Jul 25, 2019
This week’s show is special: We’ve swapped episodes with Democracy
Works, a podcast produced by Penn State University’s McCourtney
Institute for Democracy. (They ran an episode of ours last week.)
As the definition of neoliberalism contrasts among many
individuals, Wendy Brown joins this episode to talk about what
neoliberalism is, not only on an economic level, but also on a
social and political level. Brown addresses the influence of
neoliberalism on democratic societies in her most recent book, “In
the Ruins of Neoliberalism,” a follow up to her 2015 book, “Undoing
the Demos.” Democracy Works is hosted by Michael Berkman, professor
in the Department of Political Science and director of the
McCourtney Institute for Democracy, along with Christopher Beem,
managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Brown
is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California,
Berkeley, where she also teaches political theory. She received her
Ph.D. in political philosophy from Princeton University in 1983.
Her research interests include the history of political theory,
19th- and 20th-century Continental theory, critical theory, and
theories of contemporary capitalism. Democracy Works addresses a
wide range of issues involving democracy and is meant for “people
coming together to build things that are greater than the sum of
their parts.” The podcast is recorded at WPSU Penn State, central
Pennsylvania’s NPR station.