Name of the project: Political Affects and Collective Action in Times of Crisis
Project duration: 2024-2025
Donor: Circle U. – European University Alliance
Lead Partner: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
The aim of the project is to deepen the theoretical understanding of processes through which new collective actors striving for social change emerge in conditions of major societal crises such as the 2008 financial meltdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. In all these instances we witnessed a surge of social engagement – from income inequality protests such as Occupy to demonstrations against racial systemic violence – which does not produce conventional political claims or traditional organizational structures characterizing (new) social movements.
Our premise is that new collective political actors can be formed when individual political affects become collective through a dynamic we term “emerging collective affectivity”, a pre-discursive form of shared affectivity that emerges among diverse – even mutually agonistic – social groups facing pronounced uncertainty. This ephemeral collectivity, we argue, can evolve into a new collective actor that transcends existing group boundaries and identities and formulates far-reaching demands for social change, but it can also dissipate quickly. The project will investigate key factors influencing whether an instance of emerging collective affectivity will evolve into a new collective actor or not. The principal outcome of the project will be a theory of collective actor formation in conditions of crisis that bridges the gap between literature on transformative political action and that on affects and collective intentionality.