The fourth conference in a “Challenging Capitalist Modernity” series hosted by the Network for an Alternative Quest (Network AQ), entitled “We Want Our World Back! – Resist, Reclaim and Rebuild”, will take place in Hamburg, Germany, on April 7-9.
The network is set to bring together leading intellectuals to share alternative visions for a better world and provide a platform for young activists, students and scholars to present ideas. Organisers promise to make “a collective stance to demand our world back!”
The multilingual conference will focus on a critique of capitalist modernity and the patriarchal order, as well as discussions on rebuilding the arts and education, and building Democratic Confederalism.
To strengthen collective understanding and practice the international Network AQ aims to bridge the gap between communities and movements from different countries, bringing together ideas from around the world as well as from the Kurdish freedom movement and key thinker, Abdullah Öcalan.
The first of the series, “Alternative Concepts and the Kurdish Case,” was held in 2012, the second, “Dissecting Capitalist Modernity — Building Democratic Confederalism”, in 2015, and the third, “Uncovering Democratic Modernity — Resistance, Rebellion and Building the New”, in 2017. The fourth conference, set for Easter weekend, was postponed due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
The conference will take place over three days and is expected to feature some prominent names.
Marxist-oriented sociologist philosopher John Holloway will be a key contributor in a session called, “Life against Money”. He notably authored the foreword for Öcalan’s Manifesto of the Democratic Civilisation, “The Sociology of Freedom“.
Other distinguished speakers to attend the conference include author James Kelman of The Freedom to Think Kurdistan, Maryam Fathi from the East Kurdistan Free Women’s Association (KJAR) in Spain, leading anti-patriarchal Bolivian feminist Adriana Guzmán Arroyo, Yugoslav world historian Andrej Grubačić, long-time Colombian activist Manuel Rozental, and Azra Sayeed from the International Women’s Alliance of Pakistan.
The full programme is available here.
