Professor of political theory at the University of Kent. As a dissident in the late 1980s in Bulgaria, she helped organize the student strikes that challenged the regime in 1989–1990. Soon after, she denounced the autocratic turn in the post-communist democracies in a speech at the Council of Europe. She is educated in France and the United States and currently lives in Brussels, Belgium.
Competitive labour markets, whether private or public, often set profit margins over employment rights. Job insecurity and new forms of exploitation are on the rise. As is the Far Right, cashing in on resultant worker anxieties. Is there a way out of this ‘precarity’, tormenting the overworked and underpaid?
Julia Kristeva’s recently released secret service files reveal a similar persona to that which comes through her writing: unruly, witty, courageous. And yet Kristeva is denying the allegations. Is it something other than the truth that she fears?