Date: 19th and 20th April 2024

Abstract:

Are we living in a nihilistic age? In her 2023 book, the political theorist Wendy Brown describes the contemporary global age as "Nihilistic Times." Brown designates the contemporary political moment as one defined by "mass withdrawal into the trivial, immediate, and personal" driven by mass consumer culture and ubiquitous social media. While nihilism is generally understood in philosophy as the lack of meaning, values, and certainty, Brown describes a form of nihilism marked by easily available and hence superficial forms of meaning, value, and certainty. Most importantly, Brown describes the political situation as marked by a "failure of desire" for democracy.

This interdisciplinary workshop seeks to interrogate the claim that we are living in "nihilistic times" by examining classic philosophical treatments of nihilism and the thesis of "nihilistic times" in order to develop theories of democracy resistant to nihilism. Contributors are invited to explore the relationship between nihilism and democracy from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, examining questions such as: What does the desire for democracy mean? And what threatens that desire in the contemporary moment? What global patterns can be identified? And what global responses might be necessary?