Thinking Radical Democracy

Martin Breaugh is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at York University.Christopher Holman is an assistant professor in the Public Policy and Global Affairs program at Nanyang Technological University. Rachel Magnusson is the director of the Vancouver office of MASS LBP and teaches at the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria.Paul Mazzocchi is an instructor and doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University.Devin Penner is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University.

‘Thinking Radical Democracy is an important intervention in contemporary debates concerning political thought; it demonstrates both the historical roots of radical democratic theory and the respective merits of the work of Abensour, Balibar, and Rancière.’- Devin Zane Shaw (Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy vol 19:01:2015) ‘Thinking Radical Democracy makes an important contribution to our understanding of recent French intellectual history. Its intervention in postulating a left wing of the French ‘return’ of political philosophy breathes new life into this historical interpretation.’- Jacob Hamburger (Politics, Religion, and Ideology; March 2016) ‘As a series of surveys into discrete theories of radical democracy, this collected volume excels… Breaugh does a quite admirable job in explicating the underlying philosophy that informs radical democratic ideas.’- J. Matthew Hoye (Contemporary Political Theory March 2017)

• Introduction: Radical Democracy and 20th Century French ThoughtPart I – The Forebearers of the Return of Radical Democracy1 – Hannah Arendt: Plurality, Publicity, Performativity (Christopher Holman)2 – Politics À L’Écart: Merleau-Ponty and the Flesh of the Social (Paul Mazzocchi)3 – The Counter-Hobbes of Pierre Clastres (Miguel Abensour)Part II – The Critique of Totalitarianism and the Emergence of Radical Democratic Thought 4 – Claude Lefort: Democracy as the Empty Place of Power (Carlo Invernizzi Accetti)5 – Cornelius Castoriadis. Auto-Institution and Radical Democracy (Brian C.J. Singer)6 – Guy Debord and the Politics of Play (Devin Penner)Part III – New Directions and Possibilities in Radical Democratic Thought           7 – A Politics in Writing: Jacques RanciÈre and the Equality of Intelligences (Rachel Magnusson)8 – Democracy and Its Conditions: Étienne Balibar and the Contribution of Marxism to Radical Democracy (James D. Ingram)9 – From a Critique of Totalitarian Domination to the Utopia of Insurgent Democracy: On the “Political Philosophy” of Miguel Abensour (Martin Breaugh)