Chantal Mouffe | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Mouffe in 2013 | |
| Born | (1943-06-17)17 June 1943 (age 82) Charleroi, Belgium |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Post-Marxism |
| Main interests | Political theory |
| Notable ideas | Agonism, criticism ofdeliberative democracy |
Chantal Mouffe (French:[muf]; born 17 June 1943)[1] is a Belgianpolitical theorist, teaching atUniversity of Westminster.[2] She is best known for her andErnesto Laclau's contribution to the development of the so-calledEssex School of discourse analysis.[3][4] She is a strong critic ofdeliberative democracy and advocates a conflict-oriented model ofradical democracy.
Chantal Mouffe studied at the Universities ofLeuven,Paris andEssex and has worked in many universities throughout the world (inEurope,North America andLatin America). She has also held visiting positions atHarvard,Cornell,Princeton and theCNRS (Paris). During 1989–1995, she served as Programme Director at theCollège international de philosophie in Paris. She currently holds a professorship at the Department of Politics and International Relations,University of Westminster in theUnited Kingdom, where she is a member of the Centre for the Study of Democracy.[2]
She developed a type ofpost-Marxist political inquiry drawing onGramsci,post-structuralism and theories of identity, and redefining Leftist politics in terms of radical democracy.[5] With Laclau she co-authored her most frequently cited publicationHegemony and Socialist Strategy, and she is also the author of influential works onagonistic political theory, includingAgonistics: Thinking the World Politically andThe Democratic Paradox. Her bookFor a Left Populism was published in 2018.
A prominent critic ofdeliberative democracy (especially in itsRawlsian andHabermasian versions), she is also known for her use of the work ofCarl Schmitt, mainlyhis concept of "the political", in proposing a radicalization of modern democracy—what she calls "agonistic pluralism". She has developed an interest in highlighting the radical potential of artistic practices.[6] Mouffe'sAgonistics: Thinking the World Politically (2013) has been criticised by Timothy Laurie for its strong focus on State institutions, noting that Mouffe's "professed enthusiasm for (some) non-Western Islamist movements is solely conditional upon their assumption of State instruments".[7]
The sociologistPierre Birnbaum believes that Chantal Mouffe's theory is "fundamentally foreign to any Marxist or even socialist demonstration, and also contrary to any sociological analysis." He particularly calls into question her recourse to voters' emotions rather than their reason, "in an explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment embodied byJürgen Habermas", but also of "the essentials of contemporary political theory"; according to the sociologist, Chantal Mouffe's thought is "an interpretation of the foundations of mobilization certainly inspired explicitly by the experiences of Latin America, but which seems to find its distant origin in the rants, in the 19th century, ofGustave Le Bon or ofGabriel Tarde."[8]
CIP t.p. (Chantal Mouffe) data sheet (b. 17 June 1943)
