KRISTUPAS SABOLIUS. THE PERFORMATIVE OF POLITICAL DECADENCE

May 27, 2026, Wednesday, 10:00–11:30 a.m.
LMTA Study Campus, Room K207 (Olandų St. 21A, Vilnius)

“THE PERFORMATIVE OF POLITICAL DECADENCE”. LECTURE BY KRISTUPAS SABOLIUS

The Performative of Political Decadence

Almost several decades ago, Bernard Stiegler criticized industrial democracies for reproducing ideological assumptions as though they were universal truths, while propaganda was diffused across “the planet as so many deceptions and lures [leurres].” The spread of internet technologies stood at the center of these criticisms.

How can we conceive the interplay between decadence and imagination in the context of ongoing wars and the rise of authoritarian regimes, when digitally embedded imagination becomes a terrain of multilayered manipulation? What, then, would constitute the performative dimension of political decadence?

Kristupas Sabolius is professor of philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of Vilnius University (Lithuania) and Principal Investigator at the (Post)Authoritarian Landscapes Research Center. In his research, Sabolius examines the theories and practices of imagination as conceptual tools to unlock environmental, sociocultural and ontological problems.

His recent publications include The Theory of Milieu: Philosophy, Environmentalism, Education (2026, Vilnius University Press, ed.); Immaginazione. Al di là dell’antropocene (Imagination beyond the Anthropocene, 2024, Castelvecchi editore); On the Real (ed. 2021, LAPAS books), Matter and Imagination. Hybrid Creativity between Science and Art (2018, Vilnius University Press, ed.), Proteus and the Radical Imaginary (2015, Bunkier Sztuki, CAC), The Imaginary (2013, Vilnius University Press), as well as numerous essays signalizing the contradictory function of imagination at the intersection of Western and non-Western thought.

Free entrance.