Mattias Lehtinen

Description of ongoing research

My thesis project "Political Ontology and Imagination: Towards a Democratic Political Imagination" combines perspectives in current research on political imagination, political ontology and democratic theory. I work within the tradition of continental political philosophy, researching thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lefort, in order to sketch out a new theory of political ontology. My aim is to shed light on the political ontology of democracy through an enriched conception of the role of political imagination for democratic politics. The project will also develop new conceptual tools to identify undemocratic political dynamics in relation to political imagination. 

My research directly seeks to conceptualize and address questions related to inequalities regarding the conditions for political action. In my dissertation project I develop, through critical philosophical analysis, new methodological tools for ontologically analyzing and bringing into view inequality regarding the way the common political world systematically pushes aside subaltern or minoritarian political positions. Here my research immediately criss-crosses questions regarding recognition and representation. As I argue in my work, inequalities of political action must be seen as highly integrated into the lived experience of minoritarian political subjects. At the same time the intelligibility of minoritarian political projects, actors and worlds, is more severely impacted by the majoritarian political projects, actors and worlds, than is commonly held to be the case in political philosophy. My research, beyond the PhD, will also seeks to conceptualize inequalities regarding political action understood in the aforementioned sense.

Areas of expertise

Political theory and philosophy, theories of democracy, critical theory, philosophy of inequality, continental political philosophy, political ontology, political imagination, conflict, populism, postfoundational political theory, fascism and totalitarianism.