Thinking Through Balibar’s Dialectics of Emancipation
A Review of Equaliberty: Political Essays by Étienne Balibar
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Svenja Bromberg in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this review, I discuss Balibar’s ‘proposition of equaliberty’ with regard to its theoretical status and contribution, its relationship to other contemporary theories of radical democracy as well as to the problematic of bourgeois versus communist emancipation in Marx. The primary interest of this essay is to develop a detailed understanding of Balibar’s analytical schema, which draws a complex picture of our contemporary ‘human condition’, and to place it within his own theoretical development since his contribution to Reading Capital in the 60s. On that basis, it will be possible to assess his contribution to thinking politics with and after Marx and place it more concretely within the generalised radical-democratic turn in post-Marxist theory.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Abensour, Miguel 2011, Democracy against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment, edited by Martin Breaugh and translated by Max Blechman, Cambridge: Polity Press.
-
Althusser, Louis 2014, On The Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology And Ideological State Apparatuses, London: Verso.
-
Arendt, Hannah 1965, On Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
-
Arendt, Hannah 1972, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics – Civil Disobedience – On Violence – Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, New York: Mariner Books.
-
Arendt, Hannah 1973, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New Edition, New York: Harcourt, Inc.
-
Artous, Antoine 2010, Démocratie, citoyenneté, émancipation: Marx, Lefort, Balibar, Rancière, Rosanvallon, Negri…, Paris: Éditions Syllepse.
-
Badiou, Alain 2001, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, translated by Peter Hallward, London: Verso.
-
Badiou, Alain 2008, Peut-on penser la politique?, Paris: Seuil.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1974, Cinq Études du matérialisme historique, Paris: François Maspero.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1977, On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, translated by Grahame Lock, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Humanities Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1981a, ‘De Charonne à Vitry’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 852, available at: <https://archive.is/eN2Bg>, accessed 11 September 2017.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1981b, ‘Marx, le joker ou le tiers inclus’, in Balibar, Ferry, Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard and Nancy (eds.) 1981.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1985, ‘Marx, the Joker in the Pack (or the Included Middle)’, Economy and Society, 14, 1: 1–27.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1987, La Contradiction infinie: éléments d’une philosophie dans l’histoire, Doctoral Thesis, Universiteit Katholieke te Nijmegen.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1991, ‘Citizen Subject’, in Who Comes after the Subject?, edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy, London: Routledge.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1993, Die Grenzen der Demokratie, Hamburg: Argument.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1994a, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, London: Routledge.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1994b, ‘Subjection and Subjectivation’, in Supposing the Subject, edited by Joan Copjec, London: Verso.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1995, ‘The Infinite Contradiction’, Yale French Studies, 88: 142–164.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1996, ‘Structural Causality: Overdetermination and Antagonism’, in Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition, edited by Antonio Callari and David F. Ruccio, Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan University Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1997a, ‘Un Jacobin nommé Marx?’, in La Crainte des masses: Politique et philosophie avant et après Marx, Paris: Éditions Galilée.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1997b, Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality, Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers.
-
Balibar, Étienne 1998, Droit de cité, La Tour d’Aigues: Éditions de l’Aube.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2002, Politics and the Other Scene, translated by Christine Jones, James Swenson and Chris Turner, London: Verso.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2004, We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, translated by James Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2010, Violence et civilité: Wellek Library Lectures et autres essais de philosophie politique, Paris: Éditions Galilée.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2011, Citoyen sujet et autres essais d’anthropologie philosophique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2012, ‘Les questions du communisme’, available at: <https://www.scribd.com/document/203412101/Les-Questions-Du-Communisme-2012>, accessed 11 September 2017.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2013, Marx’ Philosophie, Berlin: b_books.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2014a, Equaliberty: Political Essays, translated by James Ingram, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2014b, The Philosophy of Marx, translated by Gregory Elliott and Chris Turner, London: Verso.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2015, Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, New York: Columbia University Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne 2016, Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, translated by Steven Miller, New York: Fordham University Press.
-
Balibar, Étienne, Luc Ferry, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds.) 1981, Rejouer le politique: travaux du Centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique, Paris: Éditions Galilée.
-
Balibar, Étienne, Cesare Luporini, and André Tosel 1979, Marx et sa critique de la politique, Paris: François Maspero.
-
Balibar, Étienne and Gérard Raulet (eds.) 2001, Marx démocrate: le manuscrit de 1843, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
-
Behrent, Michael 2004, ‘Religion, Republicanism and Depoliticisation: Two Intellectual Itineraries – Régis Debray and Marcel Gauchet’, in After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the Intellectual and Cultural History of Postwar France, edited by Julian Bourg, Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books.
-
Bromberg, Svenja 2014, ‘Badiou’s Recommencement of the Young-Hegelian Purification of Politics: A Response to Ishay Landa’, International Critical Thought, 4, 3: 367–383.
-
Bromberg, Svenja 2017, Thinking ‘Emancipation’ after Marx: A Conceptual Analysis of Emancipation between Citizenship and Revolution in Marx and Balibar, PhD Dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London (unpublished).
-
Celikates, Robin 2010, ‘Ziviler Ungehorsam und radikale Demokratie: konstitutierende vs. konstituierte Macht?’, in Das Politische und die Politik, edited by Thomas Bedorf and Kurt Röttgers, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
-
Farris, Sara 2014, ‘From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question: Republican Rigorism, Culturalist Differentialism and Antinomies of Enforced Emancipation’, Constellations, 21, 2: 296–307.
-
Federici, Silvia 2012 [2008], ‘The Reproduction of Labor Power in the Global Economy and the Unfinished Feminist Revolution’, in Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, Oakland, CA.: PM Press.
-
Fischer, Sibylle 2004, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press.
-
Furet, François 1981, Interpreting the French Revolution, translated by Elborg Forster, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Furet, François, Jacques Julliard, and Pierre Rosanvallon 1989, La République du centre: La fin de l’exception française, Paris: Hachette Littérature.
-
Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie, Justine Lacroix, and Diogo Sardinha 2014, Pourquoi Balibar?, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
-
Gastaut, Yvan 2000, L’immigration et l’opinion en France sous la Ve République, Paris: Seuil.
-
Habermas, Jürgen 1988, ‘Natural Law and Revolution’, in Theory and Practice, translated by John Viertel, Boston: Beacon Press.
-
Ingram, James D. 2015, ‘Democracy and Its Conditions: Étienne Balibar and the Contribution of Marxism to Radical Democracy’, in Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Post-War France, edited by Martin Breaugh, Christopher Holman, Rachel Magnusson, Paul Mazzocchi and Devin Penner, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
-
Jainchill, Andrew and Samuel Moyn 2004, ‘French Democracy between Totalitarianism and Solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and Revisionist Historiography’, The Journal of Modern History, 76, 1: 107–154.
-
Kouvelakis, Stathis 2005, ‘The Marxian Critique of Citizenship: For a Rereading of On the Jewish Question’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 104, 4: 707–721.
-
Laclau, Ernesto 2007, Emancipation(s), London: Verso.
-
Lefort, Claude 1986, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, edited by John B. Thompson, Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
-
Maihofer, Andrea 1992, Das Recht bei Marx. Zur dialektischen Struktur von Gerechtigkeit, Menschenrechten und Recht, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.
-
Marx, Karl 1975, Early Writings, translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
-
Mezzadra, Sandro and Brett Neilson 2013, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of Labor, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press.
-
Montag, Warren and Hanan Elsayed (eds.) 2017, Balibar and the Citizen Subject, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
-
Moyn, Samuel 2012a, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press.
-
Moyn, Samuel 2012b, ‘The Politics of Individual Rights: Marcel Gauchet and Claude Lefort’, in French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day, edited by Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Negri, Antonio 2009, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, translated by Maurizia Boscagli, Second, Revised Edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
-
Niederberger, Andreas 2008, ‘Wie viel Gemeinwohl braucht die Republik? Überlegungen zu neuen Varianten des Republikanismus jenseits von substantieller Gemeinschaft und Tugend’, in Politik der Gemeinschaft: zur Konstitution des Politischen in der Gegenwart, edited by Janine Böckelmann and Claas Morgenroth, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
-
Ogilvie, Bertrand 2012, La Seconde Nature du Politique. Essai d’anthropologie négative, Paris: L’Harmattan.
-
Rancière, Jacques 1999, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, translated by Julie Rose, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
-
Rancière, Jacques 2004, ‘Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103, 2/3: 297–310.
-
Rancière, Jacques 2007, Hatred of Democracy, translated by Steve Corcoran, London: Verso.
-
Read, Jason 2003, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present, Albany: State University of New York Press.
-
Read, Jason 2015, The Politics of Transindividuality, Historical Materialism Book Series, Leiden: Brill.
-
Robbins, Bruce 2013, ‘Balibarism!’, n+1, 16, available at: <https://nplusonemag.com/issue-16/reviews/balibarism/>, accessed 11 September 2017.
-
Walker, Gavin 2012, ‘Citizen-Subject and the National Question: On the Logic of Capital in Balibar’, Postmodern Culture, 22, 3.
-
Wood, Ellen Meiksins 1995, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Žižek, Slavoj 2014, ‘Barbarism with a Human Face’, London Review of Books, 36, 9: 36–37, available at: <https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n09/slavoj-zizek/barbarism-with-a-human-face>, accessed 11 September 2017.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1611 | 179 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 393 | 13 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 279 | 41 | 5 |
Thinking Through Balibar’s Dialectics of Emancipation
A Review of Equaliberty: Political Essays by Étienne Balibar
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Svenja Bromberg in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
In this review, I discuss Balibar’s ‘proposition of equaliberty’ with regard to its theoretical status and contribution, its relationship to other contemporary theories of radical democracy as well as to the problematic of bourgeois versus communist emancipation in Marx. The primary interest of this essay is to develop a detailed understanding of Balibar’s analytical schema, which draws a complex picture of our contemporary ‘human condition’, and to place it within his own theoretical development since his contribution to Reading Capital in the 60s. On that basis, it will be possible to assess his contribution to thinking politics with and after Marx and place it more concretely within the generalised radical-democratic turn in post-Marxist theory.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1611 | 179 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 393 | 13 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 279 | 41 | 5 |