Dr. Evelien Geerts (Birmingham/Linköping) will speak on “Haunting Spectro(micro)politics: The Powers of Alt-right Memes and Critical Posthumanisms”, September 22, 2023, 15:00-16:30 (ET)
Given form by memetic vignettes and visuals, memetic theory, and critical posthumanist philosophies, this talk will explore the world of far-right (post-)pandemic politics by zooming in on the Belgian alt-right youth movement Schild & Vrienden [Shield & Friends] and the haunting spectro(micro)politics of Shield & Friends’ alt-right memes.After contextualizing the Flemish nationalist tenets of Shield & Friends’ memetic (meta-)politics against the backdrop of these (post-)pandemic more-than-human crisis times, a critical posthumanist argument is constructed in favor of taking the spectro(micro)political scene-setting of – and by – memes seriously. Doing so reveals how memes are always part artefact, part agential phenomena with microfascist and counter-microfascist potential. Such a critical posthumanist take on memetic theory that conceptualizes memes-as-(counter-)microfascisms also helps us better understand the macropolitical grasp of Shield and Friends and the global alt-right on today’s neoliberal digitalized societies of control, consequently broadening the reach of contemporary critical theory and activism.
Link to the livestream: https://stream.lifesizecloud.com/extension/12627650/edf0a4e1-a920-44e8-8744-5dacc2c88b7c
Biography: Evelien Geerts (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz) (e.m.l.geerts@bham.ac.uk) is an interdisciplinary philosopher, a Research Fellow (University of Birmingham, UK), and an affiliated researcher at the Posthumanities Hub and the Eco- and Bioart Lab (Linköping University, Sweden). Her work focuses on questions of identity, difference, and violence, critical posthumanist, new materialist, and Deleuzoguattarian approaches, and theorizing in (post-)Anthropocenic crisis times. She previously has published in Philosophy Today, Women’s Studies International Forum, and CounterText, and recently co-edited special issues on “The Somatechnics of Violence” (Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies – Power, forthcoming in 2024) and “Dis/Abling Gender” (Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, 2022)—publications that can be found at www.eveliengeerts.com.
