Societies are not givens, but take shape in a process of negotiation, regulation, governance and resistance. The symposium Performing Society is devoted to the question of how we can conceive of societies in their current dynamics as well as their future formations. Do we need new terminology or are we called upon to rethink that already at our disposal?
The imagination and construction of the social, the relationship between immigration and class, the performativity of power, and faith in progress, will be among the topics discussed, but also the political as a concept, as an act of speech or as epistemological and social justice.
Within the framework of the exhibition Museum, in which art offers scope for the Other and its visualization, for freedom, transgression and resistance, the symposium is intended as an invitation to contemplate the societies in which we live–and want to live.

SATURDAY, 25 JANUARY

11am–1pm
Kristina Hasenpflug: Welcome

Susanne Pfeffer: Introduction

Aria Dean: Bad Infinity

Lea Ypi: Immigration and Social Class

2:30–4:30pm
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie: Is Democracy a Relevant Concept for Thinking about Politics?

Rainer Forst: The Performativity of Power

5–6pm
Gurminder K Bhambra: Performing Society, Reforming Society: From Progress to Reparations

SUNDAY, 26 JANUARY

11am–1pm
Natasha Lennard: Liberatory Language Games and Anti-Fascist Speech Acts: Why We Need a Better Understanding of Truth and Meaning-Making in the Fight for Social Justice

Nina Power: We Live in a Society: Ironic Belonging and Meme-Being in a Post-Public Age

2:30–4:30pm
Tiziana Terranova: Hypersocial Planetarization

Matteo Pasquinelli: Tools, Numbers, Machines and Algorithms: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence

5–6pm
Markus Gabriel: Fiction, Imagination, and Social Facts–The Dialectical Glue of Society

Moderation
Martin Saar, Nassima Sahraoui, Anna Sailer

Concept
Susanne Pfeffer, Anna Sailer
 

The symposium will be held in English. Admission is free.