Critical social research – still in the Interregnum?

Around 130 participants came together in the series of lecture hall II in the new institute building of the University of Vienna. Many of them came to Vienna. Lukas Oberndorfer, head of the Climate, Environment and Transport Department of the Workers’ Chamber of Vienna, begins his input on the opening panel on the “New Face of Authoritism” for the annual conference of the Association for Critical Social Research (AKG) with a reference to the film “and daily greets the marmot” from 1993. His protagonist Phil Connors, a sarcastic and cynic Weather moderator, played by Bill Murray, hangs in a time loop and has to experience the same day again and again. According to Oberndorfer, the situation is similar: in many companies, processes of an authoritarian formation or tendencies of fascation have been observed in many companies. So far, the social left -wing attempts to make trend reversal, and whenever it seems as if it could not get worse, the next catastrophe pass.

Subsequently, Oberndorfer characterized the current developments as a “interregnum”, as an “meantime” that Mario Candeias recently titled as “time of the monsters”. As in the 1920s, when Gramsci wrote these words in prison, today the crisis was “that the old die and the new cannot be born”. At the podium for the opening of the AKG conference on the subject of “multiple crisis, fascist tendencies, imperialist conflicts: upheavals in global capitalism”, the speakers do not agree on this time diagnosis. This disagreement on the podium not only passed the opening podium, but the entire conference.

For example, Dorothee Bohle, who is researching Eastern Europe, and Margit Mayer, who sees the United States through the contradictory Trump coalition in front of a new era, asked again whether the talk of an “in between” was still appropriate. With regard to the almost “folk chancellorship” of the FPÖ politician Herbert Kickl, Benjamin Opratko pointed out that the party-at the latest since the Ibiza affair around the then chairman Heinz-Christian Strache, whose context was still a formative moment of politics-had developed under Kickl to use the Austrian state and its means to redesign sustainably «.

Business of the foreclosure

Marie Hoffman, a research assistant in Marburg, tried to operationalize the concept of the “interregnum” productively in the workshop “Critical-materialistic perspectives on current European migration policy”, which has certainly become a general place in recent years. In contrast, Alexander Gallas, professorship at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, suggests that the current economy to be characterized as a “subterranean Trumpism”. His thesis: Both in the United Kingdom under the Labor government of Keir Strandmer and in the Federal Republic with the CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a “disguised Trumpism” arrives, which is characterized by active polarization and anti-Link rhetoric, a policy of fear and spectacle. Here the recovery of “control” is suggested, which is not least evident from the legally questionable rejections at the German borders.

Left intellectuals continue to use the same terms to describe the mixture.

The AKG did not save the topics, which is highly conflicting in the social left. At the first part of the workshop “Israel/Palestine, Anti -Semitism, Racism and State Räson”, Research Fellow at the Minerva Institute for German History at the University of Tel Aviv, and Peter Ullrich, and Peter Ullrich, including Fellow at the Center for Anti -Semitism Research at the TU Berlin. While Elm focused on Israeli society and the disputes in it since October 7, Ullrich addressed the contradictory constellation of an “authoritarian anti-anti-Semitism”, which would be emerging in the Federal Republic at the latest. Although there would be “binary friend-enemy schemes” on both sides of the argument, “authoritarian anti-Anti-Semitism” is a hegemonic social constellation that is based on a broad social coalition from right to left and, among other things, is expressed in a repressive-polar-police fighting of actual and supposed anti-Semitism.

In all of this, the controversial discussion remained analytically – the targeted objectification was largely achieved. Only during the second evening podium, in which Andreas Bieler from the union at his university in Nottingham reports in the United Kingdom, which is committed to hiring the scientific collaborations with Israeli universities, there are isolated interjections.

Build solidarity structures

In addition to the political world situation, materialistic methodology, feminist theory, critical Chinese research and many other topics, the reflection of institutional experiences and critical scientific practices was also on the conference order. This is part of the self -image of the merger of critical scientists, which was founded in 2004 with the aim of promoting the discussion about socially critical theoretical approaches, but above all wanted to secure “their reproduction and further development in times of their increasing marginalization at universities.

Accordingly, then as now, the question of how an institutionalization of critical science can succeed is crucial for the continued existence of a critical theory of capitalist society. In addition to Ulrich Brand, Professor of Political Science at the University of Vienna, Andreas Bieler and Peter Ullrich and Carolina Vestea, who reported, among other things, from experiences in Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, and currently represented a professorship in Kassel, discussed at the second evening podium “Science in crisis: Conflicts, strategies of argument”.

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In order to defend themselves against attacks- here there was agreement on the evening podium- “solidarity or resilience structures” must be created in science. Examples of the threat situation were given an absolute majority of the AfD at the state level, as in Saxony-Anhalt, after the state election 2026, as well as the activities of the network of science freedom or rights political campaigns, as they were recently conducted in the case of the “Central Law” Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. There are clear patterns to be seen here: everything that would be declared as a “left” or “woke” are under suspicion and are under pressure. Ullrich nevertheless emphasized the ambivalences and spoke out against “left lamoyance”: Even if a tendency of fascation can be identified, it does not help to emphasize only the “negative perspective”. Critical science at universities is still possible.

“And the marmot greets every day”

In the film “And the marmot greets” every day, the main character changes its behavior, is nice to people and finally escapes time loop. It cannot be dismissed out that the social left seems to be hopelessly fighting against the return of the same. However, unlike the cynical weather moderator in the film, left intellectuals continue to use the same terms to describe the social mixture. Anyone who has visited a political-critical (science) conference from time to time will be familiar with many of the discussion at this year’s AKG conference. Neo-Gramscian perspectives, ie talking about the current constellation as a “interregnum”, have been shaped by left-wing political and scientific debates for years. And the terminology of the “multiple crisis” established since the global financial crisis has only been supplemented by terms such as “fascist” or “fascist dynamics” since the end of 2024.

It is open to what extent these socio -theoretical terms are appropriate in order to be able to point out with them. Knowledge practices are only stubborn where they do not simply insert themselves into the hegemonic order, but question them or undermine them. It itself is worth discussing whether the term “interregnum” does this. Therefore, the scientific counter -public, which the AKG has been creating for precisely such questions for 21 years, should not be estimated. Especially in view of the authoritarian formation – however you classify it – and the climate crisis, the question of the existence of those who acquire critical social research will remain of great importance for social struggles for emancipation. Hopefully this tradition has a future.