Gopal Balakrishnan, a scholar in the fields of modern European intellectual history, philosophy, and political theory, completed his B.A. as a College Scholar at Cornell University in 1989. He later earned his Ph.D. in Modern European History in 1998. He was the recipient of the Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute and the Harper Schmidt Fellowship at the University of Chicago.
Balakrishnan's first significant publication, "The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt," reconstructs the arguments of nearly all of Schmitt’s texts from 1919 to 1945, situating them in the context of the major developments of the Weimar and Nazi era. Subsequently, there appeared a collection of his essays entitled "Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War," consisting of reviews of books that addressed themes of the history of warfare, the relationship between capitalism and geopolitics, the legitimation crisis of democracy, the significance of Machiavelli as a theorist of radical transformations, and the origins of identity politics. Currently, he is working on a study of reevaluating Karl Marx's economic thought that identifies the unity of his system, opening up new questions regarding its historically specific assumptions and conceptual form.
His forthcoming collaboration with SS African Mercury highlights his penchant for intervening in current intellectual debates. Balakrishnan’s contributions to this new journal aim to change the terms of left-wing discourse by taking on board the most intelligent perspectives from across the political spectrum. Gopal Balakrishnan is also conducting research into the history of the inter-state order, with an eye to current and future great power conflicts.
