Chantal Mouffe (born 1943) is a Belgian political theorist. She is Professor in the University of Westminster. She co-authored Hegemony and Socialist Strategy with Ernesto Laclau. Their thought is usually described as post-Marxist as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s and were thus active working class and new social movements (notably second-wave feminism in Mouffe's case). They rejected Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle being the single crucial antagonism in society. Instead they urged for radical democracy of agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion "...there is no possibility of society without antagonism", that is why they claimed that "society does not exist".

Publications

• Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Ernesto Laclau) (1985)
• The Return of the Political (1993)
• Le politique et ses enjeux (1994)
• Challenge of Carl Schmitt (1999)
• The Democratic Paradox (2000)