Daniel Bensaïd was a Marxist philosopher and author of an extensive body of works about political strategy. His writings combine a diversity of singular influences, such as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara on the one hand, and Benjamin, Péguy and Blanqui on the other. In his work, religious heresies, Marranos, moles and emblematic figures of the resistance to oppression such as Joan of Arc meet with the classic figures of Marxism. The non-linear concept of time and messianic reason support a strategic reading of history and an understanding of political commitment, following Goldmann’s interpretation of Pascal’s Wager as a wager of uncertain outcome.
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Achcar Gilbert ‘L’intellectuel symbolique’ Lignes 2010 32 11 20
Achcar Gilbert Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism 2013 Chicago Haymarket Books
Aguiton Christophe & Bensaïd Daniel Le retour de la question sociale. Le renouveau des mouvements sociaux en France 1997 Lausanne Éditions Page deux
Albiac Gabriel La sinagoga vacía 2013 [1987] Madrid Tecnos
Anderson Kevin Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies 2010 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Anderson Perry The New Old World 2009 London Verso
Antentas Josep Maria ‘Daniel Bensaïd’s Joan of Arc’ Science & Society 2015a 79 1 63 89
Antentas Josep Maria ‘Sliding Scale of Spaces and Dilemmas of Internationalism’ Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 2015b doi: <10.1111/anti.12169>
Arendt Hannah The Human Condition 1998 [1958] Chicago University of Chicago Press
Arruzza Cinzia Sabado ‘La femme est l’avenir du spectre?’ 2012 2012
Artous Antoine ‘Daniel Bensaïd ou la politique comme art stratégique’ Contretemps 2010 7 82 92
Badiou Alain ‘Le compagnon lointain’ Lignes 2010 32 21 25
Bartra Roger Cultura y Melancolía 2001 Barcelona Anagrama
Bartra Roger El duelo de los ángeles. Locura sublime, tedio y melancolía en el pensamiento moderno 2004 Valencia Pre-Textos
Bauer Otto O’Donnell Joseph The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy 2000 [1907] Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
Benjamin Walter ‘Left-Wing Melancholy (On Erich Kästner’s New Book of Poems)’ Screen 1974 [1931] 15 2 28 32
Benjamin Walter ‘On the Concept of History’ 2005 [1940] available at: <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm>
Bensaïd Daniel La Révolution et le pouvoir 1976 Paris Stock
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Malcolm Lowry, le voyage qui ne finit jamais’ Rouge 1978 667 available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/Malcolm-Lowry-le-voyage-qui-ne>
Bensaïd Daniel ‘« Tu seras errant et vagabond sur la terre »’ 1986 personal archives, available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/Tu-seras-errant-et-vagabond-sur-la>
Bensaïd Daniel Stratégie et parti 1987 Paris La Brèche
Bensaïd Daniel Moi, la Révolution 1989 Paris Gallimard
Bensaïd Daniel Jeanne de guerre lasse 1991 Paris Galllimard
Bensaïd Daniel Marx l’intempestif 1995a Paris Fayard
Bensaïd Daniel La discordance des temps 1995b Paris Les Éditions de la Passion
Bensaïd Daniel Le Pari mélancolique 1997 Paris Fayard
Bensaïd Daniel Lionel, qu’as tu fait de notre victoire? 1998a Paris Albin Michel
Bensaïd Daniel ‘La Politique et l’histoire’ Libre choix 1998b interview by Michel Surya available at: <http://www.danielbensaid.org/La-Politique-et-l-histoire>
Bensaïd Daniel Qui est le juge? 1999a Paris Fayard
Bensaïd Daniel Éloge de la résistance à l’air du temps 1999b Paris Textuel
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Jeanne l’irrepresentable’ Libération 1999c November 3 available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/Jeanne-l-irrepresentable>
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Un univers de pensée aboli’ Contre Althusser, Pour Marx 1999d Paris Éditions de la Passion
Bensaïd Daniel ‘L’appropriation sociale reste à l’ordre du jour’ Mouvements 2000a 9 10 147 155 interview
Bensaïd Daniel Le sourire du spectre 2000b Paris Michalon
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Théorèmes de la résistance à l’air du temps’ Critique communiste 2000c 159 160 113 126
Bensaïd Daniel Résistances 2001a Paris Fayard
Bensaïd Daniel Les irréductibles. Théorèmes de la résistance à l’air du temps 2001b Paris Textuel
Bensaïd Daniel Passion Karl Marx. Les hiéroglyphes de la modernité 2001c Paris Textuel
Bensaïd Daniel Elliott Gregory Marx for Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique 2002a London Verso
Bensaïd Daniel Les Trotskysmes 2002b Paris Presses Universitaires de France
Bensaïd Daniel Un monde à changer 2003a Paris Textuel
Bensaïd Daniel Le nouvel internationalisme 2003b Paris Textuel
Bensaïd Daniel Une lente impatience 2004 Paris Stock
Bensaïd Daniel Fragments mécréants 2005 Paris Lignes
Bensaïd Daniel Karl Marx, ‘Sur la Question juive’. Présentation et commentaires de Daniel Bensaïd 2006 Paris La Fabrique
Bensaïd Daniel Les dépossédés: Karl Marx, les voleurs de bois et le droit des pauvres 2007a Paris La Fabrique
Bensaïd Daniel Fragments mécréants, Tome 2: Un nouveau theologien, B.-H. Lévy 2007b Paris Lignes
Bensaïd Daniel Inventer l’Inconnu 2008a Paris La Fabrique
Bensaïd Daniel Éloge de la Politique profane 2008b Paris Albin Michel
Bensaïd Daniel Penser Agir 2008c Paris Lignes
Bensaïd Daniel Strategies for Resistance and ‘Who Are the Trotskyists?’ 2009a London International Institute for Research and Education/Resistance Books
Bensaïd Daniel Marx, mode d’emploi 2009b Paris Zones
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Quelle articulation entre partis, syndicats et mouvements?’ Actuel Marx 2009c 46 interview available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/Quelle-articulation-entre-partis>
Bensaïd Daniel ‘Walter Benjamin, thèses sur le concept d’histoire’ 2009d personal archives, available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/Walter-Benjamin-theses-sur-le>
Bensaïd Daniel Walter Benjamin, sentinelle messianique. À la gauche du possible 2010 [1990] Paris Les Prairies Ordinaires
Bensaïd Daniel Le Spectacle, stade ultime du fétichisme de la marchandise 2011 Paris Lignes
Bensaïd Daniel Sabado ‘Quand l’histoire nous désenchante’ 2012 interview 2012
Bensaïd Daniel Fernbach David An Impatient Life: A Memoir 2014 London Verso
Bensaïd Daniel & Besancenot Olivier Prenons parti: Pour un socialisme du XXIe siècle 2009 Paris Mille et une Nuits
Bensaïd Daniel & Krivine Alain Mai sí! 1968–1988, rebelles et repentis 1988 Paris La Brèche
Bensaïd Daniel & Krivine Alain 1968. Fins et suites 2008 Paris Lignes
Bensaïd Daniel & Löwy Michael Corcuff Philippe & Maillard Alain ‘Auguste Blanqui, communiste hérétique’ Les Socialismes français à l’épreuve du pouvoir 2006 Paris Textuel
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Boltanski Luc & Chiapello Eve Elliott Gregory The New Spirit of Capitalism 2007 [1999] London Verso
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Budgen Sebastian ‘The Red Hussar: Daniel Bensaïd, 1946–2010’ International Socialism 2010 127 available at: <http://isj.org.uk/the-red-hussar-daniel-bensad-1946-2010/>
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Callinicos Alex ‘Daniel Bensaïd and the Broken Time of Politics’ International Socialism 2012 135 available at: <http://isj.org.uk/daniel-bensad-and-the-broken-time-of-politics/>
Carme Émile ‘Blanqui et Bensaïd: la histoire ouverte’ Ballast 2015 available at: <http://www.revue-ballast.fr/blanqui-et-bensaid-lhistoire-ouverte/>
Cohen Mitchell The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics, and a Hidden God 1994 Princeton Princeton University Press
Corcuff Philippe Une radicalité joyeusement mélancolique: textes 1992–2006 2010 Paris Textuel
Costa Miquel ‘Introducció’ Pascal 2015 2015
Davidson Rjurik ‘Go Forward to Meet the New: Daniel Bensaïd’s An Impatient Life’ Overland 2014 March 25 available at: <https://overland.org.au/2014/03/go-forward-to-meet-the-new-daniel-bensaids-an-impatient-life/comment-page-1/>
Davis Mike Dead Cities 2003 New York The New Press
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Fanon Frantz Peau noire, masques blanc 1971 Paris Seuil
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Foucault Michel Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison 1975 Paris Gallimard
Foucault Michel Historia de la sexualidad. Tomo I: la voluntad de saber 1984 [1976] Madrid Siglo XXI
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Freud Sigmund ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 1957 [1917] Volume 14 London The Hogarth Press
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Gramsci Antonio Hoare Quintin & Nowell-Smith Geoffrey Selections from the Prison Notebooks 1971 London Lawrence and Wishart
Hajjat Abdellali Immigration postcoloniale et mémoire 2005 Paris L’Harmmattan
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Hardt Michael & Negri Antonio Empire 2000 Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press
Hardt Michael & Negri Antonio Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 2004 Harmondsworth Penguin Books
Harvey David Spaces of Hope 2000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press
Harvey David Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography 2001 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press
Harvey David Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development 2006 London Verso
Harvey David Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom 2009 New York Columbia University Press
Harvey David The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism 2011 Oxford Oxford University Press
Holloway John Change the World Without Taking Power 2002 London Pluto Press
Jameson Fredric Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions 2005 London Verso
Kant Immanuel Observaciones acerca del sentimiento de lo bello y de lo sublime 1990 [1764] Madrid Alianza
Keucheyan Razmig Hemisferio izquierda 2013 Madrid Siglo XXI
King Patrick ‘Crisis and Strategy: On Daniel Bensaïd’s “The Notion of the Revolutionary Crisis in Lenin” ’ Viewpoint Magazine 2014 September 4 available at: <https://viewpointmag.com/2014/09/04/crisis-and-strategy-on-daniel-bensaids-the-notion-of-the-revolutionary-crisis-in-lenin/>
Klibansky Raymond , Panofsky Erwin & Saxl Fritz Saturn and Melancholy 1964 New York Basic Books
Kouvelakis Stathis ‘Daniel Bensaïd: la dialectique du temps et de la lutte’ Lignes 2010 32 59 66
Laclau Ernesto & Mouffe Chantal Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics 1985 London Verso
Landauer Gustav Kuhn Gabriel Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader 2010 [1907] London The Merlin Press
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder Collected Works 1964 [1920] Volume 31 Moscow Progress Publishers
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Löwy Michael ‘Revolución’ Viento Sur: Por una izquierda alternative 2000 50 134 136
Löwy Michael Turner Chris Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’ 2006 London Verso
Löwy Michael Sabado ‘Un communiste hérétique’ 2012a 2012
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Martin Stewart ‘Revenge or Revival? Daniel Bensaïd, Marx for Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique’ Radical Philosophy 2003 118 33 35
Marx Karl The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 1850 available at: <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/>
Marx Karl The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 1852 available at: <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/>
Marx Karl New York Daily Tribune 1857 June 27
Marx Karl Moore Samuel & Aveling Edward Capital: A Critique of Political Economy 1867 Volume I available at: <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/>
Mascolo Dyonis Le Communisme. Révolution et communication ou la dialectique des valeurs et des besoins 1953 Paris Gallimard
Mathy Jean-Philippe Melancholy Politics: Loss, Mourning, and Memory in Late Modern France 2011 University Park, PA Pennsylvania State University Press
McNally David Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism 2012 Chicago Haymarket Books Historical Materialism Book Series
McNally David Baker Colin , Cox Laurence , Krinsky John & Nilsen Alf Gunvald ‘Working-class Formations from Cochabamba to Cairo’ Marxism and Social Movements 2013 Leiden Brill Historical Materialism Book Series
Michaloux Charles , Sabado François & Besancenot Olivier Sabado ‘Combattre et penser’ 2012 2012
Nayeri Farah ‘Revolutionary’s Tale Needs More Drama and Less Dry Detail’ The Independent 2014 February 4 available at: <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/an-impatient-life-a-political-memoir-by-daniel-bensad-translated-by-david-fernbach-foreword-by-tariq-ali--book-review-revolutionarys-tale-needs-more-drama-and-less-dry-detail-9105299.html>
Pascal Blaise Pensées 2006 [1669] New York Project Gutenberg Ebooks available at: <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm>
Pascal Blaise Pensaments 2015 Barcelona Ara Llibres
Péguy Charles Oeuvres en prose 1959 Paris Gallimard
Péguy Charles ‘Le jugement histórique’ Oeuvres 1987 Volume I Paris Gallimard
Pensky Max Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the Play of Mourning 2001 [1993] Amherst University of Massachussets Press
Proust Françoise De la Résistance 1997 Paris Le Cerf
Proust Françoise Lachaud Jean-Marc ‘Résister à l’irrésistible’ Art, Culture et politique 1999 Paris Presses Universitaires de France
Roso Darren ‘Daniel Bensaïd’s Critical Obsession with Foucault’ 2016 paper presented at the Historical Materialism Conference 13 November London
Roso Darren & Mascaro Fabio ‘Daniel Bensaïd, une politique de l’opprimé. De l’actualité de la révolution au pari mélancolique’ Période 2015 available at: <http://revueperiode.net/daniel-bensaid-une-politique-de-lopprime-de-lactualite-de-la-revolution-au-pari-melancolique/>
Ross Kristin May 68 and Its Afterlives 2002 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Sabado François Daniel Bensaïd, l’intempestif 2012 Paris La Découverte
Saint-Just Louis Antoine Oeuvres 2004 [1791–4] Paris Gallimard
Scott James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance 1985 New Haven Yale University Press
Scott James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts 1990 New Haven Yale University Press
Shallice Jane ‘Struggling for the Right of Existence: The Memoirs of Daniel Bensaïd’ Red Pepper 2014 March available at: <http://www.redpepper.org.uk/struggling-for-the-right-of-existence-the-memoirs-of-daniel-bensaid/>
Sousa Santos Boaventura Foro Social Mundial 2005 Barcelona Icaria
Sousa Santos Boaventura Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder 2010a Montevideo Ediciones Trilce
Sousa Santos Boaventura Para descolonizar occidente 2010b Buenos Aires Clacso
Steiner George Carnaud Jacqueline & Lahana Jacqueline Épreuves 1993 Paris Gallimard
Sun Tzu Cleary Thomas The Art of War 1991 Boston Shambhala Pocket Classics
Surya Michel ‘La liberté de la littérature est au principe de toutes les libertés’ Contretemps 2006 15 interview by Daniel Bensaïd available at: <http://danielbensaid.org/La-liberte-de-la-litterature-est>
The New York Times ‘Obituary: Thelonious Monk, Created Wry Jazz Melodies and New Harmonies’ 1982 February 18 available at: <http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1010.html>
Thomas Peter D. The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism 2010 Chicago Haymarket Books Historical Materialism Book Series
Thompson Edward Palmer Customs in Common 1991 London Merlin Press
Tomba Massimiliano Thomas Peter D. & Farris Sara R. Marx’s Temporalities 2013 Chicago Haymarket Books Historical Materialism Book Series
Touraine Alain et al. Le Grand Refus. Réflexions sur la grève de décembre 1995 1996 Paris Fayard
Traverso Enzo Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwitz 1999 London Pluto Press
Traverso Enzo Le passé, modes d’emploi 2005 Paris La Fabrique
Traverso Enzo ‘Préface’ Bensaïd 2010 2010a
Traverso Enzo ‘Le passeur’ Lignes 2010b 32 174 183
Trotsky Leon The Third International after Lenin 1996 [1928] New York Pathfinder Press
Trotsky Leon The Revolution Betrayed 2004 [1936] New York Dover Publications
Wald Alan ‘Astonished by the Present: The Impatient Life of Daniel Bensaïd’ International Socialist Review 2014 93 available at: <http://isreview.org/issue/93/astonished-present>
Webber Jeffrey R. ‘Contra the Blasé Wisdom of Sober Old Men’ The Bullet 2014 955 available at: <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/955.php>
Zeng Minhao ‘Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: Concept and Approaches’ The Sociological Review 2014 62 1 137 148
Žižek Slavoj The Year of Dreaming Dangerously 2012 London Verso
Bensaïd 2002a, 2009a and 2014; several articles can be found in English on his official website: <http://danielbensaid.org>. For reviews of Bensaïd’s memoirs, see Webber 2014, Shallice 2014, Davidson 2014, Wald 2014, Nayeri 2014, and Fernbach 2014.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 208. For an overview of Bensaïd’s intellectual trajectory see Budgen 2010, Antentas 2015a and (for French readers) Sabado (ed.) 2012; the monograph in the journal Lignes 32, May 2010; and the collection of articles published in the online version of the magazine Ballast (<http://www.revue-ballast.fr>) in May 2015. For an account of his political trajectory, see again Budgen 2010 and (in French) Michaloux, Sabado and Besancenot 2012.
Löwy 2012a.
Bensaïd 1989, p. 40; all quotations from non-English sources are my translations.
Bensaïd 2001c.
Bensaïd 2001c, p. 108. Surprisingly Bensaïd’s literary approach does not explore the Gothic side of Marx’s Capital, and he does not enter into the realm of capitalist and Marxist ‘monsterology’ (for this line of analysis, see for instance McNally 2012). He showed interest nevertheless in Derrida’s (1994) hauntology and spectrality (Bensaïd 2000b and 2001a).
Bensaïd 2014, p. 317. Perhaps his réndez-vous manqué with literature can be traced back to a very early occasion when he and Henri Weber (then one of the leaders of the jcr) took refuge at Marguerite Duras’s apartment. Busy with political tasks, neither of them devoted much time to socialising with their hostess or her frequent visitors who included writers such as Dionys Mascolo, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot. In his biography he notes, ‘I still regret today having missed out on a valuable encounter’ (Bensaïd 2014, p. 62).
Bensaïd 1986 and 1978.
Arruzza 2012, p. 80.
Budgen 2010.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 315.
Traverso 2010b, p. 179.
Mascolo 1953.
Steiner 1993.
Bensaïd 1995b.
Debray 1977.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 18.
Bensaïd 1999b, 2001a and 2001b.
Proust 1997. See also the interview that Bensaïd himself held with her just before her death: Proust 1999.
Bensaïd 2000b, p. 81.
Bensaïd 2001a, p. 3; Bensaïd 1991; for an analysis of Bensaïd’s Joan of Arc, see Antentas 2015a.
Traverso 2010b, pp. 176–7.
Bensaïd 2009b, p. 189. For a more in-depth analysis of Marx, see Bensaïd 2002a [French original, 1995a].
Derrida, Guillaume and Vincent 1997.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 3.
Aruzza 2012, pp. 79–80.
Bensaïd 2002b, p. 124.
Deleuze 1996, p. 50.
Bensaïd 2000c.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 284. For a study on Marranism see, amongst other sources, Albiac 2013. The best-known Marrano thinkers are Uriel da Costa (1580–1640/1645) and Baruch Spinoza (1632–77).
Kouvelakis 2010, p. 62.
Löwy 2012a.
Keucheyan 2013, p. 344.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 324.
Gramsci 1971, p. 481.
Artous 2010, pp. 82–92.
Bensaïd 1987, p. 8. In Bensaïd 2010, pp. 181–99, he discusses the concept of strategy and its links with military and political thinking. In Bensaïd 1997, pp. 163–72, he takes up the same discussion again.
Trotsky 1996.
Bensaïd 2008c.
Debord 1996.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 355.
Bensaïd 1991, p. 59.
Bensaïd 2008c.
Hardt and Negri 2000 and 2004; Holloway 2002.
Bensaïd 2003a and 2008b.
Bensaïd 2007a.
Bensaïd 2008b and 1997.
Bensaïd 1997.
Bensaïd 2002a, p. 270. For a more detailed analysis of Bensaïd’s spatial concepts, see Antentas 2015b.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 265; Harvey 2001 and 2006; Davis 2003 and 2006; Lefebvre 1991.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 266.
Aguiton and Bensaïd 1997.
Bensaïd 2008a.
Bensaïd 2008a, p. 87.
Bensaïd 2008b.
Debord 2006, pp. 1781 and 1772.
Bensaïd 1995b, p. 234.
Bensaïd 1995b, p. 243.
Bensaïd 2008c.
Tomba’s (2013) analysis of historical development and capital’s temporalities bears similarities to Bensaïd’s, as the former himself remarks (Tomba 2013, p. 3, n. 11; and p. 139, n. 220).
Bensaïd 2002a, p. 20.
Marx 1867.
Bensaïd 2002a, p. 21.
Bensaïd 2008c, p. 267.
Bensaïd 2008a, p. 14.
Bensaïd 2002a, p. 21.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 178.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 270.
Péguy 1959, p. 942. This criticism of mechanical temporality connects with Bensaïd’s analysis of Capital’s temporality in several of his books and is in resonance with the classic works on industrialisation by authors such as E.P. Thompson (Thompson 1991). Bensaïd refers to Péguy in several of his works – his most systematic analysis being Bensaïd 1995b, pp. 187–206.
Blanqui 2013. For Bensaïd’s thoughts on Blanqui, see Bensaïd 1995b, pp. 221–32, and also Bensaïd and Löwy 2006. As Carme 2015 points out, without ignoring the political limitations of the l’Enfermé, Bensaïd admired Blanqui for his inflexibility, integrity and passion, his criticism of the ideology of progress and historical determinism and his tendency towards melancholy.
Gramsci 1971, p. 796.
Bensaïd 2008b, 1997, 1999a and 2002a [French edition 1995b].
Bensaïd 2010, p. 53.
Benjamin 2005.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 81.
Bensaïd 1999a, p. 261.
Bensaïd 1991.
Péguy 1987, p. 1228.
Traverso 2005.
Bensaïd 1999a, p. 261.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 97.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 113.
Bensaïd 1995b, p. 217; Bensaïd 2001a, p. 67.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 117.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 229.
Löwy 2006, p. 172.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 43.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 163, explicitly points out that strategy requires both time and space management. However, usually in his works he gives a definition of politics centred around time management.
Bensaïd 2008c, p. 271; Proust 1997.
Tomba 2013, p. 137.
Thomas 2010, p. 285.
Löwy 2006. Against Bensaïd, Traverso (2010a) also sustains this interpretation.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 172.
Traverso 2010a, p. 16, for instance, considers that Bensaïd attributes to Benjamin a strategic view of messianism, something he considers at the least ‘daring’ and that ‘reveals a mimesis that hides two different trajectories: the one of the literary critic fascinated by the revolution [Benjamin] and the one of the revolutionary militant full of literature’. Concerning Benjamin, Eagleton 1981, p. 176, points out that in the Theses class-struggle is evoked in terms of ‘consciousness, image, memory and experience’, but that they ‘are almost wholly silent on the question of its political forms.’
Benjamin 2005.
Löwy 2006, p. 161.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 118, and Bensaïd 1995b, pp. 207–19.
Bensaïd 2008c, p. 96.
Bensaïd 2001a and 2008b.
Badiou 2010.
Bensaïd 2001a, pp. 143–70, and Bensaïd 2014, p. 287.
Bensaïd 2001a, p. 139. Bensaïd was strongly opposed to Althusserianism in its heyday during the sixties and seventies, as Althusser appeared politically as the representative of a contradictory passive policy linked to the Parti Communiste and theoretically as the incarnation of a scientificist and positivistic Marxism. Later on, whilst maintaining a negative appraisal of Althusser’s œuvre and viewing his theoretical enterprise as having failed, Bensaïd (1999d and 2001a) considered that his early opposition to him was excessive. If Althusser’s political legacy had ‘aged badly, an assessment of his theoretical legacy was harder to make’, as his thinking ‘appeared over time more contradictory and changing than we had imagined in the heat of political action’ (Bensaïd 1999d, p. 230).
Bensaïd 2008c, pp. 273–4.
Bensaïd 2008c, p. 274.
Bensaïd 2001a, pp. 143–170 and 233–41.
Roso and Mascaro 2015.
Bensaïd 2011, p. 40.
Harvey 2011, p. 229.
Foucault 1984.
Proust 1999, p. 153.
Proust 1999, p. 157.
Bensaïd 1999b, p. 77.
Bensaïd 2001b, p. 106.
Bensaïd 2001a, p. 39.
Bensaïd 2012, p. 172.
Žižek 2012, p. 110.
Bensaïd 2001a, p. 247.
Bensaïd 2011, p. 39.
Bensaïd 1995a, p. 133 [English edition: 2002a].
Bensaïd 2011, p. 45.
Bensaïd 2003a, p. 152. Lenin is a key author in Bensaïd’s writings. His early mémoire de maitrisse in Philosophy of 1968, under the direction of Henri Lefebvre, was indeed about the notion of revolutionary crisis in Lenin. In it, he attempted to go beyond the impasses of structuralism by emphasising the subjective factors in revolutionary crises, which despite enabling him to break from the limitations of structuralism, shifted him towards political voluntarism. Since then, he dealt with Lenin in many of his writings, in particular Bensaïd 1997, 2003a and 2008b. For an analysis of Bensaïd’s understanding of Lenin, in particular in his earlier texts, see Roso and Mascoro 2015 and King 2014. His ideas about the party are also heavily influenced by Lenin. Politically, it is possible to divide Bensaïd’s commitment to building a revolutionary organisation into three main periods: the ‘hasty Leninism’ in the advent and in the aftermath of May 1968; the 1980s marked by the attempt to resist against the current, and to re-evaluate the tasks of the present and the path followed since the mid-sixties; and the period following the end of the Cold War, summarised by his 1992 slogan ‘new period, new programme, new party’ that initiated the search by his own party, the lcr, to build a larger and broader anti-capitalist party that culminated in the launching of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (npa) in 2009. For his writings on the latter, see Bensaïd 2008c and Bensaïd and Bensancenot 2009.
Debord 2007, p. 24.
Sun Tzu 1991. There are several editions of this classic; I have chosen Thomas Cleary’s translation.
Bensaïd 2011, p. 45.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 349.
Foucault 1975.
Bensaïd 1976, pp. 55, 56 and 93.
Bensaïd 1976, p. 48.
Bensaïd 1976, p. 7. I use the English translation reproduced in Bensaïd 2014, p. 179.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 167.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 167, and Bensaïd 2008a, p. 81.
Bensaïd 2008b, p. 159.
Bensaïd 2008b, pp. 159 and 167.
Löwy 2000.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 272.
Bensaïd 1999b.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 278.
Bensaïd 1997.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 282.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 288.
Bensaïd 2008a, p. 16.
Marx 1850.
Bensaïd 2003a, p. 154.
Landauer 2010, p. 153.
Marx 1852.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 279.
Saint-Just 2004.
Péguy 1959, pp. 1311–12.
Bensaïd 2008a, p. 21.
Marx 1857.
Bensaïd 2009b, p. 71.
Bensaïd 2008a.
Fried 1987.
Bensaïd 1995b.
Bensaïd 2007, p. 105.
Hajjat 2005.
Bensaïd 2005, p. 133.
Fanon 1971.
McNally 2013, pp. 411–12.
Bauer 2000.
Bensaïd 2005, p. 167.
Bensaïd 2006.
Bensaïd 2005, p. 187.
Bensaïd 2005, p. 17. Bensaïd’s internationalism forcefully rejects ‘cosmopolitanism’, which is considered synonymous with ‘abstract universalism’. He opposes the ‘internationalist universality of the workers’ movement’ to the ‘cosmopolitist universality of the Enlightenment’ – the latter being ‘empty and homogeneous’ and the former ‘full of nations, classes, inequalities and combinations created by the circulation of capital and colonial conquests’ (Bensaïd 1997, p. 210; see also 2003b and 2005). Unfortunately he did not relate and compare his understanding of internationalism with the theories of ‘subaltern cosmopolitanism’ advocated, with different accents, by authors like Harvey (2009) and Sousa Santos (2010a) (for an overview of ‘subaltern cosmopolitanism’ approaches, see Zeng 2014). Achcar (2013) understands Marxist internationalism to be cosmopolitanist and recalls that Marx and Engels did not oppose either term politically and that neither were they opposed to the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ per se. Löwy (1998) takes a similar position and points out moreover that, by their time, internationalism and cosmopolitanism were quite synonymous.
Bensaïd 2001a and 2014.
Bensaïd 2005, p. 16.
Laclau and Mouffe 1985.
Bensaïd 2008b, pp. 341–2.
Bensaïd 2001b, p. 53.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 294.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 315.
Goldmann 1964 and 1967.
Costa 2015.
Pascal 2006.
Costa 2005, p. 28.
Pascal 2006.
Cohen 1994, pp. 42, 173 and 242.
Löwy 2012b.
MacIntyre 2009, p. 314.
Löwy 2012b.
Goldmann 1967, p. 187.
Löwy 2012b.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 294.
Bensaïd 2005.
Bensaïd 2010, p. 99.
Traverso 1999, p. 108.
Sousa Santos 2010b, p. 75. However, Sousa Santos offers a different and concrete political content to the wager. If for Bensaïd it is a wager on the revolution, Sousa Santos considers that the wager should be aimed at actio in proximos (concrete activities to change everyday life) and not at actio in distans, as the small, concrete changes that one can obtain from the former make it possible to strengthen the confidence of the gamblers in their struggle to win the wager. That is definitely not Bensaïd’s view, whose wager was on the possibility of radical political and social change coming from episodes of rebellion that provoke historical discontinuity.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 271.
Pascal 2006.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 294.
Bensaïd 2012, p. 177.
Burton 2009, p. 49.
Földényi 2008, p. 12; apart from Földényi, for a history of melancholy see Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl 1964.
Bartra 2001. In Ancient Greece, the Hippocratic School, based on the theory of humours, defined melancholy as an illness caused by an excess of black bile. Subsequently, the Aristotelian School would present a more positive vision of it when claiming that most of the outstanding people were melancholic. But the conception of melancholy as an illness prevailed for centuries, based on the theory of humours that was best synthesised by Galen (second century ad), and on the theory of temperaments that was formalised later. Melancholy was thus a ‘disposition’ of the individual. In the middle ages this negative understanding of melancholia was reinforced by its association with acedia, which caused sorrow and spiritual restlessness. The Renaissance recovered the idea of melancholy as a source of creativity and strength, in parallel with the invention of the modern idea of the ‘genius’. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, melancholia was a very popular subject, and treatises on it proliferated – Burton’s The Anatomy of 1621 being the most important. Romanticism exacerbated the notion of melancholy, relating it to death. Modern medicine, as the theory of humours declined, associated it with a problem of the nervous system and later melancholy understood as a disease was replaced by the more limited concept of depression. By the twentieth century Freud, in his Mourning and Melancholia of 1917, defined the latter as a pathological process caused by the feeling of loss. But as opposed to mourning, in melancholia it is not clear what has already been lost, so the subject cannot complete his or her mourning and ‘the shadow of the object [falls] upon the ego’ (Freud 1957, p. 248). Therefore, while ‘in mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty, in melancholia it is the ego itself’ (Freud 1957, p. 246).
Bensaïd 2014, p. 318.
Bensaïd 1998b.
Péguy 1959, pp. 137–8; Bensaïd had little sympathy for romanticism as a trend of protest against capitalist modernity. See Bensaïd 2012, p. 170. For a more sympathetic view of romanticism from an intellectual tradition similar to that of Bensaïd, see Löwy and Sayre 2002.
Kant 1990, pp. 50–1.
Bartra 2004, p. 63.
Pensky 2001, p. 21.
Bensaïd 1998b.
Bensaïd 1997, p. 255.
Corcuff (ed.) 2010.
Traverso 1999, p. 108.
Bensaïd 2014, p. 318.
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Daniel Bensaïd was a Marxist philosopher and author of an extensive body of works about political strategy. His writings combine a diversity of singular influences, such as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara on the one hand, and Benjamin, Péguy and Blanqui on the other. In his work, religious heresies, Marranos, moles and emblematic figures of the resistance to oppression such as Joan of Arc meet with the classic figures of Marxism. The non-linear concept of time and messianic reason support a strategic reading of history and an understanding of political commitment, following Goldmann’s interpretation of Pascal’s Wager as a wager of uncertain outcome.
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