Contingency, Hegemony, Universality Contemporary Dialogues on the Left

In a compelling and unusual experiment, three eminent theorists engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism- versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structumalism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory.

While the rigour and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange.
Introduction 1 (4)
Questions 5 (6)
Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism
11 (33)
Judith Butler

Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics
44 (46)
Ernesto Laclau

Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, please!
90 (46)
Slavoj Zizek

Competing Universalities
136 (46)
Judith Butler

Structure, History and the Political
182 (31)
Ernesto Laclau

Da Capo senza Fine
213 (50)
Slavoj Zizek

Dynamic Conclusions
263 (18)
Judith Butler

Constructing Universality
281 (27)
Ernesto Laclau

Holding the Place
308
Slavoj Ziiek



Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley and Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School. She is the author of Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter and The Psychic Life of Power.
Ernesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex. He is the author of Emancipation(s), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, The Making of Political Identities and, with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy His The Populist Reason is forthcoming from Verso.

Slavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The Plague of Fantasies, The Ticklish Subject, and The Fragile Absolute.