Introduction to the Program
News
Populist politicians and conspiracy cults enchant their followers through fear—of migrants, End Times, or an imagined nefarious World Government—and through promises of a backward-looking and insular social solidarity—of white Christian America (or Europe), Hindu India, et al. This talk presents a “political ecology of imagination” that can help us conceive enchantments that might propel the human imagination toward a forward-looking and expansive social solidarity, one that not only bridges across human borders but embraces an animate and more-than-human world.
My talk will focus on the role Catholic priests and women associated with the YWCA played during a violent attack by the South Korean military on the South Korean city of Gwangju in May, 1980. I will ask why they were arrested, but Protestant pastors and Buddhist monks were not.