2025: Disruptions
30 June to 4 July 2025, University of Lucerne
Disruptions
Ours is a time of disruption; a “disruptive age” as Bernard Stiegler terms it. Rapid technological change, the accelerating scarcity of biospheric resources, heightened political and economic volatility, social unrest and discontent – these are just some of the pressures that are radically (re-)shaping the modern condition, and which are making the experience of disruptiveness an “epochal signature” (Erich Hörl) of the twenty-first century.
The language of disruption is pervasive. At root, the term derives from the Latin disrumpere, meaning to break apart or to shatter; it refers to the action of “rending or bursting asunder”. But it also carries the sense of interrupting or jamming; of “breaking between” and “preventing something […] from continuing as usual or as expected”. To disrupt is to unsettle conventional frames and norms, flows and continuities – it is, in essence, a destructive act. And yet equally, it holds force as a generative move – one that not only calls into question what is entrenched and naturalized but which conjures the possibility of thinking and making things anew.
For this year’s Critical Times summer school, we invite postdocs, ECRs and graduate students from across disciplines to join us for a week of intensive exchange on the meanings, forms and effects of disruption – as event, as process, as mode, as gesture. Our aim is to open a space for thinking – deeply, critically and creatively – about how disruptive forces upset existing notions of law and justice, tradition and community, and about the possibilities they open for transforming our legal, political and cultural imaginaries. Topics for consideration might include:
- How does the experience of disruptiveness impact the means and ways of ordering legal and political life?
- To what extent are rising “anti-democratic forces” engendering a “nihilistic disintegration of the social compact” (Wendy Brown)? What strategies are available to challenge these forces and to help re-knit the social and/or democratic fabric?
- How are shifting political dynamics – local, national and international – contributing to a dislocation of shared cultural values and dispositions? How might these effects be countered or mitigated?
- What is the work of media forms and practices in cultivating or resisting disruptive energies?
- How does the recent (re-)thinking of human and non-human agencies disrupt conventional notions of normativity and subjectivity – in law, politics and culture?
- What kinds of lawful relations are necessary to make our disrupted worlds newly livable and habitable?
- Which imaginative practices and resources have the power to disrupt entrenched narratives and deconstruct mythical understandings of the past?
- How might such practices and resources interrupt and transform our experience of time and space and with what artistic, political and legal implications?
- What aesthetic forms and representations might be enlisted to disrupt the “distribution of the sensible” (Jacques Rancière) and offer new ways of seeing and understanding?
- How might contestatory aesthetic and political practices catalyze change and produce a shift in hegemonic articulations of the im/possible?
Programme & Activities
The 2025 summer school will follow the same format that has been honed in previous years. In the morning, interdisciplinary seminars will be delivered by expert faculty from our partner institutions. In the afternoon, research colloquia will allow participants to present and discuss their own work in a diverse and supportive environment. The evenings will be given over to a mixture of special events and social activities. The summer school thus offers a memorable opportunity to join a community of scholars and writers from around the world, and to establish lasting contacts, networks, and friendships.
We are pleased to confirm the following seminars:
- Strategies of Resignification: Making Strange, Repair, Prefiguration, Judgment (Julen Etxabe)
- Disrupting Law Through Documentary Film (Mónica López Lerma)
- Juris-Geography: The Made Up and the Made Real (Shane Chalmers & Desmond Manderson)
- Introduction to Post-Apocalyptic Law (Malte-Christian Gruber)
- Title to Follow (Greta Olson)
In addition, Başak Ertür will lead a screening of Marleen Gorris's film A Question of Silence, followed by a discussion around rupture, refusal and rehearsal. Lara Montesinos Coleman will also give an evening talk based on her recent book Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights.
Further events will be confirmed shortly. Details will be published here as soon as they become available.
Applications & Fees
Applications are invited from postdocs, ECRs and graduate students – of all disciplinary backgrounds – with research interests across law, critical theory and the humanities.
Please complete the application form and return it, together with a short academic CV (max. two pages), as a single .pdf file to lucernaiuris@unilu.ch.
Deadline: 14 March 2025
The registration fee for the full week is CHF 400.-. This includes tuition, materials, lunches, coffee breaks and social events.
Please note that the fee does not include accommodation. Participants are required to make their own arrangements. A list of possible accommodation options is available on request.
