UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, or CICI, and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, or ICCTP, received a $2.6 million grant to support a multiyear initiative titled “A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times.”
Led by campus scholars Judith Butler and Shannon Jackson, among others, the project aims to develop concrete strategies, tools and proposals to create a counter-imaginary to authoritarianism — a practice that “reaches beyond” our current moment to visions and scenarios that challenge those of autocratic regimes, according to Jackson, collaborator and campus chair of the department of History of Art.
CICI and ICCTP were awarded funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the project will be undertaken in collaboration with the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative, or EAHI, and New York University’s Critical Racial Anti-Colonial Study, or CRACS, Co-Lab.
“It is important to understand the social structures, fears, and resentments that have made authoritarianism compelling right now,” Jackson said in an email. “At the same time, we hope to learn from past and contemporary efforts across the arts and humanities that resist its appeal, helping us to re-imagine social connection and life on the planet during this deeply challenging time.”
While centered on campus, the project also brings together humanists, artists, curators, and cultural leaders from California, Illinois, New York, Florida and Texas, with different skills and experiences, each committed to developing tangible results over the next three years, Jackson noted.
Each “principal investigator” is exploring different paths on the subject, individually committed to developing concrete “deliverables” over the coming years, Jackson said. Jackson’s personal research involves artists who investigate social institutions, not to dismantle them, but rather to examine our dependence on them as well as their imperfections.
These “deliverables” range from educational platforms created by museums on contemporary issues like migration, racism, gender discrimination and climate change, to film screenings addressing authoritarianism and somatic workshops which help community participants to explore fears, hopes and new forms of social connection.
“We want the new thinking and making of our community partners in the Bay Area and across the country to be safely shared and publicly accessible,” Jackson said in the email.
According to Jackson, the center will host small and large public gatherings, lectures, symposia and conferences — as well as small seminars and large lecture classes. They plan to hold anticensorship training for both community members and students.
The center will draw upon the history of democracy and past movements that resisted inequitable and arbitrary rule. It will address the unique “character” of authoritarianism of our time, which depends on specific social, economic, technological and environmental issues, Jackson notes.
“How can we reimagine these ever-imperfect systems of care? How do we rekindle a commitment to the hard, often frustrating, work of democratic life?” Jackson said in the email. “As we reckon with authoritarian tendencies that seek to abolish public institutions – around health, housing, education, ecology, technology, public infrastructure, and democratic process more generally –this longtime concern in my scholarship, teaching, and public service feels more urgent than ever.”