Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (Phronesis) - Softcover

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism- versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structumalism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory. While the rigour and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange.

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex and The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Ernesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex. He is the author of Emancipation(s), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, The Making of Political Identities and, with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Slavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Plague of Fantasies, The Ticklish Subject, and The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian legacy is worth fighting for.