Friday, 16th of May 2025
10.30–12.30 Editorial team meeting of Redescriptions, Part I: Current Issues
14.00–17.00 Redescriptions: A Journal with an Unusual Profile
Introduction: Tuija Pulkkinen, editor-in-chief
Roundtable: Redescriptions, past, present and future – review on the content and the profile of the journal
Roundtable Participants: Samuel Hayat (Science Po), Heta Rundgren (Philomel, Sorbonne), Kimberly Hutchings (Queen Mary University), Caroline Ibos (journal Terrains /Theóries, SOPHIAPOL) and Susanne Lettow (Freie Universität, Berlin.
Saturday, 17th of May 2025
10.30–12.30 Editorial team meeting of Redescriptions, Part II: Long-term Issues
14.00–17.30 Symposium: Democratic Theory at a Time of Anti-Gender Movements
The Symposium focuses on three key concepts of democratic theory ‘majority’, ‘minority’, and ‘the people’. All three are highly topical and subject to reinterpretation and redescription in the current political landscape in Europe, which crucially includes populist anti-gender mobilisation. Nadia Urbinati’s work on democratic theory highlights the role of the three key concepts in understandings of democracy. Her work, in particular her book Me the People, How Populism transforms Democracy (2000), serves as a common reference point for the discussion in the Symposium. Discussions at the Symposium will seek to link democratic theory with thinking about anti-gender mobilisation in order to better understand why gender has taken such a central role in contemporary struggles over the meaning of democracy.
14.00–14.10 Welcome and Introduction, Tuija Pulkkinen
14.10–15.00 Julian Honkasalo: The disfigurement of representative democracy: Reading Nadia Urbinati in the context of anti-gender trouble.
Comments: Kari Palonen
Discussion
15.00–15.50 Anthoula Malkopoulou: Theories of Democratic Self-Defence: Resisting Anti-Gender Trouble.
Comments: Kari Palonen
Discussion
16.10–17.00 Éric Fassin: From Populism to Neofascism: Attacks on Minorities, Intellectuals, and Democracy
Comments: Kari Palonen
Discussion
17.00–17.30 General discussion
*Sponsored by Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing & by SOPHIAPOL