Workshop - 18.02.2026 - Ehem. Senatssaal - Neue Universität Critical Theory at the Endgame

Is there a dialectics of the apocalypse? This workshop takes this question as its point of departure to rethink the place of the end of the world within Critical Theory. Rather than approaching the apocalypse as pure catastrophe or as a residual religious motif, it treats it as a political and historical figure through which the violence embedded in the continuity of capitalism and in modern forms of rationality becomes legible. Grounded in the tradition of the Frankfurt School and brought into dialogue with feminist, post-colonial, peripheral, queer and anti-racist perspectives, the workshop examines the political uses and risks of apocalyptic thinking today, asking whether it can still interrupt dominant narratives and reopen historical possibility, or whether it has been absorbed into the ideological repertoire of neoliberalism and contemporary authoritarianism.