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What's "Left" in Schmitt? Critique of an Academic Fashion

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Wednesday, March 04, 2015
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Matthew Specter, Central Connecticut State University

In the past quarter of a century, the academy has witnessed an explosion of interest in the political theory of Carl Schmitt (1900-1985). For some on the Left, Schmitt offers resources for a critique U.S. imperialism, the narrow spectrum of liberal democracies, and the idealism of deliberative democracy. This lecture uses Schmitt's biography and political theory to highlight and criticize recent Schmitt appropriations on the political Left. It argues that Schmitt, or Schmittianism, as a leftist project is historically incoherent. The theorist of fascism and the ideologist of Nazi Lebensraum is simply not worth the tendentious stretching and pulling necessary to turn him into a progressive and emancipatory egalitarian thinker. Schmitt offers no new vision for the contemporary Left.