Defeat and the Future
Channel: ICCTP
Date: 2020-12-09

Defeat and the Future
Workshop
December 4, 2020 

Fadi A. Bardawil (Duke University), Paloma Duong (MIT), Nouri Gana (UCLA), moderated by Samera Esmeir (UC Berkeley)

Many places in the world have been contending with experiences of defeat. Struggles for racial justice, revolutions, and uprisings are confronted with crushing powers. Colonial projects and military occupations continue to defeat emancipatory aspirations. And there is a global economic system that attacks and defeats local struggles for social and economic justice. One response has been to bracket “defeat” in the effort to strengthen the struggles to overcome it; another has been to recognize defeat but only in order to critically investigate the powers that engender it. Consequently, the particular political experience of defeat, and its unexpected consequences, is rarely given reflective consideration. This conversation between scholars of Cuba and the Arab world clears space for the critical theorization of defeat in its relationship to political action and the future. What political and ethical vocabularies and practices have been developed in the course of contending with experiences of defeat? And how are we to think a relationship to the future from the past and present of ongoing defeats?

Presented by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Berkeley.

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