Symbolizing the People and Popular Sovereignty
29 January 2026
2:00 pm – 2.30 pm | Welcome and Introduction
2:30 pm – 4:30 pm | Panel 1: Performing the People and Popular Sovereignty
• Jason Frank (Cornell University): „The Aesthetics of Popular Constituent Power“
• Ino Augsberg (Kiel University): „Exposing Power – ‚Phryne in front of the A|reopagus‘ and the idea of a pouvoir prostituant“
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm | Panel 2: The Locus of Popular Power
• Luciana Villas Bôas (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro): „The people against the seat of power? Reflections on the iconography of popular sovereignty“
• Benjamin Loy (University of Munich): „The pueblo as potential and problem. On symbolic (dis-)articulations of popular sovereignty in Chile from the Unidad Popular to the present“
30 January 2026
9:30 – 11:30 am | Panel 3: Constructing the People
• Carlos de la Torre (University of Florida): „Constructing and Performing the People“
• Stefan Jonnson (Linköping University): „We Were Never One Hand: Figures of Solidarity and Popular Sovereignty in Egypt's 25 January Revolution“
11:45 am - 1:45 pm | Panel 4: From Representation to Formation
• Mattias Lehtinen (University of Helsinki): „Logics of (Un)representing the People: Democratic Accountability and Immediate and Mediated Negativity“
• Christine Blättler (Kiel University): „Collective unconscious and irrational real“
2:45 pm – 3:15 pm | Concluding Remarks
• Paula Diehl (Kiel University)
• Luciana Villas Bôas (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)