Contingency, Hegemony, Universality - Butler, Laclau, Zizek

"In a compelling and unusual experiment, three eminent theorists engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory.While the rigor and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange."

"Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and The Psychic Life of Power. Ernesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex. He is the author of Emancipation(s), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, The Making of Political Identities and, with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Slavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject."