Steirischer Herbst 2024

The 57th edition of steirischer herbst festival is titled Horror Patriae—a Latin title that places us at a crossroads between amor patriae, love to the fatherland, and horror vacui, the fear of emptiness. Why are homelands so horrific? Which gigantic void has caused the current rise of nationalisms, identitarianisms, and cults of roots and origins? These are being marketed by governments all over the world and normalized, even praised across the political and intellectual spectrum. Ethnicity-based nation-states are becoming the only frame of reference, while the growing polarization of societies is naturalized through the prism of “identity.” Community affiliations are expected to have a biological basis: blood and race. Mixed, hybrid, or displaced subjectivities are dismissed or openly rejected and stigmatized as discursive miscegenation or a betrayal of “one’s own.” New dissidents are emerging everywhere, and their words are silenced. That the left has succumbed to the same suicidal tribalism as the right is especially alarming.