Daniel Bensaïd / Miguel Abensour / Eustache Kouvélakis / Alain Badious / Etienne Balibar / Dominique Lecourt / Alex Callinicos / Peter Hallward / Jean-Jacques Lecercle
2-8pm | Friday 31 May 2002
Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, SW7
11am-6.30pm | Saturday 1 June 2002
Tate Modern, Bankside
Speakers
Daniel Bensaïd
Miguel Abensour
Eustache Kouvélakis
Alain Badious
Etienne Balibar
Dominique Lecourt
Alex Callinicos
Peter Hallward
Jean-Jacques Lecercle
The world has entered a zone of uncertainty. Far from delivering the end of history so firmly promised by certain prophets in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism in 1989, the post-Cold War epoch displays a contradictory appearance to contemporary observers. Cynicism, exhaustion and apathy certainly abound, but any blithe assertion of the post-ideological character of the period seems undermined by the return to respectability (within limits) of Karl Marx: treated only a few years ago as a << dead dog >>, as an archaic nineteenth-century radical with little to say of any interest to those entering the twenty-first century, Marx’s ruthless criticism of the dynamic instability of the capitalist system has enjoyed a new vogue of late. Nowhere is this turnaround of fortunes more obvious than in French intellectual circles. In recent years, a new and serious engagement with Marx’s analysis has re-emerged from France, led particular by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou and Étienne Balibar.
