Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially ... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!
Antrópica: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2022
Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and ... more Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and linear view of history towards a multilinear perspective in which there is room for uneven development, leaps and returns from the “archaic” past into the future of communism. It also enables Marx, based on the profound history of ancient Mexico, to anticipate the possibility of the revolutionary uprising of the community as a commune, just as it would in fact occur in Morelos. Marx in his final stage was approaching a new understanding of the link between the community as a form of reproduction of collective life and the commune as an expansive political form that cannot be limited exclusively to its best-known version, associated with the Paris Commune of 1871. In Mexico, this understanding places Marx in the company of famous historians of the Mexican Revolution such as Jesús Sotelo Inclán or Adolfo Gilly, who--already in the twentieth century but without explicitly referring to each other--will contribute new chapters to the history of that other commune, the Mexica or Mexican one on whose tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.
How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar ... more How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar Europe? I begin with the end of the 1950s, when a group of politicized intellectuals began to question the extent of the immanence of work in the development of capitalist technologies.1 What were the transformations that from within the modern factory foisted labor-power on machines? Questions like these continued to be elaborated upon with respect to the violent social development of the postwar economic expansion. What, it was asked, was the impact of human activity on how society is structured, passing from the factory to society? On the one hand is this question: what was the effect of capitalist command (and its technological instrumentation) on social life? And vice versa: what transformations did social movements force upon the structures and the institutions of capitalist command? Capitalist power was quickly extended to the control of social life until being configured as biopower, in spite of widespread and effective resistance. How could biopolitical relations be lived and organized so as to create alternatives to biopower?
... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, ... more ... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, the reader will come to appreciate a side of Badiou's work that usually is not as visible as it is in Theory ofthe Subject or, once again, in Logics of Worlds, that is, his flair for ... Not only does he present
Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence-showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning-Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. In the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein's anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels' introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou's overall project-and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.
In French theory and beyond, the shift between structuralism and poststructuralism marks a pivota... more In French theory and beyond, the shift between structuralism and poststructuralism marks a pivotal turning point in the broader process of problematizing the question of political subjectivity. Two dominant trends can be distinguished in this context: one still connected to Marxism and the dialectic, for which politics is inseparable from a process of subjectivization; and the other very much aimed against the Hegelo-Marxist dialectic in the name of difference, for which the subject remains irreparably metaphysical. If in the latter tendency, associated with the legacy of Heidegger's thinking, the most we obtain is an intimation of an ontology of "being-with" as the basis for an inoperative "community," then in the former tendency, associated with the legacy of Althusser's canonical works, the argument in favor of the political subject is frequently formulated in terms of a plea in favor of maintaining the category of "the people." The problem with this new consensus, however, is that the resulting theory of the subject, articulated onto the gap or incompleteness of the structure, has once again become ontologized as a new law. More so than a reshuffling of the familiar deck of philosophical cards, the current impasse in the theory of politics and subjectivity requires a twofold historicization. Not only should we expand on the notion of "historical modes of politics," but, in addition, we should also historicize the different "theories of the subject," in the plural, from which the new post-Hegelian consensus has been able to emerge uncontested by consolidating itself as if it were the only theory of the subject that ever existed.
Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially ... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!
Antrópica: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2022
Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and ... more Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and linear view of history towards a multilinear perspective in which there is room for uneven development, leaps and returns from the “archaic” past into the future of communism. It also enables Marx, based on the profound history of ancient Mexico, to anticipate the possibility of the revolutionary uprising of the community as a commune, just as it would in fact occur in Morelos. Marx in his final stage was approaching a new understanding of the link between the community as a form of reproduction of collective life and the commune as an expansive political form that cannot be limited exclusively to its best-known version, associated with the Paris Commune of 1871. In Mexico, this understanding places Marx in the company of famous historians of the Mexican Revolution such as Jesús Sotelo Inclán or Adolfo Gilly, who--already in the twentieth century but without explicitly referring to each other--will contribute new chapters to the history of that other commune, the Mexica or Mexican one on whose tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.
How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar ... more How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar Europe? I begin with the end of the 1950s, when a group of politicized intellectuals began to question the extent of the immanence of work in the development of capitalist technologies.1 What were the transformations that from within the modern factory foisted labor-power on machines? Questions like these continued to be elaborated upon with respect to the violent social development of the postwar economic expansion. What, it was asked, was the impact of human activity on how society is structured, passing from the factory to society? On the one hand is this question: what was the effect of capitalist command (and its technological instrumentation) on social life? And vice versa: what transformations did social movements force upon the structures and the institutions of capitalist command? Capitalist power was quickly extended to the control of social life until being configured as biopower, in spite of widespread and effective resistance. How could biopolitical relations be lived and organized so as to create alternatives to biopower?
... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, ... more ... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, the reader will come to appreciate a side of Badiou's work that usually is not as visible as it is in Theory ofthe Subject or, once again, in Logics of Worlds, that is, his flair for ... Not only does he present
Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence-showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning-Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. In the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein's anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels' introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou's overall project-and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.
In French theory and beyond, the shift between structuralism and poststructuralism marks a pivota... more In French theory and beyond, the shift between structuralism and poststructuralism marks a pivotal turning point in the broader process of problematizing the question of political subjectivity. Two dominant trends can be distinguished in this context: one still connected to Marxism and the dialectic, for which politics is inseparable from a process of subjectivization; and the other very much aimed against the Hegelo-Marxist dialectic in the name of difference, for which the subject remains irreparably metaphysical. If in the latter tendency, associated with the legacy of Heidegger's thinking, the most we obtain is an intimation of an ontology of "being-with" as the basis for an inoperative "community," then in the former tendency, associated with the legacy of Althusser's canonical works, the argument in favor of the political subject is frequently formulated in terms of a plea in favor of maintaining the category of "the people." The problem with this new consensus, however, is that the resulting theory of the subject, articulated onto the gap or incompleteness of the structure, has once again become ontologized as a new law. More so than a reshuffling of the familiar deck of philosophical cards, the current impasse in the theory of politics and subjectivity requires a twofold historicization. Not only should we expand on the notion of "historical modes of politics," but, in addition, we should also historicize the different "theories of the subject," in the plural, from which the new post-Hegelian consensus has been able to emerge uncontested by consolidating itself as if it were the only theory of the subject that ever existed.
Imagen y realismo son temas recurrentes en las discusiones estéticas, filosóficas y políticas cad... more Imagen y realismo son temas recurrentes en las discusiones estéticas, filosóficas y políticas cada vez que hay una preocupación por lo contemporáneo: sus orígenes y destinos cruzados comparten la pregunta por el presente. La relación clásica entre ambas cuestiones –la mimesis– se ha transformado hoy. En este libro se analizan obras visuales, cinematográficas, teatrales, poéticas y narrativas de América Latina que activan la experiencia de la temporalidad. En diálogo con dos ensayos de Raúl Antelo y Bruno Bosteels, se enlazan aquí múltiples enfoques que parecen privilegiar uno de los dos aspectos pero son atravesados por el otro, abriendo un espacio político entre ambos.
Raúl Antelo · Bruno Bosteels · Adriana Rodríguez Pérsico · Mario Cámara · Ana Amado · José Ramón Ruisánchez · Luz Rodríguez Carranza · Gabriel Inzaurralde · Dolores Lima · Graciela Goldchluk · Constanza Ceresa · Santiago Deymonnaz · Silvana Mandolessi · Rose Corral · Susana Scramim · Brigitte Adriaensen · Ana Chiara · Miguel Caballero Vázquez
My relationship to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus has always been marked by a p... more My relationship to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus has always been marked by a productive tension.
Con la típica mezcla de lucidez y mordacidad que caracteriza toda esa jerga lacerada de la finitu... more Con la típica mezcla de lucidez y mordacidad que caracteriza toda esa jerga lacerada de la finitud acerca de la historia—a la vez finita y terminada—del comunismo, Pasolini es el santo ideal para una izquierda postmarxista en cuya hoja hagiográfica se podrá siempre recalcar el mérito de su afiliación con el nombre de Gramsci. Ofrece un diagnóstico poético irrefutable de la derrota que globalmente sufrió la izquierda revolucionaria. Es en efecto irrefutable, porque cualquier intento de refutación inmediatamente corre el riesgo de ser tildado de nostálgico, metafísico o dogmático, siguiendo las pautas de un discurso cuyos restos se encuentran en la tumba. Pero entre el sueño de una cosa que se va volando como un pajarraco gris y las cenizas de los fuegos fatuos de la militancia comunista, también es un diagnóstico que acaba sirviendo de coartada para una internalización derrotista de la derrota.
Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The I... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!
A veces detrás de las apariencias superficiales de un simple cambio de modas intelectuales se esc... more A veces detrás de las apariencias superficiales de un simple cambio de modas intelectuales se esconde una transformación mucho más profunda, cuyas raíces subterráneas nos remiten a grandes desplazamientos sociales, políticos y culturales. Sin duda es éste el caso del destino de la referencia a Marx después de la más reciente en una larga serie de crisis y muertes anunciadas del marxismo--aquella que con tanta fuerza declaró Louis Althusser bajo el título "¡Por fin la crisis del marxismo!" en el congreso organizado por Il Manifesto en 1977 en Venecia: "Estamos, en el seno de la crisis presente, ante una nueva transformación, ya en gestación en las luchas de las masas. Ella puede dar nueva vida al marxismo, dar una nueva fuerza a su teoría, modificar su ideología, sus organizaciones, sus prácticas, para abrir un verdadero porvenir de liberación social, política y cultural a la clase obrera y a todos los trabajadores." 1 En América Latina, ciertamente, no hacía falta esperar la palabra oracular de Althusser para enterarse de que el marxismo estaba por fin (o nuevamente) en crisis. Para recordárnoslo, por si faltara alguna evidencia, allí están los golpes militares, las guerras sucias, o la represión a las guerrillas tanto urbanas como rurales. Así, la derrota de la izquierda socialista o comunista en los 70s imponía la tarea de una autocrítica, si no es que condenaba a los militantes pura y simplemente al silencio y a la muerte. Por ello, como 1 Louis Althusser, "¡Por fin la crisis del marxismo!" en La soledad de Maquiavelo, trad. Carlos Prieto del Campo y Raúl Sánchez Cedillo, ed. Yves Sintomer (Madrid: Akal, 2008), 298.
What is the fate of communism today, a full century after the October Revolution? Can we think of... more What is the fate of communism today, a full century after the October Revolution? Can we think of 1917 from an internationalist perspective that would not be limited to the Soviet Union? Does our view change significantly if we consider the fact that the short twentieth century, which could be said to run the complete gamut of the revolutionary ideal from 1917 to 1979 with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua marking perhaps the last revolutionary experience of the cycle in question, might also have begun in Latin America with the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920? Aside from the scholastic issue of finding out what was really known about the October Revolution south of the Río Grande, what other problems come into focus if we look back at the year 1917 from the land of Emiliano Zapata?
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tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.
tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.
Raúl Antelo · Bruno Bosteels · Adriana Rodríguez Pérsico · Mario Cámara · Ana Amado · José Ramón Ruisánchez · Luz Rodríguez Carranza · Gabriel Inzaurralde · Dolores Lima · Graciela Goldchluk · Constanza Ceresa · Santiago Deymonnaz · Silvana Mandolessi · Rose Corral · Susana Scramim · Brigitte Adriaensen · Ana Chiara · Miguel Caballero Vázquez