Intellectuals against liberal democracy. Academia, media, and culture.

Workshop organized par Valentin Behr 2021-2022 Paris IAS Fellow and Simon Massei, Université libre de Bruxelles, with the support of the Paris IAS, of the FIAS fellowship program and that of the Labex RFIEA+.

The FIAS fellowship program is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 945408. This event is also supported by the Labex RFIEA+, funded by the "Investissements d'avenir" program (ANR-11-LABX-0027-01).

Presentation

This workshop seeks to bring together scholars who study conservative intellectuals’ engagement and intellectuals’ contributions to the critique of liberal democracy in various national and historical contexts.

Program

Thursday, June 2

9h30-13h
Panel 1 : The formation and circulation of illiberal ideas
Chair: Valentin Behr (IAS)
Discussant: Laure Neumayer (Université de Picardie Jules Verne) 

Aron Buzogany (BOKU Vienna)  and Mihai Varga (FU Berlin): The defenders of Western civilization: Assembling Europe’s transnational right-wing network.
Chloé Kattar (EUME, Berlin): Right-Wing Lebanese Intellectuals in Transnational Networks During the Lebanese Civil War.
Simon Ridley (Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre): Extreme-Anti-Public Intellectuals: Hans Herman Hoppe and the ‘Physical Removal’ from the Libertarian Order.
Marlène Laruelle (George Washington University): Mapping Illiberal Production in a Russian Context: Bottom Up and Top Down.
Eva Pils (King's College London, EURICS): Defending ‘rule by virtue’ in Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ China: a discussion of anti-liberal establishment intellectuals amongst Chinese legal academics.

 14h-17h
Panel 2 : Illiberal intellectuals figures
Chair: Simon Massei (ULB)
Discussant : Wiebke Keim (Université de Strasbourg)

Fabio De Sa E Silva (University of Oklahoma): From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and Lawyers in Brazil's Illiberal Turn (2014–2018).
David Swartz (Boston University) : Conservative Divisions within the US Academy: Trumpists versus Conservative Anti-Trumpers.
Valentin Behr (Paris IAS): Uniting the Right through ideas? Metapolitics at the transnational level.
Juliette Faure (Sciences Po, CERI): Re-enchanting the Soviet modernity: Russian modernist conservatives and the ‘spiritualization of technology’ in the 1970s.

17h15-18h45
Roundtable (in French) : Une « droitisation » des espaces politiques ? Comprendre la montée de l’illibéralisme et de l’extrême-droite
Chair: Valentin Behr and Simon Massei
With the participation of: Béatrice Hibou (CNRS, Sciences Po, CERI), Marlène Laruelle (George Washington University), Nicolas Lebourg (Université de Montpellier)

18h45
Cocktail

Friday, June 3

9h30-13h

9h30 - 13h
Panel 3 : Illiberal media and social movements
Chair: James F. Hollifield (SMU, Paris IAS)
Discussant: Simon Massei (ULB)

Natasza Quelvennec (EHESS, CESSP): A conservative think tank at war against gender in Poland. Sociology of a militant expertise.
Jérôme Pacouret (CESSP): YouTube and the extension of the domain of conservative news and ideas: the case of the French far right news magazine Valeurs actuelles.
Ève Gianoncelli (Maison française d’Oxford): Cultural Warriors and Anti-Feminism.
Bruno Ronchi (Université Rennes-1): Olavo de Carvalho and the Traditionalist influence on the structuring of Bolsonarism.

14h-16h
Concluding remarks and brainstorming