Political Philosophy: The Horizon of Posthuman Political Philosophy: Contemporary Radical Thought in the West: Laclau, Mouffe, Zizek, Badiou, Agamben, Negri, Hardt and Bruno Latour

May 2022

Author Wu Guanjun is Professor and Director of Department of Political Science at East China Normal University, Shanghai

Abstract: A consensus of contemporary European radical thought is that at the root of the community, there is not absolute knowledge or universal value, but a black hole of abyss. The various wisdoms of political philosophy – normative political philosophy in the form of discourse politics – are actually to fill the abyss with different discourse configurations in order to cover up the black hole singularity.

However, the question now is, in the face of the singularity, how is “politics” possible? Contemporary European thinkers such as Laclau (with Mouffe), Zizek (with Badiou), Agamben, Negri (with Hardt), and Bruno Latour have all radically stood on the edge of political philosophy, gazing into the abyss and they accept this abyss’ reflection, and some of these thinkers have completely crossed the symbolic boundaries of discourse politics and thus fell into the singularity, opening up posthuman (post-Anthropocene) political philosophy in the form of singularity politics.

Keywords: discourse politics; singularity politics; posthumanity; Anthropocene

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