Following this year's Climate Dialogues, on 23 May 2025, Wendy Brown and Eva von Redecker participated in the workshop entitled Politics of Counter Catastrophe. Reconfiguring Freedom for the Future. The event focused on the relationship between democracy and the climate crisis in order to envision alternatives to the prevailing destructive ways of life and took place in the Institute of the Czech Literature of the CAS in Prague.

Participants gave talks on topics such as reparative practices in politics and social movements, the aesthetics dimensions of utopia and radial change, temporality and synchronicity of climate change, the nexus of democracy, AI and ecology as well as proposed a re-evaluation of our approaches to failure in social and political imaginings. The questions posed throughout the workshop were: how will an emerging responsibility for life affect politics in the face of climate disruption? How can nonhumans articulate their needs? How can we practice ‘reparative democracy’ (Wendy Brown) and a ‘revolution for life’ (Eva von Redecker)? What politics of counter catastrophe can be undertaken collectively today?
 
The aim of this one-day workshop was to offer an opportunity to junior scholars, particularly from Central Europe: graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and early career academics, to present their work and receive constructive feedback from Wendy Brown and Eva von Redecker.

Photos: Romana Kovacs