Niklas Plätzer
I'm a PhD student at the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science, specializing in political theory, as well as Sciences Po Paris (CEVIPOF). I hold an M.A. in Political Science from UChicago and M.A. and B.A. degrees in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris (both summa cum laude). In 2014/2015, I had the chance to spend a year as a Studienstiftung fellow at Columbia University, where I discovered my interest for theory under the guidance of Jean L. Cohen.
I have taught courses in both political science and philosophy at UChicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Sciences Po (in Paris, Reims, and Nancy), université de Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), and Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2020, I have been an affiliated doctoral fellow at the Franco-German Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.
I am driven by a passion for democracy as a way of life, new forms of plurality and collective self-rule, beyond sovereign statehood and depoliticized governance. That's why my research interests include democratic theory, Continental philosophy, as well as the study of social movements. I'm a fan of genuine activism, good humor, Hannah Arendt, unruly attitudes, and Brazilian music.
Supervisors: Linda Zerilli, John McCormick, Adom Getachew, and Frédéric Gros
Address: Chicago, IL
I have taught courses in both political science and philosophy at UChicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Sciences Po (in Paris, Reims, and Nancy), université de Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), and Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2020, I have been an affiliated doctoral fellow at the Franco-German Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.
I am driven by a passion for democracy as a way of life, new forms of plurality and collective self-rule, beyond sovereign statehood and depoliticized governance. That's why my research interests include democratic theory, Continental philosophy, as well as the study of social movements. I'm a fan of genuine activism, good humor, Hannah Arendt, unruly attitudes, and Brazilian music.
Supervisors: Linda Zerilli, John McCormick, Adom Getachew, and Frédéric Gros
Address: Chicago, IL
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Publications by Niklas Plätzer
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The history of social and political struggles is also a story of communal meals, of micro-politics that transform our desires in a new encounter: from French revolutionary banquets to soup kitchens in the squats of New York, Berlin or Athens. Such encounters, of activists who cook together, eat together and get to know each other as people beyond their mere functions in a socio-economic machinery, can represent considerable acts of contestation in and of themselves. The repression that civic banquets have undergone in the past is one illustration of this capacity. Encounters with strangers around a bowl of soup in the street can serve to interrupt the logic of rule that otherwise structures our lives. In that sense, 19th century American anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews spoke of the dinner party as the model for a new society in the shell of the old, while Hakim Bey regards "banquets" and "old-time libertarian picnics" as "already 'liberated zones' of a sort." Anyone who flatly ridicules communal meals as the self-important activity of privileged foodies does injustice to the specific ways in which the enjoyment of food—and any bodily pleasure more generally– can be transformed and politicized."
Papers by Niklas Plätzer
Essays by Niklas Plätzer
Drafts by Niklas Plätzer
Conference Presentations by Niklas Plätzer
I presented this paper at the Graduate Summer School in Political Theory and Psychoanalysis at the National and Kapodistrian University Athens / Greece, June 24, 2016. The summer school was organized in cooperation between the University of Athens, Sciences Po Paris and Paris VII.
My paper was translated into Greek with the title Η συνθήκη του αόρατου ανθρώπου : η ριζική πληθωρικότητα και ο χώρος του φαίνεσθαι στην Hannah Arendt και τον Hito Steyerl.
Greek program available at: http://www.protothema.gr/ugeia/article/588832/sunedrio-me-thema-ti-shesi-politiki-kai-psuhanalusis/
This paper explores the idea of political space as a space in-between (Zwischenraum), i.e. as an interstitial space which ruptures the given ordering of the social. While the metaphor of " political space " plays a central role in modern political theory, the notion has predominantly been linked to the space of the sovereign state. In this state-centric tradition, " political space " has been conceived of as a unique place within a social formation: a " public space " with a discrete and determinate location, both materially and on the level of the political imaginary. This paper argues that such a metaphorical equation of politics with a certain space within a closed cartographic order eliminates the ruptural element of the political, which, in the words of Simon Critchley, always operates at an " interstitial distance " from the space of sovereignty. Through an elaboration of the concept of " political space " as a space of rupture, i.e. as a crack-like, fugitive opening which escapes its possible integration in any sovereign order, this paper aims at a reconstruction of an alternative theoretical tradition. It proposes the notion of interstitial politics by drawing from the work of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and James C. Scott and highlights up to now unexplored similarities between their radically anti-sovereigntist political theories, while also emphasizing the specificities of their respective notions of political space. Whereas Hannah Arendt's thought has today largely achieved canonical status, it has only rarely been analyzed alongside radical democratic theories of political space conceived of as the interstitial space of a rupture. After a presentation of her influential notion of political space, this paper therefore discusses Arendt's " in-between space " of politics in the context of Jacques Rancière's radical view of politics as a rupture which transforms the " space of circulation " into a " space for the appearance of a subject. " The paper then compares and contrasts Arendt's critique of sovereignty with Ernesto Laclau's critique of the " suture " of social space. Lastly, it evokes the work of American political scientist James C. Scott on " legibility " as a forceful and empirically-minded extension of this anti-sovereigntist strain of political theory. It concludes with a discussion of possible avenues for a kind of research that would take into account the ruptural element of political space.
[...]
The history of social and political struggles is also a story of communal meals, of micro-politics that transform our desires in a new encounter: from French revolutionary banquets to soup kitchens in the squats of New York, Berlin or Athens. Such encounters, of activists who cook together, eat together and get to know each other as people beyond their mere functions in a socio-economic machinery, can represent considerable acts of contestation in and of themselves. The repression that civic banquets have undergone in the past is one illustration of this capacity. Encounters with strangers around a bowl of soup in the street can serve to interrupt the logic of rule that otherwise structures our lives. In that sense, 19th century American anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews spoke of the dinner party as the model for a new society in the shell of the old, while Hakim Bey regards "banquets" and "old-time libertarian picnics" as "already 'liberated zones' of a sort." Anyone who flatly ridicules communal meals as the self-important activity of privileged foodies does injustice to the specific ways in which the enjoyment of food—and any bodily pleasure more generally– can be transformed and politicized."
I presented this paper at the Graduate Summer School in Political Theory and Psychoanalysis at the National and Kapodistrian University Athens / Greece, June 24, 2016. The summer school was organized in cooperation between the University of Athens, Sciences Po Paris and Paris VII.
My paper was translated into Greek with the title Η συνθήκη του αόρατου ανθρώπου : η ριζική πληθωρικότητα και ο χώρος του φαίνεσθαι στην Hannah Arendt και τον Hito Steyerl.
Greek program available at: http://www.protothema.gr/ugeia/article/588832/sunedrio-me-thema-ti-shesi-politiki-kai-psuhanalusis/
This paper explores the idea of political space as a space in-between (Zwischenraum), i.e. as an interstitial space which ruptures the given ordering of the social. While the metaphor of " political space " plays a central role in modern political theory, the notion has predominantly been linked to the space of the sovereign state. In this state-centric tradition, " political space " has been conceived of as a unique place within a social formation: a " public space " with a discrete and determinate location, both materially and on the level of the political imaginary. This paper argues that such a metaphorical equation of politics with a certain space within a closed cartographic order eliminates the ruptural element of the political, which, in the words of Simon Critchley, always operates at an " interstitial distance " from the space of sovereignty. Through an elaboration of the concept of " political space " as a space of rupture, i.e. as a crack-like, fugitive opening which escapes its possible integration in any sovereign order, this paper aims at a reconstruction of an alternative theoretical tradition. It proposes the notion of interstitial politics by drawing from the work of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and James C. Scott and highlights up to now unexplored similarities between their radically anti-sovereigntist political theories, while also emphasizing the specificities of their respective notions of political space. Whereas Hannah Arendt's thought has today largely achieved canonical status, it has only rarely been analyzed alongside radical democratic theories of political space conceived of as the interstitial space of a rupture. After a presentation of her influential notion of political space, this paper therefore discusses Arendt's " in-between space " of politics in the context of Jacques Rancière's radical view of politics as a rupture which transforms the " space of circulation " into a " space for the appearance of a subject. " The paper then compares and contrasts Arendt's critique of sovereignty with Ernesto Laclau's critique of the " suture " of social space. Lastly, it evokes the work of American political scientist James C. Scott on " legibility " as a forceful and empirically-minded extension of this anti-sovereigntist strain of political theory. It concludes with a discussion of possible avenues for a kind of research that would take into account the ruptural element of political space.