With great joy and honour, this year, CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture will host the most significant, provocative and most influential philosopher of the 21st century, Martin Hägglund. On 29. 06. 2026 (Monday), starting at 8:00 PM, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, we will have the privilege of attending Martin Hägglund’s lecture titled:: This Life – Critique and Emancipation :: which is based on his theses epistemologically developed in his already cult book :: This Life – Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom :: which Kontrapunkt published in a translation by Žarko Trajanoski back in 2020, in its edition for contemporary critical theory “Punktum”, and thus we made the first translation of the original edition from 2019.
In a time when the future is increasingly perceived as a threat rather than a promise, the question of how to live a good and free life is once again becoming one of the most pressing philosophical and political questions of our time. What is that thing that truly gives value to life? Where do our deepest commitments come from? And how can we build a society in which caring for others is not opposed to freedom, but rather its prerequisite?
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture, with the guest appearance of Martin Hägglund, will attempt to open up and confront different epistemological perspectives, questions and polemics related to the establishment of this (bare) life that exists within the framework of endangered, perverted, unjust, and oppressive societies, which rest on new techno-feudal narratives that swallow and destroy the idea of empathetic, caring and communities based on solidarity. His reinterpretations of our finitude, the way we build communities, democratic socialism, responsibility, and the perspectives of the capitalist understanding of time, that is, our relationship to our framed and limited time, juxtaposed with Christian principles of time, are revolutionary and have been the subject of hundreds of philosophical, theological, and political symposia and debates.
One of the key questions that Häglund addresses in his major philosophical work is how we can build a society in which the care for others is not opposed to freedom, but rather its prerequisite.
Location: Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje
Date: June 29, 2026
Time: 8:00 PM
About the lecture:
This lecture develops the connection between critique and emancipation in his book “This Life”. Following Marx, Häglund argues that social freedom is our highest good and that religious projections of “being beyond our mortal existence would disappear under emancipated conditions.” However, to show why Marx is right, an argument is needed that he himself does not “provide.”
By bringing together the immanent critique of religion and the immanent critique of “capitalism,” it shows how “This Life” provides a new vision of freedom that acknowledges our mutual “dependence on one another.”
The lecture will offer an opportunity for in-depth reflection on the relationship between love and politics, between personal commitment and collective responsibility, and the potential of democratic socialism to create conditions in which every person can truly dispose of their unique and irreplaceable life.
Martin Höglund’s lecture will be followed by a moderated conversation with the author, led by Jasmina Popovska, Anastas Vangeli, and Slavcho Dimitrov.
About the author:
Martin Hägglund is a philosopher and professor of comparative literature and humanities at Yale University, United States of America. He is the author of four highly regarded books translated into fifteen languages. His work focuses on questions of freedom, time, responsibility, and secular faith, as well as the ways in which political, economic, and cultural systems shape human dependence and care for others. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the René Wellek Prize, and his works and ideas are considered to be among the most influential in contemporary debates on democracy, social justice, and collective responsibility. (https://martinhagglund.se/)
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The motto of CRIC remains rooted in the thinking of Alain Badiou:
“A community based on a political culture of critical action and confrontation, is a community of freedom, of mutuality, of courageous sailing towards new horizons of society with sails set by the winds of creative artistic confrontation and political imagination.”
Program editor and organizer of CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture:
Iskra Geshoska
Program consultants and organizers:
Tijana Ana Spasovska and Artan Sadiku
Collaborative team:
Petar Milat, Zorica Zafirovska, Aleksandra Bubevska, Koma design studio.
For more information follow us on:
https://www.facebook.com/KRIKfestival/
https://www.instagram.com/critical.culture/
https://youtube.com/@ngokontrapunkt3837?si=iUuGWynjhBAVMZJ5
Partnerships and support:
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported within the framework of the project “Culture for Development” of the Swiss Government, which is implemented by the Hartefact Foundation. The content/opinions expressed can never be interpreted as the views of the Swiss Government and the Hartefact Foundation.
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported by ProPeace North Macedonia, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Skopje, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Future Bright Art Foundation, Goethe-Institut Skopje and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia.
Funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the European Executive Agency for Education and Culture (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Споделено на: June 15, 2026 во 2:43 pm