Roman Priest (Louvre Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) Reading British newspapers' commentary on the Ukraine war gives a sense of deja vue. We have a return of the ‘West’, of the ‘Free World’, of the exreme demonisation of the opponent. Commentators are...
Costas Douzinas
Alan Hunt, intellectual, academic, radical
alan hunt, intellectual, academic, radical I met Alan in the summer of 1979 at the Communist University in London. The University, partly Alan’s idea, was a week-long series of lessons organised around the main academic disciplines. I was carrying out my doctoral...
The Redress of Politics
Emilios Christodoulidis, The Redress of Law: Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Market Capture (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Page reference in brackets refer to the book. The Redress of Law is a major achievement. Major in every sense. It is large, a...
The Left in Power? Talk by Costas Douzinas, London 30 June 2017
Date: 30 June 2017 Time: 18.00 - 20.00 Venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet St London WC1E 7HX. Malet Street main building (Torrington Square entrance), Room B34 Speaker: Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, University of London and Syriza member of the Hellenic...
On a Recent Change of Tone in Politics and Law
This is the foreword by Costas Douzinas to Law and Critique in Central Europe: Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present, eds. Rafał Manko, Cosmin Cercel, and Adam Sulikowski (Oxford: Counterpress 2016). I am writing this preface in the Chamber of Hellenic...
Human Rights for Martians
The human rights movement can be seen as the ongoing but failing struggle to close the gap between the abstract man of the Declarations and the empirical human being. Has it succeeded? Yes and no. 2015 and 2016 have been marked by the heart-breaking images of a moving...
The Left in Power? Notes on Syriza’s Rise, Fall, and (Possible) Second Rise
The left in power? Four enticing words. The most important thing here, however, is the question mark at the end. For what does the left mean today as ideology and vision, as organization and party, as movement and government? No single or simple answer exists. We have...
Syriza: The Greek Spring
According to an oft-repeated cliché, the recent Syriza victory has historic significance. Its place in history books as the first elected left government in Europe is assured. But its importance goes further. The Syriza victory is an important marker in three...
Are there just wars? The history and philosophy of bellum justum — Lecture by Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck 4 Nov 2014
In 1914, at the beginning of WWI, Cardinals Mercier of Belgium and Billot of France had a heated argument about the sacred nature of pro patria mori. For the Belgian, a soldier who dies defending his country is assured eternal salvation. Such martyrdom is the highest...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (7) Cosmopolitanism, Equality & Resistance
Against imperial arrogance and cosmopolitan naivety, we must insist that global neoliberal capitalism and human-rights-for-export are part of the same project. The two must be uncoupled; human rights can contribute little to the struggle against capitalist...