Jodi Dean

Emphasizing the use of Leninism, psychoanalysis, and certain postmodernist theories, Dean has made contributions to political theory, media studies and third-wave feminism, most notably with her theory of communicative capitalism—the online merging of democracy and capitalism into a single neoliberal formation that subverts the democratic impulses of the masses by valuing emotional expression over logical discourse. She has spoken and lectured in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, England, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Turkey, the United States, and Wales. She was formerly co-editor of the political theory journal Theory & Event.

First, Dean holds that communism is widely viewed as interchangeable with the Soviet Union; communist experiments in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin American are often given little attention. Second, Dean asserts that the seventy-year history of the Soviet Union is condensed to the twenty-six years of Joseph Stalin's rule. Third, Dean thinks it is reductive to consider Stalin's violence, political suppression, and authoritarian rule—the purges, the great famines and the gulag—as the events that accurately represent communism because that ignores the industrialization of the economy, the successes of the Soviet space program, and the relative increase in the standard of living in the formerly agrarian economy. Fourth, Dean holds that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the result of the political and economic rigidity of Stalin and his successors, until Gorbachev began glasnost and perestroika. Thus, in Dean's view, the history of Stalinism becomes the basis on which discussions around alternatives to capitalism are silenced. Lastly, Dean contends that Stalinism is seen as proof that communism cannot work in practice because any challenge to the political status quo will inevitably result in purges and violence.

In the first few chapters of her 2012 book The Communist Horizon, Dean surveys the contemporary political landscape, noting the persistence of anti-communist rhetoric more than twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She says that capitalists, conservatives, liberals, and social democrats all agree that 20th century communist regimes were unqualified failures, thereby limiting the scope of discussion around political alternatives to liberal democracy and free markets (a fusion of which constitutes Dean's conception of neoliberalism). She asserts that when people think of capitalism they don't consider what she believes are its worst results (unemployment, economic inequality, hyperinflation, climate change, robber barons, the Great Depression, and the Great Recession) because the history of capitalism is viewed as dynamic and nuanced. By contrast, Dean writes, communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced. Instead, there's a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes authoritarianism, the gulag, starvation, and violence.

On June 4th, 1995, Jodi gave birth to her son, Kian, who now works in AI research. Further, on August 5th, 1998, she gave birth to her daughter, Sadie. Both of these children were born of her ex-husband, Shane Kenyon.

Dean received her B.A. in History from Princeton University in 1984. She received her MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University in 1992. Before joining the Department of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, she taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has held visiting research appointments at the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, McGill University in Montreal, and Cardiff University in Wales.

Jodi Dean (born April 9, 1962) is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state. She has also held the position of Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.