Dangerous Desires: Dreams of Otherness

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The authors on this panel share a common interest in how the possibilities of conducting politics differently than the present are located in what they regard as dangerous ideas and practices. These are dangerous ideas and practices because their radical democratic potential can be subverted, co-opted, or bent towards the interests of centralized, sovereign power. Historically anchored in Hobbes’ Leviathan, the politics of imagination tracked in these papers examines how wonder can emerge from fear, political courage from aesthetic practices, and transformation repair and reparations from reformist measures. In each case, the portals to other political landscapes must be made, opened, and crossed. Such travels are framed as dangerous and even threatening to the degree that they mean instability and giving up the security of the status quo, yet they also harbor and preserve knowledge and praxis required for remaking the world in common.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Fear and Curiosity in Hobbes's Leviathan - Noga Rotem, University of Washington

• The Politics of Repair: Making Ready for Reparations - Ali Aslam, Mount Holyoke College

• Craving Freedom: Lessons from Black Fugitivity Thinkers - Michelle Rose, Brown University

• Race/Riot/Rebellion: Rethinking “Rule of Law” in Times of Mass Protest - Mark Golub, Scripps College

Chair

• Michelle Rose Brown University

Discussant

• Davide Panagia UCLA