18:00 - 19:00

Supra-Citizenship: Articulations

Supra-Citizenship offers a framework for understanding citizenship as a networked operational modality that is already being articulated through the changing relationships between state actors, existing supra-national bodies, digital platforms and the billions of people on the move across our planet. The notion of citizenship that is based on rooted belonging, locality-tied civil participation and fiscal responsibility to one’s nation-state is fragmenting. On the one hand, citizenship has been financialised as a means of attracting capital and investment while being divorced from fiscal residency through tax breaks, offshores and e-residency for entrepreneurship. On the other hand, it has been splintered through emergence of digital infrastructures and various forms of digital belonging. As emphasised by Benjamin Bratton, the author of The Stack: on Software and Sovereignty (2014), the emergence of new global actors and forms of utilising citizenship has charted a new global landscape within which digital platforms are increasingly acting like sovereigns that govern over user positions while nation-states are increasingly functioning like platforms that offer services to their customer-citizens.

Citizenship cannot be maintained by an exclusive contract between the subject and the nation-state. The fragility of this contract is equally exposed as an increasing number of people are forced to emigrate from areas ravaged by wars, natural disasters and economic strife. The number of people needing to escape the death traps of their birth passports is growing.

How can reimagining the relations that citizenship codifies impact the way that citizenship is operationalised? Does an articulation of networked citizenship signal a horizon beyond the culturally embedded status quo where citizenship is tied to territorial nations? In this seminar, the contributors invite you to discuss the ideas that contributed to the formation of the first iteration of Supra-Citizenship framework by addressing their affordances, limitations and vectors for further prototyping.

 

Cienfuegos

19:10 - 20:00 Sound performance by Alex Suárez