Chantal Mouffe: The Populist Moment

Underpinning In formation programme are talks and discussions around the state of democracy today, and recent shifts away from centrist politics. In this talk, political theorist Chantal Mouffe examines the reasons for the emergence of a variety of right-wing anti-establishment movements presented as 'populists' in Western Europe, the challenge that they represent for democratic politics, and the possible answers to such movements that can come from the Left.

 

This talk will be followed by an open discussion with political theorist Yannis Stavrakakis.

 

Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Westminster. She 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.

 

Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science in Athens and discourse analysis at Essex, where he completed his PhD. He has worked at the Universities of Essex and Nottingham and is currently Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the author of Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999) and The Lacanian Left (SUNY Press, 2007), and co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester University Press, 2000). His forthcoming monograph is entitled The Populist Scandal and he is also currently editing the Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory. Since 2014 he has directed the POPULISMUS Observatory.