Politics at the end of the world: An IPS workshop

Co-organised by: Queen Mary Research Group on International Political Sociology and Angharad Closs Stephens (Swansea University), Visiting Researcher at Queen Mary.

This workshop will address the shared collective mood that we are living in times of crisis if not standing at the ‘end of the world’. Given a recent context that includes the COVID-19 pandemic, new wars between Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza, the climate emergency, and the debates about the existential risks of Artificial Intelligence for humanity, these apocalyptic narratives, images and representations may not surprise. Several contemporary films, television series and video games further depict the future as catastrophe. This workshop invites reflection on the political implications of these ‘end-of-the-world’ narratives, statements and imagery in terms of how they inform and potentially impede political action. We want to ask: how can we imagine the present and future otherwise without negating the very urgent global challenges that we face?

Building on a previous IPS event, on Navigating Catastrophic Times, which asked how end-thinking can politicise and activate, this workshop seeks to unpack the different forms that ideas about the apocalypse take, how these tie to broader and longstanding ideas about modern life. We will ask how end-thinking shapes ideas about knowledge, subjectivity and the future, and how it might be challenged. We will examine how fictional and scientific portrayals of emergency and extinction interact, and are mediated to us alongside news of increasing global inequalities, populist and authoritarian movements as well as powerful counter-protests. Overall, we will bring together scholars to remind us of other apocalyptic imaginaries from the recent and distant past, and consider the possibilities for unfolding alternative understandings of where we stand and where we are headed.

The Peter Landin building can be found on the Queen Mary campus map at number 6.

Picture: Unsplash

Host or Publisher School of Politics and International Relations