Everything about Etienne Balibar totally explained
Étienne Balibar (born
April 23,
1942 in
Avallon,
Bourgogne,
France) is a
French Marxist philosopher. After the death of his teacher
Louis Althusser, Balibar quickly became the leading exponent of French
Marxist philosophy.
Life and work
Balibar first rose to prominence as one of Althusser's pupils at the
École Normale Supérieure. Balibar was a participant in
Louis Althusser's seminar on
Karl Marx's Das Kapital. This seminar resulted in the book entitled
Reading Capital, coauthored by Althusser and his students, among whom Althusser considered Balibar's contribution the foremost. Balibar currently teaches philosophy and political theory at
Paris X Nanterre and
University of California, Irvine.
In
Masses, Classes and Ideas, Balibar argues that in
Das Kapital, the theory of
historical materialism comes into conflict with the
critical theory that Marx begins to develop, particularly in his analysis of the category of
labor, which in
capitalism, becomes a form of
property. This conflict involves two distinct uses of the term "labor": labor as the revolutionary class subject (for example, the "
proletariat") and labor as an objective condition for the reproduction of capitalism (the "
working class"). In
The German Ideology, Marx conflates these two meanings of labor, and treats labor as, in Balibar’s words, the “veritable site of truth as well as the place from which the world is changed..." In
Capital, however, the disparity between these two senses of labor becomes apparent. One manifestation of this is the virtual disappearance in the text of the term "proletariat." As Balibar points out, the term appears only twice in the first edition of
Capital, published in 1867: in the dedication to
Wilhelm Wolff and in the two final sections on the "General Law of Capitalist Accumulation". For Balibar, what this problem implies is that "the emergence of a revolutionary form of subjectivity (or identity... is never a specific property of nature, and therefore brings with it no guarantees, but obliges us to search for the conditions in a conjuncture that can precipitate class struggles into mass movements...". Moreover, "[t]here is no proof… that these forms are always and eternally the same (for example, the party-form, or the
trade union)."
Balibar's daughter is the actress
Jeanne Balibar.
Bibliography
Works in French
- 1965: Lire le Capital. With Louis Althusser et al.
- 1974: Cinq Etudes du Matérialisme Historique.
- 1985: Spinoza et la politique.
- 1988: Race, Nation, Classe. With Immanuel Wallerstein.
- 1991: Écrits pour Althusser.
- 1997: La crainte des masses.
- 1998: Droit de cité. Culture et politique en démocratie.
- 1999: Sans-papiers: l’archaïsme fatal.
- 2001: Nous, citoyens d’Europe? Les frontières, l’État, le peuple.
- 2003: L'Europe, l'Amérique, la Guerre. Réflexions sur la médiation européenne.
- 2005: Europe, Constitution, Frontière.
Selected translations
1970: Reading Capital (London: NLB). With Louis Althusser. Trans. Ben Brewster.
1991: Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London & New York: Verso). With Immanuel Wallerstein. Trans. Chris Turner.
1994: Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx (New York & London: Routledge). Trans. James Swenson.
1995: The Philosophy of Marx (London & New York: Verso). Trans. Chris Turner.
1998: Spinoza and Politics (London & New York: Verso). Trans. Peter Snowdon.
2002: Politics and the Other Scene (London & New York: Verso). Trans. Christine Jones, James Swenson & Chris Turner.
2004: We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press). Trans. James Swenson.
Online texts
Reading Capital
(1968).
Self-Criticism: Answers to Questions from Theoretical Practice (1973).
On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1977).
At The Borders Of Europe (1999).
Politics as War, War as Politics. Post-Clausewitzian Variations (2006).Further Information
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