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Short abstract

This presentation focuses on the debate about capitalism's co-optation of social movements and the associated question of radical alternative futures, as well as on the role and influence of the social sciences in distorting originally progressive terms and concepts.

Long abstract

Social movements are usually societal expressions of contradiction. They address perceived injustices, formulate and organize opposition, and create spaces and practices for criticism and change. At the same time, this raises the question of the radical imagination of an "outside": How is it possible, under given social conditions, to break away from hegemonic structures of thought and formulate radical alternatives? Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the protest movement against the Corona measures and their further developments in Germany as well as other work done in the U Bremen WOC Research Lab Radical Futures, in this presentation I will focus on the debate on the question of capitalist co-optation of social movements and the related question of alternative futures and the role and impact of social sciences regarding that topic. And I will show how this debate itself is subject to a certain framework that, ironically, prevents the imagination of alternative futures outside the capitalist framework, in order to end up discussing the question of whether and how it is possible to break on through to the other side.