Books by Étienne Balibar
Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy (The Wellek Library Lectures)
In Violence and Civility, Étienne Balibar boldly confronts the insidious causes of violence, racism, nationalism, and ethnic cleansing worldwide, as well as mass poverty and dispossession. Through a novel synthesis of theory and empirical studies of contemporary violence, the acclaimed thinker pushes past the limits of political philosophy to reconceive war, revolution, sovereignty, and class.
Through the pathbreaking thought of Derrida, Balibar builds a topography of cruelty converted into extremism by ideology, juxtaposing its subjective forms (identity delusions, the desire for extermination, and the pursuit of vengeance) and its objective manifestations (capitalist exploitation and an institutional disregard for life). Engaging with Marx, Hegel, Hobbes, Clausewitz, Schmitt, and Luxemburg, Balibar introduces a new, productive understanding of politics as antiviolence and a fresh approach to achieving and sustaining civility. Rooted in the principles of transformation and empowerment, this theory brings hope to a world increasingly divided even as it draws closer together.
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Pour Marx
by Étienne Balibar, Louis Althusser
Product Description Ce recueil d'articles, publié pour la première fois en 1965 aux Éditions François Maspero, a connu un succès exceptionnel pour un ouvrage théorique : plusieurs dizaines de milliers d'exemplaires vendus et de très nombreuses traductions. Comme le note Étienne Balibar dans son avant-propos de 1996 : " Dans ce livre s'est engagée l'une des tentatives les plus originales, les plus éloquentes, les plus argumentées aussi [...] pour donner corps et figure théorique au marxisme. "Depuis les années 1960, les études marxistes n'ont pu ignorer cette approche qui établissait une " coupure épistémologique " dans l'oeuvre marxienne, séparant les textes idéologiques du jeune Marx de ceux plus scientifiques du Marx de la maturité. Elle offrait aussi une autre évaluation de l'apport de Hegel à Marx et n'hésitait pas à s'inspirer des réflexions philosophiques de Mao Zedong pour nourrir sa propre philosophie. Rares sont les livres ayant suscité autant de passions théoriques et provoqué autant de débats. About the Author Louis Althusser (1918-1990) a enseigné la philosophie à l'École normale supérieure. Sa pensée a transformé l'analyse de l'œuvre de Marx. Il dirigea la collection " Théorie " aux Éditions Maspero. Il a notamment publié Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants (1974), Positions (1976), Écrits sur la psychanalyse (1993) et Écrits philosophiques et politiques 1 et 2 (1994, 1995).
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Secularism and Cosmopolitanism Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics
What is the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism--the worldwide and the worldly? While cosmopolitan politics may seem inherently secular, existing forms of secularism risk undermining the universality of cosmopolitanism because they privilege the European tradition over all others and transform particular historical norms into enunciations of truth, valid for all cultures and all epochs. In this book, the noted philosopher Étienne Balibar explores the tensions lurking at this troubled nexus in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism itself.
Balibar argues for the idea of the universal against its particular dominant institutions. He questions the assumptions that underlie popular ideas of secularism and religion and outlines the importance of a new critique for the contemporary world. Balibar holds that conflicts between religious and secular discourses need to be reframed from a point of view that takes into account the cultural hybridization, migration and mobility, and transformation of borders that have reshaped the postcolonial age. Among the topics discussed are the uses and misuses of the category of religion and the religious, the paradoxical genealogy of monotheism, French laïcité's identitarian turn, and the implications of the responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks for an extended definition of free speech. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference that seeks to make room for a renewed political imagination.
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Reading Capital
by Étienne Balibar, Louis Althusser
Establishing a rigorous program of “symptomatic reading” that cuts through the silences and lacunae of Capital to reveal its philosophical core, Louis Althusser interprets Marx’s structural analysis of production as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Building on a series of Althussers’s conceptual innovations that includes “overdetermination” and “social formation,” Étienne Balibar explores the historical and structural facets of production as Marx understood them, scrutinizing many of the most fundamental points in Capital, as though for the first time.
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The Philosophy of Marx
A rich and accessible introduction to Marx’s fundamental concepts from a key intellectual—now updated
Written by one of political theory’s leading thinkers, The Philosophy of Marx examines all the key areas of Marx’s writings in their wider historical and theoretical context—including the concepts of class struggle, ideology, humanism, progress, determinism, commodity fetishism, and the state. Etienne Balibar opens a gateway into the thought of one of history’s great minds.
In this updated edition to this now classic work, Balibar has added a substantial introduction and new material. Complete with key “information boxes” for the student to make the most challenging areas of theory easy to understand, this remains the best available introduction to the most important thinker of the past 200 years.
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The Philosophy of Marx
In The Philosophy of Marx, Etienne Balibar provides an accessible introduction to Marx and his key followers, complete with pedagogical information for the student to make the most challenging areas of theory easy to understand. Examining all the key areas of Marx’s writings in their wider historical and theoretical context—including the concepts of class struggle, ideology, humanism, progress, determinism, commodity fetishism, and the state—The Philosophy of Marx is a gateway into the thought of one of history’s great minds.
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The Philosophy of Marx
Providing a lucid and accessible introduction to Marx, complete with pedagogical boxes, a chronology and guides to further reading, Etienne Balibar makes the most difficult areas of his philosophy easy to understand. One of the most influential French philosophers to have emerged from the 1960s, Balibar brings a lifetime of study and expertise to create a brilliantly concise portrait of Marx that will initiate the student and intrigue the scholar.
He examines all the key areas of Marx’s writings, including his early works, The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology and Capital, explaining their wider historical and theoretical context. Making clear such concepts as class struggle, ideology, humanism, progress, determinism, commodity fetishism and the state, Balibar includes brief yet incisive biographical studies of key Marxists such as Althusser, Gramsci, Engels and Lenin.
The Philosophy of Marx will become the standard guide to Marx’s thought.
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Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx
In Masses, Classes, Ideas, well-known French philosopher Etienne Balibar explores the relationship between abstract philosophy and concrete politics. The book gathers together for the first time in English nine of Balibar's most influential essays written over the last decade, which have been carefully revised and reordered in logical succession with an original preface.
Balibar discusses the influence of political philosophy on collective movements, touching on issues of religious and class struggle, nationalism and racism, the rights of man and the citizen, and property as a social relation. He seeks to explain the novelty of Marxist philosophy and political theory with respect to the classical doctrines of "state" and "revolution." Masses, Classes, Ideas also examines the limitations and aporias which have become manifest in Marxist philosophy and critically assesses its legacy, offering a provocative contribution to the project of renewing democratic theory.
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We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Translation/Transnation, 18)
étienne Balibar has been one of Europe's most important philosophical and political thinkers since the 1960s. His work has been vastly influential on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the humanities and the social sciences. In We, the People of Europe?, he expands on themes raised in his previous works to offer a trenchant and eloquently written analysis of "transnational citizenship" from the perspective of contemporary Europe. Balibar moves deftly from state theory, national sovereignty, and debates on multiculturalism and European racism, toward imagining a more democratic and less state-centered European citizenship.
Although European unification has progressively divorced the concepts of citizenship and nationhood, this process has met with formidable obstacles. While Balibar seeks a deep understanding of this critical conjuncture, he goes beyond theoretical issues. For example, he examines the emergence, alongside the formal aspects of European citizenship, of a "European apartheid," or the reduplication of external borders in the form of "internal borders" nurtured by dubious notions of national and racial identity. He argues for the democratization of how immigrants and minorities in general are treated by the modern democratic state, and the need to reinvent what it means to be a citizen in an increasingly multicultural, diversified world. A major new work by a renowned theorist, We, the People of Europe? offers a far-reaching alternative to the usual framing of multicultural debates in the United States while also engaging with these debates.
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Equaliberty: Political Essays (a John Hope Franklin Center Book)
First published in French in 2010, Equaliberty brings together essays by Étienne Balibar, one of the preeminent political theorists of our time. The book is organized around equaliberty, a term coined by Balibar to connote the tension between the two ideals of modern democracy: equality (social rights and political representation) and liberty (the freedom citizens have to contest the social contract). He finds the tension between these different kinds of rights to be ingrained in the constitution of the modern nation-state and the contemporary welfare state. At the same time, he seeks to keep rights discourse open, eschewing natural entitlements in favor of a deterritorialized citizenship that could be expanded and invented anew in the age of globalization. Deeply engaged with other thinkers, including Arendt, Rancière, and Laclau, he posits a theory of the polity based on social relations. In Equaliberty Balibar brings both the continental and analytic philosophical traditions to bear on the conflicted relations between humanity and citizenship.
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French Philosophy Since 1945: Problems, Concepts, Inventions, Postwar French Thought, Volume IV (New Press Postwar French Thought)
by Étienne Balibar, John Rajchman
After World War II, philosophy in France entered a particularly rich period whose influence is still strong in many areas today. New styles were invented, new problems were formulated, and new critical functions were engaged, reaching into many domains around the world.
In French Philosophy Since 1945, the fourth and final volume of The New Press Postwar French Thought series, Etienne Balibar and John Rajchman provide a fresh map and analysis for understanding this singular period in the history of ideas. Organized around a series of interconnected questions, featuring many different and sometimes opposed voices, this anthology collects the writings of celebrated philosophers along with work by thinkers highly regarded in France but not as well known to a U.S. audience for the first time. With new translations by Arthur Goldhammer, French Philosophy Since 1945 contextualizes this material within a larger intellectual and political history and chronology, identifying antecedents and distinguishing four main phases or moments. Indispensable for understanding the development of postwar French philosophy as a whole, this anthology also includes a comprehensive chronology outlining developments in the field since 1945.
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Identity And Difference: John Locke And The Invention Of Consciousness
John Locke’s foundational place in the history of British empiricism and liberal political thought is well established. So, in what sense can Locke be considered a modern European philosopher? Identity and Difference argues for reassessing this canonical figure. Closely examining the "treatise on identity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Étienne Balibar demonstrates Locke’s role in the formation of two concepts central to the metaphysics of the subject—consciousness and the self—and the complex philosophical, legal, moral and political nature of his terms.
With an accompanying essay by Stella Sandford, situating Balibar’s reading of Locke in the history of the reception of the Essay and within Balibar’s other writings on "the subject," Identity and Difference rethinks a crucial moment in the history of Western philosophy.
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Spinoza and Politics (Radical Thinkers)
by Étienne Balibar, Warren Montag
With Hobbes and Locke, Spinoza is arguably one of the most important political philosophers of the modern era, a premier theoretician of democracy and mass politics. In this revised and augmented English translation of his 1985 classic, Spinoza et la Politique, Etienne Balibar presents a synoptic account of Spinoza’s major works, admirably demonstrating relevance to his contemporary political life.
Balibar carefully situates Spinoza’s major treatises in the period in which they were written. In successive chapters, he examines the political situation in the United Provinces during Spinoza’s lifetime, Spinoza’s own religious and ideological associations, the concept of democracy developed in the Theologico-Political Treatise, the theory of the state advanced in the Political Treatise and the anthropological basis for politics established in the Ethics.
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Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (Radical Thinkers)
by Étienne Balibar, Immanuel Wallerstein
Forty years after the defeat of Nazism, and twenty years after the great wave of decolonization, how is it that racism remains a growing phenomenon? What are the special characteristics of contemporary racism? How can it be related to class divisions and to the contradictions of the nation-state? And how far, in turn, does racism today compel us to rethink the relationship between class struggles and nationalism?
This book attempts to answer these fundamental questions through a remarkable dialogue between the French philosopher Etienne Balibar and the American historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. Each brings to the debate the fruits of over two decades of analytical work, greatly inspired, respectively, by Louis Althusser and Fernand Braudel. Both authors challenge the commonly held notion of racism as a continuation of, or throwback to, the xenophobias of past societies and communities. They analyze it instead as a social relation indissolubly tied to present social structures—the nation-state, the division of labor, and the division between core and periphery—which are themselves constantly being reconstructed. Despite their productive disagreements, Balibar and Wallerstein both emphasize the modernity of racism and the need to understand its relation to contemporary capitalism and class struggle. Above all, their dialogue reveals the forms of present and future social conflict, in a world where the crisis of the nation-state is accompanied by an alarming rise of nationalism and chauvinism.
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Politics and the Other Scene (Radical Thinkers)
As one of Louis Althusser’s most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the theoretical collective masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself among the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. In Politics and the Other Scene Balibar deepens and extends the work he first developed with Immanuel Wallerstein in Race, Nation, Class. Exploring the theme of universalism and difference, he addresses such topical questions as European racism, the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, and identity and emancipation.
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