Political Concepts: The Balibar Edition

The seminar is dedicated to the political philosophy/theory of Étienne Balibar, a contemporary post-Marxist and post-structuralist French philosopher. The seminar will focus on the conceptual dimension of Balibar’s work through a study a small cluster of concepts with which he has been especially engaged: ideology, city, citizen and citizenship, equa-liberty, violence, politics and the political. By explicating the meaning of these concepts in Balibar’s work and their role as theoretical-political interventions, we will open the question of the political and experiment with the intellectual and creative power of conceptual analysis and its possible contribution to political theory.