Chantal Mouffe (born 1943 in
Charleroi,
Belgium) is a
Belgian political theorist. She holds a
professorship at the
University of Westminster in the
United Kingdom. She is best known as co-author of
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy with
Ernesto Laclau. Their thoughts are usually described as
post-Marxism as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s including working class and new social movements (notably second-wave
feminism in Mouffe's case). They rejected
Marxist economic determinism and the notion of
class struggle being the single crucial
antagonism in
society. Instead they urged for radical democracy of
agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion, ‘...there is no possibility of society without antagonism’; indeed, without the forces that articulate a vision of society, it could not exist.
Publications
- Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London – Boston: Routledge / Kegan Paul, 1979. (editor)
- Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London – New York: Verso, 1985. (with Ernesto Laclau)
- Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. London – New York: Verso, 1992. (editor)
- The Return of the Political. London – New York: Verso, 1993.
- Le politique et ses enjeux. Pour une démocratie plurielle. Paris: La Découverte/MAUSS, 1994.
- Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London – New York: Routledge, 1996. (editor)
- The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. London – New York: Verso, 1999. (editor)
- The Democratic Paradox. London – New York: Verso, 2000.
- Feministische Perspektiven. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2001. (co-editor)
- The legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction. Frankfurt am Main – New York: Peter Lang, 2001. (co-editor)
- On the Political. Abingdon – New York: Routledge, 2005.
See also
