Hanna Fenichel Pitkin
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| Born | (1931-07-17)July 17, 1931 |
| Died | May 6, 2023(2023-05-06) (aged 91)
Berkeley, California, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | John Schaar (died 2011) |
| Awards | Skytte Prize (2003) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Thesis | The Theory of Political Representation (1961) |
| Influences | Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Political science |
| Sub-discipline | Political theory |
| School or tradition | Berkeley school |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral students |
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| Notable works | The Concept of Representation (1967) |
| Influenced | Alice Crary |
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (July 17, 1931 – May 6, 2023) was an American political theorist. She was best known for her seminal study The Concept of Representation, published in 1967.
Pitkin's diverse interests ranged from the history of European political thought from ancient to modern times, through ordinary language philosophy and textual analysis, to issues of psychoanalysis and gender in political and social theory.
Pitkin was born on July 17, 1931.[1] She was a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Daughter of Otto Fenichel, Pitkin was born in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1938; her family had fled Nazi Germany for Oslo and Prague in the interim.[1] She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from UC Berkeley in 1961.[citation needed] In 1982, she was granted the Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley.[2]
Pitkin died on May 6, 2023, at the age of 91.[3]
InThe Concept of Representation Pitkin described four types of representation: formalistic, descriptive, symbolic and substantive.[4]
Pitkin's books were The Concept of Representation (1967), Wittgenstein and Justice (1972, 1984, 1992), and Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1984, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and edited volumes. In 1998 she published The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of "the Social". A wide selection of her writings is collected and thematized in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Justice, Action (2016).
In 2003, she was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science "for her groundbreaking theoretical work, predominantly on the problem of representation".[5] She was married to political theorist John Schaar. Some of her students are noteworthy political scientists such as David Laitin (Stanford University), Dan Avnon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago), and Mary G. Dietz (Northwestern University).
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| Preceded by | Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science 2003 |
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Recipients of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
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