States of Precariousness: Emergence and Emergencies in Contemporary Latin America (II)

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This is the second half of a proposed double panel. The abstract is identical to the first half, already submitted.

More than a century and a half ago, Marx and Engels famously described capitalism as a process that reproduces and expands through destruction and crisis. Building on the general theme of 2015 LASA, “Precariedades, exclusiones, emergencias,” our panel proposal invites participants to reflect on possible points of intersection between conditions or structures of precariousness, crisis and destruction on the one hand, and the emergence of the new on the other—new forms of accumulation, new social forms, and new possibilities for thinking and acting—in Latin American contexts. We intentionally leave open the question of what “precariousness” might mean, hoping thereby to elicit a dialogue about precariousness itself, informed by a range of theoretical perspectives and contexts including reflections on labor and employment, the social pact, the modern state form, modern institutions, and language itself. The common link between these forms of precariousness might be found not only in the idea of what is unstable but also in the etymology of the term “precarious” which, in the Latin precarius [“obtained by asking or praying”] as well as in early modern juridical thought [“held through the favor of another”], appears to emphasize a certain economy of petition, debt and the whims or favor of power. By the same token we emphasize the double valence of emergencias, as either emergences or emergencies.

Sub Track

• Culture, Power, and Political Subjectivities

Session Organizers

• Kate Jenckes, University of Michigan

• Patrick E Dove, Indiana University

Chair

• Jacques Lezra, New York University

Individual Presentations

• The Preterite University, Or, Precarious Universalism - Jacques Lezra, New York University

• Precarity and Post-sovereignty: Oscar del Barco’s Exceso y donación and the History of Philosophy - Patrick E Dove, Indiana University

• Suspending Democracy - David E Johnson, University at Buffalo

• The Crisis of no Crisis: Neoliberalism and its So-called Wars - Brett S Levinson, State University of New York/Binghamton

Discussant

• Kate Jenckes, University of Michigan