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The new issue of parallax, 'à corps', co-edited by Lenka Vráblíková and Thomas Clément Mercier, is available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/2 This issue examines the legacy of deconstruction with respect to body/bodies... more
The new issue of parallax, 'à corps', co-edited by Lenka Vráblíková and Thomas Clément Mercier, is available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/2

This issue examines the legacy of deconstruction with respect to body/bodies and corporeity in relation to sex and sexuality, desire, race and gender. It covers fields such as philosophy, psychoanalysis and phenomenology, postcolonial literature, feminist thought, queer and transgender studies, science and technology studies, new materialisms, affect theory, and many other fields.
It offers engagements with Jacques Derrida, Catherine Malabou, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Bernard Stiegler, Eve Sedgwick, Hélène Cixous, Judith Butler, Joan Scott, Roland Barthes, Sarah Kofman, Sigmund Freud, Elizabeth Grosz, Lata Mani, Jasbir Puar, Paul de Man, Gilles Deleuze, and many others.

The volume includes an interview with Anne-Emmanuelle Berger conducted by Lenka Vráblíková, "Live Body", as well as contributions by Debbie Goldgaber, Jeppe Ugelvig, Quinn Eades, Eszter Timar, Sourav Kargupta, and Elissa Marder.

The gorgeous art cover was kindly provided by Pavla Malinová.

This 'corps à corps' started with the previous issue of parallax, entitled 'corps à': https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/1
That issue includes a heretofore unpublished interview with Jacques Derrida, 'The Truth That Hurts, or the Corps à Corps of Tongues', as well as contributions by Marie-Dominique Garnier, Héctor G. Castaño, Diane Detournay, Liu Xin, and Francesco Vitale.
The new issue of parallax, 'corps à', co-edited by Lenka Vráblíková and Thomas Clément Mercier, is now available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/1 This issue examines the legacy of deconstruction with respect to... more
The new issue of parallax, 'corps à', co-edited by Lenka Vráblíková and Thomas Clément Mercier, is now available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/1

This issue examines the legacy of deconstruction with respect to body/bodies and corporeity in relation to sex and sexuality, desire, race and gender. It covers fields such as philosophy and phenomenology, psychoanalysis, literature, feminist thought, gender and transgender studies, critical race theory, political theory, transculturality, biology and biodeconstruction, queer theory, new materialisms, and many other fields.
It offers engagements with Jacques Derrida, Paul B. Preciado, Hélène Cixous, Vicki Kirby, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Judith Butler, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Antonin Artaud, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy,  Lau Kwok-ying, François Jacob, Julia Serano, Finn Enke, and many, many others.

The volume includes the translation of a 2004 interview with Jacques Derrida by Évelyne Grossman, 'The Truth That Hurts, or the Corps à Corps of Tongues', as well as contributions by Marie-Dominique Garnier, Héctor Castaño, Diane Detournay, Liu Xin, and Francesco Vitale.

The gorgeous art cover was kindly provided by Virginia Chihota (Tiwani Contemporary).

The second part of this 'corps à corps (entitled 'à corps') is now available: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpar20/25/2
It includes contributions by Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, Debbie Goldgaber, Jeppe Ugelvig, Quinn Eades, Eszter Timar, Sourav Kargupta, and Elissa Marder.
This text was prompted by a forum discussing the legacy of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, twenty-five years after its publication. In this short essay, I explore the book’s influence on the fields of Marxism, post-Marxism, and... more
This text was prompted by a forum discussing the legacy of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, twenty-five years after its publication. In this short essay, I explore the book’s influence on the fields of Marxism, post-Marxism, and beyond. With the problematic of heritage and legacy in mind, I raise the questions of sexual difference and dissemination as that which comes to interrupt the genealogical logic of inheritance understood as filiation and reproduction. I show that Derrida’s book, besides questioning reception and influence, yet remains to be read, especially in light of ongoing archival research on Derrida’s numerous engagements with Marx and Marxist thought in a series of unpublished seminars from the 1970s. This is done more specifically through a reading of an unpublished seminar from 1974-1975, dealing with the Marxian concepts of ideology and division of labor – which Derrida interrogates more particularly in relation to sex, sexuality, and sexual differences.

This text was published in the section "Ambivalent Promises—Reproductions of the Subject: A Forum on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx after 25 Years, Part IV", Contexto Internacional, 42 (1), pp. 125-148. Link: https://www.scielo.br/pdf/cint/v42n1/0102-8529-cint-202042010125.pdf
In its hegemonic definition, biopolitical governmentality is characterised by a seemingly infinite capacity of expansion, susceptible to colonise the landscape and timescape of the living present in the name of capitalistic productivity.... more
In its hegemonic definition, biopolitical governmentality is characterised by a seemingly infinite capacity of expansion, susceptible to colonise the landscape and timescape of the living present in the name of capitalistic productivity. The main trait of biopower is its normative, legal and political plasticity, allowing it to reappropriate critiques and resistances by appealing to bioethical efficacy and biological accuracy. Under these circumstances, how can we invent rebellious forms-of-life and alternative temporalities escaping biopolitical normativity?
In this essay, I interrogate the theoretical presuppositions of biopolitical rationality. I provide a deconstruction of the conceptual and temporal structures upholding the notion of biopolitics, in view of laying the ground for new forms of resistance. The articulation between life and power has a long philosophical history, which has been largely ignored by social theorists and political thinkers using biopolitics as an interpretative model. I re-inscribe this model within the tradition of critical materialism, by articulating Foucault’s ‘critical ontology’ to recent philosophical works on biological plasticity (Malabou). In these discourses, the logic of biopower depends on a representation of life – ‘the living’ – as living present. Biopower finds itself anchored in the authority of the present, that is to say, of being-as-presence (ontology); it sustains presentist definitions of life and materiality, be it under the form of a ‘plastic’ ontology. By drawing on Derrida’s notions of ‘spectrality’ and ‘life-death’ and Francesco Vitale’s work on ‘biodeconstruction’, I deconstruct these discourses on life and materiality and attempt to dissociate them from their ontological grounding, in order to suggest new paths of resistance to biopower.

In particular, I follow the tracks of “the monster” in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Malabou. Foucault tells us that the monster is a singular figure, parasitic and subversive, beckoning a life beyond life, at once organic and non-organic, located at the limit between the normal and the exceptional, and exceeding the scope of biopolitical normativity in both theoretical and practical terms. It exists at the intersection of what Foucault names “the symbolics of blood” and “the analytics of sex”. As such, it materialises a self-transformative dimension of the living which remains, I argue, inadequate to Malabou’s representation of plasticity. The monstrous is a self-deconstructive motif calling for another biopolitical rationality, before or beyond ontological reductions or reconstructions.
Responding to the provocative phrase ‘The Age of Grammatology’, I propose to question the notion of ‘age’, and to interrogate the powers or forces, the dynameis or dynasties attached to the interpretative model of historical... more
Responding to the provocative phrase ‘The Age of Grammatology’, I propose to question the notion of ‘age’, and to interrogate the powers or forces, the dynameis or dynasties attached to the interpretative model of historical periodisation. How may we think the undeniable actuality of the event beyond the sempiternal history of ages, and beyond the traditional, onto-teleological chain of power, possibility, force or dynamis that undergirds such history?
This reflection draws on Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive reading of the Aristotelian ontology of dynamis-energeia (virtuality-actuality). The essay also includes analyses of Rousseau, Cixous, Aubenque, Foucault, and Agamben, as well as a reading of early-Christian Scriptures, chiefly The Epistle to the Hebrews.
Cet essai présente une description de plusieurs travaux inédits de Jacques Derrida au sujet de Marx et d'Althusser datant des années 1960 et 1970. Au-delà du travail philologique, il s'agit aussi d'une étude théorique de notions telles... more
Cet essai présente une description de plusieurs travaux inédits de Jacques Derrida au sujet de Marx et d'Althusser datant des années 1960 et 1970.
Au-delà du travail philologique, il s'agit aussi d'une étude théorique de notions telles que 'idéologie', 'fétichisme', 'reproduction', 'division du travail', 'différence sexuelle', 'domination', 'économie politique',  'matérialisme dialectique', ou 'production culturelle' — tout autant à travers les textes marxistes que dans les lectures déconstructives qu'en propose alors Derrida.
Durant les années 1970, dans le cadre de son séminaire, Derrida s'efforce de penser une autre économie politique, au-delà de l'économie du propre qu'il identifie aussi bien chez les économistes classiques que chez leurs critiques marxistes. Ces lectures détaillées et combattives de textes marxistes restent aujourd'hui inédites. Leur prise en compte contribue à redéfinir l'image de Derrida et de la déconstruction, en témoignant de ses discussions très avancées de Marx, d'Althusser, et de la pensée marxiste — et ce dès la fin des années 1960 et le début des années 1970, plus de 20 ans avant la publication de Spectres de Marx (1993).

Une version plus courte de cet article fut traduite en espagnol par Ramiro Parodi, et publiée en 2019 dans le numéro 7 de la revue Demarcaciones — numéro consacré au 25ème anniversaire de la publication de Spectres de Marx: http://revistademarcaciones.cl/numero-7/
This paper examines the notion of “pluriverse”, which has increasingly been used in the past few years in several strands of critical humanities associated with the so-called "ontological turn": science and technology studies (Bruno... more
This paper examines the notion of “pluriverse”, which has increasingly been used in the past few years in several strands of critical humanities associated with the so-called "ontological turn": science and technology studies (Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers), critical geography and political ontology (Mario Blaser), cultural anthropology (Marisol de la Cadena, Arturo Escobar, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro), decolonial thought (Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo), or posthuman feminism (Donna Haraway). These various iterations of the figure of the pluriverse constitute a loose network of textual traces, a supposedly new scene for the humanities, organized around what is understood as a pluralistic ontology or ontological pluralism. In political terms, the discourse of the pluriverse presents itself as a strategic response to the violence of universalism. It advocates for a multiversal ethics, a pluriversal cosmopolitics based on interspecies and multi-natural kinships, one more aware of the multiplicity of worlds and world-making practices that make up the post-globalization scene.

Based on readings of Bruno Latour, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marisol de la Cadena and Arturo Escobar among others, I argue that the notion of pluriversality remains self-contradictory and self-defeating as long as it relies on an ontological representation of world/worlds in the form of "co-presence". Drawing on Derrida’s deconstruction of the concept of world (cosmos, mundus) in his late writings, I propose to think an exorbitant plurality before the pluriverse and before being. Beyond ontological pluralism, Derrida’s “infinity of untranslatable worlds” also signifies an irreducible interruption, the end of the world, of any “world-in-common”, thus raising the stakes for the ethical demand towards the other.

KEYWORDS: ontological turn; science and technology studies; decoloniality; ontological anthropology; deconstruction; cosmopolitics; Bruno Latour; Jacques Derrida; Viveiros de Castro; Marisol de la Cadena
Este ensayo presenta una descripción de los escritos inéditos de Jacques Derrida sobre Marx y Louis Althusser en la década de 1970, y un estudio de conceptos como ideología, diferencia sexual, reproducción, violencia, dominación o... more
Este ensayo presenta una descripción de los escritos inéditos de Jacques Derrida sobre Marx y Louis Althusser en la década de 1970, y un estudio de conceptos como ideología, diferencia sexual, reproducción, violencia, dominación o hegemonía en perspectiva deconstructiva. Se trata de pensar en una otra economía, más allá de la economía del cuerpo propio.
El artículo fue publicado en el Volumen 7 de la Revista Demarcaciones, "a 25 años de Espectros de Marx": http://revistademarcaciones.cl/numero-7/
This short essay examines Étienne Balibar's readings of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. The text is framed as a review of two books by Balibar: 'Equaliberty' and 'Violence and Civility'. After describing the context of those readings,... more
This short essay examines Étienne Balibar's readings of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. The text is framed as a review of two books by Balibar: 'Equaliberty' and 'Violence and Civility'. After describing the context of those readings, I propose a broader reflection on the ambiguous relationship between 'post-Marxism' and 'deconstruction', focusing on concepts such as 'violence', 'cruelty', 'sovereignty' and 'property'. I also raise methodological questions related to the 'use' of deconstructive notions in political theory debates.
In this article, I engage with Derrida’s deconstructive reading of theories of performativity in order to analyse Max Weber’s sovereignty/legitimacy paradigm. First, I highlight an essential articulation between legitimacy and sovereign... more
In this article, I engage with Derrida’s deconstructive reading of theories of performativity in order to analyse Max Weber’s sovereignty/legitimacy paradigm. First, I highlight an essential articulation between legitimacy and sovereign ipseity (understood, beyond the sole example of State sovereignty, as the autopositioned power-to-be-oneself). Second, I identify an originary force of alteration, an unconditional deconstructibility of sovereignty, foreign to the order of performative legitimacy. This disjunctive force implies an essential fallibility of the performative. The differential co-implication of legitimacy and sovereignty suggests an irreducible coloniality of law and language, but also points to an unconditional resistance located in the radical interpretability of the law, beyond determined positions of powers, dominations, sovereignties or resistances.
My reflection is triggered by a reading of Cynthia Weber’s theory of ‘performative states’, describing sovereignty under the form of an impossible ontology, which leads me to elaborate the notion of legitimation-to-come as a non-ontological ‘concept’: this unconditional legitimacy, beyond sovereignty, binds beliefs and phantasms to the unpresentable force of the event. Pursuing the efforts of scholars such as Rob Walker and Cynthia Weber, I sketch the implications of this archi-performative force of legitimacy with respect to the methodologies of International Relations and sociology, in view of elucidating the persistent ontological presuppositions of these disciplines.
Dans cet essai, j'analyse les présuppositions du récit dudit 'retour du religieux', du point de vue de la psychanalyse (Freud) et de la déconstruction (Derrida). Après avoir mis à jour l'eurocentrisme et le colonialisme inhérents aux... more
Dans cet essai, j'analyse les présuppositions du récit dudit 'retour du religieux', du point de vue de la psychanalyse (Freud) et de la déconstruction (Derrida). Après avoir mis à jour l'eurocentrisme et le colonialisme inhérents aux concepts de 'magie', 'animisme', 'religion' et 'croyance' chez Freud (en particulier dans Totem et tabou), j'offre une lecture déconstructrice des discours politiques contemporains sur le sécularisme, la foi et le savoir.
[In this essay, I unpack presuppositions involved in the narrative of 'the return of the religious', from the point of view of psychoanalysis (Freud) and deconstruction (Derrida). After highlighting the Eurocentric and colonialist components of the concepts of 'magic', 'animism', 'religion', and 'belief' in Freud (with special emphasis on Totem and Taboo), I provide a deconstructive analysis of contemporary political discourses on secularism, faith and knowledge.]
This piece is a 'conference report' about ISA 2018 (International Studies Association 59th Annual Convention, San Francisco). The review focuses on two panels on international ethics and decolonial critique organised by Louiza Odysseos... more
This piece is a 'conference report' about ISA 2018 (International Studies Association 59th Annual Convention, San Francisco). The review focuses on two panels on international ethics and decolonial critique organised by Louiza Odysseos and Myriam Fotou: 'Eurocentrism, Racism, and the De-Colonization of Ethical Enquiry'.
I start the piece with a quick presentation of the International Studies Association in the broader context of International Relations as a discipline (IR) — therefore, the piece is accessible to non-IR specialists.
Here's a copy of my article "Jacques Derrida et la question du terrorisme", which was published in Summer 2017 in the journal of the ENA school. That special issue was entitled "Terrorism and war on terror: the vicious circle".
“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976... more
“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, and 255 more
2015, January 12th. I have decided to post this piece following the recent events in Paris, in reaction to the general media coverage, but also to many scholars’ and politicians’ comments — in reaction, notably, to a certain use of... more
2015, January 12th. I have decided to post this piece following the recent events in Paris, in reaction to the general media coverage, but also to many scholars’ and politicians’ comments — in reaction, notably, to a certain use of language, and in particular this omnipresent lexicon, “barbarians”, “barbarism”, that I still fail to fully understand…

This text was initially established as a chapter for my PhD thesis, “Violence and legitimacy: an articulation beyond power”. It had to be left out from the final version, because of word-limit constraints. I haven’t modified it in view of this publication. It is a very much unfinished draft, including a lot of rambling, absurdly long footnotes, and sometimes telegraphic notes. It is also a dense, adventurous, and certainly arduous piece of political philosophy, going from Balibar to Derrida and Hegel, Marx & Engels, with references to Foucault, Schmitt, Agamben and Mouffe ; but here it is. I hope this work will trigger comments and reflections. If you have any remarks, questions or criticism, please message me. I am very much looking forward to pursuing this analysis further through any sort of discussion.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, Social Theory, and 178 more
In this article, I deconstruct the concept of legitimacy (notably in the form elaborated by Max Weber) by emphasising its conceptual complicity with the notion of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Derrida's critique of Austin's theory... more
In this article, I deconstruct the concept of legitimacy (notably in the form elaborated by Max Weber) by emphasising its conceptual complicity with the notion of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Derrida's critique of Austin's theory of performativity, I elaborate another, non-ontological 'concept' of legitimacy, located before and beyond sociological methodology, International Relations theory, and performative ontologies of power. This legitimation-to-come signifies the structural fallibility and pervertibility of the performative, and instantiates the archi-originary force of an unconditional resistance, conditioning both the position and the deconstruction of ontologies of sovereign ipseity (ipsocracy). Pursuing the efforts of Cynthia Weber and Rob Walker, I attempt to sketch the implications of this post-performative legitimacy with respect to the protocols of legitimation of International Relations theory and sociological methodologies, through an analysis of their persistent ontological presuppositions.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Religion, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, and 254 more
Since Weber formalized the notion of "legitimate domination" in Economy & Society, the concept of legitimacy has been an omnipresent staple of sociology and political science, while its theoretical foundations and ontological status have... more
Since Weber formalized the notion of "legitimate domination" in Economy & Society, the concept of legitimacy has been an omnipresent staple of sociology and political science, while its theoretical foundations and ontological status have remained uninterrogated. This article offers a deconstruction, in Derridean terms, of Weber's hermeneutics of domination (Herrschaft) and legitimacy, and argues that this hermeneutics is co-dependent with an essentialization of sovereignty, conceived as it is as the all-powerful presence of a circular performative.
Admittedly, by highlighting the performative dimension of legitimacy claims, Weber has provided powerful methodological tools towards a critique of legitimation as a process of establishing domination. This particular aspect, partly influenced by Marx and Engels' theory of ideology, concerns in priority the legitimacy of State sovereignty, now envisaged as a social construct by definition unnatural. However, as Derrida critically demonstrated in his late writings, traditional theories of performativity can only confirm and repeat (performatively) legitimizing conventions and legitimized power structures. Analogically, and despite its subversive potentialities, Weber's representation of State sovereignty in its legitimate form remains that of a centralised, indivisible and discretionary principle of decision, a monopolistic and powerful arkhē exerting violence within the limits of a clearly delineated territory. As such, the sociological formalization of legitimacy and the conceptuality attached to it cannot be said to constitute a purely descriptive, axiologically neutral theoretical model: the logic of legitimacy already offers a specific orientation and interpretation with epistemic and practical consequences, that is to say that it itself carries a certain legitimacy and performativity (with legitimizing-performative effects). This dimension has been particularly manifest in the methodology and protocols of International Relations as a discipline (notably, but not only, through its "Realist" strand): emphasis on power relations and balance of power, structuring categories of inside/outside, focus on decision-making, etc. Considering the efforts to escape "methodological nationalism" (Beck) and the "territorial trap" (Agnew), and in spite of undeniable progress achieved over the last few decades, it is not certain that International Relations and political science have been able to go beyond a certain metaphysics of presence and a logic of sovereignty, which contaminate all hermeneutics of power and sociologies of domination, even the most "critical" ones.
Nevertheless, Weber's theory of legitimacy also lays the foundations for a potent deconstruction of sovereignty. In inscribing an obligation towards the other at the heart of Kant's law of autonomy, Weber seems to suggest that the logic of legitimacy signifies a form of pre-subjective sociality, and therefore a pre-sovereign violence, figure of différance. As a rule, legitimacy blurs the boundary between autonomy and heteronomy of the subject, thus challenging the idea of sovereign ipseity by invoking an undecidable politicality: at its core, legitimacy must be without origin or arkhē, always-already divided. I argue that this originary sociality, pre-performative in nature, constitutes the specific violence of legitimacy, an arche-originary violence which precedes and conditions all other forms of sovereignty, power or domination. We are thus able to elaborate a new 'concept' of legitimacy: the unconditional call of a legitimacy-to-come, an unrecognizable 'force of legitimacy', the force of law of an arche-originary bound (or gage) exceeding the limits of traditional sovereignty and legitimacy.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, International Relations, and 38 more
In his seminal essay "Fors" (1976), Derrida conducted a reflection on the notion of secrecy in relation to psychoanalysis: under the form of the crypt, the subject receives and carries, at a subconscious level, that which should not be... more
In his seminal essay "Fors" (1976), Derrida conducted a reflection on the notion of secrecy in relation to psychoanalysis: under the form of the crypt, the subject receives and carries, at a subconscious level, that which should not be shared or even mentioned. Through this inner repression, the secret thus becomes an internalised locus of violent exclusion, a constitutive other blurring the boundary between inside and outside. But there is more: Derrida argues that cryptic repression should be understood, ultimately, through the supplementary fold of a mise en abyme. Indeed, the secret never belongs to an individual subject: in the safe of the crypt I might always enclose the traces of someone else's secret, be it my father's or my mother's, a trans-generational family secret that I cannot unravel because it was never mine. Unfolding secrecy within secrecy, this specific type of crypt implies that I may host the secret of something that I was never even aware of, either at a conscious or subconscious level: this secret without origin signifies a powerful haunting, an otherness which cannot be exorcised, that Derrida names the ghost.
I argue that this spectral economy involves a deconstruction of hermeneutics of power. For instance, Foucault's definition of power as "actions over potential actions" ("The Subject and Power", 1982) relies on the notion that power and knowledge (and therefore secrecy) can be strategically instrumentalised in view of gaining obedience and control. Foucault points to a form of secrecy that can be located, analysed, and accounted for from the perspective of a critical instance, a krinein of some sort. This suggests a calculability, even imperfect, of practical and discursive relations on an intersubjective basis. However, I argue that Derrida's logic of ghostly secrecy constitutes a pre-subjective, pre-performative violence, which subverts the calculation of the subject before its origin. This arche-originary violence, involving an originary, limitless performativity, carries huge juridico-political implications: it inscribes the law of the other before the subject and before his power of decision. I articulate this reading of the notion of secrecy to some of Derrida's later ethico-political writings, by stressing the role of secrecy in the definition and efficacy of political legitimacy, notably that of the "mystical foundation" of the "force of law".
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In guise of an abstract, here is a quote by Derrida, from 'Rogues' (xii, 2003): "What is 'coming to pass' or 'happening' [arrive] today in techno-science, in international law, in ethico-juridical reason, in political practices and... more
In guise of an abstract, here is a quote by Derrida, from 'Rogues' (xii, 2003):

"What is 'coming to pass' or 'happening' [arrive] today in techno-science, in international law, in ethico-juridical reason, in political practices and rhetorical strategies? What happens when we put to work within them the concept and the name of sovereignty, especially when this concept and this name, in the power of their heritage and of their onto-theological fiction, appear less legitimate than ever?

What is happening to the notions of the “political” and of “war” (whether world war, war between nation-states, civil war, or even so-called partisan war)? What happens to the notion of “terrorism” (whether national or international) when the old phantom of sovereignty loses its credibility? For this has been happening for longer than is often believed, although it is happening today in a new way and at a different pace."
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Semiotics, European History, Sociology, Political Sociology, and 76 more
Research Interests:
In this 2004 interview — translated into English by Thomas Clément Mercier, and published here in its entirety for the first time — Jacques Derrida reflects upon his practices of writing and teaching, about the community of his readers,... more
In this 2004 interview — translated into English by Thomas Clément Mercier, and published here in its entirety for the first time — Jacques Derrida reflects upon his practices of writing and teaching, about the community of his readers, and explores questions related to corporeity and textuality, sexual difference, desire, political dissidence, Marxism, violence, performativity and the event, truth, interpretation, transmission and translation. In the course of the interview, Derrida discusses the work of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Blanchot, Hélène Cixous, Jean Genet, Paul Celan, and many others.
The full interview is available in Parallax, at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2019.1570603
Cette conversation entre Jacques DERRIDA et Richard KEARNEY, inédite en français, s'est tenue à New York le 16 octobre 2001. L'entretien, ici traduit par Thomas Clément MERCIER, est disponible en libre accès dans le premier numéro de la... more
Cette conversation entre Jacques DERRIDA et Richard KEARNEY, inédite en français, s'est tenue à New York le 16 octobre 2001. L'entretien, ici traduit par Thomas Clément MERCIER, est disponible en libre accès dans le premier numéro de la Revue ITER: http://lire-travailler-derrida.org/revue/terreur-et-religion-pour-une-politique-a-venir-dialogue-de-jacques-derrida-avec-richard-kearney/
Dans cet entretien, marqué bien entendu par les attentats dits "du 11 Septembre", l’immédiateté du contexte historique laisse peu à peu la place à une réflexion sur des questions plus larges ayant trait au rapport entre violence, politique et religion. Derrida y marque non seulement la nécessité de négocier, dans l’espace et le temps, entre des instances dont le statut relève des concepts classiques du politique, mais aussi de maintenir une référence à une autre politique et religion à venir. Il propose alors de repenser le politique et le religieux tout autrement, en référence à 'khôra', au-delà des concepts traditionnels de l’État et du droit international, au-delà de la citoyenneté et du cosmopolitisme.
A lot has been written on Derrida’s deconstructive reading of Austin’s concept of performativity. However, one aspect has been neglected: why does performativity rely on the notion of ‘force’, and which force are we here talking about?... more
A lot has been written on Derrida’s deconstructive reading of Austin’s concept of performativity. However, one aspect has been neglected: why does performativity rely on the notion of ‘force’, and which force are we here talking about? Here, I analyse Derrida’s articulation between performativity and the event, and show that his emphasis on force covers very different significations than Austin’s or Butler's.
For Austin, the force of the performative operates as an enforcement, and implies a repetition and validation of prior conditions of legitimation. In other words, the force of the performative replaces the notion of truth (attached to constatives), resulting in what Austin names the ‘felicity’ or ‘success’ of the performative. According to Derrida, this association between force and success through performative repetition already supposes a subsequent reconstruction, that is, a performative ontologisation of the performative (thus conceived as performative power). But the performative, if it is to truly produce an event, must by definition exceed prior conditions of validation, and thus transform, in its performance, the conditions of validity that it was meant to repeat.
I then explore further the sort of 'force' which Derrida describes as the 'force of the event', a force in the face of which 'performative force' must fail. I analyse what this self-deconstructive representation of force implies with respect to gender-performativity, by elaborating on Derrida’s notion of "queer", understood as a non-ontological excess internal to ontology. This distinguishes Derrida’s notion of performative force from Butler’s, which maintains an ontological dichotomy between success and failure by reintroducing the (Foucauldian) distinction between power and resistance.
This is the text of a talk I gave at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference, in Oslo in September 2017. The talk outlines a number of questions or problems related to the discourse of biopolitics, and... more
This is the text of a talk I gave at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference, in Oslo in September 2017. The talk outlines a number of questions or problems related to the discourse of biopolitics, and more particularly that of an ‘affirmative biopolitics’, which was the main topic of the panel’s section, organized by Sergei Prozorov and Mika Ojakangas. In my talk I presented a series of reflections on the work of Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Catherine Malabou.
The talk was meant to function as a supplement or appendix to my paper ‘Resisting the Present: Biopower in the Face of the Event (Some Notes on Monstrous Lives)’, which was later published in CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2019.
The paper and the talk can be read as contributions to the current debate on ‘biodeconstruction’ inaugurated by Francesco Vitale’s seminal work on Derrida’s recently published seminar La vie la mort (1975–1976). A translation of Derrida’s seminar — Life Death — will be published in June 2020 (translation by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas).
In its hegemonic definition, biopolitical governmentality is characterised by a seemingly infinite capacity of expansion, susceptible to colonise the landscape and timescape of the living present in the name of capitalistic productivity.... more
In its hegemonic definition, biopolitical governmentality is characterised by a seemingly infinite capacity of expansion, susceptible to colonise the landscape and timescape of the living present in the name of capitalistic productivity. Indeed, the main trait of biopower is its normative, legal and political plasticity, allowing it to reappropriate critiques and resistances by appealing to bioethical efficacy and biological accuracy. Under these circumstances, how can we invent rebellious forms-of-life and alternative temporalities escaping biopolitical normativity?

In this paper, I interrogate the theoretical presuppositions of biopolitical rationality. I provide a deconstruction of the conceptual and temporal structures upholding the notion of biopolitics, in view of laying the ground for new forms of resistance. The articulation between life and power has a long philosophical history, which has been largely ignored by social theorists and political thinkers using biopolitics as an interpretative model. I wish to re-inscribe this model within the tradition of critical materialism, by articulating Foucault’s ‘critical ontology’ to Marx & Engels’s conception of ‘real life’ and to recent philosophical works on biological plasticity (Malabou). In these discourses, the logic of biopower depends on a representation of life – ‘the living’ – as living present. Biopower is thus anchored in the authority of the present, that is to say, of being-as-presence (ontology); it sustains presentist definitions of life and materiality, be it under the form of a ‘plastic’ ontology. By drawing on Derrida’s notions such as ‘spectrality’ and ‘life-death’, I wish to deconstruct these discourses on life and materiality, and to dissociate them from their ontological grounding, in order to suggest new paths of resistance to biopower. This concerns the im-possibility of a politics of the event, hospitable to otherly life forms — life-beyond-life — and to anachronistic timescapes.

In order to substantiate my argument, I follow the tracks of “the monster” in the works of Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Malabou. Foucault tells us that the monster is a singular figure, parasitic and subversive, beckoning a life beyond life, at once organic and non-organic, located at the limit between the normal and the exceptional, and exceeding the scope of biopolitical normativity in both theoretical and practical terms. It exists at the intersection of what Foucault names “the symbolics of blood” and “the analytics of sex”. As such, it materialises a self-transformative dimension of the living which remains, I argue, inadequate to Malabou’s representation of plasticity. The monstrous is a self-deconstructive motif calling for another biopolitical rationality, before or beyond ontological reductions or reconstructions.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Queer Studies, and 127 more
In this paper, I discuss contemporary readings of Machiavelli (styled ‘radical’) that perceive in his work the foundations for what they conceive as a political ontology — an ontology based on force, potency and conflictuality. I contest... more
In this paper, I discuss contemporary readings of Machiavelli (styled ‘radical’) that perceive in his work the foundations for what they conceive as a political ontology — an ontology based on force, potency and conflictuality. I contest this interpretation, both for philological and theoretical reasons. Through readings of Foucault, Deleuze, Esposito, Negri and Abensour (among others), I interrogate the notion of Machiavelli’s ‘realism’, and challenge the traditional articulation between ‘force’ and ‘reality’ with reference to Derrida's writings on force, potency and virtuality. This essay takes aim not only at the fashionable notion of ‘political ontology’, but also at the use that is made of it in allegedly progressive circles within disciplines such as political science and International Relations.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Queer Studies, and 128 more
Ce texte présente un ensemble de réflexions sur la pensée décoloniale et sur le travail de Jacques Derrida — en particulier autour du concept de "différence coloniale" tel que Walter Mignolo l'oppose à la philosophie occidentale, y... more
Ce texte présente un ensemble de réflexions sur la pensée décoloniale et sur le travail de Jacques Derrida — en particulier autour du concept de "différence coloniale" tel que Walter Mignolo l'oppose à la philosophie occidentale, y compris à la déconstruction.
Il s'agit d'une communication donnée à l'occasion de l'École d'Été du groupe de recherche EuroPhilosophie. La rencontre a eu lieu à l'Université Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès du 24 au 27 août 2016, avec comme thème général "Philosophies Européennes et Décolonisation de la Pensée". Le titre initial de ma communication était "Déconstruction et Colonialité: Penser la singularité au-delà du principe de pouvoir".
Research Interests:
Sociology, Social Theory, International Relations, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 48 more
After a long period of suspicion towards universalism, the notion of cosmopolitanism has received a renewed interest from critical theorists in the early 2000s. In this lecture, I expose and compare Marx's and Schmitt's critiques of... more
After a long period of suspicion towards universalism, the notion of cosmopolitanism has received a renewed interest from critical theorists in the early 2000s. In this lecture, I expose and compare Marx's and Schmitt's critiques of cosmopolitanism, as well as their legacies in critical theory. Then, I turn to Balibar’s and Derrida’s accounts of cosmopolitics and analyse their divergence on the articulation between universality, violence, and political ontology.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Anthropology, and 130 more
In this paper, I deconstruct the uncanny articulation, within political theory, between the notion of legitimation and that of success. I focus mainly on two examples. In Max Weber's sociology of legitimacy, the State is defined as the... more
In this paper, I deconstruct the uncanny articulation, within political theory, between the notion of legitimation and that of success. I focus mainly on two examples. In Max Weber's sociology of legitimacy, the State is defined as the administrative organisation successfully claiming the monopoly of legitimate violence on a given territory — the notion of legitimacy is thus interlinked with that of success ("Erfolg"). In a similar manner, traditional theories of performativity (starting with J.L. Austin's) have posited the felicity or success of the performative as a condition for its effective power and its interpretability. In the performance of its own event, the performative may instantiate itself by producing the conditions of its own legitimation, thus presenting itself as successful.

In the wake of Jacques Derrida's and Judith Butler's critiques of Austin, I deconstruct this theoretical reflex, by showing that the reliance on the concept of success is, in itself, profoundly ontological. I contend that ethics should concern itself with the irreducible fallibility of legitimacy and performatives, beyond metaphysics of success and performative ontology.

This emphasis on failure should constitute, I believe, a paradigm shift in performativity studies and IR theory. Cynthia Weber's work on "queer failure" in relation to IR helps me elaborate the notion of legitimation-to-come as a non-ontological 'concept', beyond the success/failure dichotomy. Pursuing the efforts of Cynthia Weber and Rob Walker, I sketch the implications of this archi-performative legitimacy with respect to the protocols of legitimation of International relations theory, through an analysis of their persistent ontological presuppositions.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, International Relations, and 45 more
"Power is war, the continuation of war by other means": Foucault's famous phrase is indubitably memorable, though extremely problematic. Elaborated during his 1976 lectures, Society Must Be Defended, this work hypothesis theorises "basic... more
"Power is war, the continuation of war by other means": Foucault's famous phrase is indubitably memorable, though extremely problematic. Elaborated during his 1976 lectures, Society Must Be Defended, this work hypothesis theorises "basic warfare" [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of all social and political relations: following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this methodological approach as a purely descriptive discourse on the reality of warlike politics, supposedly inaccessible to the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes' theory of state sovereignty being here the prime example).

However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of the notions of power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: "actions over potential actions".

I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault's hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in "Heidegger's Ear", an 'anthropolemology'. However, I will demonstrate that all conceptualisation of violence or power (all that Heidegger, in his reading of Heraclites, defines as "pólemos") implies its own deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure suggests the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, and opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the arche-originary force of différance. Such force, unconditional by definition, goes to subvert Foucault's concept of power, and suggests the arche-violence of a hyper-sovereignty located before or beyond all hermeneutics of power/knowledge.
In Politics of Friendship, Derrida elaborates the notion of aimance, usually translated as 'lovence', although Balibar considers the term 'amity' as a fair approximation. Aimance designates a universal structure of experience which... more
In Politics of Friendship, Derrida elaborates the notion of aimance, usually translated as 'lovence', although Balibar considers the term 'amity' as a fair approximation. Aimance designates a universal structure of experience which precedes and subverts the concept of friendship in its Western acceptation, thus exceeding the limits of determined and conditional figures such as philia, amicitia, amitié, etc. I will argue that, far from constituting a mere theoretical abstraction, aimance (conceived as unconditional friendship) allows a performative-transformative reframing of Western politics, and a profound deconstruction of IR.
First, aimance subverts the masculine codes of traditional friendship and fraternalism underlying European and Western democratic politics, by re-injecting the question of sexual difference (or différance) at the heart of their inherent phallocentrism. Secondly, aimance signifies both loving and being-loved, therefore unsettling the activity/passivity dichotomy; aimance thus designates a pre-subjective experience, which undermines traditional hermeneutics of power founded on the subject-object dualism. Hence, aimance, paradoxically, does not suppress violence; it demands an asymmetric, non-homogeneous conception of equality, open to the force of infinite alterity (hospitality). This messianic call precedes and conditions all secondary forms of politicality or conflictuality.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Social Theory, Gender Studies, International Relations, and 41 more
Research Interests:
"The Violence of Legitimacy. Democracy, Power, Antagonism" offers a deconstructive reading of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, with a focus on democratic politics and critical IR theory. The violence-legitimacy "couple"... more
"The Violence of Legitimacy. Democracy, Power, Antagonism" offers a deconstructive reading of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, with a focus on democratic politics and critical IR theory.

The violence-legitimacy "couple" is a traditional staple in dominant strands of political theory, relying as they do on the possibility to distinguish rigorously between legitimate violence (power) and illegitimate violence. By contrast, and drawing on Derrida's deconstructive approach to performativity, I argue that violence and legitimacy are co-constitutive, both originating from the violence of an "originary performativity." This originary force implies a redefinition of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, now exceeding hermeneutics of power and metaphysics of presence.
The bulk of my thesis consists in contrasting this deconstructive reading of performativity to critical strands of political theory which posited the partition between legitimate power and illegitimate violence in the context of democratic politics: Marx & Engels' theory of ideology, Weber's sociology of legitimacy, Schmitt's onto-theological politics, Foucault's critical epistemology, Mouffe's radical democracy, and Balibar's dialectics of Gewalt.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, Social Theory, and 130 more
"The Violence of Legitimacy. Democracy, Power, Antagonism" offers a deconstructive reading of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, with a focus on democratic politics and critical IR theory. The violence-legitimacy "couple"... more
"The Violence of Legitimacy. Democracy, Power, Antagonism" offers a deconstructive reading of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, with a focus on democratic politics and critical IR theory.

The violence-legitimacy "couple" is a traditional staple in dominant strands of political theory, relying as they do on the possibility to distinguish rigorously between legitimate violence (power) and illegitimate violence. By contrast, and drawing on Derrida's deconstructive approach to performativity, I argue that violence and legitimacy are co-constitutive, both originating from the violence of an "originary performativity." This originary force implies a redefinition of the articulation between violence and legitimacy, now exceeding hermeneutics of power and metaphysics of presence.
The bulk of my thesis consists in contrasting this deconstructive reading of performativity to critical strands of political theory which posited the partition between legitimate power and illegitimate violence in the context of democratic politics: Marx & Engels' theory of ideology, Weber's sociology of legitimacy, Schmitt's onto-theological politics, Foucault's critical epistemology, Mouffe's radical democracy, and Balibar's dialectics of Gewalt.

This text was initially established as brief summary of my PhD thesis. It presents its overall argument, elements of problematisation, and a chapter outline.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, and 168 more
In this text, I discuss Jacques Derrida's late writings on the paradoxical complicity and reciprocal resistance between psychoanalysis and political theory with respect to socio-political notions such as sovereignty and legitimacy.... more
In this text, I discuss Jacques Derrida's late writings on the paradoxical complicity and reciprocal resistance between psychoanalysis and political theory with respect to socio-political notions such as sovereignty and legitimacy. Through an analysis of violence, ipseity, and self-difference in those disciplines, I sketch a methodological problematisation of theory and disciplinarity beyond power and beyond performativity. I try to open up the possibility for another thinking of legitimacy, before and beyond sovereign ipseity; in this I follow but also try to exceed the protocols of legitimation of political theory and psychoanalysis. I strive to be, as Derrida says, 'faithful-unfaithful' to their contradictory injunctions.

I wrote this text in 2015 as a preface to my PhD Thesis, 'The Violence of Legitimacy: Democracy, Power, Antagonism', but ended up not including it in the final version. This preface was initially meant as a meditation on disciplinarity, and as a justification for the transdisciplinary character of my study.
This is the introduction to my PhD thesis, "The Violence of Legitimacy: Democracy, Power, Antagonism", in which I offer a deconstructive reading of the violence-legitimacy 'couple' in the context of democratic theory and International... more
This is the introduction to my PhD thesis, "The Violence of Legitimacy: Democracy, Power, Antagonism", in which I offer a deconstructive reading of the violence-legitimacy 'couple' in the context of democratic theory and International Relations theory.

On the basis of my reading of Derrida, I propose new interpretative models in order to understand the violence consubstantial with democratic power, without falling into the traps of ideology and legitimacy. In other words: how may we criticise democratic violence without repeating the self-legitimating discourses and categories which have been imposed on us through dispositives of power or structures of domination? How may we 'invent' something, something truly different? And what conception of democratic legitimacy could help us think something like a properly democratic 'event' — beyond power, antagonism, and performativity? and, maybe, beyond legitimacy?

My starting point is to analyse and deconstruct the concept of legitimacy — first through a historical overview and a reflection in conceptual terms, then through a reading of its most famous theoretician, Max Weber. This leads me to reflect on the conditions of possibility of legitimacy, which inseparably binds it to violence and conflictuality. I then discuss agonistic theories of democracy: chiefly Connolly, Laclau & Mouffe, Honig, and Balibar. These authors offer an intricate articulation between democratic legitimacy and conflictuality, but do they actually define violence and antagonism in the context of democracy? On these premises, I try to conceive a more originary articulation between violence of legitimacy by clarifying Derrida's notions of 'economy of violence' and 'arche-violence'. Finally, after introducing to my following chapters, I analyse the notion of 'critique' in its articulation to power and violence: this involves a discussion of Weber and Balibar's characterisation of democratic politics as a 'tragic' negotiation with its own violence.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Strategy (Military Science), and 216 more