You are warmly invited to join us for an interdisciplinary roundtable, ‘Continuities of Liberalism and Fascism: Rights ‘After Liberalism’, featuring four exciting speakers as well as artistic, activist and academic perspectives. This is a facilitated conversation (i.e. not a panel) about resistance in a changing world.

Details: ONLINE Mon 17 March 2025 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM

Booking is free: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/lawresistanceresearchgroup/1596430   

Critical scholars and resistance movements have long critiqued liberal rights as tools of neocolonialism and state power. Today, many liberal rights are on the backfoot, eroded by late fascist movements and governments. The ascendent politics of LGBT rights, for instance, were key targets of anti-colonial and queer critiques at the beginning of the 21st century. Yet those same rights are now under attack, losing their central roles in securing political order. In this context, some of us find ourselves defending the same liberal rights we once rejected. Or we’re silent for fear of aligning ourselves with those ‘other’ critics of rights. At the same time, there is a growing late fascist embrace and rearticulation of rights, especially in the arenas of free expression and white identity politics. If liberalism is ‘over’, must we now focus on fascism ‘instead’, or defend liberal rights as the lesser of two evils? Or, if the reconfiguration of liberalism into late fascism is just the latest defence of racial capitalism, what might paying attention to rights tell us about the continuities, discontinuities, opportunities and imperatives at this juncture? Join us for a roundtable conversation about resistance, from transfeminist, queer, decolonial, Jewish diasporist and Marxist perspectives. 

Speakers:

• Akanksha Mehta (Gender, Race & Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths)
• Howie Rechavia-Taylor (International Relations, LSE)
• Nat Raha (Fine Art & Critical Studies, Glasgow School of Art) [see Nat Raha’s artistic work]
• Maddie Breeze (Sociology & Social Policy, Stirling)
• Facilitator: Darcy Leigh