Sylvain Lazarus Anthropology of the Name, Paris: Seuil, 1996.

One of my central categories is that of singularity. One can see immediately the
difficulties there are in thinking the singular. Thinking the singular can be understood
as de-singularization, as an accession to the general, or, at least, to a case of the
general. But it is also possible to think without letting the object of thought establish
the thought. It is possible to think against the thesis according to which thought exists
only to the extent that its object is established. Saying this does not mean claiming
that thought is always without an object, it means locating the question of the object
as a particular case of the scientistic approach, and as a specificity of the scientistic
mode of intellectuality, and not treating it as an invariant of thought, or of all rational
thought.
In scientism, the object is linked to the general, to the establishment of general laws,
which are the laws of the real. The order of the real and its laws prescribe the order of
thought, and the hypothesis of irreducible singularities appears as antinomic to the
universality of the scientistic concepts of the real. In the scientist vision, there is no
singularity, there are only cases and types.

The thought of singularity is not a displacement with regards to the scientist thought,
but a rupture within the problematic of intellectuality.

From here I include politics within the space of my investigation, because it is an
exemplification of the thought of singularity, and because it is characteristic of the
tension between the definitional, objectal or scientistic approach, and the process of
subjectivation.
Politics is of the order of the subjective. This thesis is opposed to the objectal
(objectales) doctrines which connect the analysis of politics to that of institutions such
as the party, or structures such as the State, and which thus make of politics a social
invariant convenient to an analysis of power. For me, politics is a thought. This is
what establishes its sequential character, and which allows for this hypothesis,
without reducing politics to the State, to the economy, to history, or without the fact
that politics might be of the domain of repetition, or the structure. The opposition
between object and thought in what concerns politics implicates the debate which
opposes singularity to universalistic objectivism. If politics is a thought, it is of the
order of the singular and it is an exemplification of singularity. There is no politics in
general, there are only singular political sequences. Politics is not a permanent
instance of societies, it is rare and sequential: it is given in historical modes. The
mode, which is a relation of a politics to its thought, characterizes the lacunary
existence of politics and allows an apprehension of politics via its thought. But the
sequential and the non-objectal go together. The analysis of politics is thus exemplary
of the tension between an objectal approach and an approach in terms of subjectivity,
in that the importance of subjectivity, in terms of the identification of politics as
thought, is opposed to the objectality, which leads to a marginalisation of the thought
of politics. If the existence of politics is considered as an invariant, then politics does
not arise out of what we here call the political, it does not arise out of thought We
should understand that the mode is a thought in that it expresses a singularity of the
thought of politics, in that it unfolds a singular political thought. Politics in its
singularity, that is, in its sequential dimension, does not coincide with the structural
permanence of objects such as the State and classes. Politics as thought is not objectal.
A historical mode of politics is thus a singularity as it is given as a relation between
politics and its thought. How to identify it? A mode begins and ends. It marks the
sequence of existence of politics. The labour of identification of the mode proceeds
through the delimitation of the sequence and through the determination of its duration.
The question of determining the duration is itself a complex question which calls for
an intervention of the category of the places of politics. In effect, each historical mode
of politics displays its particular places, and therefore the disappearance of the place
signifies the end of the sequence of the mode.
HISTORICAL MODES OF POLITICS:
1. MODES IN INTERIORITY
MODE SEQUENCE PLACE(S) CATEGORY NAME
The
Revolution
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&. MODES IN E@TERIORITY
MODE SEQUENCE PLACE(S) CATEGORY NAME
>!en,h
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