Lisa Baraitser

Professor Lisa Baraitser

Mid-Career Fellow 2014-15

Time Without Qualities

The pop anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ that accompanied Tony Blair’s election victory in 1997 belongs to era in which the unfolding of a progressive future could still be confidently assumed. We currently live, however, with narratives of the ‘end times’ characterized by a continuous capitalist present that heads towards various catastrophic futures – climate change, conflict, resource scarcity and economic austerity for the planetary majority. This project seeks to understand the relation between time and social belonging now that the fantasy of a progressive future has collapsed.

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Areas of interest

Psychosocial Studies Psychoanalysis Social Theory Temporality Ethics Care Affect Motherhood Social Reproduction

Cohort

MCF2

Biography

Lisa Baraitser is Professor of Psychosocial Theory at Birkbeck, University of London.

Lisa is an interdisciplinary research scholar in Psychosocial Studies. Her research brings psychoanalytic and social theory together to address the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care.

She has written widely on motherhood and the ethics of care, social reproduction, and the temporalities of maintenance, repetition and repair in relation to foreclosed futures.

Lisa has been part of the development of the field of Psychosocial Studies, and has written on methodological and epistemological issues in psychosocial theory and research.

Biographical details correct as of 07.02.25