Frédéric Lordon & Cédric Durand: Internationalism and Democracy after the Eurozone Crisis

The NYU Department of Sociology Presents: "Internationalism and Democracy after the Eurozone Crisis" Monday, January 30thSince 2008, Europe has been mired in an institutional and political crisis that shows no signs of abating. If the 2008 financial meltdown shook the Eurozone to its foundations, the combination of austerity and the uneven recovery of member-states in its wake has once again brought questions of sovereignty and democracy to the fore. The consequence has been a series of escalating conflicts over Europe's future, exemplified by the tensions that surrounded the imposition of drastic austerity measures on the populations of Greece, Italy, and Spain, and by last summer's "Brexit" vote in the UK. Meanwhile, in many countries, growing hostility to the EU has fueled the rise of xenophobic and Euroskeptic forces on the far right, as parties like the French National Front have managed to gain traction with nationalist appeals that stress opposition to global financial elites, immigrants, and Islam. In this context, debates over the trajectory of economic and political governance in Europe have taken on a new urgency. This event features of France's leading left-wing social scientists and "public intellectuals" discussing the roots of the present crisis, the response of the social movements, and the implications for democratic politics. Using the experience of post-2008 mobilizations against austerity across Europe - and last spring's Nuit Debout protests in France in particular - they ask what a viable left strategy for dealing with the crisis might look like. To what extent are internationalism and democracy still compatible in the era of European integration? And what does the crisis signify about the future of the national state, at a time when the growing salience of exclusionary nationalism has spurred a steady rise in support for the far right? Speaker Bios: Frédéric Lordon is an economist and philosopher. He is Director of Research at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a researcher at the Center for European Sociology (CSE). He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire (2014), La Malfaçon: Monnaie Européenne et Souveraineté Démocratique (2014), and Imperium - Structures et Affects des Corps Politique (2015). Last year, Lordon was a prominent figure associated with France's Nuit Debout protest movement. He writes a regular column on European politics and the Eurozone crisis for Le Monde Diplomatique. Cédric Durand is an associate professor of economics at the University of Paris 13, a member of the Center for Economy at Paris-Nord, and a researcher with the Center for the Study of Industrialization (CEMI-EHESS). He is on the editorial board of the journal Revue d'Économie Industrielle and the online magazine ContreTemps. He is author of the forthcoming book Fictitious Capital: How Finance is Appropriating Our Future (Verso 2017). English translations of several of his recent writings are available at the Verso Books website, https://www.versobooks.com/authors/2178-cedric-durand