29th Jan Patočka Memorial lecture, recorded on 4 May 2017 at Wien Museum.
In this year’s Patočka Memorial Lecture, political theorist Chantal Mouffe examines the crucial role played in politics by what she calls ‘passions’ to refer to the common affects that are at stake in the construction of collective identities. Taking her bearings from Spinoza, Freud and Wittgenstein and from the agonistic model of democracy that she had elaborated in several of her writings she scrutinizes the nature of our current ‘post-democratic’ condition and enquire about the affects that need to be mobilized in order to create a collective will able to give a new vigour to the democratic ideals.
Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Westminster in London, where she is also the module leader of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) MA modules The State, Politics and Violence and Current Issues in Democratic Theory.
Chantal Mouffe has taught at many universities in Europe, North America and Latin America, and has held research positions at Harvard, Cornell, the University of California, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Between 1989 and 1995 she was Directrice de Programme at the College International de Philosophie in Paris.
From May to July 2017 she was Albert O. Hirschman Visiting Fellow at the IWM.
In cooperation with Wien Museum.
Further information:
www.iwm.at/