Aim

“Critical Theory Under Pressure: Building Networks for Transnational Dialogue” (CritUP) aims at developing a sustainable transnational network and platform for the exchange between forms of critical theory articulated in different regions of the world.

While models of critical theory developed in the Global North have been the subject of a vivid reception in the Global South, there has been little reciprocity. As a result, innovative contributions to a critical understanding of the present generated in the Global South have been largely ignored. This is especially problematic since South America has become a socio-economic and political “laboratory” in which tendencies are manifest that now increasingly affect the Global North as well, such as current threats to academic freedom.

CritUp not only aims to address the existing asymmetries in the global production of knowledge, by creating the conditions for the reception of crucial analyses from the Global South, thus fostering a mutual academic dialogue; but it also seeks to learn from the analyses and practices developed in the Global South that respond to challenges, which have increasingly become universalized.

CritUP is a network of academic and non-academic partners. It is hosted by the Centre for Social Critique (Berlin) in cooperation with CEBRAP (São Paulo), the Grupo de Investigación sobre Teoría Crítica (Lima), the Núcleo de Teoría Social (Santiago de Chile), the Political Theory Group at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul), and the Grupo de Estudios de Teoría Crítica Contemporánea (Buenos Aires). In addition, it consists of a growing number of non-academic partners: INTERNETLAB (Brazil), Instituto de Defensa Legal (Peru), Asociación Civil Transparencia (Peru), Fundación Sol (Chile), Fundación Ciudadanía Inteligente (active across South America), Türkiye Insan Hakları Vakfı (Turkey), Pembe Hayat (Istanbul), and Birarada Derneği (Istanbul).