Organised in collaboration between EXC 2020 and HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Jack Halberstam (Columbia University/EXC 2020 Distinguished Fellow of Global Literary Studies April–July 2025) in conversation with Paul B. Preciado. Moderation by Margarita Tsomou. 

"What if the contemporary planetary condition was the result of a generalized epistemic and political dysphoria?" Taking this question from Paul B. Preciado's latest book Dysphoria Mundi and drawing from Jack Halberstam's recent research on figurations of 'collapse' and 'un/worlding,' the distinguished theorists will engage in a conversation that highlights trans theory as a mode for gaining new insights into the constitution and grievances of our present. How can we explain that trans people and migrants have become the central target of national security necropolitical measures in contexts that presented themselves as democratic? How can we rethink political action facing the new alliances between archaic forms of white supremacist and patriarchal power, new genetic, biotech, cybernetic and AI technologies?

The evening will focus on potent modes of bodily and planetary resistance to our contemporary conditions. It addresses hypercapitalist regimes of exploitation and exhaustion, epistemic radicality, and the aesthetics and politics that produce and accompany collapse.