Courses

What do we mean when we use the word “crisis” today? Measured against normalcy and regularity, the notion of crisis is conventionally understood as an interruption, exception or temporary suspension to and of the ordinary. In pre-modern terms, however, crisis was embedded in the everyday in processes of critical assessment and decision-making. Similarly, the notion of crisis will vary according to different cultures, depending on collective and individual experiences. In this course we will explore the concept of crisis in a trans-historical and trans-cultural perspective. We will be considering crisis from a variety of perspectives and contexts such as the political and the religious, the economic and ecological, the existential and the artistic, in care, on the media and within ecological realms. We will be not only situating crisis in context but also inquire about the political implications such notion entails in and for our present.