All-star cast of radical intellectuals discuss the continued importance of communism.
About the Author: Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include "Living in the End Times," "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce," "In Defense of Lost Causes," four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.
Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. He is the author of numerous works, including "Human Rights and Empire," "The End of Human Rights," and "Law and the Image: The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law."
Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the E?cole normale superieure and the College international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including "Theory of the Subject," "Being and Event," "Manifesto for Philosophy," and "Gilles Deleuze." His recent books include "The Meaning of Sarkozy," "Ethics," "Metapolitics," "Polemics, ""The Communist Hypothesis," "Five Lessons on Wagner," and "Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy."
Bruno Bosteels, Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University, is the author of "Badiou and Politics, Marx and Freud in Latin America," and "The Actuality of Communism." He is also the translator of several books by Alain Badiou: "Theory of the Subject, Can Politics Be Thought?" and "What Is Antiphilosophy? Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Lacan." He currently serves as the General Editor of "Diacritics."
Susan Buck-Morss is Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory at Cornell University. She is the author of "Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project" and "The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute."
Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow, University of Manchester. His other books include "Ideology"; "The Function of Criticism"; "Heathcliff and the Great Hunger"; "Against the Grain"; "Walter Benjamin"; and "Criticism and Ideology," all from Verso.
Peter Hallward teaches at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. He is the author of several books including "Absolutely Postcolonial," "Badiou: A Subject to Truth, ""Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation," and "Damming the Flood."
Antonio Negri has taught philosophy and political science at the Universities of Padua and Paris; he has also been a political prisoner in Italy and a political refugee in France. He is the author of over thirty books, including "Political Descartes, Marx Beyond Marx, The Savage Anomaly, The Politics of Subversion, Insurgencies, Subversive Spinoza, " and "Time for Revolution," and, in collaboration with Michael Hardt, "Labor of Dionysus, Empire" and "Multitude." He currently lives in Paris and Venice.
Jacques Ranciere is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include "The Politics of Aesthetics," "On the Shores of Politics," "Short Voyages to the Land of the People," "The Nights of Labor," "Staging the People," and "The Emancipated Spectator."
Alberto Toscano is a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of "The Theatre of Production" and "Fanaticism," translator of Alain Badiou's "The Century" and "Logics of Worlds" and co-editor of Alain Badiou's "Theoretical Writings" and "On Beckett." He has published numerous articles on contemporary philosophy, politics and social theory, and is an editor of "Historical Materialism."