Who is the subject of violence?

Reivew of François Cusset, Le déchaînement du monde ; Elsa Dorlin, Se défendre
François Cusset, Le déchaînement du monde. Logique nouvelle de la violence (Paris: La Découverte, 2018). 240pp., 20.00 euro pb., 978 2 70719 815 0 Elsa Dorlin, Se défendre. Une philosophie de la violence (Paris: Zones, 2017). 200pp., 18.00 euro pb., 978 2 35522 1103 Just over two years ago, on 19 July 2016, Adama Traoré […]

Defiance or emancipation?

Defiance or emancipation? peter hallward What is resistance? Rather than offering a conceptual definition, Howard Caygill’s new book* approaches resistance as a problematic and elusive practice that calls for reflective judgement in the Kantian sense. His point of departure is the claim that resistance demands appreciation on its own evolving terms, rather than as an […]

Pre-emptive strike

As the editor of the new journal Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, published by Taylor & Francis, I am pleased to have a chance to respond to the ‘pre-emptive strike’ launched against the journal as a neoliberal ‘corporate-cum-academic dream’ in Mark Neocleous’s piece ‘Resisting Resilience’ (RP 178). First, it seems to be self-defeating to […]

Also Sprach Zapata: Philosophy and resistance

Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance. Clausewitz, On War, 1832Receive our truth in your dancing heart. Zapata lives, also and for always in these lands. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee ZNLA, ‘Votan-Zapata or Five […]

Preface to Rancière’s ‘Proletarian Nights’

Preface to ‘Proletarian Nights’ The article printed below is a translation of the Introduction (pp.7-l2) of Jacques Ranci~re’s La Nuit des Proletaires, which was published last year [1]. The book deals with some well known events of the l830s and l840s – the utopias of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet and Enfantin; the ‘Free Women’; the socialist […]

Bodies and power, revisited

Foucaultʼs early approach to the question of bodies and power is perhaps best known in his analysis of the body of the prisoner in Discipline and Punish. [1] Many of us have read and reread this analysis, and tried to understand how power acts upon a body, but also how power comes to craft and […]

The sublime from Lyotard to Schiller: Two readings of Kant and their political significance

The sublime from Lyotard to Schiller Two readings of Kant and their political significance Jacques rancière I will here offer a few reflections on a paradoxical object that Jean-François Lyotard puts at the centre of aesthetic theory: the aesthetic of the sublime. Two closely interconnected questions will be raised: What makes this theoretical construction possible? […]

Politics, Subjectivity, Event: A Workshop with Antonio Negri on his book Time for Revolution, Birkbeck College, University of London, 25 June; Antonio Negri in Conversation, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 26 June

Conference report Il profeta? Politics, Subjectivity, Event: A Workshop with Antonio Negri on his book Time for Revolution, Birkbeck Col ege, University of London, 25 June. Antonio Negri in Conversation, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 26 June. Antonio Negri visited London this summer for the first time since 1978. His recent release from prison and […]

The materiality of the immaterial: Foucault, against the return of idealisms and new vitalisms: Dossier: Art and Immaterial Labour

Dossier: Art and Immaterial Labour

The materiality of the immaterial Foucault, against the return of idealisms and new vitalisms Judith Revel For some years, philosophical thinking has seemed to revolve around themes and terms whose centrality merits consideration – so much more so, probably, in that this debate has been formulated from positions and questions that are moreover very heterogeneous. I […]