International Conference, January 16-17, 2014
Dissent!
Histories and Meanings of Opposition from 1968 to the Present
An Activity of the Research Group in International Studies, Aalborg
University
Globalization, post-9/11 politics and the post-2008 financial crisis have
all birthed modes and histories of opposition and dissent, be they dissent
from global political-economic systems or opposition to ranges of
international authoritarian regimes. Contemporary dissent, however,
oft-draws from forms and imaginations of earlier modes of protest, be they
student protests from the late ‘60s onward, the peace movement in the same
period, the anti-nukes movement of the 1980s or the anti-Apartheid movement
spanning the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Still, dissent takes other historical
forms: individual critiques of “actually existing” socialist systems, be
they civil rights based critique from individual figures such as Sakharov
or Rostropovich (or Solzhenitsyn’s nationalist-culturalism), media-driven
dissent, such as the political magazine Mladina’s criticisms of the
Yugoslav regime in the late 1980s and early 1990s or the voices of
“everyday” social actors, such as the Damas de Blanco in Cuba. In a
historical period encapsulating the last decades of the Cold War and an
unfolding twenty-first century, dissent and social opposition undergo and
have undergone redefinition within the confines of modern and contemporary
culture. Continue reading →
