La pesadilla que no acaba nunca Conversation between Marina Garcés and Christian Laval

The current regime of radicalisation of neoliberal thinking pushes traditional institutions toward a continuous crisis. The European project falters, incapable of sustaining its institutions and its legitimacy in the face of its failure to stop xenophobic movements across the continent. Its inability to respond to the so-called crises of political refugees and climate change highlights its lack of interest in the activation of social policies. Faced with this situation, we should analyse the roots and causes of this new scenario that has thrown European liberal democracies into disarray, as well as the resistance and solidarity movements that have emerged in various parts of the continent. On the occasion of the publication in Spanish of the last essay by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, La pesadilla que no acaba nunca, the philosopher Marina Garcés will talk with Christian Laval about the tensions to which the neoliberal project subjects democracy, and the need to find alternative projects that place life at the centre.

Christian Laval lectures in Sociology at the Université de Paris X Nanterre. He is the author of well-known essays on contemporary capitalism and a specialist in the analysis of neoliberal-inspired educational policies. Together with Pierre Dardot, he has recently published The Common: An Essay on the 21st-Century Revolution (2015) and The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society (Verso, 2014).
Marina Garcés is a philosopher and lecturer at the Universidad de Zaragoza and a member of MACBA’s PEI Independent Studies Programme. Her work focuses on the field of politics and critical thinking, and on the need to articulate a philosophical voice that is capable of challenging and engaging. She is the author of En las prisiones de lo posible (2002), Un mundo común (2013) El compromís / Commitment (Col·lecció Breus, CCCB, 2013), Filosofía inacabada (2015) and Fuera de clase. Textos de filosofía de guerrilla (2016). Since 2002, she has been promoting and coordinating the ‘Espai en Blanc’ project, a collective initiative dedicated to a committed, practical and experimental relationship with philosophical thought.

Activity organised in collaboration with Editorial Gedisa.