Reparative Futures: Utopian Thinking in Times of Crisis (Université de la Sarre)
Reparative Futures: Utopian Thinking in Times of Crisis
From 25 to 26 June 2026, the Käte Hamburger Centre CURE’s second annual conference will explore the social dimensions of cultural practices of reparation, asking what forms utopian thinking are still possible in a present shaped by dystopian expectations of the future. The international conference will take place at the Innovation Center on the campus of Saarland University (Building A 2.1), beginning on Thursday, 25 June, at 9:30 a.m.
The conference invites participants to reflect on utopian thinking as a critical, creative, and political practice. Since the end of the Cold War, and following influential theses such as “the end of history” (Francis Fukuyama), utopian imaginations have often been discredited as naive or dangerous. Today, however, global crises are making their renewed relevance increasingly obvious. The conference brings together perspectives from literature, history, ecology, and political theory to ask: What role can utopian thinking play today? How can we imagine alternative futures that are fairer and more sustainable? How might utopian visions be understood as a form of “reparation” – not merely in the sense of restitution, but as a creative response to irreversible damage and social ruptures? The focus will be on contemporary forms of utopian imagination, in fields including literature, ecological movements, and local initiatives. Together, we will explore how utopian thinking can make marginalised perspectives visible, challenge dominant epistemic orders, and open up new spaces of possibility.
PROGRAMM
Thursday
9h30 Registration
10h00 Introduction (Markus Messling, Julien Jeusette, Laurens Schlicht)
10h30 – Juliane Rebentisch (HFBK Hamburg), “Anxiety and the Possibility to Imagine Otherwise”
11h30 – Justine Huppe (Université de Liège) “Alchimie de l’encre et du détergent: utopies et abjections du travail reproductif”
12h30 – Lunch
14h00 – Yves Citton (Université Paris 8), “The Unthought Utopia of Permanent Repair”
15h00 – Julien Pieron (CURE), “De la critique du présentisme au présent comme zone à défendre”
16h00 – Pause café
16h30 – Sophie Wahnich (CNRS), “Écarter le négatif, ou comment réparer l’après violence ? Histoire de la révolution française, dans un rapport passé/présent”
FRIDAY
9h30 – Tijana Vujošević (University of British Columbia), “Materiality of Utopia”
10h30 – Troy Vettese (University of California, Berkeley), “Ursprung ist das Ziel: Karl Kraus, Socialism, and the Problem of Civilization”
11h30 – Yi-Ting Wang (CURE), “Walking with the Saar: From Situated Knowledge to Reparative Futures”
12h30 Lunch
14h00 – Hendrik Rungelrath (Universität des Saarlandes), ““Questa debole messianische Kraft” : On utopias and the messianic in the work of Luigi Nono”
15h00 – Mauro Bertola (CURE), ““A Space to Think”: Neoclassic, Utopia, and a Musical Poetics of Repair”
16h00 – Pause café
16h30 – Jennifer Allen (Yale University), “Time, Scale, Agency: Remaking Utopia for a New World Order”
Attendance at the conference is free of charge. To attend, please register by writing to kontakt@khk.uni-saarland.de.
Conference organizers:
Julien Jeusette / Markus Messling / Laurens Schlicht /
For more information contact Anna Warum, kontakt@khk.uni-saarland.de