X-Texts on Culture and Society – serie

How can political theory strengthen democracy and emancipatory social change while remaining critical of its own norms and foundations? How can it confront populist movements that claim to defend democracy but in fact advance authoritarian agendas? Oliver Flügel-Martinsen engages with key thinkers of the political – among them M. Foucault, J. Derrida, C. Lefort, C. Mouffe, I. M. Young, J. Rancière, W. Brown, R. Geuss, A. Mbembe, and J. Butler – to address these challenges. Revisiting truth-skeptical approaches, neoliberal hegemony, exclusions in the name of an essentialist understanding of the people, and global injustices, he explores how critical theory can help us escape the present in working toward a different future.

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto (2020) has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what people would gain from a shift to a post-neoliberal and post-growth convivialist future. This volume includes a theoretical debate on convivialism which reflects dystopias and shows the multiple and major obstacles that convivialism will have to face. Mainly, however, the contributors to this volume create sketches of a convivial future and collect accounts of another future world which is attractive for as many as possible.

Are robots taking away our jobs? Those who ask this question have misunderstood digitalisation – it is not an industrial revolution by other means. Sabine Pfeiffer searches for the actual novelties brought about by digitalisation and digital capitalism. In her analysis, she juxtaposes Marx's concept of productive force with the idea of distributive force. From the platform economy to artificial intelligence, Pfeiffer shows that digital capitalism is less about the efficient production of value, but rather about its fast, risk-free, and permanently secured realisation on the markets. The examination of this dynamic and its consequences also leads to the question of how destructive the distributive forces of digital capitalism might be.

»We must declare war on the virus,« stated UN chief António Guterres on March 13, 2020, just two days after the WHO had characterized the outbreak of the novel Covid-19 virus as a pandemic. Elke Krasny introduces feminist worry in order then to develop a feminist cultural theory on pandemic frontline ontologies, which give rise to militarized care essentialism and forced heroism. Feminist hope is gained through the attentive reading of feminist recovery plans and their novel care feminism, with the latter's insistence that recovery from patriarchy is possible.

Liberal democracy is under pressure worldwide. It is challenged by anti-liberal movements and parties as well as by authoritarian regimes. Liberalism as a cross-party movement and a broad way of thinking has fallen into the defensive and is often associated with market radicalism, social coldness, and ecological ignorance. The contributors show that liberalism as a school of thought is not dead. In their essays, they present ideas and approaches for new liberal concepts to cope with the great challenges of our time: from climate change, globalization, and the digital revolution to transnational migration and the increasing systemic competition between democracies and authoritarian regimes.

Species are going extinct, forests are burning, and children are worried about the future and their peers worldwide. But that is not the whole story: One Friday in 2018, a few young people joined Greta Thunberg to protest, and the global climate strike movement was born. Scientist David Fopp spent 250 Fridays with the newly formed grassroots movements. Together with activists Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille, he offers an insider perspective on how scientists and activists can fight for a just and sustainable global society. The volume also offers both an introduction to ecophilosophy and a unified science of democracy in times of interdependent crises. How can research in all disciplines – from (drama) education and economics to psychology – help with this struggle? And how can we all fight the climate crisis by transforming and deepening democracy?

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022 was called a watershed in postwar European history. The West sees Putin’s Russia on the way to restoring the former Soviet Union. But Putin’s increasingly aggressive stance was also a reaction to Western politics. The real possibility of a new security and peace order in Europe opening in the 1990s was not pursued. Instead, NATO was enlarged to the east. Now, a massive arms build-up is on the way. Using historical sources, international news media, representative surveys, and personal interviews with people in Ukraine, Max Haller shows that this war has not been predetermined and – following Kant – peace initiatives are possible even now. In these, the European Union should assume a leading role.