Questions about the contribution of the arts and their theories in times of social change
Discussions about conspiracies, fake news and (un)certainties often strive for a kind of discursive archaeology and genealogy of these and similar phenomena, i.e. to give the concepts a theoretical contextualisation and a historical depth of focus. In doing so, an emphatic use of aesthetic theory that has contributed to current social and discursive constellations sometimes comes into view. In other words, what we conceptually and socio-theoretically understand today as conspiracies, fake news or (un)certainties can be understood (often under reversed theoretical and political auspices) as the afterlife of certain academic discussions that have been widely conducted since the 1980s and 1990s. These dealt with the relationship between fact and fiction, ambivalence and undecidability, materiality and immateriality as well as the play of signifiers, the knotting of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, and even différance and differences.
The interest of the conference is decidedly directed towards the role of the arts and their theories in the debates about conspiracies, fake news and (in)certainties today and raises the question of what specific role they and aesthetic theory formation play in shaping current conditions. Therefore, the question of what the contribution of the arts could be in social change today is all the more urgent.