Discourses and experiences of threat play an important role in processes of emergence and disappearance of social orders. In this workshop existence and power are considered as two basic entry points to approach these dynamics and to develop a more differentiated understanding of the complex relationship between social orders and situations of threat. Simultaneously, the inquiry into the concept of threat enables to examine the interplay of human existence and sociality; it illustrates how the highly contingent and vulnerable nature of human existence articulates with specific historical conditions. As much as situations of threat demonstrate how existential themes and affect interfere with the social order, they exhibit how they are shaped and manipulated through existing power structures. In this sense, threat elucidates both the existential dimension of social order and the social dimension of existence.
In order to discuss the dynamic space between threat, order, power and existence we invite scholars and thinkers from different disciplines to rethink these multifold relations through the lenses of their particular fields of expertise and the intellectual problems they are occupied with. This workshop aims at opening a space for collective thinking about a basic problem of the social and cultural sciences.

Please register for participation at jan.hinrichsen@uni-tuebingen.de