Matteo Polleri and Bernard E. Harcourt:

A Conversation on Marx and Foucault

March 29, 2025

EHESS, Paris, France

Academic debate tends to create conflicts among straw figures. That is certainly what has often happened in the many debates over Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. But we need to get beyond straw figures and reductionist readings to understand how to read together Marx and Foucault—the one with the other, the other with the one.

Matteo Polleri does that in his work. Polleri is one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between the work of Marx and Foucault.

So I reached out to him to interview him about his work and to have a deep conversation about how we can enrich our own thinking today through a productive confrontation between the texts of Marx and the texts of Foucault.

This interview was conducted at the EHESS in Paris on March 29, 2025. Enjoy the conversation!