Oct 6 2025

The Authoritarianism of Financial Freedom

Visiting Fellow

October 6, 2025

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location

Student Center East, Cardinal Room

Address

750 S Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607

Pre-registration is highly encouraged. Please register below.

Reception to follow.

How does debt shape society? This talk will look at the case of Argentina, where household debt has been deployed and moralized to create the conditions for far-right authoritarianism. By looking at how debt, and particularly the concept of "indebtedness to live" has consolidated the precarity of labor, Dr. Gago will also demonstrate how the stabilization of debt as a model of social reproduction has contributed to state antifeminism.

Verónica Gago is one of the most prominent feminists of our time. A professor of social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of San Martín, her publications include A Feminist Reading of Debt (2021, with Luci Cavallero) and Neoliberalism from below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (2017). Read her full bio here.

Co-sponsored by the UIC Departments of Anthropology, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies.

Contact

Institute for the Humanities

Date posted

Sep 8, 2025

Date updated

Sep 26, 2025