The Red House Center for Culture and Debate and Open Society Institute present:

An Apology of Antagonism

public lecture by Slawomir Sierakowski, Poland

Slawomir Sierakowski (1979) is a Polish sociologist and political analyst, founder and editor-in-chief of the journal „Krytyka Polityczna” („Political Critique”). „Krytyka Polityczna" is the biggest intellectual magazine in Poland published since 2002. The aim of the magazine is to introduce in the Polish debate themes with high importance and a potential for influence on the social and political life of this country. Seirakowski is a President of the Stanislaw Brzozowski Association. Interested also in political issues and literary and theatrical criticism.

In his lecture Slawomir Sierakowski will look for the sources of the crisis in Central Europe in the general trend after the end of the Cold War to perceive and advertise liberal democracy as a non-controversial political ideal with no alternative. The dominant interpretation of this ideal is a consensus-based liberal democracy, on which the wise and rational elites are the only political actors with a right to voice the values and defend the interests of the coherent, non-antagonistic societies, silencing thereby any disagreement and conflict there. This idealized picture is not true to some fundamental facts of political reality, which is by its nature deeply antagonistic and pluralist. The recognition of this fact requires urgent and thorough revision of the currently dominant interpretation of the democratic ideal.

Part of the lecture series “The Crisis in Central Europe”, a joint project of the Red House for Culture and Debate and Open Society Institute – Sofia.

June 25 (Monday), 7.00 p.m.
Pesha Nikolova hall
In Englsh with translation into Bulgarian.
Entrance: 2/1 BGN





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