1st Annual Radical Democracy Conference
April 4 – April 5, 2011
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The Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research, in collaboration with the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, is sponsoring a two-day graduate student conference interrogating the concept, history, and implications of radical democracy. Striving to assess the legacy of antiquity on contemporary radical democratic theory, as well as explore the work of contemporary theorists such as Abensour, Arendt, Castoriadis, Mouffe, Negri, Rancière, and Wolin, we invite you to submit abstracts on any theme pertaining to the history, meaning, development and application, or critique of the concept of “radical democracy.”We strongly encourage submissions that touch upon any of the following themes, however, papers exploring other relevant topics and issues are also strongly encouraged:
- Promises, limits and critiques of the concept of radical democracy
- Ancient democratic thought in relation to modernity and post-modernity
- Technology and the mediums of (radical) democracy
- Consensus building/agonistic democracy
- Engendering radical democracy: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class
- Post-Leftist democratic politics
- Radical Democracy and anarchism
- Relationship between radical democracy and traditional regime forms such as oligarchy, liberalism, republicanism, socialism, communism
- Exploring the relationship between radical democracy and key concepts in political theory such as: participatory/direct democracy; agency and autonomy; state and nation; capitalism; imperialism; anarchy and authority, dictatorship and tyranny; sacrifice and violence; revolution and reform
More detail about the conference, as well as post-conference videos available here.