Asianet 2021: Authoritarianism, populism and new forms of nationalism in Asia
2021-10-21 - 2021-10-22 | MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Gydas vei 4, Oslo, Norway
The annual Asianet conference 2021 is hosted by MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, in collaboration with the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.
“The recent decade has witnessed a turn to authoritarianism in many countries in Asia. We see this in India under Modi, the Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka, the civil-military rule in Thailand, the rule of Duterte in the Philippines, China’s assertive nationalist turn, and last but not least the military coup in Myanmar. This authoritarian turn is intrinsically linked to various forms of populist politics and new forms of nationalism or “nation-building”. At this year’s Asianet conference we focus on these interlinkages between authoritarianism, populism and nationalism in contemporary Asia. We also want to explore the ways in which new digital technologies are re-shaping Asian politics, including state control and popular resistance; the role of institutions; and the relationship between religion/culture and new political formations. Insights into these dimensions of the authoritarian turn in Asia are essential if we are to understand how Asia will look in the 21st century.”

Mythopolitics in the age of Asian authoritarianism
2021-10-22 09:00 - 10:30 (Europe/Oslo)
Panel at the 2021 Asianet conference: Authoritarianism, populism and new forms of nationalism in Asia.
The panel takes as its starting point the political mobilization and styles of political performance that are associated with neo-hindutva and its vision of the Indian nation. Underlying the authoritarian populism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a hindutva mythopolitics, a kind of politics that draws upon and reinterprets mythological narratives, cosmologies, symbols, and forms to assert and uphold the authority of the sovereign. However, religious cosmologies and myths are also crucial resources for new political formations that are in opposition to the mythopolitics of hindutva. In emerging popular movements and oppositional online spaces, myths are recast in ways that vehemently challenge and oppose the hegemonic narratives of the Hindu right. As an analytical approach, mythopolitics cuts across the divide between the populist authoritarianism of the state and various forms of resistance and “counter-politics”, and it is not geographically confined to South Asia. In the panel we ask, how is myth employed (politically, creatively, artistically) to create or challenge positions of political authority?

Theory from the Margins: Religion, Politics, Aesthetics. MF CASR Lunch with Moumita Sen
2021-10-26 11:30 - 12:00
The separation of the religious and the political is posing new problems in Europe, while religious populisms emerge in cahoots with neoliberal capitalism and other novel configurations in the global South. Scholars working on religious politics in various regions of the global South, even those studying Europe, have long pondered the validity of the Euro-American separation of religion and politics as distinct analytical categories in the global South. This project analyses the entanglements of religiosity, popular politics, and aesthetic practices in the public sphere by building on concepts emerging from studies of the global South.
This is an off-shoot of the Theory from the Margins collective, a popular online platform for discussions on questions of decolonisation of critical theory.
