From paperwork to public buildings, from social networks to street protests, the liberal project has always relied on a set of tools and techniques to make its way in the world. Sometimes it finds these tools lying around; other times it is forced to forge them on its own. The purpose of this working group will be to study the technics of liberal states, societies, and social movements in historical and comparative contexts.

Our collaboration, which will be resolutely interdisciplinary, will distinguish itself from both the formalistic and economistic approaches that have tended to dominate discussions of liberalism. Individual rights and free markets are surely fundamental to any rigorous understanding of the liberal project. But so are communication networks, urban plans, pedagogical institutions, journalistic techniques, accounting rules, balloting procedures, archival routines, and innumerable other standards and practices. What can technics tell us about liberalism, its pasts, its presents, its futures, its powers, and its failures? How have liberal technics circulated between metropoles, colonies, and postcolonies? Do neoliberal or illiberal projects rely on qualitatively different tools and techniques? How and why are non-liberal techniques marshaled in the name of liberalism? What happens when liberal technics break down, or fail to engage? What accounts for liberalism’s resiliency, and what are its limits? And finally, how can the "global university," with its contradictory imperatives to reproduce and critique these technics, work to ensure that liberalism becomes increasingly democratic?

Bill Brown is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago.

Elizabeth Povinelli will present at the November meeting. She is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Pasquale Pasquino is Global Distinguished Professor in Law and Politics at New York University.

The September meeting of the Technics of Liberalism working group is for organizational and goal definition.