Chun-Tak Suen
Biography
Chun-Tak is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in political theory. His research engages democratic theory, political affects, and the politics of language. His current work begins with a set of seemingly contradictory remarks by Hannah Arendt on language, using them as a point of departure to explore the relationship between politics and media. He is particularly interested in the interplay between storytellers and political actors in initiating and sustaining a common political world in the televisual age. He grounds his inquiry in Arendt’s theory of poetry, Shklar’s liberalism of fear, and James Baldwin’s ethics of love.
Chun-Tak earned his B.A. with honors in political science from Amherst College in 2021, including a year abroad at New College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy. After graduating, he spent a year at Bard College Berlin, focusing on the German aesthetic tradition and contemporary political theater.
(Source: Hannah Arendt (1964) - What Remains? The Language Remains - Interview with Günter Gaus, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVSRJC4KAiE.)