Flirting with Populist Politics
“He reminds me of Hugo Chavéz”, I blurted out to the group discussing Donald Trump and the current state of the US presidential election. Befuddled looks abounded. Much has been written and plenty discussed regarding Trump’s authoritarian streak. Mainstream media is rife with articles, memes, and comments comparing Donald Trump ...
Hannah and Me: Understanding Politics in Dark Times
Contrary to the suggestion of my informal title, I did not study with Hannah Arendt, nor were we ever colleagues, although I missed both experiences only by a bit. I was a graduate student in the early 1970s in one of the universities where she last taught, the University of ...
Ernesto Laclau, 1936-2014
It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of Ernesto Laclau, the outstanding Argentinean political philosopher, at the age of 78. Ernesto had a heart attack in Seville where he was giving a lecture. He was the author of landmark studies of Marxist theory and of populism ...