Description du projet
Comment l’urgence supplante le besoin en politique
Depuis l’époque de la Révolution française, l’histoire de la politique européenne est marquée par une négociation asymétrique croissante entre l’urgence et le besoin. Cette relation complexe continue de façonner les politiques nationales et mondiales, comme la crise des migrants européens, l’urgence climatique et la pandémie de COVID-19. Le projet NOT, financé par l’UE, s’appuiera sur l’idée que les préoccupations politiques relatives aux états d’urgence négligent généralement les situations sociales, économiques et écologiques chroniques et en apparence moins pressantes. Le projet analysera comment la grammaire de la politique moderne reproduit la perspective myope, dramatique, subjectale et anthropocentrique qui privilégie l’urgence par rapport au besoin, en utilisant une archive de textes littéraires et théoriques du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours.
Objectif
NOT is a critical study of the emergency-discourse of modern European politics. My thesis is that the political preoccupation with states of emergency tends to overlook – with dire consequences – underlying chronic and ostensibly less urgent socio-economic and ecological conditions, or what I call states of need. This structural relation is captured in the ambivalence of the German word 'Not,' which means at once emergency and need. Since the French Revolution, the history of European politics has been defined by an always asymmetrical negotiation of the tension between emergency and need. This asymmetric articulation of political life is perpetuated by habits of speaking about politics, which are in turn rehearsed in literary and historiographical genres for representing the political theater. For this reason, NOT is an exercise in political philology. I analyze the way in which the grammar of modern politics reproduces the myopic, dramatic, subject- and anthropocentric perspective that privileges emergency over need by addressing a diverse archive of literary and theoretical texts from the 18th century to the present. My research historicizes this political grammar with attention to biopolitics, revolutionary rhetoric, political economy and development economics, human rights discourse, and ecological and Anthropocene debates. In doing so my aim is to excavate alternative forms of expression that do justice to the nexus of need/emergency and thereby recover ways to better articulate the political challenges we face today. In the spirit of Horizon 2020, appreciating the place of Europe in the contemporary world involves understanding the complex legacy of emergency/need that continues to inform national and global politics – as the European migrant crisis, the climate emergency and now the corona crisis have made clear. NOT is a second-book project supplemented by satellite conferences, edited publications, a public lecture series and teaching at the LMU.
Champ scientifique
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Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
80539 MUNCHEN
Allemagne