{"id":1173,"date":"2021-09-03T18:21:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T22:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/?page_id=1173"},"modified":"2023-05-22T22:50:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T02:50:15","slug":"12-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/12-13\/","title":{"rendered":"12\/13 | Utopia and Cosmopolitanism with Seyla Benhabib, Robert Gooding-Williams, Karuna Mantena, and Kendall Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">(We will be adding subtitles to the video!)<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zo9gNYBmFRI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/seyla-benhabib\/\">Seyla Benhabib<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/robert-gooding-williams\/\">Robert Gooding-Williams<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/karuna-mantena\/\">Karuna Mantena<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/kendall-thomas\/\">Kendall Thomas<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-host\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">read and discuss<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/03\/Critique-Norm-Utopia-346-353.pdf\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Critique, Norm, and<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em> Utopia<\/em>, <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/02\/Seyla-Benhabib-Utopia-and-Dystopia-in-Our-Times-2.pdf\">Utopia and Dystopia in Our Times<\/a>,\u201d and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/04\/lecture-on-cosmopolitanism-CCCCT.pdf\">Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered<\/a>&#8221; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by Seyla Benhabib<\/span><\/h2>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Wednesday, April 12, 2023<\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2022\/09\/Directions-to-Jerome-Greene-Annex.pdf\">Jerome Greene Annex<\/a>, Columbia University<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Following the seminar, Bernard E. Harcourt edited his remarks into the essay &#8220;&#8216;To Burst Open the Possibilities of the Present&#8217;: Seyla Benhabib and Utopia.&#8221; Read on SSRN <a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4436343\">here<\/a>.<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With Herbert Marcuse pronouncing the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/10-13\/\">End of Utopia<\/a>\u201d in 1967 and the passing of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, the concept of utopia was eclipsed, at least momentarily, within the critical theory tradition. J\u00fcrgen Habermas did not engage the concept in his theory of communicative ethics, and there is practically no mention of utopia in his two-volume treatise, <em>The Theory of Communicative Action <\/em>(1981)<em>. <\/em>As Seyla Benhabib observed, \u201cHabermas\u2019 theory marked a shift from utopian to communicative reason in critical theory.\u201d\u00a0Axel Honneth as well did not mention the concept of utopia, or even use the word itself, in his first book, <em>The Critique of Power <\/em>(1985).\u00a0The concept of utopia went dormant.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was not until the publication in 1986 of Seyla Benhabib\u2019s landmark contribution to critical theory, <em>Critique, Norm, Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory<\/em>, that the concept of utopia resurfaced and regained footing in critical theory. The very title of her work restituted utopia to its place as a key concept of critical theory. A central argument of the book was, in her own words, \u201cthe need to recover part of the utopian legacy of early critical theory.\u201d\u00a0In her book, Seyla Benhabib forged a new path for critical theory that incorporated a cautious embrace of utopia from the earlier Frankfurt School, chastened by the practices of new social movements.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the course of a rich and ongoing intellectual journey since then, Seyla Benhabib has crafted her original vision of a \u201ccommunicative utopia\u201d into a far more concrete utopia, what she has called a \u201cutopia of cosmopolitanism,\u201d that has continued to evolve into, more recently, the concept of \u201ccosmopolitanism from below\u201d: an ideal of equal human dignity and respect for all humans, conjoined with equal respect and generosity toward their cultural, religious, gender, and ethnic differences, that finds its generative source from local and transnational grassroots movements seeking to reinvent political community.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this seminar, we explore and discuss Benhabib&#8217;s utopian vision of \u201ccosmopolitanism from below\u201d with three brilliant critical thinkers, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/robert-gooding-williams\/\">Robert Gooding-Williams<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/karuna-mantena\/\">Karuna Mantena<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/kendall-thomas\/\">Kendall Thomas<\/a>. I could not think of more stellar critical interlocutors for this conversation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Welcome to Utopia 12\/13!<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11186\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"446\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/05\/tempImageOVGKI0-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 595px) 100vw, 595px\" \/><\/h1>\n<p>[To read the full post, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-utopia-12-13\/\">click here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(We will be adding subtitles to the video!) Seyla Benhabib, Robert Gooding-Williams, Karuna Mantena, Kendall Thomas, and Bernard E. Harcourt read and discuss Critique, Norm, and Utopia, \u201cUtopia and Dystopia in Our Times,\u201d and &#8220;Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered&#8221; by Seyla Benhabib Wednesday,&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/12-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1173","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}