Postponed: The New Enclosures: From tall border fences to our new technofeudal order
Lecture by Yanis Varoufakis within the framework of the Otto Wagner Lectures 2023 in cooperation with the Bruno Kreisky Forum and the Department of Political Sciences, University of Vienna is postponed.
As part of the Otto Wagner Lecture, Yanis Varoufakis was invited to present his current book Technofeudalism for discussion. The book is a relevant contribution to the theory of social inequality, with particular attention to contemporary spatial and border regimes.
In the current dramatically escalating, geopolitical situation, the organising institutions, - Bruno-Kreisky Forum,
- Department of Political Science of the University of Vienna, Area of International Politics,
- Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna,
have decided to postpone the lecture by Yanis Varoufakis.
The corresponding debate space will be reopened as soon as the political situation allows for constructive-confrontational dialogues again.
Fences begat capitalism, the notion of the liberal individual and, ultimately, financial globalisation. Instead of the level-playing and the open vistas of some ‘global village’, a Globalising Wall cut across our lands, seas and minds. And, then, following the 2008 crash, and the fences that privatised the original Internet, a new form of capital dominated the planet: cloud capital. In the process, and unbeknownst to us, social democracy, the liberal individual, indeed capitalism itself were killed off. What remains are New Enclosures supporting and solidifying a new technofeudal order. Resistance to it at a planetary level is the sole route to humanity’s survival. But is it likely? Is it even possible?
Lecture in English followed by a conversation between Yanis Varoufakis and Ulrich Brand.
Yanis Varoufakis leads MeRA25 in Greece and is co-founder of the paneuropean movement DiEM25 as well as the Progressive International. An academic economist who served as Greece’s Finance Minister in 2015, Varoufakis is the author of best-selling books includingTechnofeudalism: What killed capitalism (Penguin 2023), Anther Now (Penguin 2020), Adults in the Room (Penguin 2017), Talking to My daughter (Penguin 2017), (Penguin 2016), Der globale Minotaur (Zed Books 2011)
