Dr. Giovanni Zanotti

Research Project

Foundations of Freedom, Autonomy and Authoritarian Subjectivation

REACT is a Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchanges project, coordinated by the University of Coimbra and bringing together twenty-one academic and artistic institutions across Europe and Latin America. I serve as the project’s Scientific Coordinator, overseeing its scientific direction across all work packages.
My stay at the Universität Potsdam falls within Work Package 1, “Foundations of Freedom, Autonomy and Authoritarian Subjectivation,” led by the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy (CPKP) under Prof. Dr. Thomas Khurana. WP1 establishes REACT’s core theoretical-diagnostic framework, determining the specificity of the contemporary link between authoritarianism and the notion of freedom as self-emancipation, and coordinates the project’s first Research-Creation Lab (RC-Lab), a co-creative, intersectoral seminar bringing together philosophy, psychoanalysis, social theory and artistic practice.
During the secondment, I will work with CPKP and REACT’s Academic Committee on the coordination and scientific validation of the RC-Lab’s workplan, contribute to the theoretical groundwork of WP1 — rooted in post-Kantian philosophy and Frankfurt School critical theory — and help articulate its diagnostic categories with REACT’s broader inquiry into culture industry and authoritarian subjectivation in the platform era.

This project is conducted as part of the Marie Curie Staff Exchange Project REACT, examining how the dynamics of the contemporary culture industry and digital capitalism expose the crisis of contemporary liberalism, reshape subjectivity, and foster authoritarian tendencies.