This paper aims to refute the idea whereby giving consideration to vulnerability can only lead to an ethics, or is only relative to a politics derived from morality. I first shed some light on the seeming impossibility experienced by a large number of contemporary theories of vulnerability to fully think the political. Second, I define what one overlooks in the political when one simply considers it as a sphere of implementation of moral principles. Finally, I interpret care theories as an (...) attempt to overcome the difficulty of thinking the political from the viewpoint of vulnerability, and I define the political as a movement of reengaging with and transforming what is already instituted. (shrink)

Although Judith Butler regards recognition as the theme unifying her work, one finds a striking absence of dialogue between her and the authors of the normative theories of recognition – Honneth, Habermas, Ricoeur, etc. In the present article I seek to call into question this sentiment, shared by the two sides, of a radical theoretical heterogeneity. First I seek to show that the theory of performativity which Butler developed initially, contrary to all expectations, sets her relatively apart from the tradition (...) to which she conforms (the French reading of Hegel), and brings her closer to the proposition represented by the normative theories of recognition in general, and that of Honneth in particular. Then I highlight how the recent modulations in her theory, through the appearance of the idea of a constitutive vulnerability, which enables her to found an ethics, undermine for once and for all the claim of irreducibility maintained by each of the two theories in relation to the other. (shrink)

No Current Hegelian theories of recognition assume a concept of the subject as always being available for harming. This emphasis placed on vulnerability, whose validity is not being called into question as such here, leave a certain number of elements on the nature of the harm threatening the person expecting recognition unclarified, especially the fact that it cannot be perpetrated without the victim being aware. At the same time, it fails to address the nature of the relationship of recognition, omitting (...) from consideration the exercise of power and the mechanisms inherent to this relationship. These omissions, as I show, cause a particular dimension of recognition-driven struggles to be neglected, a dimension which I will refer to as the politics of exit. (shrink)

Even before ‘economic precarity’ became the default explanation for the rise of defensive nationalism globally, scholars had already begun returning to ground their work in the economy and material...

Ferrarese develops our thinking about the social conditions of caring for others, while arguing for an understanding of morality that is materialist and political - always-already political.

In _Vulnerability and Critical Theory_, Estelle Ferrarese identifies contemporary developments on the theme of vulnerability within critical theory while also seeking to reconstruct an idea of vulnerability that enables an articulation of the political and demonstrates how it is socially produced.

In this interview, Estelle Ferrarese elaborates on her account of vulnerability and care to highlight its political and social, as opposed to its ethical, dimensions. Drawing on, amongst others, Adorno, Tronto, Castell, and Laugier, she argues that vulnerability and care should not be understood ontologically, as an antropological exposure of the body, but rather socially, as the normative expectations and material conditions under which care work takes place. Situating her approach in anglophone and francophone discussions on vulnerability and precarity, she (...) discusses her approach to normative expectations and how it informs her account of vulnerability of living at the mercy of someone else's agency, as well as the politicization of vulnerability. She also discusses the political implications of her account of vulnerability and care with regard to a range of contemporary issues, such as the Men's Right Movement, the posthuman turn and the Antropocene, and mutual aid and the neoliberalization of the welfare state. (shrink)

Je tente de mettre en évidence trois pôles thématiques qui structurent la résurgence actuelle de l’idée de vulnérabilité, pôles qui sont à comprendre comme constitués dans un champ de tensions, et n’existant jamais sous une forme pure. Je distingue le modèle d’une disponibilité à la blessure physique et morale, celui d’une association stricte de l’idée de vulnérabilité au concept de dépendance, et enfin la vulnérabilité comme impropriété de soi. Et dans la mesure où la notion de vulnérabilité suppose davantage que (...) la susceptibilité de certains torts, mais implique qu’ils peuvent être prévenus, un large espace pour l’éthique et/ou à l’action politique, à l’organisation collective, s’ouvre à chaque fois, que je m’efforce d’esquisser. (shrink)

We exploit the properties of homogeneous functions to characterize the symmetric pure-strategy Nash equilibria of n-player symmetric games in which each player’s revenue function is not homogeneous but it can be decomposed into the sum of homogeneous functions with different degrees of homogeneity. Our results aim to provide a pathway for an easy computation of symmetric equilibria for this type of games. We discuss our results in a Cournot game, a contest game, and a public good game.

In _Vulnerability and Critical Theory_, Estelle Ferrarese identifies contemporary developments on the theme of vulnerability within critical theory while also seeking to reconstruct an idea of vulnerability that enables an articulation of the political and demonstrates how it is socially produced.

« Même si elles sont datées par bien des aspects, les thèses de l’École de Francfort sur le marché et la consommation permettent de mettre au jour les contours et les manques de la critique du capitalisme que constitue la consommation éthique contemporaine. Nous en discutons dans cet article deux éléments. D’une part, la consommation éthique repose sur le postulat qu’il est possible et nécessaire d’injecter des normes morales dans le marché, posé comme en étant dépourvu. Or, la question de (...) savoir si le marché est arraché aux normes, ou s’en donne simplement l’apparence, est le lieu d’un débat complexe au sein de la Théorie critique. Déplier les arguments avancés aide à comprendre comme nécessaire le désajustement des intentions morales des consommateurs et des effets de leurs pratiques sur le monde. D’autre part, la consommation éthique appelle à une forme de vertu qui serait à même de briser le fétichisme de la marchandise, engageant à ne pas oublier ce qui se tient derrière la relation entre des choses (des travailleurs, des personnes singulières, de la peine, etc.) dont l’illusion réificatrice est instituée par le marché. La discussion, par Adorno et Benjamin tout particulièrement, de ce thème marxien du fétichisme permet de mettre en évidence l’insuffisance du geste éthique pour amender ou réformer le capitalisme. ». (shrink)

Résumé De multiples théories contemporaines font de la politique une affaire de création d’une nouvelle forme de vie ; il est postulé que c’est en vivant (autrement) que l’on transforme le monde. Deux logiques se distinguent : une politique de la discipline, et une politique de l’exubérance ou de l’informe. Cet article s’en détache pour dégager de la pensée d’Adorno les éléments d’une politique du difforme : il confère à la forme (et non à la vie) le rôle de maintenir (...) une indétermination, pensant une forme qui n’oublie pas qu’elle est forme, qu’elle est issue d’un mouvement qui aurait pu être autre. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar as diferenças técnicas e militares entre o exército normando de Guilherme da Normandia e o exército anglo-saxão de Haroldo Godwinson que se confrontaram na Batalha de Hastings de 1066. Para isso, utilizamos como fontes a Tapeçaria de Bayeux e a Crônica de Guilherme de Poitiers, bem como dialogamos com a historiografia da história militar inglesa. Dessa forma, observamos que as diferenças de armas e estratégias existentes entre os exércitos anglo-saxões e normandos, influenciadas pelas (...) condições econômicas e sociais de ambos, favoreceram a vitória das forças invasoras normandas no campo de batalha. (shrink)

I show how a notion of the political as emerging reality which does not derive from any other logic — as a phenomenon devoid of foundations, of predetermined elements — features in Habermas’s theory of society. There is certainly nothing obvious about such a claim, insofar as the political is conceived, across his entire oeuvre, in relation to the public sphere, which is presented as a social space in which the functions and properties he attributes to language in general are (...) made explicit and catalysed. It appears the public sphere coincides with the constitutive rules of universal pragmatics. More generally, the motif of the public sphere is bound up with topics which all curb the political “mode” — i.e., the validity attributed to political statements (1), the weight given, in myriad ways, to morality in the public sphere (2), and the concern to preserve science and complexity no matter what (3). I examine each one in turn, in order to demonstrate how, precisely, through the limits imposed on them, they enable us to grasp the specificity of the public sphere as political instance and, from this basis, identify a place for the political in Jürgen Habermas’s theory. (shrink)

Il a été fréquemment, et à bon droit, relevé la minceur, voire l’absence du motif de l’antagonisme dans une théorie, celle de Habermas, entièrement préoccupée d’entente. Pourtant, s’il est à chercher, c’est dans la figure de la désobéissance civile que le conflit se trouve. De quels traits est alors paré le conflit politique tel qu’il apparaît chez Habermas? Fort classiques, ils sont pour la plupart empruntés à John Rawls. C’est l’architectonique théorique sur laquelle elle se trouve déposée qui donne à (...) la désobéissance civile sa spécificité et sa centralité. Elle se trouve en effet au croisement des thèmes de la légitimité, de la société civile, de la culture politique et de l’être-ensemble, qui constituent les points cardinaux de la politique délibérative de Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

Il semble impossible, dans les théories contemporaines comme dans les discours politiques, de parler de reconnaissance sans parler de lutte. Que signifie alors précisément lutter pour la reconnaissance? Quelles sont les conditions de possibilité de l’affrontement? Qu’est-ce qui permet de l’identifier, puisqu’il existe des résistances qui restent invisibles? Pourquoi apparaît-il comme une condition nécessaire de la reconnaissance? Ce livre dégage autant une théorie du conflit qu’un diagnostic sur ce qui le contraint dans les démocraties capitalistes contemporaines. Il observe une grammaire (...) répandue de la contestation, la reconnaissance, tout en éclairant la manière dont elle est prise entre idéologie et réification. Il offre ainsi une réflexion sur les conditions d’un antagonisme réellement émancipateur. (shrink)

Vulnerability is a concept with fleeting contours as much it is an idea with assured academic success. In the United States, torturable, "mutilatable," and killable bodies are a wide topic of discussion, especially after September 11 and the ensuing bellicosity. In Europe, current reflection on vulnerability has emerged from a thematic of precarity and exclusion; the term evokes lives that are dispensable, evictable, deportable, and the abandoning of individuals to naked forces of the market. But if the theme has had (...) notable fortune, it also continues to come up against considerable reluctance. The political scope of vulnerability is often denied: it seems inevitably to be relegated to the sphere of "good sentiments." This book aims to address this criticism. It shows that by questioning our hegemonic anthropology, by reinventing the categories of freedom, equality, and being-in-common based on the body, by overthrowing the legitimate grammar of political discourse, and by redefining the political subject – the category of vulnerability, far from being conservative or a-political, works to undo the world such as it is. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Critical Horizons. _. (shrink)

With the notion of the form-of-life as a counter-figure to the notion of bare life, Agamben seems to invite us to place at the center of a critical theory of capitalism a reflection on bios. To envisage a form of emancipation that unfolds against bare life suggests, at first glance, another relation to the living body. Such a gesture seems to be inspired by the desire to think a natural life that would also be a politically qualified life. The idea (...) with which Agamben closes the Homo Sacer series, namely that of a use of bodies, also gestures in this direction. In this paper I show how the categories of bare life and of the use of bodies fail to live up to their promise, before demonstrating in what sense the idea of a subtraction of law as a political project which subsumes all others ends up weakening the critical potential of the idea of a form-of-life that is to be realised against the force of production of bare lives. (shrink)

Questo articolo si sforza di ricollocare le teorie del care in seno alla teoria politica contemporanea, in cui si attesta un ritorno al tema della vulnerabilitÀ corporea e morale come problema politico e morale in sé. Qui si distinguono tre accezioni della parola vulnerabilitÀ, accezioni che implicano ogni volta ragionamenti morali e legittimano ordini politici differenti: il modello della disponibilitÀ alla ferita fisica e morale, quello dell'associazione stretta fra l'idea della vulnerabilitÀ e il concetto di dipendenza, e infine la vulnerabilitÀ (...) come non possesso di sé. (shrink)