China, a New Cultural Strength? Soft Power and Sharp Power
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REVIEW Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject (New York: Continuum, 2009)
Tomas Marttila 2010 ISSN: 1832-5203 Foucault Studies, No. 10, pp. 173-177, November 2010 REVIEW Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject (New York: Continuum, 2009), ISBN: 978-0826496737 (1) Badiou’s Post-Political Ontology of the Subject Alongside Jacques Ranciere, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze and Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou is one of the most influential and productive French philosophers of our times. Contemporary French post-foundational philosophy is split into a Lacanian and a Heideggerian stream. The Lacanian stream is more relevant than ever today, as it has been predominant in the works of, amongst others, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Žižek and, more recently, Jason Glynos and Yannis Stavrakakis. Marchart has observed the ‘Heideggerian’ influence above all in the works of Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.1 Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject (French: Théorie du Sujet), published for the first time in 1982, combines both La- canian and Heideggerian philosophy and, in this regard, reflects some of the most central philosophical ideas in recent French post-foundational philosophy. In today’s globalized post-cold-war neo-liberal world, the developments in communist China and the Soviet Union described in Theory of the Subject appear out of time. This anachronism does not, however, account for Badiou’s thought as such. Based on the works of Hegel, Hei- degger and Lacan, Theory of the Subject provides a universal ontology of the political subject. Despite its slightly misleading title, Theory of the Subject is a book about politics as a particular truth event, which makes the political subject appear as the promise of the truth to come. -
Badiou Beyond Formalization? on the Ethics of the Subject
FILOZOFIA ___________________________________________________________________________Roč. 72, 2017, č. 9 BADIOU BEYOND FORMALIZATION? ON THE ETHICS OF THE SUBJECT JAN-JASPER PERSIJN, Centre for the History of Philosophy and Continental Philosophy (HICO), Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium PERSIJN, J.-J.: Badiou beyond Formalization? On the Ethics of the Subject FILOZOFIA 72, 2017, No. 9, pp. 724-735 The paper addresses the tension between Badiou’s claim that his theory of the sub- ject must be considered first of all as a ‘formal’ theory, and a certain genealogical history of his notion of the subject. In the latter case, it seems that a very specific political experience has played a crucial role (at least) for Badiou in his early con- ception of the subject. More particularly, the paper addresses this tension from an ethical perspective. As for the claim repeatedly made in his work (that the subject poses in the first place a formal problem), one can identify an implicitly ethical disposition in the formalization itself. At the same time, there are several formula- tions in his writings that seem to exceed the formal level. The paper examines four concepts or formulations appearing in his three main books (Theory of the Subject, Being and Event, Logics of Worlds) that seem to express a more or less explicit ethical dimension, namely his theory of affects, the principle ‘to decide the unde- cidable’, the contrast between ‘fidelity’ and ‘confidence’ and Badiou’s answer to the question What is it to live? The paper’s aim is to pinpoint the difference be- tween the ethical stance implied in the formal description of Badiou’s theory of the subject and an explicit ‘ethics of the subject’. -
A Musing with Alain Badiou À La 'Dialogue Between a Chinese
Volume Four, Number One A Musing with Alain Badiou à la ‘Dialogue Between a Chinese Philosopher and a French Philosopher’,1 or, An Exercise in Self-Reference Kyoo Lee John Jay College, CUNY, NYC Free Badiou! The Same, Sex Problem in Alain Badiou on Love, and One Possible, Queer Solution from the Master Himself […] or Herself? 1 The event: ‘Alain Badiou: Dialogue between a Chinese Philosopher and French Philosopher’, 13 December 2014, The Educational Alliance, NYC. Badiou Studies 2 And “What is Love?” Alain Badiou asks and answers: Page | 124 […] The question of sex is the primary obscurity, a difference thinkable only at the cost of a laborious determination of identity that it puts to work. Let us add that contemporary philosophy addresses itself at all times to women. It might even be suspected that it is, as discourse, partly a strategy of seduction. Cogito Interruptus:3 Or subtraction, you mean? Besides, it is from the bias of love that philosophy touches upon the sexes, to the extent that it is to Plato that Lacan must look for what hold thought has over the love of transference. Such or any, as one might already know, truth is essentially an empty category for Badiou – it is produced, in Badiou’s own words, as a hole in knowledge, an unnameable element. It is essentially something which is indiscernible to either language or mathematical counting. Hence, Badiou’s recourse to a philosophy of foundations grounded on mathematical logic 2 Alain Badiou, “What is Love?,” UMBR (a), 1996, p.37. 3 Kyoo Lee, ‘Cogito Interruptus: The Epistolary Body in the Elisabeth-Descartes Correspondence, June 22, 1645-November 3, 1645’, philoSOPHIA 1.2 (2011), 173-94. -
Six Political Philosophies in Search of a Virus: Critical Perspectives on the Coronavirus Pandemic
LSE ‘Europe in Question’ Discussion Paper Series Six political philosophies in search of a virus: Critical perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic Gerard Delanty LEQS Paper No. 156/2020 May 2020 Editorial Board Dr Bob Hancké Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis Dr Sonja Avlijas Dr Cristóbal Garibay-Petersen Dr Pieter Tuytens Mr Toon Van Overbeke All views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the LSE. © Gerard Delanty Six political philosophies in search of a virus: Critical perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic Gerard Delanty * Abstract The Coronavirus (Covid-19) poses interesting questions for social and political thought. These include the nature and limits of the ethical responsibility of the state, personal liberty and collective interests, human dignity, and state surveillance. As many countries throughout the world declared states of emergency, some of the major questions in political philosophy become suddenly highly relevant. Foucault’s Writings on biopolitical securitization and Agamben’s notion of the state of exception take on a new reality, as do the classical arguments of utilitarianism and libertarianism. In this paper, I discuss six main philosophical responses to the pandemic, including provocative interventions made by Agamben, Badieu, and Zizek, Latour on the governance of life and death as Well as the Kantian perspective of Habermas on human dignity. Keywords: Agamben, Badieu, Utilitarianism, Habermas, libertarianism, Latour, nudge theory, Zizek, * School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex Email: [email protected] Acknowledgments This is an expanded version of a short essay that appeared in the Hong Kong Review of Books in May 2020. -
Chinese Sharp Power Are Political and Economic Elites (“Elite Capture”); Media and Public Opinion; and Civil Society, Grassroots, and Academia
A Macdonald-Laurier Institute Publication THE HARD EDGE OF SHARP POWER Understanding China’s Influence Operations Abroad J. Michael Cole October 2018 Board of Directors CHAIR Richard Fadden Pierre Casgrain Former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, Director and Corporate Secretary, Ottawa Casgrain & Company Limited, Montreal Brian Flemming VICE-CHAIR International lawyer, writer, and policy advisor, Halifax Laura Jones Robert Fulford Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Federation Former Editor of Saturday Night magazine, of Independent Business, Vancouver columnist with the National Post, Ottawa MANAGING DIRECTOR Wayne Gudbranson Brian Lee Crowley, Ottawa CEO, Branham Group Inc., Ottawa SECRETARY Calvin Helin Vaughn MacLellan Aboriginal author and entrepreneur, Vancouver DLA Piper (Canada) LLP, Toronto Peter John Nicholson TREASURER Inaugural President, Council of Canadian Academies, Martin MacKinnon Annapolis Royal CFO, Black Bull Resources Inc., Halifax Hon. Jim Peterson DIRECTORS Former federal cabinet minister, Blaine Favel Counsel at Fasken Martineau, Toronto Executive Chairman, One Earth Oil and Gas, Calgary Barry Sookman Jayson Myers Senior Partner, McCarthy Tétrault, Toronto Chief Executive Officer, Jayson Myers Public Affairs Inc., Aberfoyle Jacquelyn Thayer Scott Past President and Professor, Cape Breton University, Dan Nowlan Sydney Vice Chair, Investment Banking, National Bank Financial, Toronto Vijay Sappani Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Research Advisory Board TerrAscend, Mississauga Veso Sobot -
Briefings on Existence
Briefings on Existence A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology Alain Badiou TRANSLATED. LDITLD, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Norman Madarasz State University of New York Press Tins work is published with support from the French Ministry of Culture / National Book Center. Ouvrage public arec I'aide du Ministere fran^ais charge de la Culture’ / Centre national du livre. Originally published in France under the title Court Traitc d’ontologie transitoire Copyright: © 1998, Editions de Seuil All rights reserved English translation made by agreement with Editions du Seuil Published by State University of New York Press, Albany English translation © 2006 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America For information, address State University of New York Press 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Susan M. Petrie Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Badiou, Alain. [Court traite d'ontologie transitoire. English] Briefings on existence : a short treatise on transitory ontology / Alain Badiou ; translated, edited and with an introduction by Norman Madarasz. p. cm. — (SUNY series, intersections— philosophy and critical theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6803-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6803-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6804-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6804-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ontology. 1. Madarasz, Norman. II. Title. III. Intersections (Albany, NY) BD3 12.B3213 2006 I I I— dc22 2005033878 10 98765432 I I call “transitory ontology” the ontology unfolding between the sci ence of Being qua Being, that is, the theory of the pure manifold, and the science of appearing, that is, the logic of the consistency of actually presented universes. -
Philosophy (PHIL) 1
Philosophy (PHIL) 1 PHILOSOPHY (PHIL) PHIL 3000 Plato's Metaphysics (4 Credits) A systematic study of Plato's Middle and Late Period Dialogues that focuses on his arguments for the existence of abstract objects and the development of Plato's theory of Forms. Prerequisite: At least Junior standing or permission of instructor. PHIL 3003 Plato's Theory of Knowledge (4 Credits) A systematic investigation of Plato's treatments of knowledge throughout the dialogues with a focus on the theory of recollection, Forms as objects of knowledge, the relationship between the Forms and perceptual experience, and the challenges posed by notions of true and false belief. Prerequisites: At least Junior standing or permission of instructor. PHIL 3005 Cosmopolitics (4 Credits) This class will be a close reading of Plato's dialogue Timaeus, with a special focus on the cosmological, theological, and political dimensions of the text. PHIL 3010 Great Thinkers: Aristotle (4 Credits) A study of Aristotle's central theories and doctrines. Prerequisite: junior standing or instructor's permission. PHIL 3011 Great Thinkers: Virginia Woolf (4 Credits) In this course we will read Virginia Woolf as a philosopher. We will discuss her philosophy of nature, knowledge, art, politics, science, sensation, gender, and materialism throughout her fiction and non-fiction writings. PHIL 3023 Great Thinkers: Maimonides: Politics, Prophecy and Providence (4 Credits) Using "The Guide for the Perplexed" as our central text, we explore the complex philosophical ideas of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), one of the central figures in medieval philosophy and Jewish thought. Our study includes analyses of his ideas on principles of faith, human perfection, intellectual vs. -
THE EVENT in DELEUZE Alain Badiou
PARRHESIA NUMBER 2 • 2007 • 37–44 THE EVENT IN DELEUZE Alain Badiou Translated by Jon Roffe1 Deleuze always paid tribute to Sartre as the figure who, during the thirties and forties, woke French philosophy from its academic slumbers. He considered the 1937 article, ‘The Transcendence of the Ego’, the origin of everything: why? It is because, in this text, Sartre proposes the idea—I am citing Deleuze—of ‘an impersonal transcendental field, having the form neither of a personal synthetic consciousness nor subjective identity—the subject, to the contrary, always being constituted.’2 I want to emphasise this remark of Deleuze’s all the more insofar as the motif of an impersonal transcendental field is dominant throughout my Greater Logic, where it is effectuated, in the finest technical detail, as a logic of appearance or worlds.3 Deleuze remarked also that Sartre had been prevented from thinking all of the consequences of his idea because he had attached the impersonal field to a (self)-consciousness. This is absolutely correct. We could also say: Sartre continued to believe in an auto-unification of the transcendental. He did not expose the subject to the alea of a pure Outside. Now, one of the names of the Outside is ‘event’. This is why the event, as that to which the power [puissance] of a thought is devoted, and/ or that from which this power proceeds, has, after Sartre, become a common term for the greater number of contemporary philosophers. Other than through the critique of the phenomenology of consciousness, this term has been transmitted to us, on the side of truth-procedures, by the lasting fragment—in the 20th century—of four entangled motifs: that, in politics, of Revolution; in love, of erotic liberation; in the arts, of performance; and in the sciences, of the epistemological break. -
Download File
Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France Diana King Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Diana King All rights reserved ABSTRACT Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France Diana King In “Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France,” I examine how the two countries translated each other’s revolutions during critical moments of political and cultural crisis (the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth Movement (1919), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and May 1968 in France), and subsequently (or simultaneously), how that knowledge was mobilized in practice and shaped the historical contexts in which it was produced. Drawing upon a broad range of discourses including political journals, travel narratives, films and novels in French, English and Chinese, I argue that translation served as a key site of knowledge production, shaping the formulation of various political and cultural projects from constructing a Chinese national identity to articulating women’s rights to thinking about radical emancipation in an era of decolonization. While there have been isolated studies on the influence of the French Revolution in early twentieth-century China, and the impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the development of French Maoism and French theory in the sixties, there have been few studies that examine the circulation of revolutionary ideas and practices across multiple historical moments and cultural contexts. In addition, the tendency of much current scholarship to focus exclusively on the texts of prominent French or Chinese intellectuals overlooks the vital role played by translation, and by non-elite thinkers, writers, students and migrant workers in the cross-fertilization of revolutionary discourses and practices. -
Plato's Republic
PLATO’S REPUBLIC PLATO’S REPUBLIC A Dialogue in Sixteen Chapters, with a Prologue and an Epilogue ALAIN BADIOU Translated by Susan Spitzer polity First published in French as La République de Platon © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2012 This English edition © Polity Press, 2012 Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-7456-6352-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com CONTENTS 7/426 The numbers and letters in parentheses after each chapter title (e.g. 327a) refer to a division of the text into sections, each usually about ten lines long. -
Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Norms: Meeting the Authoritarian Challenge
August 2020 SHARP POWER AND DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE SERIES Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Norms Meeting the Authoritarian Challenge by Nicholas D. Wright ABOUT THE SHARP POWER AND DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE SERIES As globalization deepens integration between democracies and autocracies, the compromising effects of sharp power—which impairs free expression, neutralizes independent institutions, and distorts the political environment—have grown apparent across crucial sectors of open societies. The Sharp Power and Democratic Resilience series is an effort to systematically analyze the ways in which leading authoritarian regimes seek to manipulate the political landscape and censor independent expression within democratic settings, and to highlight potential civil society responses. ABOUT THE AUTHOR This initiative examines emerging issues in four crucial arenas Dr. Nicholas D. Wright is an affiliated scholar at relating to the integrity and vibrancy of democratic systems: Georgetown University, an honorary senior research • Challenges to free expression and the integrity of the fellow at University College London (UCL), a consultant at media and information space Intelligent Biology, and fellow at New America. His work combines neuroscientific, behavioral, and technological • Threats to intellectual inquiry insights to understand decision making in politics and • Contestation over the principles that govern technology international confrontations in ways practically applicable • Leverage of state-driven capital for political and often to policy. He leads international, interdisciplinary projects corrosive purposes with collaborators in countries including China, the United States, Iran, and the United Kingdom. He was an associate The present era of authoritarian resurgence is taking place during in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment a protracted global democratic downturn that has degraded for International Peace. -
Editorial: Postanarchism
Editorial: Postanarchism SAUL NEWMAN Postanarchism is emerging as an important new current in anarchist thought, and it is the source of growing interest and debate amongst anarchist activists and scholars alike, as well as in broader academic circles. Given the number of internet sites, discussion groups, and new books and journal publications appearing on postanarchism, it is time that the challenges it poses to classical anarchist thought and practice are taken more seriously. Postanarchism refers to a wide body of theory – encompassing political theory, philosophy, aesthetics, literature and film studies – which attempts to explore new directions in anarchist thought and politics. While it includes a number of different perspectives and trajectories, the central contention of postanarchism is that classical anarchist philosophy must take account of new theoretical directions and cultural phenomena, in particular, postmodernity and poststructuralism. While these theoretical categories have had a major impact on different areas of scholarship and thought, as well as politics, anarchism tends to have remained largely resistant to these developments and continues to work within an Enlightenment humanist epistemological framework1 which many see as being in need of updating. At the same time, anarchism – as a form of political theory and practice – is becoming increasingly important to radical struggles and global social movements today, to a large extent supplanting Marxism. Postanarchism seeks to revitalise anarchist theory in light of these new struggles and forms of resistance. However, rather than dismissing the tradition of classical anarchism, postanarchism, on the contrary, seeks to explore its potential and radicalise its possibilities. It remains entirely consistent, I would suggest, with the libertarian and egal- itarian horizon of anarchism; yet it seeks to broaden the terms of anti-authoritarian thought to include a critical analysis of language, discourse, culture and new modalities of power.