Standing Seminar in Critical Theory: Drop the debt, before we drop dead

Drop the debt, before we drop dead:

Discussing the politics of sovereign debt, ‘austerity’, and the crisis of the nation state. Resonances from Greece, Argentina and beyond

The expansion and multiplication of public debt by nation-states have become a key factor of global capitalism in recent decades. Public debt functions as a pressure mechanism on national governments which in turn force their people to live in a permanent state of austerity.

In this event, speakers will discuss the significant topic of sovereign debt, capital and the nation-state. Together they will reflect on the ways in which indebtness is saving global capitalism and problematising social reproduction within the boundaries of the nation state by using Argentina and Greece as examples.

Public debt is functioning as a mechanism of pressure on states and peoples who are forced to live in permanent austerity. In this event, we will discuss how massive indebtedness and the capitalist crisis threatens the reproduction of life and questions the institutions of bourgeois democracy.

Participants:

• Werner Bonefeld – Prof. Bonefeld is a Professor of politics at the University of York (UK). He is founder and co-editor of Open Marxism (3 Volumes) (Pluto Press published in the 1990s). Recent publications include Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy and The Strong State and the Free Economy.
• Ana Cecilia Dinerstein – Dr Dinerstein is a critical theorist. She teaches and does research on the global politics of hope at the University of Bath. She is the author of The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope (2015) and editor of Social Sciences for An Other Politics: Women Theorising without Parachutes (2017).
• Mariano Féliz (La Plata – Argentina) –  Dr Féliz is a researcher at the Institute for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (IdIHCS) and the Geographical Research Center (FAHCE / UNLP) // CONICET. He is a professor at UNLP. Member of the Center for Studies for Social Change and of the Popular Front Darío Santillán.
• Alexandros Kouris (Bath) –  is a ESRC funded PhD candidate In the global political economy pathway, dep of SPS His research offers a global-critical re-examination of the “Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis” from a critical Marxist perspective.
• Theodoros Papadopoulos (Bath) –  Dr Papadopoulos is a comparative political sociologist based at the University of Bath’s Department of Social and Policy Sciences. His recent research includes publications on the neoliberal character of EU’s economic governance as well as the politics and socio-economic impact of austerity in Greece and other southern EU countries.
• María José Ventura Alfaro (Bath) – María José is an ESRC funded PhD student in the field of Development Studies, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath. Her doctorate offers a feminist analysis of the widespread violence against women and Feminicide in Mexico and the women action movements in Mexico City and the peripheries of the capital.