Marcel Gauchet and the Loss of Common Purpose

Imaginary Islam and the Crisis of European Democracy

Inbunden, Engelska, 2017

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This bookexplores the work of Marcel Gauchet, one of France’s most prominent contemporary intellectuals, to examine the contemporary crisis of European democracy. It does so by examining the threats from ideological co-radicalization associated with the combined impact of economic crisis and Islamic fundamentalism. It locates Gauchet’s ideas in the context of French intellectual history and notes the significant influence upon it of the social and political theories of Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort and its reaction against those of Foucault. The book reviews the entire scope of Gauchet’s writings, from the early publications to the most recent publications on the “new world” of neo-liberal individualism, economism, and globalization. The book reveals how Gauchet’s work overcomes many of the misunderstandings affecting current discussions of controversial topics including the European Union, the nation-state, political Islam, the paradoxes of democracy, secularization, and reactionary political movements. It highlights the need for European societies to rediscover their political underpinnings: their capacity to invent a new collective future starting from the nation-state and to adapt to a new mode of international relations on a global scale. To do so, and to counter the threat of radicalization, they must retrieve the lost common purpose encapsulated in the notion of democratic sovereignty.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2017-12-20
Mått159 x 237 x 25 mm
Vikt558 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor294
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781498519175

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PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: French Post-Marxist Theory and Gauchet’s Model of CritiqueChapter 2: French Post-Marxist Theory and the Political: Gauchet and ReligionChapter 3: Gauchet and the Genesis of Modern SocietyChapter 4: The Legacy of French Sociology and Anthropology: Gauchet and the Question of the Post-SecularChapter 5: The Crisis of European Democracy: The Neo-Liberal Ideology and Political RadicalizationConclusionBibliographyAbout the Author

Natalie Doyle’s study offers a provocative account of what she diagnoses as a “loss of common purpose” in contemporary French political debates by reconstructing the critical itinerary of Marcel Gauchet, a former gauchiste leader at a provincial French university in May 1968, whose encounter with a professor, Claude Lefort, led him to join also with Cornelius Castoriadis to transform the critique of totalitarianism into a positive theory of radical democracy. Now the editor of the monthly journal, Le Débat, an established historian and regular political commentator, Gauchet has—for good or for ill—recast the French intellectual stage. How did the former leftist-anarchist become an authority whose writings are taken seriously by all corners of the political spectrum? Natalie Doyle’s searching study presents a comprehensive analysis of Gauchet’s intellectual itinerary whose suggestive conclusions about the contemporary crisis of European democracy open new horizons.