The Editorial Board of Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon
is pleased to announce our third annual Spring Conference.

March 1st & 2nd, 2013
The Humanities Initiative at NYU
20 Cooper Square, New York City

Roy Wagner on Alienation
Avital Ronell on Authority
Nitzan Lebovic on Biometrics
James Miller on Consent
Nilüfer Göle on Contemporary
Jacques Lezra on Enough
Stathis Gourgouris on Human/Animal
Emily Apter on Impolitic
Juan Obarrio on Interest
Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo on Liberal Democracy
Ben Kafka on Repression
Joan Copjec on Sexual Difference
Yves Winter on Siege
Banu Bargu on Sovereignty
Souleymane Bachir Diagne on Time
Richard J. Bernstein on Violence

Co-Sponsored by The Humanities Initiative at NYU | Comparative Literature (NYU) | The New School for Social Research
The Society of Fellows (Columbia University) | The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (Columbia University)


Political Concepts is a multidisciplinary, web-based journal that seeks to be a forum for engaged scholarship. Political Concepts is a forum for conversation and constructive debate rather than the construction of an encyclopedic ideal. Each lexical entry focuses on a single concept in the field of political discourse and aims to address what has remained unquestioned or unthought in that concept. Our aim is to expand the scope of what demands political accounting, and for this reason we welcome essays that fashion new political concepts or demonstrate how concepts deserve to be taken as politically significant. It is our view that “politics” refers to the multiplicity of forces, structures, problems, and orientations that shape our collective life. Politics enters the frame wherever our lives together are staked and whenever collective action could make a difference to the outcome.