The Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry is pleased to announce that select recordings of its annual symposium, Demos Anxiety: "Great Replacement" Theory and Democracy, are now available. To view all recordings of the symposium, find the curated playlist.
Demos Anxiety: “Great Replacement” Theory and Democracy took place on October 20, 2023, in the Maude Fife Room at UC Berkeley. This daylong symposium gathered scholars from a range of disciplines (literature, sociology, law) to reflect on conspiracy theories about population replacement. Despite its extremism, “The Great Replacement” theory has worked its way into mainstream political discourses about race, immigration, and religious difference. A driving force behind racialized violence from Charlottesville, VA to Christchurch, New Zealand, replacement theory’s demographic anxieties are imperiling democracy. How do anti-Semitic, anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and Islamophobic conspiracy theories change according to their settings? What are commonalities and distinctions between their manifestations in the United States, France, Europe, or India? What are political and cultural engagements that challenge the phantasms and passions stoked by population replacement conspiracies? How can we cultivate and mobilize a powerful counter-imaginary to “demos anxiety”
Recordings are available of the following lectures presented at the symposium:
The Word Turned Upside Down: Intellectual Anti-intellectualism, Orwellian Rhetorics & the Politics of Truth, Eric Fassin
“Jews Will Not Replace Us”: Antisemitism and the Great Replacement Theory, Dorian Bell
Symptoms of Disavowal: Replacement Conspiracy Theories and White Supremacist Paranoia, Sarah Bracke
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