Gopal Balakrishnan
Gopal Balakrishnan
Gopal Balakrishnan is an author of some renown who has written on modern European intellectual history, economic theory, philosophy, and international relations. His academic path began at Cornell University, where he earned a College Scholar B.A. in 1989. He later pursued a Ph.D. in Modern European History in 1998. Throughout his career, he has been acknowledged with prestigious awards, such as the Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence and the Harper Schmidt Fellowship at the University of Chicago, in recognition of his substantial contribution.
Balakrishnan's course of studies was broad, laying a solid foundation for his future academic endeavors. At Cornell, his course work was interdisciplinary with an emphasis on modern European history, philosophy, and social thought. This multidisciplinary approach helped shape his intellectual outlook preparing him for graduate studies and his long involvement with the New Left Review.
His first significant book, "The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt," offers a striking profile of a disturbing mind that probed the depths of an interwar European crisis of a legal order grounded in a sovereignty that was being put into question from above and below. This publication established Balakrishnan as a noted historian of right-wing thought. He followed this with "Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War," which explores the strategic disorientation of the West in its wars against asymmetrical foes.
As an editor, Balakrishnan had a broad influence on debates going back to the 90s via the reception of "Mapping the Nation" and "Debating Empire." These collections feature essays from leading scholars that situate the present in the broader arc of the history of the state and the international system.
In recent years, Balakrishnan has returned to Karl Marx's economic theories, focusing on their genesis, their intellectual coherence, and finally, their contemporary relevance. This work aims to conceptualize Marx systematically not in order to vindicate him but to reveal his assumptions and conceptual choices more transparently.
Gopal Balakrishnan is a public intellectual who regularly contributed to the prestigious New Left Review where his essays spanned a range of topics, from the heights of Weimar intellectual life to the flatlands of postmodern identity politics.
He will be publishing in SS African Mercury, a journal that he hopes will come to be recognized for its distinctive forms of critique, review, and essay writing.
His engagement with the SS African Mercury is compelling him to modify aspects of his writing style and his very conception of what an essay is and what a journal should do. Although regarded by some as an accomplished writer, he continues to learn the art of writing in these perilous times for edification as well as to clarify essential matters.
Balakrishnan continues to conduct seminars informally with small groups of fellow travelers. He prefers the freedom and intensity of this form of intellectual community. His methodology emphasizes uncompromising investigation into subjects and texts without regard for pieties.
Balakrishnan used to be somewhat prominent on the academic circuit, lecturing on topics of interest to the left.
Currently, Balakrishnan is reading widely on Marx, the history of American capitalism, biblical studies, and the evolution of European war and diplomacy from the 18th to the 20th century.
Balakrishnan’s books and essays set the mold for our understanding of Carl Schmitt, now recognized as a political thinker of the first rank, but also changed the terms of disputes over a number of other topics of importance, most of all the future of the capitalist system.
Balakrishnan prefers the intellectual company of small circles to the fare at conferences and lecture halls. He currently participates in study groups on Ricardo and the legacy of classical economics, on the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, and on the rise of the Atlantic slave trade with different groups of young intellectuals.
Explore Further:
https://gopalbalakrishnan.net/the-hegelians/
https://gopalbalakrishnan.net/the-critique-of-liberalism/
https://aepet.org.br/artigo/anti-imperialismo-na-periferia-do-capitalismo/
https://www.brasil247.com/blog/anti-imperialismo-na-periferia-do-capitalismo
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii90/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-the-abolitionist-1
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii91/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-the-abolitionist-ii
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii104/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-counterstrike-west
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii66/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-the-coming-contradiction
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii13/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-the-oracle-of-post-democracy
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii16/articles/gopal-balakrishnan-the-age-of-identity.pdf
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/EG3/new-left-review-debates/
https://gopalbalakrishnan.net/marx-on-the-jewish-question/
https://gopalbalakrishnan.net/marxs-early-critique-of-political-economy/