Claude Lefort's rethinking of ‘the political’ has been highly fruitful for political theory, yet its politics remain unclear. It has inspired transformative, radical-democratic projects, but has also served as a basis for more liberal conceptions. This article explores the sources and implications of this ambiguity by setting Lefort's work against the backdrop of the anti-totalitarian moment in French political thought and the trajectories of two of his students, Miguel Abensour and Marcel Gauchet. It emerges that although Lefort's democratic theory cannot (...) be reduced to a defensive liberalism, neither is it as expansive as some might hope. (shrink)

Se investiga el alcance y los límites de la concepción política de Jacques Rancière. En primer lugar, se hace una presentación esquemática de lo que el filósofo francés entiende por “política” (en donde se trata la distinción entre policía y política, el desacuerdo y la subjetivación). En segundo lugar, y tomando una disposición máscrítica, se busca evidenciar el alcance y los límites de esta concepción de la política como interrupción. Con ello se ponen de presente las ventajas y los problemas (...) del pensamiento político rancieriano. Por último, vinculando estas reflexiones con lahistoria y la memoria, se busca proponer una nueva concepción de la política como interrupción que supere los límites antes mencionados. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the relations between public space, language, and democracy. It describes how dissensus, democratic citizenship, domination, and political speech are linked together in contemporary French political philosophy, referring in particular to Jacques Rancière, Miguel Abensour, Alain Badiou and Claude Lefort. Hannah Arendt's political thought represents a theoretical frame or reference for most of these authors, who relate to her work in different, and often discrepant, ways.

This chapter contains sections titled: Something is Taking its Course What's Happening, What's Happening? Bare Interior Endgame References.

RESUMEN Se investiga el alcance y los límites de la concepción política de Jacques Rancière. En primer lugar, se hace una presentación esquemática de lo que el filósofo francés entiende por "política". En segundo lugar, y tomando una disposición más crítica, se busca evidenciar el alcance y los límites de esta concepción de la política como interrupción. Con ello se ponen de presente las ventajas y los problemas del pensamiento político rancieriano. Por último, vinculando estas reflexiones con la historia y (...) la memoria, se busca proponer una nueva concepción de la política como interrupción que supere los límites antes mencionados. ABSTRACT The article examines the scope and limits of Jacques Rancière's political conception. First, it provides a brief presentation of what the French philosopher understands by "politics". Secondly, from a more critical stance, it seeks to evince the scope and limits of this conception of politics as interruption, thus highlighting the advantages and problems of Rancière's political thought. Finally, by linking these reflections to history and memory, the paper proposes a new conception of politics as interruption that overcomes the aforementioned limits. (shrink)

In his essay ‘Critique of Violence’, Walter Benjamin subjects violence to a critique in order to establish the criterion for violence itself as a principle. His starting point is the distinction between law-positing and law-preserving violence. However, these are for him inseparable and subjected to the law of historical change: the history of the law is nothing but the dialectical rising and falling of legal orders. Benjamin’s analysis of legal violence and his criticism of parliamentary democracies, this article advances, should (...) be related to the critical analysis of the possibilities for alternative politics in contemporary democratic rule of law states, as those advanced by Bernard Noël, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Rancière. For Benjamin, it is only law-destroying divine violence, whose principle is justice, not power, that is able to break this circle and open up a new era. Divine violence is, however, not only a provocative but also an extremely problematic, even dangerous, concept, as Jacques Derrida, among others, has claimed. This article considers, therefore, whether the concept of divine violence has any real political relevance in the contemporary era. (shrink)

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

This article contends that Jacques Rancière’s aesthetic understanding of corporeality is central to his interpretation of intellectual emancipation. Concretely, I will argue that Rancière’s aesthetic understanding can be viewed as a torsion of a body that affects its vital arrangements, which thereby open paths for political emancipation. I will support my claim with Rancière’s reading of the plebeian philosopher Gauny, as well as works that have not been sufficiently considered in secondary literature, such as The Nights of Labor and The (...) Ignorant Schoolmaster. My reading will, I maintain, help to question common interpretations of emancipation in Rancière that tend to read this notion either in dichotomous terms or as a merely ephemeral, evental practice with no concrete conditions of possibility and without long-lasting or verifiable effects in the world. (shrink)

The article presents a theoretical discussion and sociological analysis about the tensions in the building of social sex/gender relationships that are at the basis of the exclusion of women within the political field. It shows contents in dispute in the production of politics, considering the weight that categories play in the relations at a global level and in the school, the attributions inside the system sex/gender, the significations in politics, and the modes in which it is subjectified, resisted and confront (...) different logics to understand life and politics, considering the conceptual distinctions between Bíos and Zoé. This discussion allows the analysis of the imaginary institution within systematic difficulties and obstacles of political and legal kind during the post dictatorship in Chile, where based on arguments about the sex/gender system, the exclusion of women from the political field is established, limiting the development of politics that valorizes cultural diversity and human rights, accentuating discrimination and social exclusion. These shape the discussion over the modes in which the political field for women is configured, recovering the possibilities of conflict as an opening of that horizon. El artículo presenta una discusión teórica y análisis sociológico acerca de las tensiones en la construcción social de las relaciones sexo/género, que fundamentan la exclusión del campo político de las mujeres. Se distinguen los contenidos en disputa en la producción de la política, considerando el peso que tienen las categorías en juego en las relaciones a nivel global y en el espacio de la escuela, las atribuciones dentro del sistema sexo/género, las significaciones de la política, y los modos en que se subjetivan, se resisten y se confrontan diferentes lógicas para entender la vida y la política, teniendo como base las distinciones conceptuales entre Bios y Zoé. Esta discusión permite analizar la institución del imaginario en el marco de las dificultades sistemáticas y obstáculos de tipo político y legal durante la post dictadura en Chile, donde sobre la base de argumentos propios del sistema sexo/género, se establece la exclusión del campo político de las mujeres, limitando el desarrollo de políticas que pongan en valor la diversidad cultural y los derechos humanos, acentuando la discriminación y la exclusión social. Estos dan forma a la discusión sobre el modo en que se configura el campo de lo político para las mujeres, recuperando las posibilidades del conflicto como apertura de este horizonte. (shrink)

In accordance with Progressivism, Matthew Lipman, introduced an educational model for renewal and change by means of the child. With his Philosophy for Children programme he wished to offer an alternative for the intellectualistic oriented education which silenced children. The answer to the search for freedom and change, Lipman finds in the symbioses between ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Children’. Philosophy expressed in critical thinking and communication, was the basis to emancipate the child from the oppression of the adult and to cause change. (...) According to Lipman the main purpose of philosophy is to free every individual from determination. This plea is being elaborated by dialogue. The main issue of our paper concerns the question whether Lipman’s alternative ‘Philosophy for Children’ can fulfil the promise of change and freedom. To answer this question we will investigate thoroughly where dialogue and change in Philosophy for Children stand for. Finally we will propose another perspective of dialogue. A dialogue stressed on listening. Listening to how the world appears to us and how we appear to ourselves. (shrink)

Neste artigo, nosso objetivo é desenvolver o seguinte questionamento: Na relação entre professor e aluno em sala de aula, é possível, através do reconhecimento mútuo, romper com o princípio da desigualdade das inteligências, que produz o embrutecimento, em prol de uma educação para a emancipação? De início, principalmente, a partir de Judith Butler, descrevemos o processo de reconhecimento mútuo e buscamos mostrar que, tanto nas relações entre professor e aluno como em outras possíveis conjunturas, o reconhecimento mútuo ocorre mediante determinadas (...) normas que condicionam os modos de reconhecimento. Em seguida, com Jacques Rancière, focamos o princípio da desigualdade das inteligências que, de acordo com o filósofo franco-argelino, se faz presente como verdade inquestionável ou crença inabalável na relação entre mestre e aprendiz. Situada dentro do enquadramento da desigualdade das inteligências, a relação entre professor e aluno se configura em duplas polarizadas, de modo que temos, de um lado, o professor posto como sábio, sujeito ativo, explicador e capaz de usar sua própria inteligência; e, do outro, o aluno tido como ignorante, espectador passivo, incapaz de aprender por si mesmo e sempre dependente do mestre explicador. Em tais termos, o reconhecimento mútuo entre eles se torna impossível. Por fim, postulamos, ainda, a partir de Rancière, o princípio da igualdade das inteligências e ensaiamos a possibilidade de ruptura com o princípio da desigualdade das inteligências, em prol de uma educação comprometida, não com o embrutecimento e a submissão da inteligência do aprendiz àquele mestre, mas com a emancipação de ambos, compreendidos, daí por diante, como interatores, iguais em inteligência na sala de aula. Palavras-chave: Reconhecimento. Enquadramento. Embrutecimento. Emancipação. (shrink)

Starting from a Foucaultian perspective, the article draws attention to current developments that neutralise democracy through the 'governmentalisation of democracy' and processes of 'governmental subjectivation'. Here, ideas of Rancière are introduced in order to clarify how democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of 'political subjectivation', that is, a disengagement with governmental subjectivation through the verification of one's equality in demonstrating a wrong. We will argue that democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of political subjectivation, and that today's consensus (...) society tends to depoliticize all processes of subjectivation. A final step in the argumentation is to introduce the concept of 'pedagogic subjectivation'—to be understood as the experience of potentiality—that is to be distinguished from governmental subjectivation and also from political subjectivation. The concept 'pedagogic subjectivation' is proposed as a way of thinking of the school as a public place. (shrink)

Several authors have recently stressed the constitutive and ubiquitous nature of representation, which, as a result, can no longer be conceived as a relation between pre-existing entities. This has important consequences for democratic representation, traditionally thought in terms of authorization, accountability or representativity. This article argues that Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy makes a fruitful contribution to the necessary rethinking of democratic representation. Although Rancière never systematically developed a theory of representation, this concept is shown to constitute a red thread throughout (...) his political writings. His main contribution consists in shifting the focus from the relation between representative and represented to the relation between the distribution of the sensible as a space of representability and its disruption or contestation. This makes it possible to recast a critique of representative government, and to reconceive of democratic representation, which is about making the contingent equality underlying each order visible. (shrink)

RESUMO Neste artigo pretendemos refletir acerca da constituição do sujeito político a partir de dois conceitos específicos: rosto e cena de dissenso. Nosso argumento pretende evidenciar como, ao “aparecerem”, os indivíduos produzem uma cena polêmica de enunciação na qual se desencadeia um processo de subjetivação política e de criação de formas dissensuais de comunicação e performance que inventam modos de ser, ver e dizer, configurando outras interfaces entre experiência estética e política. Tal processo potencializa a invenção de novas visualidades e (...) interlocuções nas quais se inscreve o rosto, definido aqui como o vestígio de um lugar do outro que se transforma na promessa do meu próprio lugar, assumindo caráter político e comunicacional, num processo incessante de subjetivação política em que ética e estética se tangenciam. ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to ponder on the constitution of the political subject from two specific concepts: the face and the scene of dissensus, in order to show how the “appearance” of the individuals can produce a controversial scene of dissensus, trigger a process of political subjectivation and the creation of dissensual forms of expression and communication that invent new ways of being, seeing and saying, configuring new ways of collective enunciation and interconnections between aesthetic experience and politics. This is related to the invention of new visualities and interlocutions in which the face is inscribed. Face is defined here as the vestige of a place of the other that is transformed into the promise of my own place, assuming a political and communicational character, in an incessant process of political subjectivation where ethics and aesthetics are related. (shrink)

The article offers a conversation with the ghost of the madman ‘Jacotot/rancière’: one of the possible dialogues between the ignorant schoolmaster and my own perplexities in what I feel to be an endgame. Is there any point at the present time, in the declining mercantilist university, in pondering once again the issue of the place of philosophy in institutions responsible for training people who will work in the sphere of education? ‘We’ knew the old words, so the article goes, but (...) now we are no longer sure they mean anything. And we are not keen to learn the new ones: we do not trust them, they are irrelevant to us. Moreover, we are sad and tired. All we feel is rage and impotence. Will we be capable of trying all the words once again: university, philosophy, education? Will we be capable of trying all the verbs once again: reading, writing, conversing, perhaps thinking? (shrink)

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía, a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

Following Freud’s suggestion that we are able to recognize in the others some parts of our unconscious life that we are not keen to admit as our owns, this paper draws a theory of empathy understood as a double intention affecting the self and the other, each of them being connected indirectly to an unconscious phantasm sustaining the social relations. The subjectivation is to be described as a process driving the self from what is seen in the other towards some (...) parts of his unconscious that remain unknown. Violence and freedom in the social field are to be examined in relation to this difficult self-knowledge that we may access when the other is not only a limit, but also an indicating sign of what we are, without knowing it. (shrink)