Empire is the end of national conflict and the creation of a

'terrorist' Enemy that is simultaneously banalized and

theory of Empire absolutized; constituted by a monarchy of international
western-led powers and institutions; the form of sovereignty
under conditions of globalization

at once many and one; an unmediated, revolutionary,

immanent and positive collective social subject which can
multitude
found a non-mystified form of democracy; an antagonistic
and creative positivity that calls for the destruction of Empire

main theses/key concepts value produced from affective and cognitive activities which is
immaterial labour
commodified in capitalist economies

the transformation of social institutions through a withdrawal

refusal of work from exploitation and rejection of the obligation to produce
surplus value

Antonio 'Toni' Negri

the rupture with any fixed dialectic between modern
altermodernity
sovereignty and antimodern resistance

constituent power the democratic force of revolutionary innovation

First major event for the reception of Nietzsche's work in France;

played a significant role in legitimizing Nietzsche's philosophical General features Empire (with Michael Hardt)
reputation; organized by Deleuze and presided by Gueroult
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (with Michael Hardt)
On the Will to Power and the Eternal Return (conference closing remarks) Gilles Deleuze
Commonwealth (with Michael Hardt)
Jean Wahl key works
Communists Like Us (with Felix Guattari)
Michel Foucault
Marx Beyond Marx
Gianni Vattimo Nietzsche Conference (the Abbey at Royaumont, 1964)
The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics
Gabriel Marcel Key participants

Jean Beaufret combination of psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis,

communication theory, foucauldian genealogy and marxism
Autonomist theory
Karl Lowith to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the
functioning of the capitalist system

Eugen Fink
cognitariat knowledge workers; the proletariat created by their exploitation
main theses/key concepts
Giorgio Colli & Mazzino Montinari
the state of society under the grip of capitalism; the tension
breathlessness
between humanity and capitalism

Occured at the height of nietzscheanism in France and placed

Franco 'Bifo' Berardi the use of speculative rhetoric of poetry against the
Nietzsche at the center of french philosophy at the time;
General features mathematical language of economics
many presentations were avant-garde and dealing with the
recent developments in post-structuralism
The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance
Gilles Deleuze
The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy
Notes on the Return and Kapital François Lyotard key works
Breathing: Chaos and Poetry
Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles Jacques Derrida
Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility
Jean-Luc Nancy

Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe deconstruction of christianity

Pierre Klossowski rejection of the idea that a community can be produced

"Nietzsche aujourd'hui" Conference (International Cultural Center at Cerisy-la-Salle, 1972)
through work; not a dysfunctionality but a spontaneous
inoperative community
Nietzsche and Metaphor Sarah Kofman coming together that has no object or purpose other than
Key participants itself; a passion for sharing
Eric Blondel
as primordial as the question of Being itself; the relative loss
main theses/key concepts being-with
of autonomy of the Ego in its dependance from otherness
Pierre Valadier

being singular-plural the 'I' is not prior to the 'we'

Pierre Boudot

Jean-Luc Nancy the existential or finite origin of every freedom; the existence
Richard Roos nonsubjective freedom
of others is neccesary condition to be free

Eugen Biser
sense of world within the world itself; our radical ontological responsibility

Jean-Michel Rey
The Inoperative Community
Bernard Pautrat
The Experience of Freedom
key works
organised be Jean Beaufret (with the help of Gandillac and Axelos), The Sense of the World
it was the first major event focused on the reception of Heidegger's
work in France; Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Wahl refused to
Being Singular Plural
attend due to Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi party

Maurice de Gandillac
the conception of life in which the sheer biological fact of life is
bare life
given priority over the way a life is lived and its potentialities
Kostas Axelos
figure from Roman law that means sacred or accursed man,
Gabriel Marcel and had no rights as citizen, could be murdered by anyone
homo sacer
except in religious rituals; as the sovereign, a figure that is
Lucien Goldmann both excluded by and included within the law
main theses/key concepts
Jean Starobinski the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary
Heidegger Conference (International Cultural Center at Cerisy-la-Salle, 1955) state of exception politics; zone of indifference which blurs the distinction of
outside-inside in relation to the law
Alphonse de Waehlens
Key participants
private life and public life; also bare life (the mere fact of life)
Leon-Pierre Quint zoe-bios distinction and qualified life (the way of living); a distinction that does not
Giorgio Agamben hold anymore in the sovereign's control of individual's lives
Alexis Philonenko

The Coming Community

Paul Ricoeur

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Gilles Deleuze

State of Exception
Jean Beaufret
key works
What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays
Martin Heidegger

The Signature of All Things: On Method

the conference that introduced structuralism to North
America; Derrida's paper already announced the end of General features The Sacrament of Language: An Archeology of the Oath
structuralism and the movement towards post-structuralism

Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences Jacques Derrida the role of technics has been repressed throughout the
history of philosophy
Tiresias and the Critic Rene Girard
technics, as organised inorganic matter and essentially a form
Lucien Goldmann of memory is constitutive of human temporality

human beings are essentially adoptive and prosthetic creatures

Tzvetan Todorov "The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man" Conference (John Hopkins University, 1968)

a way of thinking the co-individuation of human organs,

To Write: an Intransitive Verb? Roland Barthes Key participants main theses/key concepts general organology
technical organs and social organisations

The Structure of Philosophic Language According to the "Preface" to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind Jean Hyppolite
genealogy of the sensible a way of thinking the historicity of human desire and aesthetics

Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever Jacques Lacan

mass exclusion from cultural production constitutes a form of
Significant Events Bernard Stiegler
symbolic mysery
generalized impoverishment
Guy Rosolato

psychosocial effects of the destruction of authority (the

Jean-Pierre Vernant Antigone complex
superego) on politics and youth

organised by Sylvere Lotringer and his Semiotext(e) publishing house; Technics and Time (3 vols.)
influenced by Deleuze & Guattari's AntiOedipus and Foucault's
General features
Discpline and Punish; transgressive, avant-garde and interdisiciplinary; On Symbolic Misery (2 vols.)
introduced french post-structuralism to North America
key works The Decadence of Industrial Democracies: Disbelief and Discredit (3 vols.)
John Cage
Constituting Europe (2 vols.)
William Burroughs
Schizo-Cultures (Columbia University, 1975)
For a New Critique of Political Economy
Jean-François Lyotard
Key participants
R.D. Laing a theoretical approach to social theory where everything in
the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting
actor-network theory
John Rachjman networks and relationships, and nothings exists outside those
relationships
main theses/key concepts
Denis Hollier
critique of modernity the modernist distinction of culture and nature never existed

taking place over the span of 30 years, it was a high-profile exchange social constructionism scientific objects are socially constructed within the laboratory
between Foucault and Derrida principally concerning whether Descartes
excluded the possibility of madness as a ground for doubt (Foucault) or General features
includes it (Derrida); also a more profound debate on philosophical Laboratory Life
Bruno Latour
methodology, and on the primacy of the textual or the physical realm
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society
Debate on Madness and the Cogito (College Philosophic and through published texts, 1963-1991)
Cogito and the History of Madness
We Have Never Been Modern
Jacques Derrida
key works
To do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis Key participants
Politics of Nature

My Body, This Paper, This Fire (appendix to History of Madness) Michel Foucault Aramis, Or the Love of Technology

Reassembling the Social

a debate that began in the 50s with Bataille's text and was particularly heated
in the 80s; concerned the notion of community and the possibility for its
foundations; arguments varied between sovereignty as the foundation for a
General features
negative community (Bataille); a being-towards-death of the community taken for granted, unquestioned truths; experience in which
(Blanchot); the impossibility of the production of a community through work the social and natural world appear as self-evident; that which
doxa
(Nancy); and the centrality of the future for the community (Agamben) goes without saying because it comes without saying; the
petrification of social limits
The Unavowable Community Maurice Blanchot Debate on Community (1986-1992)
both the hexis (tendency to hold and use one's body in a
certain way) and more abstract mental habits, schemes of
Sovereignty Georges Bataille habitus perception, classification, appreciation, feeling and action; the
Key participants reproduction of social structures results from the habitus of
The Inoperative Community Jean-Luc Nancy individuals

The Coming Community Giorgio Agamben any historical, non-homogeneous social-spatial arena in
which people maneuver and struggle in pursuit of desirable
resources; a setting in which agents and their social positions
Derrida wrote a deconstruction of J.L. Austin's How to Do Things main theses/key concepts field are located, which is a result of specific rules of the field,
With Words, arguing that Austin relied on distinctions that he agent's habitus and capital (social, economic and cultural);
himself did not respect in his text; Searly responded that Derrida General features fields are hierarchical and subordinated to larger fields of
misunderstood basic concepts from analytic philosophy; Derrida power and class
then further replied in an interview on the same topic
the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of
Debate on Performatives and Language (1977-1988) Pierre Bourdieu cultural capital speech and dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a
Signature, Event, Context stratified society
Jacques Derrida
Limited Inc. Key participants non-physical violence manifested in the power differential
symbolic violence between social groups and in the imposition of norms on the
subordinated group
Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida John Searle

society's agreement to abide by rules of common sense, as

social illusion
determined by concurring perspectives, constitutes a belief in reality
taking place in the Netherlands and being televised, it was one of the few
in-person conversation between the continental and analytic traditions in
philosophy; Chomsky proposed a positive view of human nature and an General features
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
anarchist politics attached to such vision; Foucault questioned the
implications, limitations and intentions of discourses on human nature
Debate on Human Nature (Eindhoven University of Technology, 1971) General Sociology: Lectures at the College de France (5 vols.)

Michel Foucault
key works Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market
Key participants
Noam Chomsky
Language and Symbolic Power

The Field of Cultural Production

particularly heated in the 50s and 60s (with both sides
featuring prominent supporters); it involved the alignment or
not of the French Communist Party with Stalinism, as well as
debates on how to react to the revelations of the Gulags and a system is the regularity manifest in the various attempts to constitute a system
other atrocities of the Soviet Union
poetry as the noise of science
Jean-Paul Sartre main theses/key concepts
Harlequin multi-coloured clown standing in the place of the chaos of life
Claude Lefort
Inheritors 1 (next generation)
Hermes (messenger) the communication that takes place between the sciences and the arts
Andre Breton

Michel Serres Hermes (5 vols.)

Daniel Guerin

The Natural Contract

Marcel Martinet
Rejection of and Disenchantment with Stalinism (1950-1970)
key works The System of Leibnitz and its Mathematical Models
Maurice Nadeau
Key participants
Times of Crises
Benjamin Peret

The Five Senses: A philosophy of Mingled Bodies

Henry Poulaille

David Rousset
politics an activity the subject of which is equality

Colette Audry
an insurmountable conflict between people, which is inherent
in human nature manifests itself in a speech situation when
Cornelius Castoriadis disagreement
one of the interlocutors understands and does not
understand the other at the same time
Guy Debord
main theses/key concepts equality a set of practices aimed at certifying the equality of anyone with anyone

a symbolic ordering of the social, aimed at determining the

police
share of participation or lack of participation in each part

consensus system of modernity based on the identity (full

post-democracy compliance) of society and the individual and the
consideration of society as the sum of its parts
Jacques Ranciere

Reading Capital (with L. Althusser et al.)

Iranian Islamic revolution
The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation
prisons and political prisoners in france (GREPH)
Foucault Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy
leader of the protests against Franco's dictatorship in Spain giving death sentences
key works The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge
Polish 'Solidarity' movement
The Future of the Image

may 68
The Aesthetic Unconscious

Palestinian Liberation movement

The Politics of Literature
Deleuze
Italian 'Autonomia' movement

a science of philosophy that analyses the structural decisions

Armenian Liberation movement
made by philosophy and which are uninterpretable by it;
non-philosophy
proceeds by transcendental axioms and produces theorems
may 68 (participated though skeptically)
Political Activism which escape philosophy's grasp

structural feature of all philosophical texts and theories by

objected to the Vietnam war the philosophical decision
which the world is split dialectically in order to make sense of it

aided persecuted Czech intellectuals
registered concerns for the proliferation of nuclear weapons
active in cultural activities against the Apartheid government of South Africa
main theses/key concepts instance defined by its radical immanence under all possible
condition of thought: thus by its being.given (of) itself, yet
the Real called Vision-in-One or One-in-One, and by its being-
foreclosed tothought; the Real is neither capable of being
Derrida known or even thought, but can be described in axioms

protested against the death penalty radical immanence, identity-without-transcendence, not

Francois Laruelle the One associated with transcendence or division; the in-One or
vision-in-One and not in-Being or in-Difference
supported Lionel Jospin's socialist candidacy in 1995

refused to vote in 2002 for lack of acceptable choices (Chirac and Le Pen) Nietzsche contra Heidegger: Theses for a Nietzschean Politics

opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq Beyond the Power Principle

Philosophy and Non-Philosophy

key works
Peter Eisenman (parc de la Villette project)
Principles of Non-Philosophy
Architecture Derrida
The Arts of Space (collected essays)
Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy

his own photographic work Photography Baudrillard General Theory of Victims

Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image Cinema Theoretical Uses of Art
literally unfinished; require active participation of the
open work
Francis Bacon in The Logic of Sense Deleuze audience to derive meaning

Painting
the reader, in identifying the deep structures, elicits
The baroque style in The Fold
main theses/key concepts reader's intention something that the author could not have meant, and which
the text nonetheless seems to evince with absolute clarity
Velazquez's Las Meninas in The Order of Things Painting Foucault
the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation, which destroys
limits of interpretation
meaning and the basis of communication

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas

Umberto Eco
James Joyce
The Open Work

Franz Kafka
The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts

Marcel Proust
key works The Limits of Interpretation

Michel Leiris
Serendipities: Language and Lunacy

Raymond Roussel
Ur Fascism

Joe Bousquet
On Uglyness

Jean Genet

we borrow our desires from others, by imitating their choices

André Gide
of object of desire of a 'model'; through the object, one is
mimetic desire
drawn to the model; the model or mediator is that which is
Stephane Mallarmé sought (mediation)

Arthur Rimbaud the role model is also the rival for the desired object;
contradictory injunction to imitate and not to imitate;
mimetic double bind
Charles Baudelaire adjusting as an individual relates to dividing reality so as to
neutralize this double bind
main theses/key concepts
Paul Verlaine
mimetic contagion increases to a point where society is at
Literary and Poetic References risk, leading to a person being singled out as the cause of the
D.H. Lawrence scapegoat mechanism
troubled and expelled by the group, becoming the scapegoat;
social order is thus restored and the cycle continues
Herman Melville

Rene Girard the ressurection of Christ reveals him to be an innocent

Samuel Beckett victim; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies
and the cycle is broken
Francis Ponge

Violence and the Sacred

Comte de Lautreamont

To Double Bisness Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology

William Burroughs

The Scapegoat
Alain Robbe-Grillet key works
A Theory of Envy: William Shakespeare
Marquis de Sade

Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism

Heinrich von Kleist

Friedrich Holderlin tracing the origin of romanticism to Kant's idea of a total

main theses/key concepts the literary absolute philosophy; linking german romanticism to contemporary
Gerard de Nerval literary theory; the fragmentary and mimesis at its core

The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan (with J.L. Nancy)

epistemology and philosophy of science (biology); revival of

specialization The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (with J.L. Nancy)
vitalism; concept of dispositif
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Typographies: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics
Knowledge of Life
Georges Canguilhem key works
Retreating the Political (with J.L. Nancy)
Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences key works

The Nazi Myth (with J.L. Nancy)

The Normal and the Pathological

Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry

17th and 18th century philosophy; spinozism specialization

speculative materialism metaphysical realism against post-kantian philosophy, in a return to Hume

The Anti-Dogmatism of Kant and Fichte

the idea that we can only know what is correlated between

The Transcendental Philosophy of Salomon Maimon thought and being must be abadoned, through a rejection of
Martial Gueroult critique of correlationism
key works necessity of all physical and logical laws except non-
Dianoematique: History of the History of Philosophy and main theses/key concepts contradiction
Philosophy of the History of Philosophy (4 vols.)
the absence of reason for any reality; the impossibility of
facticity
Spinoza (2 vols.) prividing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being
Quentin Meillassoux

factiality things could be otherwise than what they are

17th and 18th century philosophy; cartesianism specialization

After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contigency

Science and Metaphysics in Descartes

key works Time Without Becoming

Cartesian Studies Ferdinand Alquié
key works
Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction
The Rationalism of Spinoza

The Nostagia of Being

war model of modern city the city and society in general are structured for and by war

integral accident technology cannot exist without the potential for accidents
logic and philosophy of science; analytic philosophy specialization

the logic of speed that is the foundation of technological society

Logic and the Sensible World main theses/key concepts (warfare and media); the speed at which something happens
dromology
Jules Vuillemin may change its essential nature, and that which is quick tends to
Kantian Intuitionism key works dominate the slower

Necessity or Contingency the use of images and information in war; the movement of
Paul Virilio logistics of perception
images can start or end a conflict

philosophy of science and mathematics; dialectics of the concept specialization

Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology

Mathematical Philosophy War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception

key works
On Logic and the Theory of Science Jean Cavailles The Information Bomb
key works
Mathematical Thought The Administration of Fear

Axiomatic Method and Formalism

a system is abolished only by pushing it into hyperlogic,

accelerationism forcing it into an excessive practice; capitalism must be
Hegelianism specialization drastically intesified to create further radical social change

Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit freedom is incompatible with democracy; post-libertarian
dark Enlightment
Jean Hyppolite futurism that argues for authoritarian forms of government
Logic and Existence key works
main theses/key concepts
hyper-superstition; the action of successful ideas in the arena of
hyperstition
culture; ideas that causally bring about their own reality
Studies on Marx and Hegel

cybernetic intensitification; inverted, self-reflexive and

Nick Land teleoplexy
german philosophy; translator specialization simulated teleology; intensive magnitude of catastrophes

templexity temporal complexity; the coming together of different times

Cartesiana
Gerard Granel Professors (lesser-known influences)
Logical and Political Writings key works The Thirst forAnnihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism

The Sense of Time and of Perception in Husserl Machinic Postmodernism: Complexity, Technics and
key works
Regulation

heideggerianism specialization Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007

Path to Heidegger

a genre of literary writing that deviates from traditional

Dialogue With Heideger Jean Beaufret masculine styles of writing, one which examines the
key works relationship between the cultural and psychological
Introduction to the Philosophies of Existence ecriture feminine inscrption of the female body and female difference in
language and text; places experience before language, and
main theses/key concepts privileges non-linear, cyclical writing that evades discourse
From Existentialism to Heidegger
that regulates phallocentric systems; writing as a means for
women's freedom
hegelianism; philosophy of science; critique of positivism specialization
self-hatred women have under oppressive patriarchal
logic of antilove
societies
From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe Helene Cixous
Alexandre Koyre
The Laugh of the Medusa
Introduction to the Reading of Plato key works

The Book of Promethea

The Astronomical Revolution

key works The Third Body

philosophy of science; literary theory; psychoanalysis and phenomenology specialization

Portrain of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint

The Formation of the Scientific Mind

The Newly Born Woman

Intuition of the Instant

Gaston Bachelart
the socially-constructed aspect of gender which is performed;
Dialectic of Duration key works
gender performativity gender as a doing, not an essence; ongoing and out of the
subject's control; the performance produces the individual
The Poetics of Space main theses/key concepts
it is impossible to produce a coherent and linear
Rational Materialism impossibility of autobiography autobiography because of the dynamic and fragmentary
structure of self-perception, memory, identity and narrativity

medieval and renaissance philosophy specialization

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Judith Butler
History of Philosophy: Philosophy in the Renaissance
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Maurice Gandillac
Genesis of Modernity key works
Giving an Account of Oneself
key works
On the Notion of Genesis and of Structure
Undoing Gender

Senses of the Subject

expert on Hegel, Bergson, Kierkegaard, Heidegger specialization

Frames of War: When is Life Grievable

Human Existence and Transcendence

A Short History of Existentialism Jean Wahl

The Pluralist Philosophies of England and America
The Philosophies of Existence
hegelianism and marxism; critique of existentialism and structuralism
becoming cast off and separated from norms and rules,
key works especially societal and moral; inherently disturbs conventional
abjection
identity and concepts; a breakdown in the distinction between
self and Other; repressed corporeal reality
the shaping of a text's meaning by another text; the
interconnection between similar or related works of literature
intertextuality
specialization main theses/key concepts that reflect and influence an audience's interpretation of the
text

The Production of Space

an emotional field, tied to the instincts, which dwells in the
Henri Lefebvre fissures of language rather than denonative meanings of
The Critique of Everyday Life key works semiotic of the pre-mirror stage words; associated with the musical, the poetic and the
feminine; previous to the distinction of self and other;
The Contradiction of the Modern State, The Dialectic of the State Julia Kristeva continual process in life that creates unstable identities

Proust and the Sense of Time

rejection of the past as a continuum of progress and as an Powers of Horror

eternal picture
Tales of Love
main theses
the law is unjust; justice is law-destroying key works
Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
in modernity, art has lost its 'aura' or unique truth
Intimate Revolt

violence that is law-destroying and brings justice in name of

Divine violence Strangers to Ourselves
human dignity and sacredness

the perception of the truth of a work of art only in unique,

Auratic perception
concrete presence the primacy of the masculine in the history of philosophy and
phallocentrism
in conceptions of subjectivity
key concepts
the streetwalker and his experience in the modern city Flaneur main theses/key concepts
Walter Benjamin women are exchanged; the phallic economy places women
the use of fascist regimes of the capacity for self-expression women on the market alongside signs and currency, since all forms of exchange are
Aesthetization of politics conducted exclusively between men
of the masses in order to maintain the status quo

the past is one single catastrophe Angel of history This Sex Which Is Not One

Luce Irigaray
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Speculum of the Other Woman

Critique of Violence The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger

key works
Inheritors 2 (feminism and queer theory) Elemental Passions
The Origin of German Tragic Drama key works

Theses on the Philosophy of History An Ethics of Sexual Difference

Arcades Project (Passagenwerk) Sharing the World

the individual subject is an effect of the processes of expose how the author's desires and ideas are inextricably
individuation and not a cause woven together in the fabric of their texts
main theses
main theses/key concepts
philosophical applications of biology the repression of by male philosophers of femininity in themselves

reading is itself a political act

a pure process by which the new and the different are produced Individuation

dynamic operation by which energy is actualized, moving The Childhood of Art: An Interpretation of Freud's Aesthetics
from one state to the next, in a process that individuates new Transduction Sarah Kofman
key concepts
materialities Nietzsche and Metaphor
Gilbert Simondon
the necessary incompleteness of the process of individuation Seductions: From Sartre to Heraclitus
Pre-individial field
which allows for further and future individuations key works
Smothered Words

Two Lessons on Animal and Man

The Melancholy of Art

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects

Autobiogriffures
key works
The Individual and its Physico-Biological Genesis

Psychic and Collective Individuation being-on-drugs every culture has a drug culture; the mode of existence of the addict

disappearance of authority to raise the question of authority is to point to its disappearance

incorporation of madness into writing

books whose effects transcend the fields of the literary and
main theses
killer texts the philosophical; books that are denounced, forbidden,
the value of cruelty as re-invention
trafficked and which are corrosive to the social order
main theses/key concepts

a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the narcoanalysis the study of how addiction dismantles essences or shows their arbitrariness
human subconscious and reveal man to himself; the agitation Theatre of Cruelty key concepts
of a life that has lost a compelling force where the facts of life fall into a twilight zone between
biophony
knowing and not knowing, between empiricity and speculation
Heliogabalus or Crowned Anarchy Antonin Artaud
Avital Ronell obliterature a space of thought's disavowal of sex
The Theatre and Its Double

Dictations: On Haunted Writing

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society key works

The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech

The Tarahumaras

The Test Drive

To End With the Judgment of God
key works
Dark Precursors Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania

exchange systems are not a purely economic activity but a

main theses Stupidity
mode of producing and maintaining social bonds

Losers Sons: Politics and Authority

cumulative and non-equivalent obligation to give back to the other Reciprocity
key concepts
archaically collective; a materia representation of a social bond Gift
the subaltern can never speak, because the focus is on the
eurocentric subject as they disavow the problem of representation
Essay on the Nature and Function of Sacrifice Marcel Mauss
main theses/key concepts
mayor works of European metaphysics exclude subaltern
The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic from their discussions and actively prevent non-Europeans
Societies from occupying positions as fully human subjects
key works

Sociology and Anthropology

Can the Subaltern Speak?
Gayatri Spivak
Manual of Ethnography
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present

key works Nationalism and the Imagination

Christianity, idealism and rationalism have led to decadent values in the west

Death of a Discipline
the notions of value and sense must be incorporated into
main theses
philosophical thought
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization

reality is constructed (perspectivism)

philosophy is inevitably shaped by language, metaphor and

a sense of hostility directed towards an object that one power relations
identifies as the cause of one's frustration; sense of weakness main theses/key concepts
Ressentiment
derived from this object; value system or morality developed the specific imaginary level intrinsic to philosophy; sets the
the philosophical imaginary
to justify oneself by identifying the object as inferior conditions of what can be constructed as rationality within it

Michele Le Doeuff
to love one's fate; the attitude of seeing what happens in
one's life, such as suffering and loss, as good; the willingness Amor fati Hipparchia's Choice
to live one's life exactly the same over and over again
key works The Philosophical Imaginary
the forces that lead humans to value rationality, order and
Appollonian
moderation The Sex of Knowing

the forces that lead humans to value irrationality, chaos and

Dionysian
instincts
the capacity to feel through others and for others; the touch
the recurring of all of existence throughout eternity Eternal return hapticality of the undercommons, the interiority of sentiment; the feel
main theses/key concepts that what is to come is here
key concepts
the philosophical position that rejects objective truth,
universities turn insurgents into state agents
knowledge, morality, values or meaning, which are viewed as
Nihilism
baseless, meaningless or impossible; the opposition to the Fred Moten
affirmation of life
Friedrich Nietzsche The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (with S. Harney

the exaltation of life instead of suffering; the acceptance of

Transvaluation of values key works In the Break: The Aesthetic of the Black Radical Tradition
instincts and desires

the ideal goal of humankind; a being concerned only with this The Universal Machine
Ubermensch
world; the future, amoral aristocracy

the fundamental urge of all beings to expand their potential Will to power the creation of zones of death where death becomes the ultimate
necropolitics
exercise of domination and the primacy form of resistance
the Enlightment has eliminated the possibility of the existence of god God is dead main theses/key concepts
discourse on Africa is based in a variety of cliches based on
Western fantasies and fears, it is the unconscious projection
the values of pride and power vs. those of kindness and
Master-slave morality tied to guilt, disavowal and the compulsion to repeat
empathy; judging things as good or bad vs. good or evil

Achille Mbembe
On the Postcolony
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Critique of Black Reason

On the Genealogy of Morality
key works
Necropolitics
The Birth of Tragedy

Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization

Human, All Too Human key works

Twilight of the Idols

the dehumanizing stereotypes of the western world and
occidentalism
ideological representation of the west
Ecce Homo
main theses/key concepts
the Orient is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who
Beyond Good and Evil
orientalism produced it, which makes orientalist work inherently political
and servile to power

Edward Said
primacy of ethics Orientalism
Inheritors 3 (postcolonialism and black studies)
transcendence of the other main theses Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (with D. Barenboim
key works
critique of western philosophy's focus on the self and subjectivity Culture and Imperialism

The Politics of Dispossesion: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994

the other; the sense of the other even in its absence Alterity

orders and compells us to be resposible for and to give and

serve the other; states 'do not kill me'; prior to reason, the face strategy of the suppressed against their suppressors;
hybridity
volition or judgment emergence of cultural forms from multiculturalism

the human urge to escape from being; the para- key concepts strategy of colonial subjection; the colonialist's desire for a
Transcendence mimicry
phenomenological experience of the other reformed, recognizable Other, almost the same

Emanuel Levinas main theses/key concepts

the content (said) and the act itself (saying); one belongs to cultures as consisting of opposing perceptions and
the Said and the Saying ambivalence dimensions; this ambivalence allows for hybrid identities
judgment, the other to the experience of transcendence
between the colonized and colonizer cultures

the privation of being that leads to transcendence Meontology

the ambiguous area that develops when two or more
third space
Homi K. Bhabha individuals or cultures interact
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority

Our Neighbours, Ourselves: Contemporary Reflections on Survival

Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence

Framing Fanon
Existence and Existents key works

key works On Writing Rights

Time and the Other

The Location of Culture

God, Death and Time (seminars)

Negotiating Rapture: The Power of Art to Transform Lives

we must think about the space, time and experience of the

act of writing itself main theses/key concepts blackness beyond a monolithic definition of black culture
Po u u a m Gu de Map
literature is distinguished from everyday language in its
fascination for the absence of the thing denoted by the word African Cinema: Politics and Culture
Manthia Diawara
main theses key works In Search of Africa
our access to reality is blurred by our relation to language

communities cannot be avowed and are constituted by their We Won't Budge: A Malaria Memoire
insufficiency and death

writing is a form of madness (as in the case of Kafka) Author: Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal

neither one nor the other, neither absence nor presence, but
the Neutral
their articulation; anonymous passivity

exteriority beyond all event that disorients the subject; a

the Outside
thought that dislocates the subject from reality

the death that is always realizing itself and the death that
Two deaths
never realizes; the actual and the ideal deaths

the threat of the outside, opening to another self that is key concepts
passive; that which anticipates its occurence but has always the Disaster Maurice Blanchot
already occured

breaks the relation to memory and identity; is always the

forgetting of forgetting; empty and fragmented experience of Forgetting
Henri Bergson
time

Jean-Paul Sartre
the impossibility of waiting; the absence of time; the delay of
Waiting
presence; neutral act opened to the disaster
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Writing of the Disaster Maurice de Gandillac

The Space of Literature Jean Hyppolite

The Unavowable Community Simone Weil

The Infinite Conversation key works Jean Cavailles

The Work of Fire Louis Althusser

Friendship Etienne Balibar

notable students
Thomas the Obscure Alain Badiou

Jacques Ranciere
sovereignty must be thought beyond its institutional and
political connotations and belongs to every individual Michel Foucault
main theses
critique of Hegel: negativity without work
Jacques Derrida

Nietzscheanism: the will-to-chance and tragedy Ecole Normale Superieure - Ulm (ENS) (est.1794-1807, reest.
Gilbert Simondon
1808-1822, reest. 1826)

excessive and non-recuperable part of the economy (and of Francois Laruelle

human energy) that must be spent (in the arts, non-
accursed share
procreative sexuality, laughter, etc) or go to waste in Bernard-Henri Levy
destructive and ruinous acts (war)
Benny Levy Institut d'etudes levinassiennes (est. 2000) (Founder)
an experience that approaches the edges of life in terms of
intensity and impossibility (eg: fascination, madness, suffering)
Limit-experience Predecessors (first generation or proto-post-structuralists)
Andre Comte-Sponville

active base matter than encompasses and disrupts the

Base materialism
opposition of high and low and destabilises all foundations Louis Althusser

key concepts
the boundary between the possible and the impossible; life Jean Hyppolite
beyond utility; an experience of the present moment in which Sovereignty
anticipation dissolves into nothing Georges Bataille Centre International d'Etude de la Philosophie Français
Alain Badiou
Contemporaine (CIEPFC, est. 2002) (Founder)
the realm of inner experience, whose opacity defies social notable professors
structures and knowledge; the disruption of order by the Sacred
Jean-Luc Marion
heterogeneity that leads to destruction

Quentin Meillassoux
assenting to life up to the point of death; loss of rationality
and seriousness; the experience of continuous existence; the Eroticism
death of the isolated self Bernard-Henri Levy

public institution of higher education, highly selective, competitive

The Accursed Share
and prestigious; students are civil servants; top level of research-
key characteristic
training education in the French university system; does not offer
Erotism: Death and Sensuality
diplomas (students must also enroll at a university)

Inner Experience
key works Jacques Derrida
On Nietzsche
Raymond Aron
Literature and Evil
Pierre Bourdieu
Theory of Religion
Roland Barthes

the death of the author Cornelius Castoriadis

notable professors
against the incorporation of intentions and identity of author in literary criticism Pierre Hadot
key theses
a text's unity lies not in its origins but in its destination Claude Lefort

the scriptor exists to produce the text and only simultaneously with it Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) (est. Claude Levi-Strauss
1947 (as part of EPHE), reest. 1975 (independent))
Lucien Febvre (first president)
writing without signification; the revolutionary possibilities of
Writing degree zero
literature
Fernand Braudel (second president)

textual device whose purpose is to establish a literary text as

Effect of reality
realistic Jean Hyppolite

the reader passively recieves ready-made meanings; notable students Bernard Stiegler
key concepts
literature that abides to the principle of non-contradiction; Readerly text
does not disturb doxa or common sense
Roland Barthes Alain Tourraine

a literature that aspires to make the reader not a consumer but

a producer of the text; reading becomes an active form of work
pre-existing vs. created with the text; genius vs. combiner
Writerly text
created initially as the sixth section of the EPHE for research
in the social sciences; welcomes interdisciplinary research;
key characteristic
Author and Scriptor since 1975 offers doctoral diplomas; allowed intellectuals to
teach who otherwise couldn't have at standard universities

Mythologies
Georges Dumezil
Writing Degree Zero
Alexandre Kojeve
S/Z: An Essay
key works Alexandre Koyre
The Death of the Author notable professors
Claude Levi-Strauss
Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE) (est. 1868)
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
Marcel Mauss
Elements of Semiology
Ferdinand de Saussure

Nietzscheanism: we must read Nietzsche as a philosopher of created as an experimental research institution autonomous
the body and through the body key characteristic of the Universite Paris; the fifth section, for the scientific study
of religions, was created in 1886
the laws of hospitality are an impossible paradox that lead to
the destruction or disappearance of the host main theses
Emmanuel Levinas
words and their meanings are mutually excluded from memory
Jean Baudrillard
language is a combat zone between the body and the mind
Paul Ricoeur

obsessional image produced instinctively from the life of the notable professors Etienne Balibar
Phantasm
impulses

key concepts Pierre Klossowski Henri Lefebvre

willed reproduction of a phantasm that simulates the
agitation of the soul; the actualization of something Simulacrum
Francois Laruelle
nonrepresentable
Universite Paris X - Nanterre (est.1964)
Catherine Perret
Sade My Neighbor

Such a Deathly Desire Luc Brisson

notable students

Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle key works Jean-Luc Marion

The Suspended Vocation created as an extension of the Universite Paris/Sorbonne;

based on the americal model, it was created as a campus (as
key characteristic opposed to Universite Paris' integration in the city; became
The Baphomet
famous for sparking and initiating the revolts of may 68, after
which it was nicknamed 'red' (communist) or 'mad' Nanterre

power and knowledge are inseparable

Gilles Deleuze

we must un m
Main theses Francois Chatelet

m Alain Badiou

Etienne Balibar
M M
Michel Foucault (first head of the philosophy department)
mm
M Felix Guattari
M
Luce Irigaray
M notable professors
Helene Cixous Centre de recherches en etudes feminines (est. 1974) (Founder)

Jean-Francois Lyotard
Universite Paris VIII - Vincennes (est. 1969)
m
Antonio 'Toni' Negri

Jacques Ranciere

m m m Jacques Lacan
m
Jacques-Alain Miller

m
Michel Foucault Slavoj Zizek

notable students Daniel Bensaid

m m founded as an experimental campus outside of Paris (Vincennes,

m m later Sain-Denis), in direct response to may 68; sympathetic for
key characteristic students' demands for more freedom and interdisiciplinary
courses, but also the removal of students from the Latin Quarter
where fighting with the police had taken place

Michel Foucault
m
m Associated Institutions
Raymond Aron

Roland Barthes

Emile Benveniste

Henri Bergson

Pierre Bourdieu

notable professors Martial Gueroult

m

Maurice Merleau-Ponty
College de France (est. 1530)
Paul Valery
M

Jules Vuillemin

Georges Dumezil

Gabriel Tarde

m M Maurice Halbwachs

m
a research and teaching institution without enrolled students;
offers high-level courses that are free, non-degree granting
key characteristic and open to all without condition or registration; professors
are elected by their fellow professors and take the position
lifelong or until retirement; each academic course they
present their most recent research

m
Jacques Derrida (founder)
M
Francois Chatelet (founder)
W
Dominique Lecourt (founder)

Jean-Pierre Faye (founder)

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

mm mm m mm
Francois Jullien
notable professors
m m
Jean-Claude Milner

College International de Philosophie (Ciph) (est. 1983) Francois Noudelmann

m

Giorgio Agamben
m m
Alain Badiou

m Antonio 'Toni' Negri

m Francois Laruelle

founded to re-think the teaching of philosophy in France and to

liberate it from any institutional authority; chairs are competitively
m m elected for 6 years (non-renewable); few students are enrolled and
m key characteristic
they may recieve a diplome which is not a university degree; focuses
m on the intersection of philosophy and other (eg: law, science,
psychoanalysis, economics, politics etc); free and open to the public
m m

m Jean Baudrillard

Jacques Derrida
M
m
Slavoj Zizek

M Antonio 'Toni' Negri

m m

Giorgio Agamben
m

notable professors Jean-Luc Nancy

European Graduate School (EGS) (est. 1994)

Judith Butler

Alain Badiou

Helene Cixous

Simon Critchley

Jacques Ranciere

private graduate university; a center for advanced studies in the arts,

key characteristic
philosophy and critical thought; offers intensive summer courses

Roland Barthes

M Pierre Bourdieu

m Main Authors Georges Canguilhem

m Pierre Hadot
notable researchers
Luce Irigaray
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (est. 1939)
Michele Le Doeuff

Tran Duc Thao

m
M
Jules Vuillemin
M

the national research institution of France; brings together pure and

m
key characteristic applied research; is traditionally focused on the sciences, it has also
supported the research of several philosophers and social scientists
M

Emile Boutroux

m
Henri Bergson
m
Edouard Le Roy
m m m
Etienne Gilson

Jean Guitton
notable members
Michel Serres
Academie Française (est. 1635)
m m Claude Levi-Strauss

Voltaire

Montesquieu

Alain Finkielkraut
m

the most prestigious academy within the Institut de France;

m m key characteristic only 40 members at any given time, lifelong election; the
principal council for matters pertaining the french language
m m

Ferdinand Alquie
m

Raymond Aron
m

Gaston Bachelard
W

Henri Bergson
M

Emile Boutroux

Emile Brehier
M

Leon Brunschvicg
notable members
m Georges Davy
Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (est. 1795-1803, reest.1832)
m Henri Gouhier
M
Martial Gueroult

Jean Guitton

M Louis Lavalle

M M Edouard Le Roy

Rene Le Senne

M
a learned society, member of the Institut de France; it purpose
is to promote the discussion of philosophy and related subjects;
key characteristic
composed of 50 members in 6 sections (philosophy, economics,
law, sociology, history and geography)

Cornelius Castoriadis (leader)

m m
Claude Lefort (founder)
m m
Jean Laplanche (founder)

Vincent Descombes
m m m m notable members
Gerard Genette
Socialisme ou Barbarie (1948-1967)
Guy Debord

m m
Jean-Francois Lyotard

W
Edgar Morin

m
libertarian socialist group of intellectuals and workers who agreed
key characteristic the enemy of society are bureaucracies in modern capitalism; also
a journal of the same name; started as an off-shoor of trotskyism

Guy Debord

M
Raoul Vaneigem
m
Constant Nieuwenhuys

M M
Alexander Trocchi
notable members
mm
Ralph Rumney

M
Situationist International (1957-1972)
Asger Jons
M
m
Attila Kotanyi

M
Michele Bernstein

m m
libertarian marxist, dada and surrealist international organization of
social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals
m key characteristic and political theorists; through the concept of the spectacle critiqued
m
m advanced capitalism; transitioned from a more artistic emphasis to a
more political one; evolved out of the Lettrist International

m m Georges Bataille

Pierre Klossowski
m
Roger Caillois
m
notable members Jean Wahl

College International de Sociologie (1937-1939) Michel Leiris

m
Alexandre Kojeve

Walter Benjamin

anti-surrealist group of intellectuals who gave a series of

informal conferences and held discussion sessions;
key characteristic
surrealism obscures the social dimension of human
experience; drew from work in anthropology and sociology

Michel Foucault

Gilles Deleuze
m

Jean Genet

M
notable members Maurice Clavel
W W

Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP) (1971-1972) Robert Badinter

M

Jean-Marie Domenach

M Pierre Vidal-Naquet

study-group of the conditions of prisoners in France; guided

key characteristic by the notion of the 'intolerable'; thought as link between
prisoners and the public opinion

Jacques Derrida

m
Sarah Kofman

m notable members
Jean-Luc Nancy
Groupe de recherche sur l'enseignement philosophique
(GREPH) (1975-1979)
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

created to analyse and change the educational system, and in

key characteristic particular the philosophical institution, through the extension
m of the teaching of philosophy at all grades

M
Jacques Lacan

Jean Laplanche

Michel de Certeau
notable members
Cornelius Castoriadis
Ecole freudienne de Paris (EFP) (1964-1980)

m m Felix Guattari
M m

M m m M Luce Irigaray

created by Lacan after being expelled of the international

key characteristic
psychoanalytic association to train analysts

m m
m m
Jean-Paul Sartre (founder)

m mM
Simone de Beauvoir (founder)

m
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (founder)

Raymond Aron

m m
notable contributors Michel Leiris
Les Temps Modernes (1949-2019)
Jean Paulhan

Jean Genet

M
Samuel Beckett
W

Richard Wright
m m

Relevant Groups and Journals key characteristic existentialist journal

m

m M Philippe Sollers
notable editors
m Julia Kristeva

m Roland Barthes

m Michel Foucault

Maurice Blanchot

M Tel Quel (1960-1982) Jacques Derrida

notable contributors
Bernard Henry-Levy

m m
Francis Ponge
M
m
Umberto Eco

m
m Tzvetan Todorov

m m m post-structuralist and deconstructionist; originally aligned

key characteristic
with the communist party, it was maoist 1971-1976.
m m

Antonio 'Toni' Negri

m

Giorgio Agamben
m
notable contributors
Futur Anterieur (1990-1998) Paolo Virno

M M
Jean-Luc Nancy

key characteristic deleuzian-inspired journal of political thought

M
m

Georges Bataille (founder)

M
R m m m
Karl Jaspers
m m
M Jean Wahl
m
notable contributors Pierre Klossowski
Acephale (1936-1939)
m m
Roger Caillois

m m
Andre Masson

m mm m
Jean Rollin

key characteristic journal focused on avant-garde essays and Nietzsche; also a secret society

m
Jacques Derrida
M
M
Sarah Kofman
notable editors
m
La philosophie en effet (1975-present) Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

m Jean-Luc Nancy
m
m key characteristic book series at Galilee publishing house initially concieved to publish works by GREPH
M

Maurice Blanchot (author)

m m m
Dionys Mascolo (author)

m m
Simone de Beauvoir

m m
Jean-Paul Sartre

Andre Breton
signatories
M
Manifesto of the 121 (1960) Guy Debord
m

Alain Robbe-Grillet
m
Marguerite Duras
M
m
Henri Lefebvre
m
Michel Leiris

m
key characteristic declaration of the right to insubordination in the Algerian war

Xavier Leon (founder)

Leon Brunschvicg (founder)

Elie Halevy (founder)

M
Louis Couturat
W

Emile Durkheim

Emile Chartier 'Alain'

M Felix Ravaisson

m Emile Boutroux

Gustave Belot
notable contributors
Jacques Derrida
Revue de Metaphysique et de morale (1893-present)
Celestin Bougle

Sully Prudhomme
m
Jean Cavailles

m
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Georg Simmel

Gilles Deleuze
M m

Henri Bergson
M
M
Jean Wahl

mm created intially against the menace of both positivism and misticism,

defending the notions of the metaphysicial and the moral spaces of
key characteristic
reflection; became the most prestigious philosophical journal in
m
France throughout the mid-to-late 20th century

m M

m m