Etienne Balibar

Il saggio affronta la relazione tra nazionalismo e razzismo ruotando attorno alle nozioni die di, che insieme rinviano all'idea che la nazione debba trovare un meccanismo, istituzionale e immaginario, per trasferire e riprodurre al livello politico la funzione simbolica che lega il susseguirsi delle generazioni sotto il segno del ‘retaggio culturale' e della ‘identitÀ ereditaria'. Da un'analisi attenta risulta come tali nozioni siano ildell'idea di ‘razza' dopo che la sua applicazione alla violenta discriminazione dei soggetti coloniali, o dei discendenti degli schiavi, o dell'alteritÀ etnica, č stata delegittimata. Dunque, si puň comprendere come la nozione di razza, qualunque sia la giustificazione biologica adottata, non sia mai stata altro che una costruzione mitologica volta ad autorizzare il pensiero che riproduzione, trasmissione, educazione, memoria, tradizione ecc., avvenganodotata di una identitÀ riconoscibile.

Borders are never purely local institutions, never reducible to a simple history of conflicts and agreements between neighboring groups and powers. Borders are already global, ways of dividing the world into regions and thus make possible place and a ‘mapping imaginary’. Borders are characterized by an intrinsic ambivalence that derives from their internal and external functions, as the basis of collective belonging and state control over mobility and territory. The construction of political space takes place through modes of translation between inside and outside that the border signifies.

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 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.

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.