Contemporary French Philosophy

Paradox and Critique. Some Thoughts on an Unexpected Affinity between Deleuze and Adorno.

by João Pedro Cachopo

Paper presented at “CONNECTdeleuze: The Second International Deleuze Studies Conference,” Universität zu Köln, Köln, 10-12 August 2009.

"The 'Passion for the Outside': Foucault, Blanchot, and Exteriority"

by Kas Saghafi

"Phantasmaphotography"

by Kas Saghafi

"The Ghost of Jacques Derrida"

by Kas Saghafi

"Salut-ations"

by Kas Saghafi

"'A Certain Spirit of a Certain Marx': Blanchot's Revolutionary Return in Specters of Marx"

by Kas Saghafi

The sudden rise of French existentialism: a case-study in the sociology of intellectual life

by Patrick Baert

Published in Theory and Society 2011 40, pp. 619-644.

This article offers a new explanation for the sudden rise in popularity of French existentialism, in particular of... more This article offers a new explanation for the sudden rise in popularity of French existentialism, in particular of Sartre’s version, in the mid-1940s. It develops a multidimensional account which recognises both structural and cultural factors. The explanation differs from, and more fully addresses the complexity of the situation than, the two most prominent existing explanations: namely Anna Boschetti’s Bourdieu-inspired account and Randall Collins’ network-based approach. It is argued that, because of specific socio-political circumstances, the intellectual establishment became tainted and lost legitimacy, with its aesthetic and philosophical views now regarded as outdated if not politically dangerous. This hiatus brought unprecedented publishing opportunities for a new philosophical current, and skilful public performances by the main protagonists helped its ascendancy. Most importantly, existentialist writers colluded with de Gaulle in portraying a cohesive and defiant French nation; and their philosophy, especially in its notion of responsibility, enabled sections of French society to assimilate and make sense of the recent past, whilst drawing a line underneath it so as to move forward.

Key words: Sartre, sociology of philosophy, sociology of ideas, public intellectuals, cultural trauma

Jean-Paul Sartre's positioning in Anti-Semite and Jew

by Patrick Baert

Published in the Journal of Classical Sociology 11 4 2011, pp. 378-397.

This article is one of the first to employ positioning theory to analyse an intellectual product. After introducing... more This article is one of the first to employ positioning theory to analyse an intellectual product. After introducing the theory itself, it explores how Sartre’s book Réflexions sur la question juive enabled him to locate himself within, as well as intervene in, the socio-political and intellectual context at the time.  Using the text, Sartre positioned himself as an authoritative public intellectual; that is, a generalist, drawing on his vast cultural resources to speak out about a wide range of important societal issues with moral conviction. He also positioned himself within the tradition of the Dreyfusard notion of the intellectual - that is, as an intellectual who engages with contemporary social and political issues and who is a defender of progressive Republican notions whilst remaining an independent voice - with the qualification that he expressed disquiet about the French Republican notion of citizenship. Drawing on these insights, the article ends discussing glaring omissions in Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive, making sense of them in the light of the socio-political context of the mid-1940s in France. The article shows the fruitfulness of positioning theory for analysing intellectual interventions whether they are in the form of books, essays or articles.

Key words: Sartre, perfomativity, positioning theory, intellectuals, Jews, anti-Semitism

The power struggle of intellectuals at the end of the second world war: a study in the sociology of ideas

by Patrick Baert

In: European Journal of Social Theory 14(4) 2011, pp. 415-435

This article is one of the first sociological explorations of power struggles between intellectuals where matters of... more This article is one of the first sociological explorations of power struggles between intellectuals where matters of life and death are literally at stake. It counters the prevailing tendency within sociology to study intellectuals within confined academic institutions where power struggles are limited to matters of symbolic and institutional recognition. This study explores the conflict between collaborationist and Resistance intellectuals at the end of the Second World War in France, and it focuses in particular on the purge of collaborationist intellectuals which culminated in several high profile trials. This article shows that the arguments and meta-arguments put forward in these trials led to broader intellectual debates outside the courtroom. These debates not only centred on the notion of the writer’s responsibility, but also dealt with anxieties about the disintegrative forces of modern society. Whereas collaborationist intellectuals portrayed their writing as either separate from politics or rescuing a defunct or degenerate nation, Resistance intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre were keen to portray collaborators as outsiders, both socially and sexually, lacking in social integration and subservient to a strong external force. The Resistance intellectuals saw the notion of individual responsibility not as antithetical but as integral to the remaking of the French nation, and this concept would become the cornerstone of the reshaping of the intellectual landscape in the post-war era in France.

Keywords: de Beauvoir, intellectuals, meta-arguments, power struggles, purge, Sartre, trials

"The Topology of the Kantian Sublime: Lyotard, Heidegger, Rancière, Deleuze and Nancy"

by William J. Urban

paper published in the Avello Publishing Journal, v.1, n.1 (2011)

accompanying 2 1/2 minute film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2rp6v7MXCs

Deleuze and Guattari’s Historiophilosophy: Philosophical Thought and its Historical Milieu

by Craig Lundy

Critical Horizons, Vol 12, No 2 (2011)

This paper will examine the relation between philosophical thought and the various milieus in which such thought takes... more This paper will examine the relation between philosophical thought and the various milieus in which such thought takes place using the late work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It will argue that their assessment of this relation involves a rearticulation of philosophy as an historiophilosophy. To claim that Deleuze and Guattari promote such a form of philosophy is contentious, as their work is often noted for implementing an ontological distinction between becoming and history, whereby the former is associated with the act of creation and the latter with retrospective representations of this creative process. Furthermore, when elaborating on the creative nature of philosophical thought, Deleuze and Guattari explicitly refer to philosophy as a 'geophilosophy' that is in contrast to history. Nevertheless, this paper will demonstrate that far from abandoning the category of history, Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the relations between philosophical thought and relative milieus suggests to us an historical ontology and methodology that is a critical part of philosophy’s nature.

Deleuze’s Untimely: Uses and Abuses in the Appropriation of Nietzsche

by Craig Lundy

Deleuze and History, eds. Jeffrey Bell and Claire Colebrook (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 188-205

This paper studies the expression of Nietzsche’s untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. The concepts of... more This paper studies the expression of Nietzsche’s untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. The concepts of immanence and the outside form a relation throughout Deleuze and Guattari’s work that leads to their radical conception of the event, and in particular the historical event. As we see in What Is Philosophy?, in conjunction with Foucault’s actual and Péguy’s aternal, the Nietzschean untimely provides a touchstone for Deleuze and Guattari’s explanation of creativity in the historical event: the unhistorical is located as both the force and the site from which the sedimentations of history emerge. But while Deleuze and Guattari share in Nietzsche’s attempt to facilitate creations counter to our historical present, it cannot be said that they explicitly mirror (or indeed faithfully recount) Nietzsche’s analysis of history, its terms, and its effects in society. By tracing the various uses of the untimely throughout Deleuze’s work, a differential ‘becoming/history’ materialises that simultaneously enhances aspects of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the untimely whilst conflating others.

Emerging from the Depths: On the Intensive Creativity of Historical Events

by Craig Lundy

Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Vol 18, No 1 (2010)

This paper will explore the possibility of a creative philosophy of history in the work of Gilles Deleuze. It will do... more This paper will explore the possibility of a creative philosophy of history in the work of Gilles Deleuze. It will do so by focusing on Deleuze’s concepts of ‘intensity’ and ‘depth’, as discussed in his seminal work Difference and Repetition. By analysing these concepts in light of several historical thinkers whom Deleuze significantly draws upon (Bergson, Péguy and Braudel), I will show in this paper how Deleuze promotes a theory of history that is not opposed to his philosophy of becoming and creativity, but in concert with it.

Archaeology, Genealogy, Method: Foucault Paper

by Scott Balasak

‘A Weariness of the Flesh’: Towards a Theology of Boredom and Fatigue

by K Jason Wardley

From: 'Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life' (Ashgate, 2012)

This essay follows two impulses: Jean-Yves Lacoste’s suggestion that philosophy and theology should speak about... more This essay follows two impulses: Jean-Yves Lacoste’s suggestion that philosophy and theology should speak about boredom and about fatigue, just as they do about anguish or joy, and the Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s contention that theological anthropology and philosophy of religion are incoherent without them. Above all, it will try and offer a tentative answer to the question as to what it means to pray when one is tired or bored. To this end, I shall begin by examining some of the traditional theological and philosophical readings of fatigue and boredom (beginning with Jewish and Christian scripture), before turning specifically to Martin Heidegger and Giorgio Agamben, and finally to recent phenomenological accounts, drawing from them some suggestions for a possible theology of boredom and fatigue.

Jean-Yves Lacoste:The Experience of Transcendence

by K Jason Wardley

From: 'Looking Beyond? Shifting Views of Transcendence in Philosophy, Theology, Art, and Politics' (Rodopi, 2012) ISBN:  9789042034730

This paper will examine Lacoste’s treatment of ethics, transcendence and theology, beginning first of all with the... more This paper will examine Lacoste’s treatment of ethics, transcendence and theology, beginning first of all with the relationship between phenomenology and transcendence in Lacoste’s work, specifically the issue of perception. As we shall see, for Lacoste, every phenomenon has the same right to be welcomed and described as any other: God does not differ from things in the world—both Deus and res can be semper maior. It will then discuss how, with reference to liturgy, the phenomenology of silence could relate to divine transcendence, ethics, and intersubjectivity.

Inchiodati alla vita biologica: Emmanuel Levinas e la filosofia dell'hitlerismo

by Rita Fulco

"French Theory: the Movie"

by Gregg Lambert

Symploke, Volume 18, Numbers 1-2, 2010

Flashback: 1967, Paris
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Even while he was in the process of proclaiming différance as the cri de... more Flashback: 1967, Paris
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Even while he was in the process of proclaiming différance as the cri de guerre for his new radical program of “decentering Western ethnocentric reason,” Derrida was also already anticipating that it would become an inflationary sign, one that would recede the more it was multiplied and disseminated. In the first essay, “Force and Signification,” published in L’écriture et la différence (1967), we find the following statement: “If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question for the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object” (1978, 3). Of course, Derrida had no way of foreseeing to what extent this would come true.

Gary Gutting, Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960. Reviewed by

by michael maidan

Michel Foucault, Introduction à l'Anthropologie (Paris: Vrin «Bibliothèque des Textes Philosophiques», 2008) & Michel Foucault, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology, …

by michael maidan