Distinguished Professor at the Paris Ouest Nanterre University and at the University of California, Irvine, Étienne Balibar is a prominent figure of contemporary philosophy. His works mainly deal with political philosophy (as in Politics and the Other Scene, published in English in 2012, or Equaliberty: Political Essays in 2014 ). A former student of Louis Althusser, he was excluded from French communist party in March 1981 after writing in the press against the party’s racist stance. A member of the French Human Rights League, he has been committed in defending rights for the undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers. Since 2007 he’s headed the France Jan Hus Association founded in 1982 by Jacques Derrida. His latest publications in English include a thorough reflection on the fate of Europe (as in his book translated into English in 2004, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship; or in his last book in French, Europe : crise et fin ? in 2016).
Category Archives: Bio-Politics: Bio-Security
Carole Widmaier
Working in the field of political philosophy, Carole Widmaier confronted Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss’s approach to the modern crisis in Fin de la philosophie politique ? Hannah Arendt contre Leo Strauss, 2012. She has lately edited and translated Hannah Arendt’s essay on politics (Qu’est-ce que la politique ?, 2014). She also explores the relationship between biological and social fields (the legitimacy of analogies between them), and between time and institutions (the efficiency of the institution and the arising of freedom).
Bio-Politics Today (1): Bio-Security
Faculty of Arts – room 300
Biologization and naturalization of “threats”
Who: Judith Revel
What: Short Lecture
When: 7 PM
Language: English
Live to Let Die: from Multitude to Pogrom Crowd in Capitalist Post-Modernization
Who: Michał Kozłowski
What: Short Lecture
When: 8 PM
Language: English
Security and/or Rights and Liberties?
Who: Ivan Buraj
What: Short Lecture
When: 8:30 PM
Language: Slovak
Fair Trade Palace – Studio Hridnů
War and Violence
Who: Pavel Barša, Étienne Fassin, Judith Revel, Jan Sokol and Carole Widmaeir
What: Debate
When: 8:30-9:45 PM
Language: Czech and French, with simultaneous translation
From Non-Politics to Bio-Politics
Who: Roberto Esposito
What: Big Lecture
When: 10-11 PM
Language: French
Producing Commonship: A New Internal Enemy?
Who: Antonio Negri
What: Big Lecture
When: 11:15 PM-0h15 AM
Language: French, with simultaneous translation in Czech
Faculty of Arts – Kinosál (room 429)
Détruire, dit-elle by Marguerite Duras
Who: Benedetta Zaccarello
What: Screening and Commentary
When: 0:45-2:45 AM
Language: French, with English subtitles; commentary in English
Jan Sokol
Former Minister of Education of the Czech Republic, Jan Sokol is known for his public commitment. In his younger years, he worked as goldsmith and precision mechanic. His interest in philosophy has led him to teach in the Czech Republic and outside, and to translate from French and German philosophy (Lévinas, Blondel, Foucault, Teilhard, Derrida, Rosenzweig, Gadamer and so forth). He explores philosophy in its everyday dimension, as demonstrated in his last book published in English, Thinking about Ordinary Things (2013). Among his latest publications, he published in 2014 his Etika, život, instituce on personal freedom and its institutional support. He currently teaches at the Charles University.
Éric Fassin
Éric Fassin is a prominent sociologist. After teaching at Brandeis University and the NYU until 1994, then at École normale supérieure in Paris until 2014, he has become a Professor of sociology and gender studies at Paris 8 University. His work focuses on sexual and racial politics in France and the United States, with special emphasis on immigration. He published L’Inversion de la question homosexuelle (2005), Droit conjugal et unions de même sexe: mariage, partenariat et concubinage dans neuf pays européens (with Kees Waaldijk, 2008) and Le sexe politique. Genre et sexualité au miroir transatlantique (2009), and Roms & riverains. Une politique municipale de la race (2014). A part of his work investigates the fate of the left wing, as in his last book entitled Gauche, l’avenir d’une désillusion (2014).
See one of his latest articles here.
Antonio Negri
Specialist of Spinoza, translator of Hegel and founder of the political movement Potere Operaio, Toni Negri is a world known political philosopher and sociologist. Born in Italy, where he became professor of “State theory” at a very young age, he has been spending a good part of his life in France, teaching in several universities (École Normale Supérieure, Paris VII, Paris VIII, Collège International de Philosophie). Here philosophers such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari took position against his controversial detention for political reasons, and opened a philosophical dialogue with his thought and with the political movements he was leading in Italy (with Guattari he wrote in 1985 Communists like us). He is well known as well as the co-autor with Michael Hardt of Empire, one of the most popular theoretical works of the last decade, where the transition from a “modern” imperialism, grounded on nation-states, to a “post-modern” one, is described as a shift toward a transnational asset of powers leading to a radical change in war policies and class dynamics. First of a trilogy, Empire has been followed by Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009), where the topics of democracy and property at the age of the « Empire » are discussed.
Ivan Buraj
A specialist of French theory, Ivan Buraj investigates political philosophy around questions such as freedom and power, as in his book on Michel Foucault (Foucault a moc, 2000). He has lately written about fanaticism, democracy and civil society. While teaching at the Comenius University, he is a member of a large scientific project on Science, Society, Values: A Philosophical Analysis of Their Mutual Relations and Interactions.