About
A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times seeks to counter the incendiary effects of right wing discourse by producing a more desirable and just way of imagining the world. The phantasms circulated by those who seek to augment state powers at the expense of collective rights and freedoms appeal to passions of fear and hatred. A counter-imaginary is needed to appeal to another set of passions: the desire for freedom, the passion for equality, the aspiration of justice.
We put forth an interconnected sequence of collaborations among scholars, activists, artists, and community members, who are increasingly concerned with the censorship and the targeting of fields and policies focusing on gender, race, ethnic studies, migration, diversity, and sexuality. Our project centers the arts and humanities, asking what alternative imaginaries are possible, and how we can enact them.
A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times is a joint project of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI), the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP), and the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Critical Racial Anti Colonial Study Co-Lab (CRACS Co-Lab) at New York University. We partner with universities and arts institutions in key areas of the United States. The project is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- What is new about the authoritarians we face now, and what accounts for the current conjuncture?
- What kind of counter-imaginaries could effectively oppose the force of right-wing phantasms, and how might communities collaborate to produce new kinds of thinking, making, and sensing?
- In the face of new restrictions, including censorship, criminalization, surveillance, and gender and racial inequality, what strategies can work for interconnected arts, activist, and academic communities under pressure to carve out both critical and creative spaces seeking to affirm justice, rights, and freedom?
All sectors need to mobilize right now, including the cultural sector. We are ready to do our part in providing experimental spaces to assemble, to renew, and to model a different kind of future.
Our commitment is to facilitate a passionate counter-imaginary, one that affirms the desire for freedom, the commitment to equality, the aspiration for justice. What might that look like, sound like, feel like?
Leadership
Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI)
CICI encourages cross-disciplinary, inter-regional, and global collaborations dedicated to political, social, religious, and cultural issues of our time. CICI is committed to creative approaches across disciplines to develop a capacious vision of how the arts, humanities, and social sciences can engage critical thought, justice, and ethics on issues of pressing and common concern.
International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP)
The ICCTP aims to document the global contours of critical theory today, supporting critical thought both inside and outside the university in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology studies, and seeking collaborative forms for critically responding to pressing global challenges.
Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative
EAHI advances the multidisciplinary study of the environment with particular attention to critical histories and futures, narrative, visual, and embodied practices, beliefs, values, and ethics, and environmental justice and the public good.
Critical Racial Anti Colonial Study Co-Lab (CRACS Co-Lab)
The CRACS Co-Lab is a collective feminist intellectual hub for scholars whose research focuses on global colonial and racial power and anti-colonial transformation. The Co-Lab hosts conversations, experimentations, and explorations oriented towards a global approach to questions of colonial and racial subjugation.
Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory
Critical Times is an open-access journal published by Duke University Press. Since the publication of its inaugural issue in 2018, Critical Times has consistently featured work that tracks the resurgence, accounts for the force, and opposes the spread of today’s far-right political movements.