Thesis Eleven Forum for Social and Political Theory presents

‘Ágnes Heller: a European intellectual and critic’

A workshop with Dr Emilia Palonen

Politics, media and academia are not distinct spheres but increasingly entangled – with public partnerships and engaged scholarship, called by the need to generate instant “value” through “impact”. Critical theorists have been aware of this entanglement, yet also often dismissed as critics of the status quo or avant-garde. Willingly or not academics and intellectuals play roles in politics. Philosopher Ágnes Heller experienced the volatility academic space. She emigrated in 1978 to Melbourne establishing herself and space for her philosophy in La Trobe University. Having retired from the New School New York to her native Hungary she was made a villain. Heller’s story invites us to reflect on what are intellectual practices and how they shape our meanings? How do regimes react to their critics and how counter publics emerge? What kind of roles intellectuals play in challenging status quo? Heller’s recent proposals for voting populist right included. In what kinds of situations critical theory and engaged scholarship emerges and how can it form not only academic bubbles or nodes – but the people and critical public?

Workshop Readings:

1. 2018. ‘Practicing “Europe”: Georg Lukács, Ágnes Heller, and the Budapest School’ in Marja Jalava, Stefan Nygård & Johan Strang, al. eds., Decentering European Intellectual Space, Brill.

2. 2018. ‘Performing the nation: the Janus-faced populist foundations of illiberalism in Hungary’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, pre-print available July 2018

3. 2018. ‘Rhetorical-performative analysis of the urban symbolic landscape: Populism in Action’, in Tomas Marttila ed. Discourse Culture and Organization: Inquiries into the Relational of Structures of Power (manuscript forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan)

WHEN: Wednesday, 1^st August,  2:00pm to 5:00pm

WHERE: Latrobe University Bundoora Campus, Donald Whitehead Building, Level 1, Room DW-101

https://www.facebook.com/events/2086523471666322/

Emilia Palonen teaches politics at the University of Helsinki, engaging on populism and democracy at the Academy of Finland funded consortium Mainstreaming Populism in the 21st Century. In the past, she has held fellowships at Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Collegium Budapest, Humboldt University in Berlin. After her MA and PhD in Ideology and Discourse Analysis (Essex) she visited the Northwestern University with the late Ernesto Laclau. She has a BA in Contemporary East European Studies (London). She has authored articles and book chapters on Hungary and Europe, politics of memory and discourse analysis, and edited volumes on populism such as the e-volume Populism on the Loose (2018). As an expert on Hungarian politics, she studied Ágnes Heller for a volume Decentering European Intellectual Space (2018). She engages on platinum open access for academic journals and launched op-ed publication for the Finnish Political Science Association that she currently chairs. Dr Palonen will also be delivering the 17th Annual Thesis Eleven Lecture: ‘Populism and Democracy in Contemporary Europe’ (see here for details).

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Dr Palonen will also be delivering the 17th Annual Thesis Eleven Lecture: ‘Populism and Democracy in Contemporary Europe’ (see here for details)