International Conference: States of Exception and the Politics of Anger

The EDDA Research Center in Critical Contemporary Research at the University of Iceland hosts, in cooperation with the Nordic Research Hub ReNew, an international conference—which will be held 19–20 October 2018—on emergency politics from historical and contemporary perspectives. It brings together scholars in diverse academic fields and working within different thematic and national paradigms to explore “states of exception.” The conference will take place in the Conference Hall at the National Museum of Iceland. Please find the conference program here.

In the past two decades, Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben’s accounts of the “state of exception” have captured the imagination of scholars working in the fields of history, politics, law, economics, philosophy and literature. What has accompanied the resurgence of interest in “exceptions” is the proliferation and increasing use of government or supranational emergency powers or other extraordinary measures to deal with political and social unrest, violence and terrorism, and financial crises. The conference seeks to address several questions raised by this development. What explains the resort to emergency institutions to grapple with political, economic and social problems? What is the potential of the rule of law to respond to emergencies? Is it possible to identify alternative paradigms or frameworks for confronting severe crises? “Exceptions” will be defined broadly to encompass total or partial suspensions of the rule of law in cases of emergency, challenges to political systems and jurisdictional grey zones. Topics include the politics of fear and the rise of right-wing  populist parties; financial crises and economic states of exception; terrorism and political violence; mass surveillance and new technologies and Big Data; historical victimhood and mass crimes.

Conference participants include Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University; Claudia Aradau, Professor of International Politics at King’s College in London; James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin; and Hans Köchler, Professor of Philosophy, University of Innsbruck.