The Universality of Non-Belonging: Todd McGowan in conversation with Jana Bacevic

Recording of live webinar hosted by The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal, on 10 November 2020. Join future free live events & learn how to subscribe on our website: ------ What does it mean not to belong? Belonging, we are told, is essential for citizenship and participation in modern societies. Belonging invokes solidarity, but also uniformity and conformism. This conversation will explore the intersections between universality and particularity through an emphasis on the universality of non-belonging, and its role in rethinking political futures. Thanks to philosophers in the last half of the 20th century, universality has received very bad press. It is understood as an external force that dominates particular identities by forcing them to conform to its singular ideal. But the problem isn’t universality. It is this conception of it. What is universal is not what dominates us but the point of absence within the socia