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1. Claude Lefort(1924 – 2010) was a French philosopher and activist. He was politically active by 1942 under the influence of his tutor, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. By 1948, he founded, together with Cornelius Castoriadis, the libertarian socialist group SocialismeouBarbarie. In his academiccareer, Lefort taught at the University of São Paulo, at the Sorbonne and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Publications Le Travail de l'œuvre, Machiavel, Gallimard, Paris, 1972. Essaissur le politique : XIXe et XXesiècles, Seuil, Paris, 1986. Écrireàl'épreuve du politique, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1992. La Complication, Fayard, Paris, 1999. Les Formes de l'histoire. Essaisd'anthropologiepolitique, Gallimard, Paris, 2000. Le Temps présent, Belin, Paris, 2007. English translations: The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (MIT Press, 1986) Democracy and Political Theory (MIT Press, 1989) Writing: The Political Test (Duke University Press, 2000) Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2007) Chantal Mouffe(born 1943) is a Belgian political theorist. She studied at Louvain, Paris and Essex and has worked in many universities throughout the world. During the 1989-1995 period she served as Programme Director at the College International de Philosophie. She currently holds a professorship at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminister, UK, where she directs the Centre for the Study of Democracy. Publications: (with Ernesto Laclau) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, 1985. (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. London – New York: Verso, 1992. The Return of the Political. London – New York: Verso, 1993. (ed.) The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. London – New York: Verso, 1999. The Democratic Paradox. London – New York: Verso, 2000. (ed.) The legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction. Frankfurt am Main – New York: Peter Lang, 2001. On the Political. Abingdon – New York: Routledge, 2005.