Étienne Balibar

"As one of Louis Althusser's most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the theoretical collective masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself amongst the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. In Politics and the Other Scene Balibar deepens and extends the work he first developed with Immanuel Wallerstein in Race, Nation, Class. Exploring the theme of universalism and difference, he addresses questions such as "European racism, " the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, identity and emancipation"--provided by publisher.

A signal work in contemporary race theory and the study of nationalism, Race, Nation, Class brings the conditions of presentday racism into focus. Situating racial and ethnic relations within the social structures maintained by nationalist ideologies, class interests, and veiled conflicts, Balibar and Wallerstein illustrate racism's particularity as both symptom and tool in capitalism's latest stage of development. Packed with clear-sighted historical analysis and productive debates, this book marks a major shift in Western Marxism towards a deeper understanding of social strife. Àn important collection of ideas which should be read by anyone at all concerned about the pervasiveness of racist ideologies in today's societies.'--Chartist.

First published in 1976 as Sur la dictature du proletariat.

John Locke's foundational place in the history of British empiricism and liberal political thought is well established. So, in what sense can Locke be considered a modern European philosopher? Identity and Difference argues for reassessing this canonical figure. Closely examining the "treatise on identity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Étienne Balibar demonstrates Locke's role in the formation of two concepts central to the metaphysics of the subject--consciousness and the self--and the complex philosophical, legal, moral and political nature of his terms. With an accompanying essay by Stella Sandford, situating Balibar's reading of Locke in the history of the reception of the Essay and within Balibar's other writings on "the subject," Identity and Difference rethinks a crucial moment in the history of Western philosophy.

Modern destinations. Political theology and liberal culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt / Victoria Kahn ; The tragicity of the political: a note on Carlo Galli's Reading of Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hecuba / Adam Sitze ; Hamlet: representation and the concrete / Carlo Galli ; Blumenberg and Schmitt on the rhetoric of political theology / Graham Hammill ; Political theologies of the corpus mysticum: Schmitt, Kantorowicz and de Lubac / Jennifer Rust ; Dead neighbor archives: Jews, Muslims, and the enemy's two bodies / Kathleen Biddick ; Novus Ordo Saeclorum: Hannah Arendt on revolutionary spirit / Paul A. Kottman ; Force and justice: Auerbach's Pascal / Jane O. Newman -- Scenes of early modernity. The instance of the sovereign in the unconscious: the primal scenes of political theology / Jacques Lezra ; Pauline edifications: staging the sovereign softscape in Renaissance England / Julia Reinhard Lupton ; Striking the French match: Jean Bodin, Queen Elizabeth, and the occultation of sovereign marriage / Drew Daniel ; The death of Christ in and as secular law / Gregory Kneidel ; Samson uncircumcised / Jonathan Goldberg ; Postscript: The idea of a "New Enlightenment" [Nouvelles Lumières] and the contradictions of universalism / Étienne Balibar.

In 'Violence and Civility', Étienne Balibar boldly confronts the insidious causes of violence, racism, nationalism, and ethnic cleansing worldwide, as well as mass poverty and dispossession. Through a novel synthesis of theory and empirical studies of contemporary violence, the acclaimed thinker pushes past the limits of political philosophy to reconceive war, revolution, sovereignty, and class. Through the pathbreaking thought of Derrida, Balibar builds a topography of cruelty converted into extremism by ideology, juxtaposing its subjective forms (identity delusions, the desire for extermination, and the pursuit of vengeance) and its objective manifestations (capitalist exploitation and an institutional disregard for life). Engaging with Marx, Hegel, Hobbes, Clausewitz, Schmitt, and Luxemburg, Balibar introduces a new, productive understanding of politics as antiviolence and a fresh approach to achieving and sustaining civility. Rooted in the principles of transformation and empowerment, this theory brings hope to a world increasingly divided even as it draws closer together.--

Un petit ouvrage qui tente de rendre accessibles les thèmes et les problèmes proprement philosophiques traités par Marx.