Library and Course

I have been informed by the library that all of the texts
which are on this course should be available within a week
or two.

Project Gutenburg

I have just put up a link to project Gutenburg. Due to copyright law, I am not allowed to send you, or use the pdf's from Project Gutenburg, but I am allowed to direct you towards it. Project Gutenburg is valuable since they have an available copy of Bergson's Creative Evolution.

John Protevi's Website

John Protevi, an American Philosopher from Louisiana State university has kindly made his lectures available on-line. Many of these lectures touch on the thinkers that we will be dealing with Contemporary French Philosophy. I would also reccomend reading any of Prof. Protevi's work as he published voliminously on 20th Century French Philosophy. The link is on the list of links to the right.

Ruth on Alain Badiou

Pocket Pantheon

Anyone interested in the work of Badiou and/or key philosophers of the C20th might want to take a look at my Culture Machine book review of one of Badiou's recent works, Pocket Pantheon (2009) available at:

http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/412/424

Badiou's Pantheon is a small, informative yet provocative volume, well worth a look...

Cheers
Ruth
Posted

RIP Claude Lefort 1924-2010

Perhaps one of the lesser known of French poststructuralists, Claude Lefort utilised both phenomenology and Maussian sociology in the service of political theory. Some of his key influences were Merleau-Ponty, Machiavelli and Tocquievelle. He was particularly known for his analysis of totalitarianism. This was effected by the famous Socialism or Barbarism journal, along with JF Lyotard, which analyzed the relationship between corporatism and state. Lefort was also noted for his critique of Soviet beuareaucratic style socialism, particularly in left-wing French thought. Put in the bluntest terms, Lefort's most basic point is that fascism elides the distinction between the state and the company in an organistic unity. Lefort was one of the progenitors of the agonistic conception of democracy, which would be taken up by Laclau and Mouffe in different contexts. Lefort theorised that democracy worked best when it was founded on argument, dissensus and a multiplicity of opinions. He also, following Ernst Kantorowicz analysis of the kings two bodies, theorised the idea that democracy operates through an 'empty sovereignty' after the transition from monarchism to democracy.