“Aleatory materialism” does not merely constitute that which, in an overly linear perspective, one would call the “fourth Althusser”. Even if, in the last decade of his life, Althusser did indeed attempt to construct a “new philosophy”, seen as an alternative to “dialectical materialism”, one should rather perceive, behind the past arguments, so assertive and sharp, advanced by the previous Althusser, something like a discreet practical layer, self-conscious or not, wherein such arguments would have found their true point of anchorage. (...) What is at stake in this philosophy “starting from nothing” is what has always been the most necessary and the most unthinkable question, that of political subjectivation. (shrink)

The ontology of Toni Negri, as political philosophy of the multitude, supposes a very speck relation between philosophy and politics, determined by the non-difference between the two of them, while refusing, at the same time, to make the one proceed from the other, or to médiatise them and to unite them by a third necessity. They unite there only by the univocity of freedom that registers the political-philosophical indeterminacy. Hence the difficulty of making them into a political programme, of «organizing» (...) the multitude as a political subject. But the notion of void, concomitant this univocity and defined as the very possibility of any qualitative change, establishes the philosophical-political particularity of the negrian ontology related to 1) the deconstructionist founding of the political and democracy and 2) Alain Badiou’s ontology. Far from being incapable of presenting a politics, Negri’s void designs a way to act « doing and saying at the same time » in politics. (shrink)

In the epoch of Empire, the American economy is sustained by a global monetary circuit totally different front that of the imperialist period. Whilst the imperialist countries were constituted as « centres » of production, the contemporary US is no longer just a centre of absorption and evacuation of money which necessitates the existence of a financial pump to the outside. In becoming that pump, the Japanese economy became integral to the global market. The imperial monetary circuit also functions as (...) a mode of capture, particularly of value, that one can qualify as « financial » with regard to the classic « exploitation » of workers. This paper tries to demonstrate that ultimately the two modes of capture are nonetheless achieved by a single function of money. (shrink)

Not turned upside down, as Marx did to Hegel, but « inverted » by the mere contact with speaking beings, the Cartesian order of reasons becomes, according to Antonia Birnbaum, a device which generates both the subject and its environment, all at once, determining them as elements of the political - which has however already become « accidental » due to this invention, which exposes the speaking being to the world, and confronts it with the haecceity of the event. Cartesian (...) « politics » thus takes place in the forest, the privileged figure of the philosopher and the sign of the absence of any orientation, the truth of which Antonia Birnbaum tends to identify in and through Beckett s Molloy: far from being an possible community, it is full of « good things ». (shrink)

“Reversal”, in dialectics, takes place between two things located on the same level of substantiality, while “inversion” participates in a paradoxical ontology where the things to be inverted do not pre-exist the inversion itself. Such is the meaning of an ontological thesis largely shared by today’s Marxism : the primacy of class struggle over classes. While making a clear distinction between the two in The Capital, Jacques Rancière insistently asks whether these two operations can be separated without resorting to “kautskism”, (...) which introduces it within the struggle from the exterior of the struggle, thus denying the ontological primacy of struggle. The solution he provides is unheard of : on the one hand, he radicalises inversion as a politics of subjectivation within which there no longer is any “constituted” ; on the other hand, he reconfigures the reversal as an activity of the imagination which perpetually differs from itself, as in “labor’s dream” or in “heretical speech”. He thus presents these two operations as mutually conditioning and producing each other. (shrink)

From Captain Beefheart to Stockhausen, through the Velvet Underground and La Monte Young, this article redefines the « noise continuum » not so much as a transgeneric reality than, more surprisingly, as the emanation of a raucous « ritournelle » anchored in the work songs of the African-American community. Minor shifts in a chord progression, notes held beyond their expected duration, smoking blabbers : the source of noise music is to be located in the gutters of the musical roads built (...) by the bluesmen. (shrink)

Résumé Par rapport au « renversement » qui, comme dans la dialectique, s’opère entre deux choses ayant le même niveau de substantialité, l’ « inversion » fonde une ontologie paradoxale où les choses à inverser ne préexistent pas à l’inversion elle-même. Tel est le sens d’une thèse ontologique largement partagée dans le marxisme d’aujourd’hui : le primat de la lutte de classes sur les classes. Tout en discernant nettement la différence du renversement et de l’inversion dans Le Capital, Jacques Rancière (...) ne cesse de poser la question de savoir si le clivage des deux opérations est possible sans recours au « kautskisme » qui l’introduit dans la lutte de l’extérieur de la lutte, ce qui dénie purement et simplement le primat ontologique de la lutte. La solution donnée par lui est inouïe : radicalisant d’un côté l’inversion en tant que politique identique à la subjectivation, dans laquelle il n’y a plus de « constitué », et restituant de l’autre le renversement en tant qu’activité de l’imagination qui se différencie perpétuellement de soi comme dans le « rêve ouvrier » ou la « parole hérétique », il fait de ces deux opérations les conditions réciproques pour que l’une et l’autre viennent au jour. (shrink)

Traumatized with the national « blunder » of the Gulf War, the Japanese government tries now to cross a historic threshold: contribution to the war for the « new world order » must not be limited any more to finances, but widened in the military cooperation, which is formally forbidden with the Constitution. A revision of that this is nevertheless unthinkable, because the political tension which would be then created would return the new late Constitution on the situation. Where from (...) big current effort to coexist legal pacifism and military «duty », to deny and assert at the same time the current Constitution. « Theological » attempt which invents funny solutions. (shrink)

The attack of September 11 verified M Hardt’s and T Negri’s main thesis and by breaking with the politics of nation-state, Empire materializes under our eyes. At the same time however, event leads us to question definitions proposed in their book. It seems that we attend the end of the « small crises» which characterized Empire. And that the current visibility is how a protest against the definition of its essence as « abstract machine ». But the most serious problem (...) is in its «ontological » foundation: the Multitudes. If they are they who support and determine the state of the Empire, are they forced to keep pace with this last one, including when the stability seems shaken ? Which is then the line of possible flight for the Multitudes ? (shrink)