Thursday, July 28, 7:30pm @ No-Space
Please join The Public School and Not An Alternative for an evening with political theorist Jodi Dean.
Focusing on her book-in-progress THE COMMUNIST HORIZON, this seminar mounts a provocative response to the economic and social crises that define our time. From the extremes of corporate bonuses to the attacks on public sector unions, the antagonism that cuts across capitalist countries is increasingly apparent.
Democracy is no panacea, Dean argues. Extreme inequality is not inevitable. Politics are not dead. Communism didn't end in 1989. Instead, the communist horizon is our horizon.
Come to discuss the potential of communism as the contemporary name for left political and economic aspiration. What possibilities does it open up? What aspects of our current conjunction suggest the continued force of communism as a universal and egalitarian ideal?
Background readings:
The Communist Horizon - Excerpt
Revolutionary Theory and the Communist Horizon
BIO
Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She has authored or edited ten books, including, most recently, ‘Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies’ (Duke 2009), “Blog Theory’ (Polity 2010), and 'Zizek's Politics" (Routledge 2006). She is the co-editor of Theory & Event.
PRAISE
"Jodi Dean...provides what we have all been waiting for: the authentic theoretical analysis of how ideology functions in today’s global capitalism. Her diagnosis of ‘communicative capitalism’ discloses how our ‘really-existing democracies’ curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap pseudo-Marxist denunciations, but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices.’”—Slavoj Zizek