Etienne Balibar

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.

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 (of gender-sex, race-culture, normality and abnormality, etc.) 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.

The paper argues that a specific "concept of the political" can be reconstructed in Arendt by bringing together elements coming from Origins of Totalitarianism, Part II, from The Human Condition and On Revolution, and from On Disobedience. These propositions produce a singular variety of "institutionalism", which involves a "groundless" politics of Human Rights, and also helps clarifying the thesis on the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem: the sovereign tautology "law is law" is the root of voluntary servitude. To say that we have a choice between becoming Eichmanns or taking the risk of civil disobedience is too quick; and to suppose that a state where civil disobedience becomes recognized would be immune of the danger of totalitarian transformation is an illusion, but as an ideal type, these formulations may encapsulate what Arendt's "concept of the political" hints at.

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.

As a contribution to the debate on the future of philosophy as an autonomous discipline beyond its current function within Western-type universities, a comparison is offered between three diverging strategies of “speaking the universal” which keep their relevance today; the “Double Truth” strategy for secular tolerance, illustrated by Spinoza and Wittgenstein; the construction of the universal as “hegemony,” analyzed by Hegel and Marx in terms of collective consciousnesses or ideologies; and the program of generalized translation as it emerges from the critique of traditional “paradoxes of the untranslatable” in the works of contemporary socio-linguists and pragmatic philosophers. The conclusion remains an open questioning on the equivocity of the universal.

The fourth and final volume of The New Press Postwar French Thought series provides a fresh map and analysis for understanding the history of ideas since 1945. This anthology collects the writings of celebrated philosophers along with work by thinkers highly regarded in France for the first time. It contextualises the material within a larger intellectual and political history and chronology, identifying antecedents and distinguishing four main phases or moments. Indispensable for understanding the development of postwar French philosophy as a whole.

"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.

This paper presents the main directions of a new research project that centres on the paradox of the enunciation of the universal. Historical experience and the history of philosophy have made us highly sceptical towards the very possibility of enunciating the universal, yet the universal can be said to have become a fact of contemporary life, and the attempt at enunciating the universal remains an inescapable demand, in politics and notably in practice. Not to enunciate the universal is impossible, but to enunciate it is untenable. Three directions of questioning emerge from this paradox. First, a rereading of Hegel helps us to study the conflict of universalities. Second, with Marx, we can revisit the problem of ideology, the relation between the enunciation of the universal and the idea of domination. And thirdly, by rereading texts by Freud on identification and ideality, we can revisit the relation of the universal to the idea of community, and the aporia of its deconstruction.