The future is no longer what it never was - A Theory of the Present

Francisco Louçã is one of the most brilliant Portuguese economists, with a wide impact also abroad.

He had an intense political intervention and maintains the civic intervention to everyone's liking. A former deputy from the Left Bloc, he is State Councilor.

Professor at the University of Lisbon (ISEG), he is largely responsible for the diversification of economic studies among us, following names such as João Ferreira do Amaral, Manuela Silva and José Reis.

Restless spirit, tireless worker, he has a vast bibliography, and only in 2021 he wrote the Manual of Political Economy, in co-authorship with Mariana Mortágua, and The future is not what it never was – A theory of the present.

The first of these books represents a fundamental study manual, while the second corresponds to a profoundly original appreciation of these terrible times in which we live.

The future is no longer what it has never been will be discussed at the “Thinking the Economy” session, organized by IDEFF, Caixa Geral de Depósitos and Ordem dos Economistas, on March 24, to be held at Culturgest, at 5:30 pm.

Francisco Louçã thus joins the ongoing reflection on the paths of analysis and economic studies, in a session in which João Ferreira do Amaral and Miguel Moura e Silva will be commentators and will greatly contribute to livening up the debate.

Here is a passage from the book to whet your appetite for the session in which we hope to meet you for free and enthusiastic discussion.

“The whole future is fabulous”, writes Alejo Carpentier. Will it be? And will it be a happy fable or a chimerical fable? The answer lies in the present, the one we live in today, which is a society of fear. This is what we unlearned with the pandemic: fear of others or ourselves locked us in a life in zapping, plunged us into illusory identities on Facebook, overwhelmed us with images dominated by tribalism - whether of fanaticized religions or supremacism. aggressive. Our world is changing and ghosts of the past reappear, necropolitics, which uses destruction as normalization, and buffoonery, which elevates puppets to power, making, as Foucault guessed, «the grotesque is one of the essential procedures of arbitrary sovereignty».

Free registrations for: caixageraldedepositos@cgd.pt.