Keynote by Prof. Dr. Ben Trott (Leuphana) at the FRIBIS Annual Conference 2023: “A Queer Case for the Basic Income at Our Current Conjuncture: Political Philosophy, Individual Rights and De-Individualisation”

Ben Trott, visiting professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Art History at Leuphana University of Lüneburg presents a keynote at the FRIBIS Annual Conference 2023 on the 10th of October.

Title: A Queer Case for the Basic Income at Our Current Conjuncture: Political Philosophy, Individual Rights and De-Individualisation

Time: 10.10.2023, 02:30-04:00 p.m. (CEST)

Place: Hybrid (Onsite: HS 1221, KG1 / Online: Zoom-Link)

Abstract: This talk makes a queer case for a universal basic income on three grounds. First, a basic income is of particular importance to queer and trans people who tend to be among those disproportionately impacted by the increased precarity that has followed in the wake of the 2007/8 political economic crisis. Second, in this period, there has been a steady rollback in the forms of rights and recognition secured in the era of what, within Queer Studies, has been called “queer liberalism”. Whereas queer liberalism promised greater tolerance and inclusion for some, through the granting of individual rights and forms of equality, the effects of demanding a universal basic income can play a role in producing collective political subjectivities. These could entail a partial undoing of some of the forms of individualisation and de-politicisation that marked the socially liberal period of neoliberalism which dominated the years around the turn of the millennium. Finally, and drawing on the Marxist feminism of Kathi Weeks and the work of queer of color critic José Esteban Muñoz, I argue that such demands can represent a form of “concrete utopianism” that can create critical space to begin imagining and indeed building alternative futurities.

Bio: Prof. Dr. Ben Trott is a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Art History at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He is co-editor (with Mike Laufenberg) of Queer Studies: Schlüsseltexte (Suhrkamp, 2023).