Dr Maša Mrovlje
Postdoctoral Fellow, October – December 2020
Biography
I completed my PhD at the University of St Andrews. From 2016 to 2020, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the ERC-funded project "Illuminating the ‘Grey Zone’: Addressing Complex Complicity in Human Rights Violations." Currently, I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) and a Visiting Fellow with CRITIQUE - the Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought at the University of Edinburgh.
My research interests are located within contemporary political theory, international political theory and the history of political thought. I draw on twentieth-century philosophies of existence, enriched with feminist and postcolonial perspectives, to conceptualise the complexities and potentials of individual and collective action in conditions of systemic oppression. Within this focus, I have contributed to pressing issues of political judgement, memory politics, transitional justice, political violence and, most recently, resistance. I am author of Rethinking Political Judgement: Arendt and Existentialism (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). My articles appeared in Philosophia, Law, Culture and the Humanities, The European Legacy and Political Theory.
Project
My current project, entitled “Disappointment: Reclaiming the Unfulfilled Promise of Resistance,” examines the political value of disappointment within the modern revolutionary tradition. It explores the political potential of disappointment by studying three political thinkers – Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon and Albert Camus – whose revolutionary aspirations were significantly shaped by their experiences of disappointment. The purpose is to outline how their theoretical and practical engagements with disappointment can help us move beyond left melancholia and confront the challenges involved in resisting oppression in the present era of political disillusionment.
The three months of the IASH fellowship will be devoted to the analysis of the contemporary relevance of Luxemburg’s disappointment. I will focus on her disappointment over the failures of the socialist movement before and during WWI and examine how it encourages us to reconsider political commitment beyond the instrumental logic of success. I will outline how this rethinking of political commitment can respond to the difficulties of sustaining dedication in the face of adverse circumstances today, when the assurances of past utopian visions are sorely missing.