Activist Perspectives on Radical Imagination – A Workshop with Max Haiven
Workshop
Institute for Political Science, Vienna University
20 & 21 March 2025
Organised by: Alexander Kurunczi & Madlyn Sauer as part of the ERC Research Project Prefiguring Democratic Futures (PREDEF)
If there was ever a moment for the radical imagination to emerge and for social movements to bring it to life, it is now. This was stated by Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish in 2014 – an insight that reflected the events of the 2010s, a decade shaped by transnational social movements. From the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to the waves of resistance in Greece and Spain and to the Occupy Wall Street movement: The 21st century has been defined by movements challenging systemic oppression and seeking alternatives to the global crises of finance capitalism, ecological destruction, (post-)colonialism, antisemitism, genocide, and the rise of anti-feminist, right-wing and fascist movements taking over governments around the world.
Creating cracks in the oppressive systems we seek to dismantle is not a smooth process and it often does encounter fierce resistance. As we strive to create openings in the walls of power – challenging governments, multinational corporations and right-wing movements – those in power respond with attacks, imprisonment, and destruction. In fact, as Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor resume, “we are all living amid the wreckage of a long, ongoing, and intentional war against progressive collective action” (2024, 151). How do we, then, honor the grief of lost comrades, broken solidarities and repressed movements without losing sight of the need to continue organizing? How do we move forward and continue organizing, while holding space for mourning, and how can radical imagination help us bridge loss with radical hope?
Radical imagination needs to be collectively nurtured, nourished, and developed; it can be a tool for analysing and transforming our movements. The workshop aims at bringing together activists, artists, researchers, and politically-minded scholars to rethink the role of radical imagination in political and social struggles and its relation to practices of resistance.