourses, and bodies in institutional enclosures but attention itself.” (Harsin, 2015: 332.). In my view, there are two directions of biopolitical thinking are applicable to populism (Lemke, 2011). On the one hand, the state biological and racist form of biopower, which conceives life as the basis of politics. I will analyze here the main assumptions of Nationals Socialist biopopulism and demonstrate through the Hungarian example the nature of Communist biopopulism. On the other hand, populism has been analyzed here according to the three leading biopolitical narratives in the field of social and critical theory: the concept of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. I will put forward here a hypothesis concerning the biopolitical nature of contemporary populisms especially the populism of the nationalist right-wing. In my view, there is a remarkable tendency in the field of neopopulisms which use the biopower of modern state to regulate the human life, create a permanent state of exceptions and try to occupy the biopolitical production of financial capitalism. Furthermore, this paper will conclude bionationalism as a threat caused by biopopulism.

The draft paper is available here.

Empire and Multitude Populism

I have a lecture at ECPR Annual Conference on 8th September 2017 in Oslo, Norway. My lecture is dealing with the political and social theoretical assumptions of nationalist right-wing populism and transnational left populism.

The abstract of my lecture can be found here:

In recent years populism has not only become some kind of Zeitgeist, but it has redesigned our beliefs and assumptions concerning liberal democracy. Is seems to be that radical right populism is more successful than leftist populism. According to my hypothesis we have entered the era of populist democracy and there is a fierce competition between the left and right to define and maintain the core nature of this populist democracy. I will apply the well know theory of Empire and Multitude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) to understand our current populist tendencies. It will be argued in my paper that right-wing nationalist populism can be seen as a manifestation of the Empire. According to my understanding the populist parties and movements on the political right belong to the realist conception of the Empire: these actors are seeking the political power and would like to conquer the institutions of global capitalism. Right-wing nationalist populism is neither anti-capitalist, nor anti-elitist. It means that a new political elite has been created (for instance this is Donald Trump and alt-right in the USA, Viktor Orbán and his regime in Hungary) and seeks to gain political power with populist political communication and style. That’s why I call this new phenomenon elitist populism or Empire Populism. These actors are acting like populist in that sense they understand and solve the people’s problems, in fact they serve elitist purposes. On the other hand, the (radical) left populism has been called here a utopian or Multitude Populism. This form of populism tries to concern the multitudes of the people. Occupy movement, Indignados) and DiEM25 have emerged as left populist promises. I will analyse in my paper the political theoretical backgrounds of Empire and Multitude Populism. It has been stated here that the populist right has been inspired by the concepts of Carl Schmitt (the concept of the Political; the nature of neoliberalism; state of exception), Max Weber (leader democracy), and populist constitutionalism. On the left side, the Multitude Populism seems to be frozen from ideological point of view and suffering from ideological emptiness, but transnational populism could fill this theoretical gap. That is why I will put forward my thought on this crisis and argue that populist left needs to reformulate its bases as transnational political communities based on multitude.

The full draft paper can be downloaded from my Academia.edu

My presentation is available from here:

Empire and Multitude Populism from Antal Attila 

Menekültválság és biopolitika

Előadást tartok az Erdélyi Politikatudományi Konferencia, Otthonlét - idegenség című konferenciáján Kolozsvárott 2017. július 23-án Menekültválság és biopolitika címmel.

A konferencia programja elérhető itt.

Az előadás diasora letölthető innen és hamarosan elérhető lesz a draft paper is.

Menekültválság és biopolitika from Antal Attila

Populism and Climate Change in the Era of Post-Truth

I am going to have a lecture he 3rd Prague Populism Conference between 22 and 23 May 2017. In this year the populism conference concerns  Current Populism in Europe and the Role of the Media.

The conference program can be find here.

My lecture is dealing with post-truth and climate change.

Populism and Climate Change in the Era of Post-Truth

Populism and Climate Change in the Era of Post-Truth from Antal Attila

Post-truth (PT) and post-factual politics (PFP) has increasingly been core pillars of our public and media sphere. This can be analyzed in the broader context of the politics, which shows that the core nature of politics has changed: emotions, enemies, political personalities have been moved in to the center of the politics. Facts, institutions, experts, law- and right-based approach begin to lose their importance. On the one hand, populist forces felt this political shift; on the other hand, they have begun to force and push these tendencies. I will put forward here a hypothesis concerning the relationship between the populist turn of politics and the climate change. Climate skepticism and climate change denial were existing and flourishing phenomena before the populist era of PT and PFP, but the law- and expert-based neoliberal politics tried to handle this situation with transnational agreements (most recently with the Paris Agreement). Unfortunately, populist (mainly on the political right) forces are attempting to use PT and PFP techniques to attack environmental measures and self-evident facts concerning the climate change. According to my hypothesis this combat can not only be seen as result of a political strategy to support industry donors, but also the massive anti-climate policy based on the concept of political sovereignty. The nationalist populist right (from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán) recognized that the adaptation and mitigation in the context of the Anthropocene and climate change need to have a new concept of sovereignty. I will investigate here the roots of PT/PFP and fake news politics and I am elaborating the concept of biopopulism concerning the climate change. After all I will conclude some assumptions how to protect the climate against the populist post-truth regimes.

My draft paper is available here.

Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene

I have a lecture at Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene Symposium, April 24-25, 2017 at Colorado State University. My lecture is dealing with political theoretical implications of enviroinmental and climate justice questions in Eastern and South Europe.

Environmental and Social Justice in Eastern and South Europe: Ecopopulism and Biopower

I am dealing in this paper with the question of environmental and climate (in)justices in Eastern and South Europe (ESE). At first, I will refer the theoretical pillars of environmental justice and my statement is that there is an expanding sphere concerning environmentalism which has grounded the theory of climate justice. The environmental justice has been expanded to climate justice, because it increasingly addressed that the environmental and social conditions provide for individual and community needs and functioning and justice depends on the environmental conditions. It has been put forward here that populism could bring closer the meaning of environmental and climate related disasters to the people’s everyday lives and experience. In the next part of this paper the connection of climate justice and social problems have been analyzed. The investigation elaborated here is based on a very important initiative called Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) and its Environmental Justice Atlas. I will focus two main environmental and climate injustice caused challenges: the first one is the situation of the Roma communities in ESE, and the second one is the emerging case of fuel or energy poverty. I will conclude this paper that we need to (re)enhance the social nature of environmental problems and this will strengthen the environmental consciousness in ESE. The relating discourse of environmental and climate justice in ESE is need to be based on environmental identities constructed on ethnical and social solidarity. Finally we should have a look on the biopolitical structure of modern State.

You find the draft paper here.

My lecture is available at SlideShare.

Environmental and Social Justice in Eastern and South Europe_Ecopolitics and Biopower from Antal Attila