RGCS Lecture, Emma Planinc (Notre Dame), "Regenerative Politics"
Schedule
Thu Apr 02 2026 at 04:30 pm to 06:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Thomson House Restaurant/Bar/Cafe and Reception Hall | Montreal, QC
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The Research Group on Constitutional Studies Lecture Series presentsEmma Planinc
Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts and Political Science, University of Notre Dame
McGill MA '12
"Regenerative Politics"
Thursday, April 2, 2026
4:30-6 pm, reception to follow
Thomson House Ballroom
One current McGill student who registers at http://www.facebook.com/RGCSMcGill/events or by e-mail to [email protected] and attends will be randomly selected to win a copy of Professor Planinc’s book Regenerative Politics (Columbia University Press 2024).
RGCS is a unit of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. The RGCS Lecture Series is supported in part by a grant from the Institute for Liberal Studies.
Abstract of the book _Regenerative Politics_
Critics of liberal democracy from both the left and right view rights not as protectors of freedom but as impediments to self-determination and call for radically regenerative political alternatives. Liberals respond to these challenges by reasserting that universal rights are self-evident, intentionally foreclosing the possibility of remaking the political order. Regenerative Politics makes a bold intervention into this fraught landscape, arguing that the survival of rights depends on abandoning their claims to self-evidence.
Emma Planinc argues that liberal democracies must open themselves up to a regenerative politics that accepts all claims against political convention as self-determinative—including those that desire the rejection of rights or the overturning of liberal democracies themselves. Bringing together scholarship on race, democracy, liberalism, fascism, and the far right with an intellectual history of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and a novel account of human nature, Regenerative Politics offers a new political theory for the revitalization of politics. Planinc shows that liberal democracies can arm themselves against extreme challenges by remaining perpetually open to the reconstitution of rights, restoring the capacity for human beings to determine themselves in the world.
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Where is it happening?
Thomson House Restaurant/Bar/Cafe and Reception Hall, 3630 Rue McTavish, Montréal, QC H3A 1Y2, Canada, MontrealEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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