Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond: A Transnational History

Balázs Trencsényi — Professor, Department of Historical Studies, CEU

When: March 11, 2025 at 14 pm
Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 and online (to get the link, please mail us to cefres@cefres.cz)

 Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond maps the range of meanings the term ‘crisis’ has borne and the roles it has performed across disciplines and countries, de-centering the dominant narrative that takes Western European positions and developments as normative. It especially focuses on the historical roots of two key contemporary contesters of liberal democracy: neoliberalism and populism and presents an innovative analysis of the roots of contemporary illiberalism in Europe. Bringing these ideas into the present day, Balázs Trencsényi offers ideas on how a reflective and self-critical liberal democratic political position could be defined and defended in our current predicament, which is increasingly compared to the interwar period and is often described as a “polycrisis”.

The event is supported by the ERC Starting Grant ‘Memory and Populism from Below’ (MEMPOP) #101076092 and hosted by the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES, MEAE-CNRS).