Roger Berkowitz: Globalization and the Human Condition

This event occurred on:  In a global world boundaries collapse. There is a question whether any borders or limitations are valid. For many, all boundaries (whether moral or political) are unjust impositions of hierarchal orders. Occupy Wall Street and Human rights share more than a desire to actualize freedom in the world. They are also, in significant ways, non-political and even anti-political institutions. As political instances of the radical democratic theorizing of Jacques Ranciere, both OWS and the global human rights movement reject the institutionalization of politics in favor of unlimited openness. This paper argues that politics requires institutions, for politics without a space of politics secured by institutions is impossible.
Roger Berkowitz is an interdisciplinary scholar, teacher, and writer. He writes on politics, law, Hannah Arendt, Greek and German philosophy, and legal history. His essays have appeared in Bookforum, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Theory & Event, The Fortnightly Review, The Journal of Politics, Philosophy and Literature, the Journal of Law, Culture and Humanities, New Nietzsche Studies, and many other publications. His monograph, The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, was recently published by Harvard University Press. He is co-editor of Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics and The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis. He teaches at Bard College where he is Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities.