The Identity of Europe seminar

Between 14. and 18. September 2020, a large part of the research team of the project The Break in Tradition: Hannah Arendt and Conceptual Change attended the Identity of Europe seminar for the second year in a row at the Inter-university Center in Dubrovnik, which took place under the title Changing Concepts in a Changing World. Vlasta Jalušič, Lana Zdravković, Martin Gramc and Toni Čerkez (last two external collaborators) participated in the live conference, while Gorazd Kovačič, Mirt Komel and Jerneja Brumen joined us online. We presented the new research achievements that have emerged in the project. In our presentations, we focused on reflecting on how the use and modification of political concepts affect our ability to understand some of the major contemporary societal and political challenges.

Together with other lecturers – Zoran Kurelić, University of Zagreb, Wolfgang Heuer, Free University of Berlin, Waltraud Meints-Stender, University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein, Iana Lepetiukhina, Technical University of Aachen, Ringo Rösener, University in Leipzig, the seminar critically discussed groups of concepts that are crucial for the development of critical political thinking in the 21st century and for understanding contemporary post-totalitarian processes. These include: the break with socialism / communism and its consequences, the emergence and decline of revolutionary and emancipatory movements at the end of the millennium, the withdrawal of the liberal-democratic political model, the return of totalitarian tendencies in Europe and elsewhere, pressing (post) truth issues in politics. racism and new world divisions, the problems of nation-states and sovereignty, the increasing number of refugees, the criminalization of migration and the rise of global climate justice movements.