This essay examines Étienne Balibar's readings of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. The text is framed as a review of two books by Balibar: 'Equaliberty' and 'Violence and Civility'. After describing the context of those readings, I propose a broader reflection on the ambiguous relationship between 'post-Marxism' and 'deconstruction', focusing on concepts such as 'violence', 'cruelty', 'sovereignty' and 'property'. I also raise methodological questions related to the 'use' of deconstructive notions in political theory debates.

Review of Etienne Balibar's On Universals with an eye towards Balibar's Hegelianism and work on translation.

This response focuses on Balibar’s method of thinking transindividuality through multiple figures, in their similarities as well as their productive differences. His essay ‘Philosophies of the Transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud’ combines the three titular figures in order to better think the multifaceted idea of ‘classical’ transindividuality. Balibar’s method combines the three but nonetheless maintains their dissimilarities as real differences. This response attempts to test or apply that method in two ways. The first application links Balibar’s analysis of (...) Freud’s hypnotic leader with a theme Balibar does not here discuss: wonder’s connection to superstition in Spinoza. At the level of their effects, superstitious wonder and hypnosis are nearly identical transindividual processes which lead to affective mass formation. However, their causes are quite distinct. This response details the similar effects and different causes, then asks the question: does their difference render them irreconcilable or complementary? Given the prominent role Spinoza plays in Balibar’s work, and the strong overall equivalence of wonder and hypnosis, this first application of Balibar’s method of multiple combination likely presents a complementarity rather than a conflict. This response’s second application, attempting to integrate another figure into the transindividual multiple, presents greater difficulties: what role, if any, could Foucault play in Balibar’s transindividuality? With Foucault, the tensions or differences perhaps amount to fundamental and thoroughgoing incompatibilities. However, combining Foucault with ‘classical’ transindividuality potentially extends and deepens each. This response concludes with examples of these problematic tensions as well as possibly fruitful combinations. (shrink)

In the current “second reception” of Althusser, the concept of the capitalist mode of production as explored in Reading Capital and On the Reproduction of Capitalism has been relatively underdiscussed. The concept, however, remains an important component of larger discussions in Marxist theory. This paper rereads Althusser and Balibar’s early contributions to the concept of the mode of production alongside Marx and contemporary thinkers such as Jairus Banaji. In so doing, preliminary connections are made between Althusser’s second reception and (...) important recent interdisciplinary work on subsumption and heterogenous development. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente trabajo intentaremos analizar cierta serie o tradi-ción de reflexiones sobre el conocimiento científico que lo caracteri-zan por su discontinuidad en relación al conocimiento ordinario osentido común. El origen de esta serie puede localizarse en la obrade Gaston Bachelard y su peculiar estudio de los actos epistemológicoscon los que se rompe con el pasado en una disciplina científica. Estosactos contrastan con lo que este autor califica como el “mitocontinuista” del empirismo. Esta posición será apropiada porAlthusser y desarrollada (...) por sus discípulos Balibar y Pêcheux. Inten-taremos mostrar que el factor común de la discontinuidad no consti-tuye una posición monolítica, sino que cabe reconocer, en las posi-ciones que consideramos, maneras diversas de entender la naturale-za de la misma. En este sentido, la revisión de las posiciones queAlthusser efectuó en su “autocrítica” constituye un punto de obser-vación privilegiado del abanico de alternativas que algunos de susdiscípulos desarrollarían sobre bases diversas. -/- Abstract In the present paper we analyze a tradition of reflections onscientific knowledge which distinguish it because of its“discontinuity” with common sense or ordinary knowledge. The beginning of this tradition can be traced back to Gaston Bachelardand his peculiar study of the epistemological acts which allows ascientific field to break with its past. The study of these acts helps toovercome what Bachelard considers is the empiricist myth ofcontinuity of knowledge. Bachelard’s views were retaken by Althusser and further developed by his students Balibar and Pêcheux.We will try to show the common commitment with discontinuity isnot an homogeneous view. Consequently we will try to showdifferences in the understanding of discontinuity. The revision of hisown positions made by Althusser in his “Self-criticism” is a specialstandpoint in order to consider the alternatives that his disciplesdeveloped on different grounds. (shrink)

This article’s guiding thesis is that the theory of radical democratic citizenship is built on a tension between a radical, conflictual element and a democratic element. As radical democrats, these philosophers point to the intimate relation between conflict and both emancipation and democracy. But as radical democrats, they also propose different methods that prevent conflict from breaking up the polis—the common ground that makes democratic conflict possible. I look at two radical democrats’ way of dealing with this tension: Chantal Mouffe (...) and Étienne Balibar. My claim is that the former ends up overemphasising the danger of division in her later democratic works and is therefore unable to account for more intense forms of democratic resistance (such as riots). In the work of Balibar, however, we find a way of dealing with this tension. (shrink)

Vardoulakis explores what Balibar means by designating transindividuality as ‘quasi-transcendental.’ He does so by turning to Balibar’s readings of Part IV of Spinoza’s Ethics, the Part that is central to Balibar’s understanding of the transindividual in Spinoza. Vardoulakis shows that the quasi-transcendental in Spinoza can only be a form of agonistic relations if his political theory in the Theological Political Treatise is to account for political change.

Balibar presents Spinoza as a profound critic of " the anthropomorphic illusion. " Spinoza famously derides the tendency of humans to project their own imagined traits and tendencies onto the rest of nature. The anthropomorphic illusion yields a gross overestimation our own agency. I argue in this essay that the flip side of this illusion is our refusal to extend certain properties we reserve exclusively to ourselves. The result is that we disregard the power of social and political institutions (...) because they do not resemble us. The anthropomorphic illusion therefore causes us both to overestimate our power as singular individuals and to underestimate the power of social and political institutions. If we understand ourselves and institutions as " transindividuals " rather than on the illusory model of substantial individuality, it is unproblematic to attribute individuality to collective powers, like the commonwealth, and makes better sense of how we are determined by external forces. (shrink)

This chapter is a response to Étienne Balibar's paper 'Ontological Difference, Anthropological Difference, and Equal Liberty', which was first published in European Journal of Philosophy and is republished in this book (Meeting Balibar, edited by Soraya Nour Sckell, Edições Húmus, 2023). Robert Vinten's chapter ('A grammatical investigation?') reflects upon grammar and ontology - as well as on war and Islamophobia.

Aproximaciones a la escuela francesa de epistemología Los problemas que dominan a la epistemología pueden contextualizarse históricamente como una forma de racionalidad filosófica. La filosofía se ha presentado a lo largo de la historia como un discurso en el que sus diversos componentes (metafísica, ontología, gnoseología, ética, lógica, etc.) se mostraron unidos en el molde de la ?unidad del saber?. En este marco unitario alguna de las formas del saber filosófico detenta usualmente una posición dominante. El énfasis colocado en la (...) unidad del saber filosófico, o en ?la unidad del pensamiento humano?, es una herencia que el pensamiento filosófico recibe de sus raíces mítico-teológicas. Dicha visión se vio sometida, en la historia de la filosofía, a un proceso de secularización por el cual la instancia dominante pasó de la teología a la metafísica y de ésta a la teoría del conocimiento. Entre los siglos XIX y XX, este proceso atestiguó un cambio ulterior, colocando a la epistemología como instancia dominante de la racionalidad filosófica. La sucesión debe verse como una consecuencia de la funcionalización social de los dispositivos de creencias (ideología), lo que provoca que los mismos se conviertan, en determinado momento, en un obstáculo para la producción de nuevos conocimientos. De esta manera, los nuevos conocimientos, para desarrollarse, se ven forzados a provocar reestructuraciones en el campo filosófico, ya sea mediante el reemplazo de la instancia dominante, la incorporación o creación de nuevas formas de saber filosófico -tal el caso de la epistemología-, o de la marginalización relativa de otras. Se trata de en un proceso complejo (que no es ni lineal, ni biunívoco), en el que cabe no obstante discernir un esquema de la sucesión temporal de las formas filosóficas que dominan la pretendida ?unidad del pensamiento humano? (filosofía). El que acabamos de describir es un proceso lento de sustitución y reemplazo en el tipo de garantías que se le exige elaborar a la filosofía. Algunos momentos, como el ocaso de las garantías de la fe, acaecido con el surgimiento de la filosofía moderna, podrían parecer a primera vista contrajemplos para esta concepción de la evolución del saber filosófico. Podría creerse, en efecto, que con la constitución de esferas autónomas de discurso (teología, ciencia, filosofía), del discurso filosófico se desgajó en un discurso de una naturaleza diferente: la ciencia. Sin embargo, una mirada más atenta revela un paisaje diferente, puesto que esta transformación estuvo acompañada, primero, por la aparición de una nueva instancia dominante de la unificación del conocimiento filosófico. Se trata de la búsqueda de una nueva clase de garantías, las del origen y el fundamento del conocimiento, es decir, las de la gnoseología o teoría del conocimiento, en el interior de la cual se verificó finalmente un nuevo desplazamiento, con la constitución, a fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, de la ?filosofía de la ciencia? o epistemología. Este modelo para la conceptualización del desarrollo del discurso filosófico tiene la ventaja de permitirnos pensar la relación que la epistemología guarda con la instancia de saber filosófico dominante en el seno de la cual se desarrolla: la de la gnoseología. A partir de las relaciones que la epistemología guarda con la temática de las garantías del conocimiento podemos apresar, en un esquema heurístico que será complejizado de diversos modos en este libro, la diferencia entre las tesis características de la epistemología anglosajona y de la epistemología francesa. De acuerdo con en este esquema heurístico, el rasgo más característico de la epistemología anglosajona es su sujeción, en la mayor parte de su desarrollo, a la teoría del conocimiento, lo que se revela en la persistencia de algunos aspectos de la filosofía de la representación y en la reproducción de la oposición idealista entre sujeto y objeto como dos polos cuya armonía debería establecerse, filosóficamente, en términos de la verdad. En su lugar, la epistemología francesa se propuso el estudio de los mecanismos de producción de los conocimientos. La epistemología, desde esta perspectiva, ya no fue vista primordialmente como el estudio de los fundamentos del conocimiento científico, sino como la teoría de las condiciones y las formas de la práctica científica y la historia de esta práctica, tal como aparece en las distintas ciencias concretas. Expresado de otra manera, el contraste se podría establecer mediante la observación de que mientras los anglosajones hacen filosofía de la ciencia como una extensión de la lógica, los franceses la hacen como una extensión de la historia de la ciencia, es decir, encontrando en la historia el laboratorio del epistemólogo. Ahora bien, según veremos, el campo de la epistemología francesa ha cobijado una buena cantidad de debates que tienen que ver primordialmente con dos tendencias en tensión: la que enfatiza la autonomía de lo epistemológico y aquella que destaca la determinación social del pensamiento. Los trabajos de este libro esperan problematizar este y otros ejes, explorando las perspectivas de los ?clásicos? de la escuela francesa en epistemología (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Althusser, Foucault, etc.), las relaciones entre los mismos y los diálogos que cabe establecer entre estos y otras corrientes de pensamiento. ÍNDICE: La ruptura epistemológica, de Bachelard a Balibar y Pêcheux, Pedro Karczmarczyk La ruptura epistemológica según Bachelard, Althusser y Badiou, Carlos Gassmann Visitaciones Derrideanas, Jazmín Anahí Acosta Epistemología sin sujeto cognoscente. Superación, disolución o sujeción de la subjetividad en Popper, Wittgenstein y Foucault, Silvia Rivera; La torsión política del concepto de verdad en Michel Foucault, Manuel Cuervo Sola Canguilhem y Foucault. De la norma biológica a la norma política, Andrea Torrano Psicología e ideología: Foucault, Canguilhem y Althusser, Matías Abeijón . (shrink)

This paper argues that we find a double deduction of the origin of society in Spinoza’s philosophy. The site of this doubleness is in E4p37, where Spinoza offers two distinct demonstrations for the same phenomenon. Paying close attention to this double articulation highlights important features of Spinozian social and political philosophy. As Étienne Balibar noted, the two demonstrations operate according to two dimensions of human existence, namely rationality and affectivity. Through rationality, human beings are necessarily in harmony; through affectivity, (...) human beings are in an ambivalent relationship towards one another. The root of this ambivalence, Balibar argued, is the structure of imitation that rules human interactions. Accordingly, the task of politics is to avoid the inimical tendencies of the said ambivalence through artful strategies. In this paper, I aim to sharpen Balibar’s reading by proposing a reading of E4p37 that focuses on a little-discussed distinction between commonality and similarity. This distinction bleeds into social life and becomes the difference between the apolitical community of friends and the political society of citizens. In other words, through a close re-reading of E4p37 that puts it in relation with Spinoza’s political works, I argue that rationality cultivates harmony under the guise of friendship, while politics is an art that shapes the category of the similar, thus drawing the contour of the fellow-citizen. Hence, politics seeks to imitate friendship, and it can only do so by shaping our judgement concerning the similarity of the other. (shrink)

solicited by Joan Copjec; use Balibar to respond to Susan Moller Okin in my analysis of the tensions between feminism and multiculturalism.

This article is concerned with the status and stakes of Gilles Deleuze’s “break” with structuralism. With a particular focus on a transitional text of Deleuze, the 1967/1972 article “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?,” it asks how Deleuze understood structuralism and why, after his encounter with Félix Guattari and Guattari’s own transitional text, 1969’s “Machine and Structure,” Deleuze felt the need to break with structuralism. It argues that reading these two texts together allows us to see that Deleuze already perceived tensions (...) within the structuralist project, and argues that Guattari’s non-structural account of the machine allowed Deleuze to clarify this perception, and see it as necessitating a departure from structuralism. To close, however, it turns to recent work by philosophers such as Étienne Balibar and Patrice Maniglier that re-examines the structuralist moment and identifies an ongoing legacy that the “poststructuralism” of Deleuze and Guattari may be part of. By considering Deleuze and Guattari’s break with structuralism in light of this work, this article considers how the polemical rejection of structuralism by Deleuze and Guattari may not fully account for the ongoing legacy of the structuralist program and the persistence of a structuralist problematic in their thought. (shrink)

Preliminary Material /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Kosmos & Kontingenz /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- "De la théorie à la pratique“ /Eva Marie Noller -- Mittelalterliche Kosmologie und Kontingenz /Cornelia Selent -- Kontingenz der Stimmen im Kosmos der Lettern -,Atomologie', Technologie und William Baldwins Beware the Cat /Ronja Bodola -- Hypothese, Abweichung und Traum Keplers Ellipsen /Reto Rössler -- "Nur leerer Raum und Schatten“ /Hartmut Böhme -- Gewissheit als sentiment /Christian Reidenbach -- Poiesis im (...) "Gegenhalt“ der anderen Welten: Epistemische und kosmologische Kontingenz bei Breitinger und Brockes /Johannes Wankhammer -- Ungereimtheit - Poesie und Prosa um 1755 /Wolfgang Hottner -- "Es giebt freylich unzähliche Welten“ /Tim Sparenberg -- Kontingenz, Ordnung und realer Grund bei Kant /Thijs Menting -- Im Grunde das Regellose /Philipp Weber -- Kontingenz und Latenz /Helmut Müller-Sievers -- Revolution in Permanenz: Auguste Blanquis Ewigkeit durch die Sterne /Alexandra Heimes -- "Kosmische Gesetze“? /Elisa Ronzheimer -- Vom unendlichen Universum zur Dialektik der Kontingenz /Thomas Ebke -- Stetigkeit im kosmischen Diskontinuum /Timothy Attanucci -- Versuch einer Kosmologie des Performativen in der Kunst /Maximilian Haas -- Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus: Zwei Modelle, zwei Erbschaften /Étienne Balibar -- Vom kontingenten Kosmos zur Kosmopolitik /Karin Harrasser -- Auswahlbibliographie /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Begriffsregister /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Autorinnen und Autoren /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber. (shrink)

This "text" discusses how capitalism, colonialism, and trauma are linked to various present-day crises, including issues related to civic engagement, environmental collapse, addiction, and collective trauma. The work argues for the inevitability of universalism by going through a history of how neoliberalism colonized the world and our minds. After surveying these various crossroads of contemporary precariousness, the crises of strategic intimacies, and the paralysis of endless reductionist calculi, in this work we will come to acknowledge how between the nightmares of (...) history and a technologically overdetermined and ecologically devastated future, an examination of civic life must start from within the throngs of devotees so mesmerized by the circulations of global finance. Out of a mélange of conflicting paradigms, I look to two prevailing belief systems that underpin the most populous language-cultures of the internet; which both locate each other from the utmost periphery of one another; both have underlying religious ideologies that may aid in the acculturation of inclusive institutions which work to affirm differences among their respective congregations. Encountering a convergence from the utmost periphery from the other, gives each perspective the potential to see how they are in a “constitutive relationship with (their) own outside,” to question their own universality, as well as realizing the inadequacies that come from within" (Balibar, 36). After analyzing the political implications of the philosophies of Hegel and Spinoza, in relation to Christian and Confucian theologies, I end by admonishing "us" to take responsibility as inscribers of ritual to heal ghosts of collective trauma. (shrink)