KHAS CORE Talks – Dr. İrem Taşçıoğlu

KHAS CORE Talks series continues with Dr. İrem Taşçıoğlu’s speech entitled “Kristin Ross’ Rancièrean Anti-Sociology in May ‘68 and its Afterlives: A Critical Reading”.

You can follow the speech on Wednesday, March 9 at 18:00 on Zoom.

Please fill the registration form in advance.

Abstract: Amongst the studies on the memory of May ‘68,  Kristin Ross’ work, May ‘68 and its Afterlives stands out as a unique approach as it strives to recapture the political significance of the events of May against their subsequent de-politicized interpretations. She addresses sociological accounts, along with the testimonies of ex-gauchistes, as major narrative forms through which such discursive de-politicization occurs. This talk specifically addresses her critique of sociology and critically deals with the Rancièrean theoretical framework that grounds her opposition between sociology (of May ‘68) and politics (of May ‘68). It argues that her opposition maps Jacque Rancière’s distinction between ‘politics’ and the ‘police’ onto the opposition between the inherently political nature of May ‘68 and sociology’s subsequent interpretive ‘policing’.  On the one side, this paper argues, there is the presumption of a ‘sublime’ form of politics that resists any kind of social-scientific enquiry. On the other side, there are the de-politicized (‘policing’) sociological narratives that allegedly rise either upon 1)  ‘structural-functionalism’ that strictly associates the movement with the demands of university youth or 2) ‘teleology’ of capitalist modernization that posits the events as part of France’s cultural moment of (re)adjustment in the service of Capital. Critically addressing the short-comings of such a purified opposition, this talk introduces the sociological accounts on ‘recuperation’, i.e., co-optation of May ‘68 to capitalism, as a rejoinder to her strict anti-sociology in order to deal with one prominent question that interests her throughout the book: How did May ‘68 come to signify a ‘cultural’ moment in the service of capitalism in the first place?

İrem Taşçıoğlu is an independent researcher and translator who has received his B.A. and M.A. from Boğaziçi University, Sociology Department and his PhD from Goldsmiths College, Sociology Department. He is interested in studies on right- and left-wing populism, theories on radical democracy and post-Marxism. He has published on Ernesto Laclau, Claude Lefort and Carl Schmitt, focusing on how their works can be read and interpreted through the lens of the populist question. He is currently working on an article on 2010 Constitutional Referendum in Turkey with an emphasis on the hegemonic strategies of the AKP rule, and two translations which are Slavoj Zizek’s Where is the Rift: Marx, Capitalism and Ecology and Darian Leader’s Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction which will be published by Encore Yayınları in 2022.