Chantal Mouffe

Chantal Mouffe (born 1943 in Charleroi, Belgium) is a Belgian political theorist. She is a Professor in the University of Westminster and she co-authored Hegemony and Socialist Strategy with Ernesto Laclau. Their thoughts are usually described as post-Marxist as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s and were thus active working class and new social movements (notably second-wave feminism in Mouffe's case). They rejected Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle being the single crucial antagonism in society. Instead they urged for radical democracy of agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion, "...there is no possibility of society without antagonism," which is why they claimed that "society does not exist."

Publications

• Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London – Boston: Routledge / Kegan Paul, 1979. (editor)
• Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London – New York: Verso, 1985. (with Ernesto Laclau)
• Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. London – New York: Verso, 1992. (editor)
• The Return of the Political. London – New York: Verso, 1993.
• Le politique et ses enjeux. Pour une démocratie plurielle. Paris: La Découverte/MAUSS, 1994.
• Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London – New York: Routledge, 1996. (editor)
• The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. London – New York: Verso, 1999. (editor)
• The Democratic Paradox. London – New York: Verso, 2000.
• Feministische Perspektiven. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2001. (co-editor)
• The legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction. Frankfurt am Main – New York: Peter Lang, 2001. (co-editor)
• On the Political. Abingdon – New York: Routledge, 2005.