Alienation in the 21st Century: Revisiting, Reevaluating, Recentering. Part I

Many scholars would contend that we live in dangerous, desperate times, where increasingly the slow erosion of human and civic rights is not merely a clash of forces in which a dominant capitalist ideology extinguishes everyone in its way. Rather, the complexities of understanding the resurgence of fascism, the rise of terrorist dictators under a false impression of democracy, and a rebranding of center and/or center-left politics as radical leftwing zealots has created space for new considerations on alienation. How might we rethink the concept of alienation in the new political, economic, and social climates, globally? How might we consider the exploitation of workers and their estrangement from the workplace, their products (material or intellectual), or even other workers, in the current and/or increasingly global capitalism citadel? Presenters in this session will interrogate and offer new insights on the concept of alienation--whether aligned with traditional Marxist notions or alternative perspectives that might shed new light on current and future global inequalities.