Etienne Balibar

In the 1960s and 70s, first Lacan and then Althusser invoked the category of instance, in a way which would mark what is today called the «structuralist moment» of French philosophy, profoundly influencing the discourse of those who were the disciples of both. The complex system of references to action, demand, insistence, effectivity, decision, hierarchy, which found themselves combined in the notion, proves difficult to translate into other languages, and in particular into English (which has today become the paramount language of critical theory). In order to achieve a syncretism of three heritages (Marx, Freud, Saussure), the French theorists drew on the polysemic extension of the word «instance», which while it does exist in English, operates differently. Hence the interest in examining the divergent choices made by the English and American translators, reading them as symptoms of certain tensions and of a logical instability which affect, from within, the «structuralist» paradigm à la française.

The idea of “two discoveries” in Marx is essentially known through the presentations of Engels and Stalin, which had lasting influences in the constitution of “Marxism”. They essentially insisted on a correlation of “theories” or “disciplines” hierarchically articulated . But it had another, earlier and more specific, formulation offered by Marx himself, when trying to emphasize the novelty of his theory in Capital, Volume One. Marx singled out, on the one side, the “double character of labour” expressed in the value-form, on the other side the articulation of “surplus labour” and “surplus value”. In this essay, we attempt a thought experiment which considers the “two discoveries” claimed by Marx not as successive moments of a single demonstration, also not as falling apart in an “epistemological break”, but as terms of a “disjunctive synthesis”. It would subject the critique of capitalism to a permanent tension, with, on one side, the logic of universal commodification arising from the institution of the General Equivalent, and on the other, the comparative study of modes of exploitation and domination in different “class structures”. The resulting ambiguities in the formulation of the “communist hypothesis” in Marx are perhaps of no little import in today’s renewed interest for the Marxian critique

Cet article propose une analyse philologique, épistémologique et critique du concept de survaleur, des Grundrisse de 1858 jusqu’au Capital où il reçoit son développement systématique. Il rappelle la centralité que lui confère son couplage avec la notion de surtravail pour opérer le renversement du « point de vue du capital » au « point de vue du travail », faire de l’exploitation du travail la source de l’accumulation du capital, et comprendre comment s’articulent la « contradiction » et le « conflit » dans le mouvement historique du capitalisme et de son dépassement. Il identifie pour finir certains points de tension appelant, plutôt que l’invalidation de la théorie de la survaleur, sa relance critique dans des analyses de l’exploitation devant inclure, non seulement une grande contradiction entre capital et travail, mais aussi des contradictions spécifiques au sein du travail, qui ne peuvent rester sans conséquences pour l’analyse « marxiste » des articulations entre théorie critique du capitalisme, composition de classes, et mouvements ou formes de mobilisation politiques.

We observe many signs of the fact that the category « racism » not only has profoundly changed its meaning, but could also have reached the limits of its historical validity, both as an instrument of theoretical analysis, and as an instrument of progressive politics. The failed World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related Intolerance in Durban (2002) was a striking indication in this respect. As a consequence, we can no longer proceed in our struggle against extreme discriminations and violence without critically revisiting the origins and meaning of our notion of « racism ». The term was coined in the 30’s in its current use, but it was not before the 1950 and 1951 Declarations on race and racism, issued under the aegis of UNESCO and the UN, that it named a scientific paradigm. The article examines its logical function (to give a unitary description of the phenomena of anti-Semitism, colonialist subjection, and colour segregation), its ethical prerequisites (the « humanist » principle of the indivisibility of the Human Species), its epistemological consequences (a Copernican Revolution in the field of anthropology, and finally the alternative conceptualizations that – right from the beginning – confronted its research program with a different problematic of the community, notably in Antelme, Primo Levi, Fanon and Arendt.

L’accueil des réfugiés conduit à un élargissement démographique et non territorial de la construction européenne, qui va exiger une nouvelle élaboration politique car la confédération d’États actuelle est incapable de traiter ce problème. Il faut inventer de nouvelles règles et perspectives d’accès à la citoyenneté européenne, qui pour les réfugiés sera une citoyenneté fédérale. Une politique économique européenne commune sera nécessaire pour la confirmer. Il faut que l’initiative unilatérale de l’Allemagne se transforme en solidarité communautaire générale.

First published in French in 2010, _Equaliberty_ brings together essays by Étienne Balibar, one of the preeminent political theorists of our time. The book is organized around _equaliberty_, a term coined by Balibar to connote the tension between the two ideals of modern democracy: equality and liberty. He finds the tension between these different kinds of rights to be ingrained in the constitution of the modern nation-state and the contemporary welfare state. At the same time, he seeks to keep rights discourse open, eschewing natural entitlements in favor of a deterritorialized citizenship that could be expanded and invented anew in the age of globalization. Deeply engaged with other thinkers, including Arendt, Rancière, and Laclau, he posits a theory of the polity based on social relations. In _Equaliberty_ Balibar brings both the continental and analytic philosophical traditions to bear on the conflicted relations between humanity and citizenship.

We are witnessing and participating in a new “Querelle of Universals” which has indissoluble political and philosophical characters. It ranges from the incorporation of anthropological differences into the very definition of the “human” to the contemporary attempts at rethinking the diversity of histories within mankind as a multiverse of translations rather than a failed unity. The essay discusses a series of typical aporias that are relevant to this querelle and proposes a concept of subjectivity which elaborates their productivity.