Working group Resilient life in neoliberal ruins Foregrounding hope and optimism in the face of biopolitics and governmentality Add to calendar 2025-04-29 15:00 2025-04-29 16:30 Europe/Rome Resilient life in neoliberal ruins Hybrid Event Seminar Room Mansarda (Villa Schifanoia) and Zoom YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Apr 29 2025 15:00 - 16:30 CEST Hybrid Event, Seminar Room Mansarda (Villa Schifanoia) and Zoom Organised by Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Department of Political and Social Sciences This International Relations Working Group session features a presentation by EUI Jean Monnet Fellow, Dr. Peter Finkenbusch. The academic disciplines of International Relations and Politics have so far been largely critical of the resilience discourse. Whether they see it as neoliberal, postliberal, or biopolitical, scholars have focused on resilience's stifling effects on the subject. This event will present a paper that takes issue with one-sided engagement of resilience by trying to work out its agential potential in the face of pervasive biopolitics and governmentality. Specifically, it looks at popular science self-help literature to explore the positive aspects of resilient agency often neglected in the academic debate. While arguments about biopolitics rightly point out the depoliticising effects of resilience, this paper demonstrates how resilience discourse moves emancipatory agency inward, to within the subject. Avenues for collective action are shut down, while the resilient subject's capacity for introspection, adaptation and self-transformation are enhanced.The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.