Il s’agit dans cet article de proposer une interprétation du projet logique à travers une discussion entre Hegel et Frege. Au-delà des divergences bien connues concernant, entre autres, la formalisation du langage et le rapport aux mathématiques, et après avoir souligné quelques points de convergences parfois remarqués, notamment la critique du psychologisme, nous voulons montrer ici comment la logique se construit, et comment cette construction implique une certaine productivité de la forme logique. Le fait que la forme logique ne puisse (...) pas être abordée de manière immédiate, dans une évidence, conduit à une conception de celle-ci comme développement. Derrière cette présentation « organique » de la logique se joue en réalité une certaine compréhension de la forme dans laquelle celle-ci se produit elle-même dans son explicitation. Cette exigence d’autonomie est comprise à partir d’une analyse, chez Frege, de l’autonomie du nombre. Mais la réponse hégélienne sur le statut de celui-ci nous permet de souligner la contradiction que le nombre abrite. C’est à ce titre que nous pouvons rendre compte, de manière plus détaillée, non seulement du processus d’élaboration de la logique, mais également de la production des contenus : en comprenant le rapport réflexif de la forme comme instauration de la contradiction. (shrink)

This is a short introduction by the three authors, Gabriela Basterra, Rada Iveković and Boyan Manchev, to the issue of the French journal "Rue Descartes" (N. 67), titled "Quel sujet du politique?" or approximately, "Who is the subject (or Who is the agency) of the political [dimension]?". The question is posed in the specific political and philosophical context of 2008, and is dealt with through History and Political philosophy.

In international political language, within the framework of globalisation, there is nowadays a new and reversed usage of the terms and concepts “terror” and “terrorism”. I shall analyse these new meanings in political discourse as well as their implications in international politics. To some extent (and according to the needs of the moment, i.e. the needs of the powerful), the old and traditional meaning of those terms now still apply to conflicts and situations considered as local and inoffensive globally, or (...) as having no global reach or dimension, such as the conflict and terrorism in Sri Lanka or in Nepal. In such “local” conflicts, the larger context of state terror(ism) may still be in view and (in)directly acknowledged. On the other hand, following the paranoia instituted by the “nine-eleven” re-foundational moment of history, the new-fangled usage of, and the recent meanings credited to those terms now roughly apply to the complex vaguely denoted as “Arabic-country-ethnicity-religion-and/or-Islam”. State terror is now considered to be exclusively defensive and justified in advance. However, it still includes para-statal terror and international “anti-terror strategies”, together with wars, torture, extraordinary renditions, extraterritoriality and extra-legality of detention, secret detention, man-made droughts, pollution, climate change, famines, forced migrations, terror against women and feminicide, trafficking of humans, sex-tourism etc. I consider language as being not only the possibility for evening-out differences and conflicts through necessary and welcome negotiations, but also as providing a possible space for conflict. Language can be (but needn’t be) as much a weapon as any other. I will therefore explore the politics of language, as i believe that the political (but not politics) “precedes” language. This is not only a question of freedom of speech, but a question as to who, for what purposes and under which conditions lays out those rights and that freedom. (2004). (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the little-studied component of architectural creativity - architectural graphics. At the same time, the purpose of the article is three-dimensional: to consider the categorical, historical and postmodern problems of architectural graphics, which will allow to outline a holistic picture of this cultural phenomenon. The article uses the methods of typological, historical and synchronous-cult analysis of both specific architectural artifacts and trends in the development of architectural graphics in general. It has been proven that architectural graphics, (...) as a unique type of graphics, are a means of expressing the creative ideas of an architect. They define, define and correct the direction of his professional searches. Graphics influence the creativity of a design as it serves as a graphical visualization of an architecture. Architectural graphics are the line between the design calculation and the creative imagination of the author. He performs artistic and engineering tasks at the same time. The article deals with the problem of architectural graphics as a specific creative activity, which, as a result of historical development, has formed into a separate genre direction. A number of conceptual and terminological issues are touched upon, including the definition of the very concept of «architectural graphics». The priority features of architectural graphics and variants of its stylistic solutions by different architects and designers have been identified. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing the (...) inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan argues that although all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent value, there are often differences in the value of lives. According to Regan, lives that have the highest value are lives which have more possible sources of satisfaction. Regan claims that the highest source of satisfaction, which is available to only rational beings, is the satisfaction associated with thinking impartially about moral choices. Since rational beings can bring impartial reasons to bear on decision making, (...) Regan maintains that they have an additional possible source of satisfaction that nonrational beings do not have and, consequently, the lives of rational beings turn out to have greater value.. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Ovaj rad opisuje promene naucne paradigme u demografiji do kojih je doslo u kontekstu drustveno-politickih procesa tokom zadnje dve decenije dvadesetog veka. Promena se posmatra u domenu analize reproduktivnog ponasanja gde je, kako tvrdi autorka, teorija demografske tranzicije ostala dominantan okvir analize ali je prednost dobila njena modifikovana verzija koja primat daje idejnim u odnosu na struktrualne varijable u objasnjavanju reproduktivnog ponasanja; i u domenu socijalne politike, gde je, po recima autorke, napusten koncept planiranja porodice a na njegovo mesto stupio (...) koncept populacione politike. Autorka, medjutim, tvrdi da alarmirajuca upozorenja i ostra retorika o populacionim problemima nisu doveli do formulisanja specificnih mera populacione politike te da su demografski diskursi koji su u to vreme prepravili javni prostor bili mnogo znacajniji za politiku identiteta - nacionalnog i rodnog - nego za socijalnu politiku. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. An affirmative answer, however, (...) begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

The article explores two questions: what is feminist bioethics, and how different it is from standard bioethics. Development of feminist bioethics, it is argued, began as a response to standard bioethics, challenging its background values, and philosophical perspectives. The most important contribution of feminist bioethics has been its re-examination of the basic conceptual underpinnings of mainstream bioethics, including the concepts of?universality?,?autonomy?, and?trust?. Particularly important for feminists has been the concept of autonomy. They challenge the old liberal notion of autonomy that (...) treats individuals as separate social units and argue that autonomy is established through relations. Relational autonomy assumes that identities and values are developed through relationships with others and that the choices one makes are shaped by specific social and historical contexts. Neither relational autonomy, nor feminist bioethics, however, represents a single, unified perspective. There are, actually, as many feminist bioethics as there are feminisms-liberal, cultural, radical, postmodern etc. Their different ontological, epistemological and political underpinnings shape their respective approaches to bioethical issues at hand. Still what they all have in common is interest in social justice-feminists explore mainstream bioethics and reproductive technologies in order to establish whether they support or impede gender and overall social justice and equality. Feminist bioethics thus brings a significant improvement to standard bioethics. (shrink)

The article explores two questions: what is feminist bioethics, and how different it is from standard bioethics. Development of feminist bioethics, it is argued, began as a response to standard bioethics, challenging its background values, and philosophical perspectives. The most important contribution of feminist bioethics has been its re-examination of the basic conceptual underpinnings of mainstream bioethics, including the concepts of?universality?,?autonomy?, and?trust?. Particularly important for feminists has been the concept of autonomy. They challenge the old liberal notion of autonomy that (...) treats individuals as separate social units and argue that autonomy is established through relations. Relational autonomy assumes that identities and values are developed through relationships with others and that the choices one makes are shaped by specific social and historical contexts. Neither relational autonomy, nor feminist bioethics, however, represents a single, unified perspective. There are, actually, as many feminist bioethics as there are feminisms-liberal, cultural, radical, postmodern etc. Their different ontological, epistemological and political underpinnings shape their respective approaches to bioethical issues at hand. Still what they all have in common is interest in social justice-feminists explore mainstream bioethics and reproductive technologies in order to establish whether they support or impede gender and overall social justice and equality. Feminist bioethics thus brings a significant improvement to standard bioethics. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. An affirmative answer, however, (...) begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

Анотація. У статті проаналізовані досягнення Соціального Вчительства Католицької Церкви, репрезентовані працями Лева ХІІІ, Пія ХІ, Пія ХІІ, Івана Павла ІІ, що розкривають змістовні характеристики поняття «принцип субсидіарності», його роль і значення в системі християнських цінностей. Принцип субсидіарності робить можливими такі взаємовідносини в соціальному житті, коли спільнота вищого порядку не втручається у внутрішнє життя спільноти нижчого порядку, перебираючи на себе належні тій функції; заради спільного добра, спільного блага вона надає їй у разі потреби підтримку й допомогу, узгоджуючи у такий спосіб її (...) взаємодію з іншими соціальними структурами. Принцип субсидіарності скеровує соціальну практику на утвердження спільного блага в людському співтоваристві. Поширення і застосування принципу субсидіарності протистоїть небезпеці «одержавлення» суспільства та найзагрозливіших проявів колективізму, обмежує абсолютизацію влади, бюрократизацію державних і соціокультурних структур, стає одним із гарантів дотримання прав і свобод громадян своєї країни. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

section 1. Reason, language, and the self -- section 2. Law, emergency, and exception -- section 3. Terrorism as a paradigm of (in)security -- section 4. Terrorism and the crisis of the political.

This paper is mainly about situating the French language within (its) history. It analyzes the nostalgia for a linguistic and cultural imaginary global dimension of French. Although there are different globalities for different purposes, the one most widespread global language is English. English works internationally as an international language, even where it was once the colonial language, now left in heritage to once colonised countries. But the situation of the French language is quite different, its "globality" being much more discrete (...) and more locally circumscribed. (Yet the French often refer to French as a once diplomatic language, which it is not anymore, except for the French and for the "Francophonie"). This is not to deny the different global outreach (and different publics) of such languages as Mandarin, Arabic, or Spanish. In this paper, i compare French as a mainly local, and English as a global/international language in their different and divergent postcolonial configurations. Having access to a global language does not preclude the local dimension, which has several tracks. Contrary to the monolinguistic dream, languages actually inhabit each other. Since languages inhabit one another, plurilinguism is an asset, but it is also quite accessible to anyone. The French often have an inbuilt difficulty and complex (which comes with the way the first language is taught and transmitted) about not being able to speak another language, which inhibits them right from childhood. Crying over the fate of small languages or of languages "divested" of their universal claim seems useless. Language is a living organism subject to transformations and to decay. (shrink)

Rada Iveković reflects on the significance of modernity in contemporary Indian philosophy. Where the orient has been figured as the other for western philosophers, she asks how Indian philosophy depicts the west, how philosophers such as Kant have been interpreted, and how thematics such as pluralism, tolerance, relativity, innovation, and curiosity about the foreign have been figured in both ancient and contemporary Indian philosophy. While working on the western side with such authors as Lyotard, Deleuze, Serres, or Irigaray, Iveković (...) doesn't exactly indulge in comparative philosophy. Rather, she tries to make the most of the existing "coincidences," using both western and Asian thought in order to open a new area for the production of concepts and a new field for philosophy in general. (shrink)

Rada Iveković reflects on the significance of modernity in contemporary Indian philosophy. Where the orient has been figured as the other for western philosophers, she asks how Indian philosophy depicts the west, how philosophers such as Kant have been interpreted, and how thematics such as pluralism, tolerance, relativity, innovation, and curiosity about the foreign have been figured in both ancient and contemporary Indian philosophy. While working on the western side with such authors as Lyotard, Deleuze, Serres, or Irigaray, Iveković (...) doesn't exactly indulge in comparative philosophy. Rather, she tries to make the most of the existing “coincidences,” using both western and Asian thought in order to open a new area for the production of concepts and a new field for philosophy in general. (shrink)

When posing the political as first, we imply an order. Such civilisational choice distinguishes the political and installs the subject within a sovereignist hierarchy. It forbids the political to those who are constructed as "others" in time, in space or in culture etc. The production of knowledges and (cognitive) inequality are constructed together. Translation is a politics and a technique of resolving that inequality (though it can produce some too). We attribute "ourselves" the political and concede the "pre-political" or the (...) "non-political" to others. Translation, together with some other instruments should allow to target cognitive justice necessary to a future epistemological revolution. It has its politics. The author's idea is, then, to start from intersecting etymologies as well as from the "untranslatables" which, thanks to the context, never make the whole "un-expressible". She gives some examples from "Asian" and "European" philosophies. The difference between the latter is striking when it comes to the fact that "European" philosophies value the subject/agency, while the "Asian" ones do not value it and do not even construct it. (shrink)

: A philosopher formerly based in Zagreb, now at the Université de Paris VIII (Saint-Denis), Rada Ivekovic explains the genesis of her interest in comparative philosophy, situated in the context of a convergence of Asian, Islamic, and European forms of thought which emerged among certain philosophers in the former Yugoslavia. She discusses the relationship between this area of specialization and her work as a feminist philosopher.

A philosopher formerly based in Zagreb, now at the Université de Paris VIII, Rada Iveković explains the genesis of her interest in comparative philosophy, situated in the context of a convergence of Asian, Islamic, and European forms of thought which emerged among certain philosophers in the former Yugoslavia. She discusses the relationship between this area of specialization and her work as a feminist philosopher.

In this brief piece in French the author Rada Iveković reviewed and commented some of the work (references in the text) that Ranabir Samaddar did on the theory and practice of dialogue in resolving political and social conflicts. The short piece works also as some kind of portrait of Samaddar. Some years later (2017) Samaddar publishes a challenging book on the crisis in Europe (not reviewed in this piece here): A Postcolonial Enquiry Into Europe's Debt and the Migration Crisis. (...) Publication Date: 2006 Publication Name: Rue Descartes. (shrink)

The decolonization of France is not over yet. Blind to what was coming , France is now badly hit by the boomerang : linguistic isolation, postcolonial studies in slumber, deafness towards the boys and girls of the suburbs : words are cruelly lacking for institutions to make sense of what’s happening. At a loss, the media can only multiply distortions in media coverage and the authorities produce repression/selection at the borders. In this paper, the author develops the apparent differences between (...) English and French as colonial and postcolonial languages, as well as the difference between the language and politics of young boys and girls from the suburbia in France. (shrink)

Gender is a form of "divided reason" (la raison partagée) which, in its turn, is an instrument of hegemony. The paper redefines both the concept of gender and such concepts as reason, in that it sees them as normative. The hegemonic project of reason divided (le partage de la raison) aims to compensate for the unstable process of differentiation and sexuation. Similarly it reinterprets the often contested sex/gender divide beyond the impasse of the nature/culture distinction and analyses it instead as (...) dynamics between the différend (that which makes the difference) and hegemonic identity. The point to be made is a re-interrogation of the sex/gender essentialising distinction and taking it beyond the concepts of différend and hegemony. The dichotomy is inherent to the process of dividing reason and it is the very way of being of reason. It aims at comprehending & governing any pattern of hierarchy. The paper shows how the subordination of women, through the “sexuation”/”gendering” of all human institutions starting with language and thinking, is used as a means to legitimate and justify all other social and political inequalities and injustices. At the same time, violence is shown to arise from the rejection of the fact that we are born of the other. It is a desperate attempt at self-generation. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014) est reconnu aujourd'hui comme l'un des philosophes politiques principaux pour le XXIe siècle. Cet ouvrage poursuit les débats entrepris avec lui, et réunit quelques-uns de ses principaux interlocuteurs en France (Étienne Balibar, Toni Negri, Jacques Rancière), aux États-Unis (Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser) et en Argentine (Horacio González, Leonor Arfuch, Emilio de Ipola, Senda Sferco). Laclau a écrit des ouvrages devenus des références sur l'hégémonie, le populisme et l'émancipation. Longtemps ignorées par la philosophie institutionnelle et méconnues du grand (...) public, ses thèses originales ont su perturber la scène contemporaine de la pensée politique. Son activité citoyenne en Argentine a fait de lui un intellectuel familier du public hispanophone. Ce que disent ici les penseurs argentins éclaire d'un jour nouveau la contribution des épistémologies du Sud aux débats politiques français et européens, mais aussi au-delà, portant sur la question d'un populisme de gauche que Laclau appelait de ses voeux et qu'il nous laisse en héritage."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

I analyze the relationship between women and nationalism and argue that women's "identity" and relationship to the "Other" is different from that of men, because within the nation women, though included, are so as subordinate to men. I argue, further, that the structures of nationalism are fundamentally homosocial, and antagonism toward women is one of the first forms of attack on the "Other" (including of course towards women of one's own nation). It is constitutive of "extreme nationalism" and is, as (...) subordinate inclusion, the pattern of other excusions. (shrink)

The series of wars and civil wars in Yugoslavia, thereby dismembered, are seen in this paper as basically European wars, wars through which Europe is constructed and questionned in its very being. Contemporary history has alas confirmed this approach, since the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have seen right-wing populisms and nationalisms spread throughout the European subcontinent, the partition of Yugoslavia being the pattern repeated. In this sense, the Yugoslav wars are foundational for Europe (...) which is regularly being reconstructed and (re)founded by the reshuffling of its borders to the east. (shrink)