Depoliticization before Neoliberalism: Contesting the Limits of the Political in Modern Europe

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Depoliticization before Neoliberalism: Contesting the Limits of the Political in Modern Europe

Veranstalter
Adriejan van Veen (Nijmegen), Theo Jung (Freiburg i. Br.)
Veranstaltungsort
Soeterbeeck
Gefördert durch
KNAW Thorbeckefonds
PLZ
5352
Ort
Deursen-Dennenburg
Land
Netherlands
Vom - Bis
01.04.2022 - 02.04.2022
Von
Theo Jung, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br.

All too often, depoliticization is reduced to a very recent phenomenon, an effect of "Neoliberalism". This workshop to be held in Nijmegen on April 1–2, 2022 places the concept in a wider historical perspective. On the basis of a broad spectrum of European cases, we reconsider the contestation of the boundaries of the political sphere since its emergence in the late eighteenth century.

Depoliticization before Neoliberalism: Contesting the Limits of the Political in Modern Europe

In recent decades, public commentators and political scientists alike have observed a widespread delegation of tasks from democratic to technocratic, international and market bodies. This „neoliberal“ displacement has often been pinpointed as the cause of dissolving ideological cleavages and of growing public disenchantment with politics. Yet while the shift of responsibilities from political to allegedly non-political spheres was long thought to have led to widespread political disengagement, recent upsurges in populism and identity politics have called this view into question. Are such recent developments to be understood as a repoliticization, in reaction to previous depoliticization? Or was the political never quite as deflated as we thought? Against this background, questions about the boundaries of the political sphere have again reached the top of both public and scholarly agendas.

Missing from such debates, however, is an expanded historical perspective on the complex entanglements of depoliticization and politicization processes. Research on political history often focuses on the many manifestations of politicization: the rise of political parties, mass movements, and popular leaders. Yet phenomena of depoliticization – the removal of particular issues from political agendas, the manufacturing of tacit political and ideological consent, and citizens“ non-participation – are often less visible and therefore far less studied. In recent years, historians of neoliberalism have started to explore this terrain, demonstrating how the institutional dismantling of the Keynesian welfare state involved the re-framing of contentious issues in terms of „natural“ globalization and economic „necessity“, placing them beyond the realm of collective deliberation. This workshop“s goal is to expand such insights beyond the narrow margins of the late 20th and 21st centuries: to study depoliticization processes and their interdependencies with politicization as an integral facet of European modernity since the late eighteenth century.

Guests

Guests are very welcome to attend, both off- and online (via Zoom). Please register in advance with the organizers via email.

Programm

Friday April 1

09:30–09:55 Theo Jung and Adriejan van Veen: Introduction

09:55–10:40 Ido de Haan: Keynote

10:45–12:30 Panel 1: Timeless Realms: Art and Religion beyond Politics

Tamar Kojman: Constructing an Apolitical Realm after the 1848/9 German Revolutions

Jan-Markus Vömel: Unpolitical Islam? Stategies of De-Politicization Surrounding Islam in Turkey

Klara Kemp-Welch: Antipolitics and Art in Late-Socialist East-Central Europe

12:30–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:45 Panel 2: Perspectives on Political Abstention

Oriol Luján: Articulating Political Unease in 19th Century Europe: Abstention and Blank Vote as Forms of (De)Politicization

Adriejan van Veen: Passive Citizenship? Civil Society and Political Abstention in the Netherlands, 1780–1840

Zoé Kergomard: Depoliticizing “Apathy”? Institutional Reactions to Non-Voting in France under De Gaulle (1958–1969)

15:45–16:15 Coffee

16:15–18:00 Panel 3: Discourses of Competence and Functionalism

Ruben Ros: Technocratic Anti-Politics in Dutch Interwar Political Culture (1917–1939)

Koen van Zon: Depoliticisation through Participation? Consultation and Consensus Formation in European Community Policy-Making, 1960s–1980s

Wim de Jong: Politicizing the Police? The Problem of Depoliticization in the Public History of Democratic Municipal Policing in the Netherlands, 1945–2019

Saturday April 2

09:00–10:45 Panel 4: Protecting the System from Politics

Mart Rutjes: Depoliticizing the Will of the People: Limiting the Franchise for Political Opponents in the Netherlands 1780–1800

Stefan Scholl: Doubly Politicized? Semantical Struggles around the Relation between Economics and Politics in the Weimar Republic and National Socialism

Anna Catharina Hofmann: An Administered Society? Planning and (De-) Politicization in the Late Franco Dictatorship, 1964–1973

10:45–11:05 Coffee

11:05–12:50 Panel 5: Ruling by Ideas and Dreaming of Rational Government

Matthijs Lok: Moderation and Depoliticization after the Revolution: the Case of the Idéologues

Eva Visser: Planning the Technate. The Apolitical Politics of the 1930s’ Technocratic Movement

Jussi Kurunmaki and Jani Marjanen: Ideology, Politicization and Depoliticization in Parliamentary Rhetoric

12:50–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:00 Final discussion

Kontakt

Theo Jung
E-Mail: theo.jung@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de

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