Benoît Dillet - The Ontological Turn in Contemporary Political Theory (1990-2015)

FRIAS Lunch Lecture frm 19 November 2015 with Dr. Benoît Dillet froom Loughborough University

The post-2008 global financial crisis, the 2011 Arab Spring, the Occupy movement and the 2013 Edward Snowden controversy have challenged traditional political theories and categories. Concepts such as the state, power and identity have become inadequate to think our present. We seem to lack new tools to account for these changes and to invent the future, especially in the age of the Anthropocene and the digital revolution. In this FRIAS lunch lecture, I want to briefly map out some of the main changes that have taken place in normative political theory and contemporary political theory in the last 25 years to situate the 'ontological turn' in the field. This ontological turn has allowed us to think, for instance, non-human agency beyond the nature/culture opposition, the artificial and human nexus, as well as the new regimes of truth found in re-organised neoliberal societies.

More information on the FRIAS Lunch Lectures 2015/16: https://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/de/mediathek/lunch-lectures/videomitschnitte-der-lunch-lectures