Political Imagination: Rethinking Our Vocabulary Lexical Workshop
September 29 & 30, 2021
Political imagination is a concept that can be traced to a 200- year tradition of political thought and has returned to the public discourse in recent years in the context of theoretical artistic and activist conversations. In this workshop we seek to join this conversation by developing lexical concepts to explore Political Imagination and Imagination as Politics. Theories of decolonization, environmental justice discourses and activist groups around the world as Extinction Rebellion, Standing Rock, the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter use a political imagination rhetoric not only to criticize, challenge and oppose political realities but also to offer alternatives for them. At the same time, artists, writers and filmmakers are producing more and more cultural artifacts that engage with questions of futurism, alternative pasts, dystopias and imaginaries.