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The international conference will take place at the Innovation Center on Saarland University's Saarbrücken campus (Building A2 1). The symposium opens on Thursday, 25 June, at 10 a.m.
The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.
The conference invites participants to reflect on utopian thinking as a critical, creative and political practice. Whilst utopian visions have often been discredited as naive or dangerous since the end of the Cold War and in the wake of influential theories such as the ‘end of history’ (Francis Fukuyama), their renewed relevance is now evident in the face of global crises. The symposium brings together perspectives from literature, history, ecology and political theory and poses the question: What role can utopian thinking play today? How can we imagine alternative, fairer and more sustainable futures? And to what extent can utopian thinking be understood as a form of ‘reparation’ – not in the sense of mere restitution, but as a creative response to irreversible damage and social fractures? The focus is on contemporary forms of utopian projects, for example in literature, ecological movements or local initiatives. Together, we want to explore how utopian thinking can make repressed perspectives visible, challenge dominant knowledge systems with , and open up new spaces of possibility.
Lectures 25 June:
10.30 am | The End of Dystopia and the Return of Hauntology
Juliane Rebentisch (HFBK Hamburg)
11.30 am | Alchemy of Ink and Detergent: Utopias and Abjections of Reproductive Labour
Justine Huppe (University of Liège)
2.00 pm | The Unthought Utopia of Permanent Repair
Yves Citton (University of Paris 8)
3.00 pm | From a critique of presentism to the present as a zone to be defended
Julien Pieron (CURE)
4.30 pm | Setting aside the negative, or how to repair the aftermath of violence? A history of the French Revolution, in a past/present context
Sophie Wahnich (CNRS)
Lectures 26 June:
9.30 am | The Materiality of Utopia: An Architectural Perspective
Tijana Vujošević (University of British Columbia)
10.30 am | The Origin is the Goal: Karl Kraus, Socialism, and the Problem of Civilisation
Troy Vettese (University of California, Berkeley)
11.30 am | Walking with the Saar: From Situated Knowledge to Reparative Futures
Yi-Ting Wang (CURE)
2.00 pm | “Questa debole messianische Kraft”: On utopias and the messianic in the work of Luigi Nono
Hendrik Rungelrath (Saarland University)
3.00 pm | “A Space to Think”: Neoclassicism, Utopia, and a Musical Poetics of Repair
Mauro Bertola (CURE)
4.30 pm | Time, Scale, Agency: Remaking Utopia for a New World Order
Jennifer Allen (Yale University)
The full programme can be found at: https://cure.uni-saarland.de/veranstaltungen/reparative-futures-utopian-thinking-in-times-of-crisis/
CURE Symposium: “Reparative Futures: Utopian Thinking in Times of Crisis”
Thu–Fri, 25–26 June 2026
Saarland University, Innovation Centre A2 1, Seminar Room 3.05 | Languages of presentation: English & French (with simultaneous interpretation into English)
Participation in the conference is free of charge.
Please register by email: kontakt(at)khk.uni-saarland.de
Contact for enquiries:
Anna Warum
Käte Hamburger College CURE
Saarland University
Tel.: +49 (0)681 302-3372
Email: kontakt@khk.uni-saarland.de
https://www.cure.uni-saarland.de