RAULET: How should we begin? I have had two questions in mind. First, what is the origin of this global term, "post-structuralism"? FOUCAULT: First, none of the protagonists in the structuralist movement -- and none of those who, willingly or otherwise, were dubbed structuralists -- knew very clearly what it was all about. Certainly, those who were applying structural methods in very precise disciplines such as linguistics and comparative mythology knew what was structuralism, but as soon as one strayed from (...) these very precise disciplines, nobody knew exactly what it was. I am not sure how interesting it would be to attempt a redefinition of what was known, at the time, as structuralism. (shrink)

Critical Cosmology takes up the task of establishing the much needed philosophical tools to think globalization by reading Kant's refoundation of ...

Globalization is more than an economic or geopolitical matter; it is above all a new culture and, as such, it requires philosophical inquiry to determine if it represents a 20th century revolution in thinking not unlike the Kantian Revolution represented to the 18th century. Critical Cosmology takes up the task of establishing the much needed philosophical tools to 'think' globalization by reading Kant's refoundation of cosmopolitanism as a political, not moral, text.

The financial crisis which recently occurred is the epiphenomenon of a structural crisis of advanced capitalism. Although it referred to a very different context the diagnosis made by Habermas in his work Legitimationsprobleme des Spätkapitalismus , published in 1973, remains a very useful key in order to understand the irreducibility of social policy and the way the post-Fordist capitalism assumes the mediation between the economic and the social sphere — that is, how it deals with both the deficit of rationality (...) and the deficit of legitimacy. Instead of being the political expression of social relations the neo-liberal system decouples labour and capital and, governed by financial markets, disconnects the social and the political rights and undermines the possibility of a true foundation of citizenship. In other words, the ‘refeudalization’ Habermas had reported as early as in Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (1962) remains quite topical. (shrink)

What is the nature of the relation between self-presentation and political representation? Drawing on Simmel and Plessner this article tries to define the constitutive function of the role and the danger of self-expression as well as of a total transparency. Both of them are inhabited by a pathological excess of representation which undermines what it pretends to aim at: democracy.

Pour Gérard Raulet, le problème politique le plus urgent qui se pose aux républiques contemporaines, est celui de l’intégration. Face à l’échec de l’institution scolaire pour assumer cette fonction, l’auteur propose une relecture de Kant afin d’approfondir sa réflexion sur la redéfinition de la citoyenneté contemporaine. Contrairement à l’analyse ultra-républicaine qu’il avait faite de cette pensée dans un récent ouvrage, l’auteur prend une position plus modérée et plus pragmatique qu’il nomme le républicanisme authentique. Cette posture idéologique l’amène à relire Kant (...) dans une perspective plus globale. Cette réflexion se termine sur une question politique névralgique : comment les républiques contemporaines peuvent-elle revoir leur politique d’intégration, afin de respecter davantage le droit à la différence, sans mettre en danger l’unité de la nation? (shrink)

This text is a discussion of Walter Benjamin’s speculation on a so called “mimetic faculty” as well as a critical position to the debate between Philosophical Anthropology and Critical Theory which can be considered as insufficient until now. Although Axel Honneth regards it as rather marginal, Benjamin’s approach is much more radical than his own paradigm of recognition – and this not only in anthropological respect but also with regard to the core of the problem: the reification and the domination (...) of the form of commodity. (shrink)

Dans une lettre du 10 novembre 1938, Adorno a formulé envers l’investigation benjaminienne des mythologies modernes des griefs radicaux et terribles : la description y prendrait l’allure d’« un pouvoir d’illumination presque superstitieux » et ne parviendrait pas, malgré ses efforts louables pour « payer tribut au marxisme », à mettre en œuvre une approche véritablement dialectique de la phénoménologie de la modernité. Bref, Benjamin aurait succombé au charme des phénomènes mythiques qu’il dé...