GradCam present Peter Hallward: 'The Will of the People and the Struggle for Democracy'

dublin | arts and media | event notice Sunday January 23, 2011 11:50 by Praxis and Pedagogy seminar series/ research group - Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM)

Thursday February 17th 2011, 6 - 8pm, Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, Dublin

This is a free public seminar, however, places are limited, and booking is strongly recommended. Please send an email to praxis@gradcam.ie to reserve your place.

GradCAM present Peter Hallward: 'The Will of the People and the Struggle for Democracy', Feb 17th, Dublin

In this talk Peter Hallward will try to clarify and defend the once-familiar notion of a democratic political will, understood as a rational practice of inclusive and egalitarian self-determination. As conceived by thinkers ranging from Rousseau to Fanon, exercise of an autonomous 'will of the people' involves a process of collective self-emancipation. It requires a capacity for association, deliberation, and prescription, as well as the power to implement political decisions in the face of whatever resistance they encounter. In the past, it was the militant assertion of such a popular will, for instance in the French, Haitian and Russian revolutions, that posed the most far-reaching challenges to the existing order of things; unsurprisingly, today's reactionary political establishment (along with a good deal of contemporary philosophy and critical theory) is largely organised around its exclusion or disruption. But the struggle continues!

Peter Hallward teaches at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University London, and is the author of Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment (2007), Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (2006), Badiou: A Subject to Truth (2003), and Absolutely Postcolonial (2001).