The pandemic has brought to the fore the economic, social, and ecological crisis of our time. It demonstrated the need for a policy that is capable of protecting the many, providing social justice and foster solidarity – and – it created a favourable terrain for authoritarian forms of politics.
In this talk Chantal Mouffe discuss the ‘return of the political’ in the post-pandemic area. She warns about underestimating the importance of affects and argues for the coalition of movements.
Chantal Mouffe, the well-known Belgian political theorist, is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster (UK). Mouffe is known for her agonistic conception of democracy and a critical dialogue with Marxism and the Left.
Mouffe has taught at universities throughout Europe and the Americas, and she has held research positions at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, to name but a few.
Mouffe is the author of many influential books, among them Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (with Ernesto Laclau, 1985), The Democratic Paradox (2000), On the Political (2005), Podemos: In the Name of the People (with Inigo Errejon, 2016), For a Left Populism (2019) and the soon-to-be-released Towards A Green Democratic Revolution: Left Populism and the Power of Affects (2022).