ZAKIYYAH IMAN JACKSON Zakiyyah Iman Jackson is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Professor Jackson is the author of Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. Her research explores the literary and figurative aspects of Western philosophical and scientific discourse and investigates the engagement of African diasporic literature and visual culture with the historical concerns, knowledge claims, and rhetoric of Western science and philosophy. Jackson has published in Feminist Studies; Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Science; Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; South Atlantic Quarterly (SAQ); e-flux; and twice in Gay and Lesbian Quarterly (GLQ).

Excerpt from Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan, (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press, 2022). Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II KARMA BEN-JOHANAN 23 October 2023 PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Karma Ben-Johanan; Image Credit: Two Nice Jewish Boys 2njb.com Excerpt from Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan, (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press, 2022). The events of the twentieth century shook Western civilization to its core. The ruin of two world wars—especially the horrors of World War II, with its ideologically justified bloodshed and institutionalized slaughter of those regarded as Others, perpetrated by the very paragons of high European culture—had left Europe reeling from a sense of moral failure. The cultural achievements of the century before had all too easily given way to barbarity. Regard for the Other became the cornerstone of the West’s attempt to rebuild a moral foundation and redefine its values. Where universal reason, progress, and objective truth had once commanded center stage, the protagonists in the postwar period were now pluralism and the discourse of human rights. In view of the iniquities that had defiled Europe, the Holocaust in particular, the Christian world had to contend with difficult and penetrating questions: Why had the Christian churches failed to save Europe from the abyss of cruelty? Had they fallen prey to secular regimes, or had Europe’s Christian legacy itself sown the seeds of destruction? Was it even possible to “speak theology” after such a catastrophe, or was it better to finally depart from doctrinal obsessions? In the latter half of the twentieth century, Western Christianity grappled with the ethical challenge posed by—to use Emmanuel Levinas’s words—the face of the Other. Yet those same Others—that is, the Jews—were also called on to adjust to the new ethical challenge that had crystallized in response to their torment. Which face should Jews present to the West, with its new moral sensibilities? Must that face remain anguished and subjugated, or was it now permissible to bare some teeth? And when facing their own Others—when facing Christians—must Jews assimilate the West’s new ethical imperative and play by the rules formulated by those who had only yesterday been their murderers? Would the Jews embrace the lessons that had been learned from their own torment, or would they refuse, once again, to participate in the Western project, reluctant to adopt the new gospel of reconciliation as their own? Jacob’s Younger Brother focuses on the relation to the Other as a key component in the consolidation of religious identities in the second half of the twentieth century. It concentrates on mutual perceptions of Christians and Jews after they rose from the debacle of the world wars and reorganized themselves in a postmodern, multicultural, and liberal reality in which Jews have become sovereign in their own state and the Catholic Church has largely accepted the separation of church and state and withdrawn from many of its historical political aspirations. It is in this context that the book discusses the religious literatures of two specific communities: the Roman Catholic community and the Orthodox Jewish community. Under the term Roman Catholic, I subsume the Christian communities that see themselves as subject to the spiritual authority of the pope. Under the term Orthodox Jewish, I subsume a diverse group of Jewish communities (from Modern Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox) that regard themselves as faithful representatives of Jewish tradition and as having an obligation to preserve it, especially through their commitment to halakha—the evolved (and evolving) body of laws, derived from the written and the oral Torah, that guide Jewish life and religious observance. I chose to focus on these communities for several reasons. First, they have tremendous influence on contemporary religious identities. The Catholic Church is one of the most influential religious institutions in the world, and Jewish Orthodoxy fills a crucial role in defining Jewish identity for Jews both inside and outside the Orthodox community. In Israel, it holds a hegemonic position. Second, there is a prominent common denominator that makes looking at these otherwise so different communities together eye-opening: Orthodox Jewish and Catholic leaders negotiate their traditions in the modern setting in a similar way. Unlike other Christian and Jewish denominations that often openly reject significant swaths of their traditions that are incompatible with contemporary value systems, Orthodox rabbis and Catholic priests and theologians define themselves as fully obligated to maintain the entire scope of their religious heritage. They can resort only to reinterpretation, not rejection. Finally, the Christian-Jewish dialogue of recent decades is often represented by the images of a cardinal in a red cape and a bearded Orthodox rabbi—probably because these two specific communities symbolize “thick,” traditional religious identities and are associated in Western memory with the historical Christian-Jewish rivalry that the contemporary phase of modernity seeks to solve. The problematization of this image—of religious tradition as the arena of conflict and of contemporary dialogue as this conflict’s ultimate overcoming—is one of the objectives of this book. The choice to focus on Catholic Christianity and Orthodox Judaism does not imply that Orthodox Jewish and Roman Catholic mutual perceptions are the only factors that define the direction of the Christian-Jewish relationship today, nor that these communities are more important than others. There are other fascinating and lively aspects of this relationship that are worthy of their own research. This work focuses on the relations between Jews and Christians in the age of reconciliation. More specifically, it concentrates on the time between the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI (2013).1 Nevertheless, several sections of the book are dedicated to earlier periods in the twentieth century, revolving especially around the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and the foundation of the State of Israel. Developments that occurred later than 2013 are discussed only briefly, in the Epilogue. In the fourth paragraph of Nostra Aetate, the Catholic Church turned its back on its anti-Jewish heritage and paved the way toward rapprochement between the church and the Jewish people. The political independence of Jews in Israel has also removed many of the problems that characterized Christian-Jewish coexistence in the past. Yet these fundamental changes have not rescinded the ambivalence that has characterized the Christian-Jewish relationship throughout history. For many Catholics, the reconciliation with the Jews caused a theological avalanche and disorder. For many Orthodox Jews, the demand to adapt themselves to the conciliatory perceptions of Christians seemed to be another attempt to force a Christian agenda and a Christian timetable on them, this time with a liberal flavor. The process of reconciliation led, in both cases, to complex consequences. This book inquires into the elements that constitute the Christian-Jewish rapprochement of recent decades and the identity transformations that that rapprochement has demanded from each of the parties. The book examines the discourse within each of the religious communities with respect to the other—that is, what Orthodox Jewish rabbis tell Jews about Christianity, and what Catholic theologians and priests tell Christians about Judaism. This focus reveals layers within the Christian-Jewish relationship that do not find expression in the explicit interreligious dialogue that is currently taking place between Jewish and Christian official representatives and that is careful about political correctness. I am interested mainly in the closed conversations in which one community discusses the other without diplomatic considerations. To describe these internal discourses within both faith communities, I analyze a diverse body of sources that spans magisterial pronouncements, official declarations, journal articles, well-known halakhic rulings, and obscure internet discussions. I evaluate the texts not according to their official standing but according to the weight they carry in Catholic and Orthodox Jewish discourses as a whole. This strategy is central to the book, since it brings to the surface the tensions between what is done and thought officially and what is done and thought unofficially, a tension that is present in both communities’ preoccupations with the relationship between them. I do not pretend to cover the entire set of opinions of all Orthodox Jewish and Catholic thinkers on the issue. My objective in writing this book was to extract dominant trajectories out of a vast mixture of diverse phenomena. Moreover, I dedicate particular attention to the aspects of Orthodox Jewish and Catholic reciprocal perceptions that have remained underexplored in contemporary scholarship. My assumption is that the fruitful and overt dialogue that has been taking place between Orthodox Jewish rabbis and Catholic priests and theologians in the last decades is already known to the reader. The book thus seeks to bring to the surface precisely the points of resistance to Christian-Jewish dialogue, especially within the Orthodox Jewish world, and the sophisticated means by which the deepest questions raised by reconciliation are avoided, especially within the Catholic world. In other words, this book is about the problems of rapprochement and not about its successes. The book, then, tells two different stories, a Catholic one and an Orthodox Jewish one, that progress in parallel and often with the agents of each group being unaware of the details of the other story. Related Articles Anti - “Jewish” ELAD LAPIDOT Read Article On the eternal return of anti-Semitism: A dialogue between Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Stéphane Habib DANIELLE COHEN-LEVINAS & STÉPHANE HABIB Read Article

DOROTHÉE LEGRAND Dorothée Legrand is a researcher in philosophy (CNRS) affiliated to the Husserl Archives (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université Sciences et Lettres de Paris). She is also a psychologist psychoanalyst (IHEP - Institut des Hautes Etudes en Psychanalyse), and practices in private practice and with exiled people with the associations MigrENS and Le Chêne et l'Hibiscus. Since 2014, she leads the seminar "Articulations philosophiques et psychanalytiques" at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She is the author of Ecrire l'absence - Au bord de la nuit , published by Hermann in 2019. Exile: A world where the Other can appear 3 April 2022 Read Article

Etienne Balibar is the most important Marxist philosopher today and it is precisely for this reason that he continues to present sensitive critiques of Marxist models. Balibar has challenged and shaken the philosophy of many hardened myths of our time, including the nation-state. Of Ambivalent Insurrections: Interview with Etienne Balibar IVICA MLADENOVIĆ and ZONA ZARIĆ with ETIENNE BALIBAR 14 January 2021 PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Etienne Balibar; Image credit: FRANCE 24, http://cas.uniri.hr and Verso Books Etienne Balibar is the most important Marxist philosopher today. He continues to present sensitive critiques of Marxist models. Balibar has challenged and shaken many hardened myths of our time, including the nation-state. This interview with Balibar for Philosophy World Democracy was conducted by Ivica Mladenović and Zona Zarić. The conversation ranges from the meaning of political engagement and intellectual engagement amidst the transformations of world powers; the limits of Althusser's project; the insurgent politics unfolding; xenophobia and national identities; and the “war on migration”. First of all (1) , we will start with the issue you will address in this conference, namely the issue of commitment. Several researchers have mentioned the fact that the term has different meanings in different languages. You speak of commitment in the Pascalian and Sartrean sense. What inspires this idea of engagement in your own experiences and your own philosophical references? EB : It was Sartre who reused Pascal’s vocabulary in what is considered to be the “founding” text of his theory of engagement (the 1945 “Presentation of Modern Times”), citing the famous formula: “you are embarked” ( vous êtes embarqués ). (2) This initiates a dialectic of opposites: you have to choose (wager; il faut parier ) (3) but in a situation that you do not choose. I think that the Pascal reference is fundamental, because it shows that in commitment it is not a simple decision of choosing between one way of life or work and another, but rather of what determines all life and all thought. It is therefore a question of transforming a contingency into a necessity. But the Pascal reference suggests that what is at stake there is redemption or damnation in a future life (a “beyond”), whereas it is the meaning of the present life, or what Marx called “the here below” (Diesseitigkeit). This raises the question of the consequences of commitment, which I think is the fundamental question. What do we do about the errors that commitment inevitably entails? From a Sartrean point of view, which is that of a freedom that is always “transcendent”, one can “free oneself” and sometimes this is what one must do. I think that the higher form of commitment consists in ‘obstinacy’ (as Negt and Kluge say in History and Obstinacy ), which does not mean blindly defending the same mistakes, but seeking the means to understand and rectify them for oneself and especially for the ‘we’ to which a commitment binds you. For commitment means to get outside of oneself. This is what I have tried to do in my dealings with the communist commitment - without being certain of having succeeded, of course. The idea of the end, or at least the decline of intellectuals, is defended in a significant number of theoretical texts published over the last thirty years. Do you agree with this thesis and what is, in your opinion, the role and place of the commitment of intellectuals in contemporary societies and in social struggles? EB : This question is meaningless without an investigation into and an effort to define what “intellectuals” mean. Two ideas seem to me to be important in this respect in the tradition to which I belong. On the one hand, that of Marx, who included the “division of manual and intellectual labour” among the great structures of domination throughout history, even if its modalities are constantly changing. On the other hand, that of Gramsci, who makes “intellectuals” (or at least some of them, with an “organic” capacity for intervention in social struggles) the builders of hegemony, power relations and subordination (or counter-powers defying the established order), but who also affirms the existence of an “intellectual function” that goes beyond the dominant institutional intellectuality and can be assumed by individuals from all social classes, particularly through their activitism. Today's ‘globalised’ capitalist society (which I call with others a society of ‘absolute capitalism’) is completely transforming the facts of this problem, using the resources of new technologies and communication by shifting the locus of real power in society. In fact, it no longer needs intellectuals in the “bourgeois” sense of the term (which includes academics, “independent” artists, even scholars dedicated to “pure” research, etc.). It is a non-bourgeois or post-bourgeois capitalist society. Hence, it is a paradoxical and perilous situation at the same time: intellectuals who want to be “critical” (the “traitors” to the existing order, as Marx said) must also, and perhaps first of all, defend their right to exist and the institutions that allow them to work. But they have no chance of doing so if they stick to a backward-looking definition of the intellectual (even if “committed”) and take a defensive position. The articulation with social struggles (which doesn’t mean only class struggle, but ecology, feminism, anti-racism and decolonialism, etc.) is therefore both an ethical-political choice and a way of bringing the “intellectual function” to life in society. Insurgencies are the driving force behind political change in today’s world, but ambivalence is their fundamental characteristic, and therefore the political problem they face. Your teacher and someone who fundamentally influenced your thought, Louis Althusser, published in June 1970 in the journal La Pensée one of his masterly texts, entitled “Ideology and Ideological Apparatus of the State”. In this text, the philosopher distinguishes between two state apparatuses: the repressive apparatus and the ideological apparatus of the state. The latter is less visible and is composed of all the institutions whose ideology it transmitted to the to the whole society by the classes that run the state. What is the difference between the ideological apparatus of the state of the 1970s of which Althusser spoke and the ideological apparatus of the state today? EB : That would be a very long discussion... I learned a lot from Althusser, both through his texts and in the form of a long friendship and personal collaboration. I am very happy to observe that some of his texts, often incomplete and aporetic, because they were elaborated under conditions of great personal and collective tension, continue to make people think or even act today. The opposition between “repressive apparatuses” and “ideological apparatuses”, which has often been criticised (notably by Foucault), shouldn’t be understood in a typological way (even if Althusser indulges in classifying large institutions into one or the other category) but rather in a dynamic or strategic way, as a sign of the fact that power relations oscillate between two poles and combine them in unequal proportions. But the most delicate and potentially the most fruitful problem concerns the reference made here to the state. This is obviously inherited from the notion of indirecta postestas , which belongs to the tradition of political theology (Bellarmin, Hobbes) and which in the 19th century led to the concept of ‘spiritual power’ in Auguste Comte. By combining it with the Marxist idea of “the dominant ideology as the ideology of the ruling class”, Althusser is able to take up the Gramscian program of an "enlargement of the concept of the state" which places the state in an occult way in the unconscious infrastructure of individual subjectivity itself. Louis Althusser in his study, Paris, April 26, 1978, Photo credit: Alain Mingam/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images But one may wonder whether this structural construction is still adequate (at least without variation) to the way in which subjectivities are formatted in current capitalism (which from this point of view is well characterized as ‘neo-liberalism’). A young Greek philosopher, Maria Kakogianni, proposed the concept of ‘ideological market apparatuses’ to record the novelty of the mechanisms of interpellation of individuals as ‘subjects’ in a society where ideological domination happens not so much through the imaginary of sovereignty as through that of competition and profitability to which one must 'adapt' (Barbara Stiegler). I’m tempted to think that we have here another indication of the emergence of a capitalism without bourgeoisie in the classical sense. It is clear from the current crisis engendered by the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis whose moral dimensions are as fundamental as the economic ones, that collective confusion and even despair result as much, if not more, from the feeling of the failure of the market than from the feeling of the failure of the state... Or rather the state is part of it, because states today are being instrumentalized by the market to a degree that is unprecedented. At the time when the Yellow Vests movement was at its zenith, you said that through this movement - which presents many contradictions - one notices the process where “the excluded include themselves”. How do you see this movement in the context of new class struggles in France? EB : As a “movement” which is not organized but individualized, the Yellow Vests have probably completed their trajectory. But the revolt against the effects of exclusion (deprivation of active citizenship at the same time as deprivation of recognition and social protection) of which it was an expression is not going to disappear. On the contrary, it may be thought that the extraordinarily unequal and authoritarian conditions in which society’s efforts to control the pandemic (which itself affects individuals and social groups in an extraordinarily unequal way, deepening what I have called the “anthropological differences”, that is, the differences that fracture the human species as such) are major new insurrectionary phenomena. But the question of what political direction they will take will be raised in an acute way. In the Yellow Vests movement, wherein many thought they could read a French form of the “populism” that was also developing elsewhere at the same time (think of Trump, Bolsonaro, etc.), it is remarkable that xenophobic and authoritarian tendencies were marginalized and eventually overcome by the participants themselves. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case. Insurgencies are the driving force behind political change in the world today, but ambivalence is their fundamental characteristic, and therefore the political problem they face. The articulation with social struggles (which doesn’t mean only class struggle, but ecology, feminism, anti-racism and decolonialism, etc.) is therefore both an ethical-political choice and a way of bringing the “intellectual function” to life in society. The last chapter of your latest book, Histoire interminable : d'un siècle l'autre, (Ecrits I), is a strategic plea for a socialist project for the 21st century. We have a question: if previous socialisms - those that materialized in the National Social State as you call it - thought politics in terms of pure power relations, what is the interpretative framework of the policy you propose for 21st century socialism? EB : In this final chapter of my book, I take care to underline the hypothetical nature of the descriptions and proposals that I put forward. All this is a matter for discussion and therefore an object of reflection. I have taken the risk of using a broad and even extremely broad (I have been reproached) concept of “socialism.” In it I turned Friedrich von Hayek’s thesis, which opposed liberalism as absolute market deregulation to all forms of state intervention in the economy, against itself; and I have included both the authoritarian and single-party planning models of “real socialism” as well as the social democratic formations of Western Europe and the United States (thus the New Deal), and the “development” policies of the Third World. In particular, it was a question of inscribing all these policies and the corresponding institutional innovations in the history of class struggles, to underline (after Keynes and Negri) the decisive function of the Russian Revolution of 1917 which inspired in capitalism the sense of urgency of social policies (which it has lost today...), and to understand that the capitalism in which we live today is not, according to the classic formula, an “antechamber of socialism”, but a postsocialist regime, which was built by deconstructing socialism in its different forms. Lenin in Paris Soviet poster ; Image credit: Wikimedia Commons I also stressed, as you recall, that these socialist experiences (very heterogeneous) have the common feature of having dealt with the social question in a national framework, which is also a result of their statism and explains the difficulty of rethinking the question of social transformation in a transnational way, by mobilizing the corresponding forces at this scale. Yet this is what is required by both the more or less reversible effects of “globalization” and the decidedly irreversible effects of the ecological disaster. A “socialism” of the 21st century (I have put the term in scare quotes, to show that it isn’t necessarily the best or the definitive term) should combine, in an open manner, objectives and forms of political action that are very heterogeneous and on very different scales: I have said, hypothetically international regulations (of labour, finance, environmental standards, armaments...), utopias (i.e. small- or large-scale experiments in new ways of living together, therefore of consumption, property, etc.), and finally insurrections (in the broadest sense, preferably non-violent at that). Last June, you co-signed an appeal alerting the public sphere to the fact that Emmanuel Macron is not fighting against racism, but against anti-racism in France. How do you see Emmanuel Macron's presidency as a whole? Is there something fundamentally new that he has brought to French political life compared to his predecessors? And how do you feel knowing that the French president has indicated that he was "very inspired" by your work and even wanted to do his thesis with you? EB : I think these statements by the then candidate Emmanuel Macron were part of a communication campaign, as were his even more insistent references to working with Paul Ricoeur. But after all, I have no reason and no way of determining the degree of his sincerity. So, I have nothing more to say on this. As for the combination in the discourse and action of a French political leader of modernizing and reforming rhetoric, possibly including a social component, with an instrumentalization of the xenophobic and, in fact, racist theme of ‘French identity’, it is absolutely nothing new. What is very worrying is that the President is making this shift to the right, and even to the extreme right (he is not the only one in French politics, but he is in power) at a time when a whole series of factors (including terrorism) may push public opinion towards an “active” form of institutional racism. This is the phenomenon which, a few years ago, I called “the impotence of the almighty”, one of the matrices of fascism in European history. The reception of wanderers in “human” conditions, that is, in accordance with international law, may pose problems of policing like any movement of peoples in exceptional situations. But it does not constitute a danger to the “security” of European countries or their communities. Its amalgamation with the issue of ‘terror’ is purely and simply racist (especially through its Islamophobic component). Three years ago, in an article in Le Monde , the European Union, threatened by technocratic authoritarianism and the rise of neo-fascism, was in danger of exploding. In that article, you called for a historical refoundation of Europe based on a new type of federation. In the meantime, the situation is only getting visibly worse. In your opinion, what is the most likely solution for the EU in the current situation: dissolution or re-foundation? And, can it be said that the destruction of former Yugoslavia can be seen as an indicator of Europe’s inability to face its own destiny? EB : My answer – forgive the evasion – is that I don't know. The destruction of Yugoslavia (I never use the expression “ex-Yugoslavia”...) is of course, among other things (because there are also internal causes, but we are here by definition in a topology where the internal and external constantly exchange places) a mark of this incapacity of Europe that you evoke. But there are many others. Brexit is another, of course, and above all the criminal management of the issue of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, before, during and after Merkel's initiative in 2015 (whose sabotage was carried out jointly by Hungary and France). Refugee from Syria holding a poster of Angela Merkel; Image credit: Deutsche Welle Some commentators welcomed the European Commission’s “recovery” program (including a very limited debt pooling component) in the face of the current crisis as a “Hamiltonian moment” – therefore federalist – for Europe. Let’s admit the comparison, although it covers all sorts of difficulties as to the nature of state construction in America in the 18th century and in Europe in the 21st century... In fact, nothing is at stake because, on the one hand, the question now being asked is what is a currency in the world of generalized indebtedness (or, in which monetary regime will Europe have to commit itself, given the international balance of power); and, on the other hand, the possibility of managing a common budget without enhanced democratic legitimacy for the European institutions is more dubious than ever (and this legitimacy is almost non-existent). So, we are left with the situation I have described: there will be no policy for the peoples of Europe if European federalism does not reinvent itself (let us think of what we said above about regulations). But the opponents of this federalism (for reasons that are often opposed to each other, but whose negativity is combined) have all the means to block it. I don't have the means to say anything else. Like others, I am thinking of 'Sleepwalkers' (in the sense of Hermann Broch, since taken up again). In a conference you gave on 22 October 2018 in Montreal, you said that after the “war on terror”, we are now talking about the “war on migration”. We can see that the issue of migration deepens the divide not only between the left and the right, but also within the left itself, between those who advocate a so-called security solution and those who advocate the humanitarian position. You yourself support the thesis that the right to movement and hospitality are fundamental rights. How do you think the issue of migration should be understood in the context of contemporary capitalism and what is the appropriate strategy for a progressive left on this issue? the capitalism in which we live today is not, according to the classic formula, an “antechamber of socialism”, but a postsocialist regime, which was built by deconstructing socialism in its different forms. EB : As I cannot sum up all my arguments in a few words, as they are moreover constantly evolving, except on the core point which is the recognition of the political and moral centrality of this question, I will content myself with three remarks. First, we must cease isolating ourselves within this dichotomy of “security” and “humanitarian”, which is itself a component of the rhetoric of war against migration, or rather against migrants and refugees – which taken together I call the “wanderers” ( les errants ). The reception of wanderers in “human” conditions, that is, in accordance with international law, may pose problems of policing like any movement of peoples in exceptional situations. But it does not constitute a danger to the “security” of European countries or their communities. Its amalgamation with the issue of ‘terror’ is purely and simply racist (especially through its Islamophobic component). Secondly, the analysis of international migration in today's world, with all the complexity of the concrete determinations that accompany it (orientation of migration from South to South, from South to North, the combination of legal and illegal forms; the correlation, or not, with the transformation of the international division of labour, etc.) is not a simple matter. Rosa Luxemburg (and her successors, analyzing the “world-system” of historical capitalism) rethought it as an articulation between the capitalist “centers” and their “peripheries”. Today the centers are in Europe or America, but also in China, in South-East Asia, in the Persian Gulf... and the “peripheries” from where proletarianized overpopulation arises. Finally thirdly, the regulation of population movements and above all the recognition of the “right to rights” (Arendt) for all categories of human beings on the surface of the earth, territorialized and deterritorialized, nationalized and denationalized, is the heart of a new cosmopolitan law and a new international order, to which all the conservative forces (including those on the ‘left’ here and there in the world) are opposed, but which are inevitably being put on the agenda by the entry of humanity into the age of climatic and demographic upheavals (to which we now see that health upheavals will now be added). I don’t know how long it will take for the majority of our peoples to become aware of this, nor what kind of violence will be the condition for this (I do not believe, unfortunately, that it will exclude genocidal practices); nor, a fortiori , [how long it will take] for governments and international institutions to take charge of the problem. But I don't see how this can be avoided. Translated by Sophie Galabru NOTES 1. This interview was conducted on December 11, 2020 on the occasion of the award of the annual “Miladin Životić” prize to Etienne Balibar at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. 2. Blaise Pascal, Pensées , Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, London : Penguin, 1995, p.123 ; Pascal, Les Pensées , Paris, E. Mignot, 1913, p. 123. 3. Pascal, ibid. Related Articles Demosophia JEAN-LUC NANCY Read Article The ‘Ismos’ of the Many SHAJ MOHAN Read Article

MARZIYEH FARNAM Marziyeh Farnam is an Iranian critic and translator. She is a screenwriting graduate from Soore University and has translated works by Slavoj Žižek, Bistra Velichkova and Willis Hall into Persian.

L’hommage et les souvenirs de l’auteur du film sur at avec Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Homme, ce vieil animal malade (2021). L’autre Jean-Luc SIMONE FLUHR 7 September 2021 PHILOSOPHY JEAN-LUC NANCY Une image du L’Homme, ce vieil animal malade ; Crédit d’image : Simone Fluhr L’hommage et les souvenirs de l’auteur du film sur at avec Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Homme, ce vieil animal malade (2021). J’ai réalisé récemment un film avec Jean-Luc Nancy qui s’appelle L’Homme, ce vieil animal malade (production Dora Films, copyright 2020) Mon premier contact avec Jean-Luc Nancy remonte à une de mes autres vies, il y a plus de dix ans. Mon travail consistait alors à accompagner dans leur galère des demandeurs d’asile échoués à Strasbourg. Il avait signé une pétition du monde universitaire pour protester contre leurs conditions d’accueil. A ce moment-là, Jean-Luc Nancy n’était qu’un nom pour moi. Peu m’importait d’ailleurs que ce nom soit celui d’un philosophe, d’un archevêque, d’un coureur automobile, d’un chanteur de rap... s’il pouvait porter la voix de ceux qui n’en ont pas, ou si peu. Témoin de la violence s’exerçant sur eux, ici, chez nous, redoublant celle subie là-bas, chez eux, je me disais souvent que si je ne voyais pas cela de mes propres yeux, je n’y croirais pas. D’où la réalisation d’un film documentaire Les éclaireurs pour essayer d’en témoigner. Un bouquin Mon pays n’est pas sûr l’accompagnait. Tout cela, film et livre, se sera fait dans la même urgence que celle qui faisait la quotidienneté de mon boulot, sans compter ni son temps, ni son énergie, ni son argent. En plein cœur de l’été, mon éditeur me suggère de trouver rapidement un préfacier pour mon livre. Tous ceux auxquels je pensais étaient morts, certains depuis bien longtemps, et les autres étaient en vacances. C’est donc, je l’avoue, un peu à défaut que me souvenant de son nom, j’ai écrit à Jean-Luc Nancy. Je lui ai dit franco de port que je n’avais lu aucun de ses bouquins, la philosophie me tombant bien vite des mains. Cinq jours plus tard, il avait non seulement lu mon manuscrit mais rédigé la préface. Cela aurait pu s’arrêter là si quelques mois plus tard, je ne lui avais pas proposé de boire un café, histoire de le remercier. Sur le chemin du bistrot, je me disais « Mais qu’est-ce que je vais bien pouvoir lui raconter et est-ce que je comprendrais seulement ce qu’il va dire ? ». J’ai découvert un homme simple, curieux et, ce qui ne gâte rien, vraiment gentil. Après, on se retrouvait de temps en temps autour d’un café, comme de vieux potes se racontant leurs petites vies et ce qu’on en faisait. Il s’intéressait à mon travail de réalisatrice (j’avais alors changé de métier pour cause d’épuisement). Je réalisais un nouveau film Rivages qui dessine le portrait de trois personnes sans abri, dont un certain Jean-Luc vivant sous un pont depuis dix-sept ans. A l’issue d’une projection, j’ai été frappée par le commentaire d’une spectatrice « Mais c’est un vrai philosophe ! ». J’ai rapporté ces propos à Jean-Luc Nancy en lui disant que je pourrais faire un film intitulé « Jean-Luc et Jean-Luc » où je pourrais les faire se rencontrer et confronter leurs conceptions du monde. Je ne l’ai pas risqué, ce film. De toute façon, Jean-Luc sous le pont allait partir sans plus tarder dans les étoiles. Suite à une overdose, en cohérence avec sa destinée où il lui fallait s’évader de notre monde, vécu comme inhabitable. Maintenant, j’ai perdu les deux Jean-Luc, je n’en connais pas d’autres. Il me reste le rire de Jean- Luc sous le pont , ce pauvre enfant terrible qui n’a pas pu grandir, et ça résonne comme des grelots. De l’autre Jean-Luc , il me reste... C’est quoi ce reste que j’aimerais partager ? Ce qui me reste et me restera comme un étonnement. Eh bien celui de l’enfance aussi, lui et moi, partis ensemble pour faire un film, s’aventurer, jouer, se risquer, se découvrir et découvrir... ne sachant absolument pas à quoi ni où ça nous mènera. Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de plus important, la destination ou le chemin ? Je crois que pour les deux Jean-Luc, ce fut la compagnie. Il est peu de dire que Jean-Luc Nancy a été un compagnon fidèle jusqu’à la sortie du film où il a tenu à être à mes côtés. Durant le tournage, il était prêt à répondre à toutes mes questions et à m’emmener partout « à Paris rencontrer un peintre, à l’hôpital pour une échographie de son cœur, chez lui où recevoir un étudiant faisant une thèse sur la question juive, à l’université pour une conférence sur la question du peuple... ». Je l’accompagnais ou non suivant que ça résonnait ou non à mes propres questions. Ce fut là pour moi toute la difficulté de l’écriture de ce film. Avec Jean-Luc sous le pont , je m’étais faite comme une page blanche, ne sachant pas trop ce qui allait s’y inscrire. Avec l’autre Jean-Luc , cette position s’est vite avérée intenable sauf à me perdre complètement et me laisser submerger et ensevelir par la prolixité et la dissémination de l’œuvre de sa vie. A mon corps défendant, il me fallait m’exposer différemment et faire mes choix en amont de l’écriture du film. Mais, gribouillages et scribouillages, brouillard... jusqu’à entrevoir enfin ces limites que je voulais explorer sans le vouloir , là où les mots manquent et parfois s’arrêtent, interdits, face aux splendeurs et aux horreurs de notre monde. Sans le vouloir ni le pouvoir, car si les mots manquent, les images ne pourront que se saborder pareillement. Aborder le réel de ces questions ne pouvait se faire frontalement. Je ne peux ni ne veux filmer le cadavre d’un petit Aylan échoué sur une plage de Méditerranée. Ni des cochons enfermés leur vie durant sans lumière du jour. Ni un corps de femme, sexe ouvert. Ce qui m’a aidé à faire avancer le film, c’est notre aimantation commune par l’art sous toutes ses formes, ce que ça dit, littéralement et dans tous les sens (Rimbaud). Arts que j’ai largement convoqués dans le film au travers de la littérature, la poésie, le cinéma, la peinture, le dessin, le théâtre... De toutes mes cogitations, Jean-Luc n’en savait rien. Il ne m’a jamais posé la moindre question sur ce que j’étais en train de trafiquer. Ce qu’il m’aura confié relève indubitablement de la confiance qu’il me faisait. Et qui continue d’ailleurs à me revenir comme un étonnement infini. C’était qui pour lui cette meuf qui, non seulement n’entend pas grand-chose à la philosophie, mais qui de surcroît n’a jamais fait d’études et encore moins de cinéma ? Il ne peut plus me donner de réponse. J’aime à penser qu’elle réside dans une cour de récréation où deux enfants se retrouvent régulièrement pour jouer, très sérieusement comme font les enfants, sans se préoccuper d’où ils viennent, qui ils sont et où ils vont alors même que telle est la question en jeu. C’est le Jean-Luc que j’ai tant aimé qui est à mille lieux de toute notion d’appropriation, de convention, de compétition, de carrière. Qui pour faire sens, laisse passage au sensible, aux sens. Lui qui depuis si longtemps, éprouvait dans son corps ce passage s’incarnant en chacun d’entre nous. Un passeur donc. Dont nous devrons apprendre à nous passer désormais alors même qu’il continue à faire battre notre cœur. Related Articles The Audacity of Jean-Luc Nancy DIVYA DWIVEDI Read Article Even the open closes: on the disappearance of Jean-Luc Nancy JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BAILLY Read Article

KAMRAN BARADARAN Kamran Baradaran is an Iranian author, critic, translator and journalist. He has translated various philosophical and literary works into Persian, including works by Jean Baudrillard, Antonio Gramsci, Paul Virilio, Slavoj Žižek, Hector Munro, Georges Perec, and Luigi Pirandello. Baradaran has also published a book on feminine writing titled Écriture Féminine: Improvisation in the Mist . The Archaeologist of Utopia: For Fredric Jameson 11 October 2024 Read Article Walt Whitman’s Equivalencies: Rupture and Catastrophe in Memoranda 19 April 2024 Read Article The Politics of the Expired: Response to “Trash: Evil” by Dwivedi and Mohan 4 May 2023 Read Article

Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy’s Insurrectionary Insistence: to Start from Nothing DIDIER CAHEN 23 August 2021 PHILOSOPHY JEAN-LUC NANCY Image credit: Prabooks.com Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy "There is indeed a question of meaning: but it is before us, to come and to be thought" ( 1 ) Once again, Jean-Luc Nancy holds this single ridge line: he seeks what seeks him, waits for what waits for him (the unexpected first) while knowing perfectly well what he wants: an excessive truth of meaning, a meaning to be born, a meaning supposed to exceed meaning and to be in agreement, not without reason, with this excess. The risk is there in this passion of the exhaustion of the sense, of the exhaustion where it is the sense which finally prevails. Hence this need to mix prudence and imprudence, relevance and many forms of impertinence, philosophical discipline and its indiscipline, but always situating itself on the side of the human; hence this way of recreating from within the essential questions, weighing on the limits, touching the absolute (given without being, he thinks, finding there – who knows? – a remnant of Christianity...). However, we must be careful not to forget the man behind the thinker's commitment. Jean-Luc Nancy holds on to his own history. When he expresses the fierce will to 'transform the world' – to put it back into the world – one feels the impetus of the first days, all the energy drawn from the shadow of another faith... One will retain first of all a relentless lesson of life in his intact desire to start from nothing, in this art of choosing to be only to be better, better than being. One will then admire this insurrectionary insistence on living the adventure, to live simply with his other heart, not without philosophy. By approaching the abyss... NOTES 1. Jean-Luc Nancy, "L'oubli de la philosophie", Paris, 1986. Related Articles Le Meravigliose Nascite di Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy Read Article In whose wild heart immortality sleeps homeless Shaj Mohan Read Article

B. R. AMBEDKAR Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 - 1956) was a political philosopher, philosopher of jurisprudence, philosopher of religion, economist, and politician. Ambedkar obtained his Masters’ degree in economics from Columbia University, with the thesis “Administration and finance of the East-India Company” in 1915, followed by a second Masters’ degree. Ambedkar began his studies in Law at Gray’s Inn in 1916. In 1920 he founded the periodical Mooknayak. In 1921 he received an MSc degree from London School of Economics with the thesis “Provincial decentralisation of imperial finance in India”, which was published as The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India . In 1923 Ambedkar was awarded D. Sc. from London School of Economics. The thesis was published as The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Solution. In 1927 Ambedkar obtained doctoral degree from Columbia University. In the same year he burned the Manusmriti (The Law Book of Manu) in public. Ambedkar was the chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution of independent India. He was prolific author. His works include Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India, Buddha or Karl Marx, Annihilation of Caste, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Who Were the Shudras , and The Buddha and his Dhamma. Gandhism – The Doom of the Untouchables 14 April 2023 Read Article

ROGER ZAPATA ROGER ZAPATA is a Colombian professor of philosophy and history of religions. Columnist and political analyst, his texts have appeared in various digital media, combining academic depth with reflections on the Colombian reality.

HIROSHI TOYA Hiroshi Toya is a philosopher based in Japan. His research publications are in the areas of inter-generational ethics and philosophy of technology. He is the author of the book Reading Hans Jonas (Horinouchi-shuppan, 2018) and Philosophy of Atomic Power (Shueisha, 2020). Responsibility to Others in the Future: The Foundation of the Imperative of Responsibility in Hans Jonas 21 January 2021 Read Article