AAG 2019 CFP: The Spatial Politics of Reaction: Austerity, Ressentiment, and the Urban

The election of Donald Trump alongside the rise of explicitly nationalistic political movements across Europe has impelled critical scholars to reevaluate the contours and content of reactionary ideologies—including nativism, (neo)fascism, protectionism, and xenophobia—at multiple scales. A recent call for papers points to the importance of thinking through the spatiality of these movements, calling upon scholars to “consider the persistent and resurgent histories of right-wing populisms” (IJURR, 2018) as part of a broader investigation into the articulation of right-wing politics and urban space. 

This session takes up the challenge of theorizing reactionary politics in urban space. Within the broader theme suggested above, we are particularly interested in work that engages the banality (Arendt, 1963/2006) of the forces of reaction in the racialized metropolis. Urban events such as Charlottesville suggest a hyper-visible and self-aware white nationalist populism is on the rise—how do we make sense of (and contest) less explicit, though also violent, manifestations of fascism, nationalism, and other forms of reactionary politics in urban space? How do these articulate with other violent regimes that reproduce and operate within the urban? In what ways do they respond to, grow out of, or otherwise relate to material conditions engendered by neoliberal and austerity urbanism?

With the foregoing in mind, we welcome papers that speak to such diverse themes as:

• Neoliberal failure, austerity urbanism, and the politics of reaction
• Revanchism, redevelopment, and policing
• The politics and aesthetics of whiteness
• Affect and the politics of ressentiment
• Urban & global crises of racial capitalism
• Democracy, liberalism, and fascism
• Immigrant and refugee spaces in the reactionary city

Please send a brief abstract of your project to Coleman Allums (coleman.allums@uga.edu) and Scott Markley (scott.markley@uga.edu) by October 12th.

References
Arendt, H. (2006). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: 
Penguin Books. (Original work published 1963)
IJURR (2018). Right-wing populisms and the city. Retrieved from http://www.ijurr.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/CfP_Right-wing-populisms-and-the-city-2018.pdf