Biofuel development not only condemns the poorest of the poor to famine, it also deprives peasant communities of their property rights - think of the 10 million acres of land robbed by Columbian paramilitaries for conversion into oil palm estates. Biofuel development takes place at the expense of biodiversity, it finishes off the last of the pristine rainforests, as in Indonesia where the ecosystems catering for orang-outangs are disapearing. And it also savages the floral resources within the European Union. And (...) yet, only two years ago, biofuels were hailed as the miracle solution to dwindling petroleum reserves and to the problem of global warming, with the European Union adding one ambitious biofuel initiative to the next! The near-unanimous change of heart we have been witnessing over the past months is surely a first victory, but we should definitely not slacken in our efforts. (shrink)

A translation of one of the single most important works of recent French philosophy, Badiou's magnum opus, and a must-have for his growing following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental thought.

Against "political philosophy" -- Politics as thought -- Althusser -- Politics unbound -- A speculative disquisition on the concept of democracy -- Truths and justice -- Rancière and the community of equals -- Rancière and apolitics -- What is a thermidorean? -- Politics as truth procedure.

The subtractive : preface by Francois Wahl -- Philosophy itself -- The (re)turn of philosophy itself -- Definition of philosophy -- What is a philosophical institution? -- Philosophy and poetry -- The philosophical recourse to the poem -- Mallarm's method : subtraction and isolation -- Rimbaud's method : interruption -- Philosophy and mathematics -- Conference on subtraction -- Truth : forcing and unnameable -- Philosophy and politics -- Philosophy and love -- What is love? -- Philosophy and psychoanalysis -- Subject (...) and infinite -- Antiphilosophy : Lacan and Plato -- Writing of the generic -- Writing of the generic : Samuel beckett. (shrink)

Contra those proclaiming the end of philosophy, Badiou aims to restore philosophical thought to the complete space of the truths that condition it.

Everywhere, the twentieth century has been judged and condemned: the century of totalitarian terror, of utopian and criminal ideologies, of empty illusions, of genocides, of false avant-gardes, of democratic realism everywhere replaced by abstraction. It is not Badiou's wish to plead for an accused that is perfectly capable of defending itself without the authors aid. Nor does he seek to proclaim, like Frantz, the hero of Sartre's Prisoners of Altona, 'I have taken the century on my shoulders and I have (...) said: I will answer for it!' The Century simply aims to examine what this accursed century, from within its own unfolding, said that it was. Badiou's proposal is to reopen the dossier on the century - not from the angle of those wise and sated judges we too often claim to be, but from the standpoint of the century itself. (shrink)

The place of the subjective -- Everything that is of a whole constitutes an obstacle to it insofar as it is included in it -- Action, manor of the subject -- The real is the impasse of formalization : formalization is the locus of the passing-into-force of the real -- Hegel : "the activity of force is essentially activity reacting against itself" -- Subjective and objective -- The subject under the signifiers of the exception -- Of force as disappearance, whose (...) effect is the whole from which it has disappeared -- Deduction of the splitting -- A la nue accablante tu? -- Any subject is a forced exception, which comes in second place -- Jewelry for the sacred of any subtraction of existence -- Lack and destruction -- The new one forbids the new one and presupposes it -- On the side of the true -- There are no class relations -- Every subject crosses a lack of being and a destruction -- The subjects antecedence to itself -- Torsion -- Theory of the subject according to Sophocles, theory of the subject according to Eeschylus -- Of the strands of the knot, knowing only the color -- A materialist reversal of materialism -- The Black sheep of materialism -- The indissoluble salt of truth -- Answering to the sphinx demands from the subject not to have to answer or the sphinx -- Algebra and topology -- Neigborhoods -- Consistency, second name of the real after the cause -- So little ontology -- Subjectivization and subjective process -- The topological opposite of the knot is not the cut-dispersion but the destruction-recomposition -- Subjectivizing anticipation, retroaction of the subjective process -- Hurry! hurry! word of the living! -- The inexistent -- Logic of the excess -- Topics of ethics -- Where? -- The subjective twist : and -- Diagonals of the imaginary -- Schema -- Ethics as the dissipation of the paradoxes of partisanship -- Classical detour -- Love what you will never believe twice. (shrink)

Cultural historical research has deliberately challenged “historical realism,” the view that history is comprised entirely of observable actions that actually occurred, and instead has emphasized the historical significance of thoughts, emotions, and representations; it has also focused on the invisible, the momentary, and the perishable. These latter elements introduce the notion of the possible in history. This article examines the ways in which cultural history has approached the notion of the possible, as well as the methodological and theoretical implications of (...) this approach. Its chief claim is that the idea of possibility is fundamental for the concept of culture and ineliminable from its historical study.The question of possibility is present in multiple ways in the study of history; it is important to distinguish among different levels of possibility. The possible may mean, for instance, what it is possible for historians to know about the past, or the possibilities open to historical agents themselves, or, indeed, the possibilities they perceived themselves as having even if these seem impossible from the point of view of the historian. The article starts with the first aspect and moves on toward the possibilities that existed in the past world either in fact or in the minds of those in the past.The article argues that the study of past cultures always entails the mapping of past possibilities. The first strand of the essay builds on the metaphor of the black hole and intends to solve one of the central problems faced by cultural historians, namely, how to access the horizon of the people of the past, their experience of their own time, especially when the sources remain silent. The second, more speculative strand builds on the notion of plenitude and is designed to open up avenues for further discussion about the concept of culture in particular. (shrink)

This volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's ambitious system.

Self-awareness represents the capacity of becoming the object of one’s own attention. In this state one actively identifies, processes, and stores information about the self. This paper surveys the self-awareness literature by emphasizing definition issues, measurement techniques, effects and functions of self-attention, and antecedents of self-awareness. Key self-related concepts (e.g., minimal, reflective consciousness) are distinguished from the central notion of self-awareness. Reviewed measures include questionnaires, implicit tasks, and self-recognition. Main effects and functions of self-attention consist in selfevaluation, escape from the (...) self, amplification of one's subjective experience, increased self-knowledge, self-regulation, and inferences about others' mental states (Theory-of-Mind). A neurocognitive and socioecological model of self-awareness is described in which the role of face-to-face interactions, reflected appraisals, mirrors, media, inner speech, imagery, autobiographical knowledge, and neurological structures is underlined. (shrink)

been recently proposed (Morin, 2003; 2004). The model takes into account most known mechanisms and processes leading to self-awareness, and examines their multiple and complex interactions. Inner speech is postulated to play a key-role in this model, as it establishes important connections between many of its ele- ments. This paper first reviews past and current references to a link between self-awareness and inner speech. It then presents an analysis of the nature of the relation between these two concepts. It is (...) suggested that inner speech can inter- nally reproduce and expand social and physical (ecological) sources of self- awareness. Inner speech can also create a psychological distance between the self and mental events it experiences (thus facilitating self-observation) it can act as a problem-solving device where the self represents the problem and self-information the solution, and can label aspects of one’s inner life that would otherwise be difficult to objectively perceive. Empirical evidence supporting the role of inner speech in self-awareness is also presented. (shrink)

Badiou explores the exponentially rich and varied world of French philosophy in a number of groundbreaking essays, published her for the first time in English or in a revised translation. Included are the often-quoted review of Louis Althussers's canonical works For Marks and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of 'potato fascism' in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guttari's A Thousand Plateus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara (...) Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, the argues for the persistence of Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea. (shrink)

This paper's purpose was to identify the key sources when formulating competitive advantages of hotel chains. The research assessed the financial activities performance included in annual hospitality industry reports and on their official websites; questioning of loyal and potential customers; the five-point Likert scale and the Pearson correlation coefficient were applied to understand the possible consumer reaction to a certain competitive advantage or its absence. The paper confirms the effectiveness of key sources used by management to win and retain competitive (...) advantages: despite strong dependence on the economic cycle phase etc., after the devastating crisis of 2007, 2008, but also to achieve sustainable growth. All the networks examined over the last decade have expanded their presence in international markets, diversified the portfolio of brands, increased the number of jobs and profits. It was also proved that the opinion of the final consumer is still not sufficiently taken into account in the assessment of the Pearson correlation coefficient (the latter allowed the authors to propose their own definition of the competitive advantage in the industry). The paper attempts for the first time to consider the competitive advantages of hotel chains from the point of view not only of theorists and business practitioners, but also with the view of the opinion of the services consumer; there were identified the discrepancies, which consideration would allow to increase the level of guest satisfaction and, accordingly, the efficiency of the hotel business. In future papers, the authors plan to verify the existence of a correlation between the degree of guest loyalty to a particular hotel network and the main financial results of its activities. (shrink)

Two controversial thinkers discuss a timeless but nonetheless urgent question: should philosophy interfere in the world? Nothing less than philosophy is at stake because, according to Badiou, philosophy is nothing but interference and commitment and will not be restrained by academic discipline. Philosophy is strange and new, and yet speaks in the name of all - as Badiou shows with his theory of universality. Similarly, Zizek believes that the philosopher must intervene, contrary to all expectations, in the key issues of (...) the time. He can offer no direction, but this only shows that the question has been posed incorrectly: it is valid to change the terms of the debate and settle on philosophy as abnormality and excess. At once an invitation to philosophy and an introduction to the thinking of two of the most topical and controversial philosophers writing today, this concise volume will be of great interest to students and general readers alike. (shrink)

Quite a few recent models are rapidly introducing new concepts describing different levels of consciousness. This situ- ation is getting confusing because some theorists formulate their models without making reference to existing views, redun- dantly adding complexity to an already difficult problem. In this paper, I present and compare nine neurocognitive models to highlight points of convergence and divergence. Two aspects of consciousness seem especially important: perception of self in time and complexity of self-representations. To this I add frequency of (...) self-focus, amount of self-related informa- tion, and accuracy of self-knowledge. Overall, I conclude that many novel concepts (e.g., reflective, primary, core, extend- ed, recursive, and minimal consciousness) are useful in helping us distinguish between delicate variations in consciousness and in clarifying theoretical issues that have been intensely debated in the scientific literature—e.g., consciousness in rela- tion to mirror self-recognition and language. (shrink)

A leading continental philosopher from France and author of Theory of the Subject interrogates the "anti-philosophy" of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, arguing that his beliefs compromise truth and logic while rendering philosophy a practice of esoteric aphorisms.

In this book a noted physiologist and neuroscientist introduces the concept of simplexity, the set of solutions living organisms find that enable them to deal with information and situations, while taking into account past experiences and anticipating future ones. Such solutions are new ways of addressing problems so that actions may be taken more quickly, more elegantly, and more efficiently. In a sense, the history of living organisms may be summed up by their remarkable ability to find solutions that avoid (...) the world's complexity by imposing on it their own rules and functions. Evolution has resolved the problem of complexity not by simplifying but by finding solutions whose processes--though they can sometimes be complex--allow us to act in the midst of complexity and of uncertainty. Nature can inspire us by making us realize that simplification is never simple and requires instead that we choose, refuse, connect, and imagine, in order to act in the best possible manner. Such solutions are already being applied in design and engineering and are significant in biology, medicine, economics, and the behavioral sciences. (shrink)

Enigmatic relationship between philosophy and politics -- Figure of the soldier -- Politics as a nonexpressive dialectics.

Explores the link between mathematics and ontology.

Little is known with regard to the precise cognitive tools the self uses in acquiring and processing information about itself. In this article, we underline the possibility that inner speech might just represent one such cognitive process. Duval and Wicklund’s theory of self-awareness and the selfconsciousness, and self-knowledge body of work that was inspired by it are reviewed, and the suggestion is put forward that inner speech parallels the state of self-awareness, is more frequently used among highly self-conscious persons, and (...) represents an effective, if not indispensable, tool involved in the formation of the self-concept. The possibility is also raised that the extent to which one uses inner speech could partially explain individual differences in self-consciousness and self-knowledge. A selective review of the private and inner speech literature is presented, and some possible ways of testing the hypothesis by using pre-existing techniques are proposed in the hope of stimulating empirical investigations. Some implications are outlined in conclusion. (shrink)

This article proposes a reading of digital citizenships as these are shifting from a historical and conceptual perspective. We developed the following steps to carry it out: first, a problematization of the concept of digital citizenship from a critical-historical reading, betting on a complex understanding of it that assumes interactions between public and private spheres; second, taking into account aspects of the technology’s philosophy, we analyze the relationship between young people and politics through Twitter, and finally, a proposal of prejudices (...) configuration and modelling that can occur in this new public-private sphere based on some aspects seen in the second round of the 2018 Colombian presidential campaign. One of the conclusions we reached is that Twitter is a sociotechnical network that generates a shifting form of connection between the private and public spheres, where young people have assemblage and can generate resistance to the modelling imposed by political campaigns. (shrink)

Para este trabajo, seleccionamos los programas Bailando por un sueño, Intratables y El show de la mañana, y retomamos algunas expresiones de los sujetos que participaron en grupos de discusión durante los meses de octubre, noviembre y diciembre de 2016 en Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Rosario y Córdoba.Estos programas televisivos, en tiempos de una “democracia mediatizada”, son centrales en la modelización de lo político en un sentido muy distinto a lo que definía el concepto de “videopolítica” en los 90. (...) Uno de los cambios a considerar remite al impacto del desarrollo de internet y a los dispositivos asociados para un tipo de “participación mediatizada” en vivo, que transforma sustantivamente el lugar y la posición que tenía el espectador de los viejos medios masivos de comunicación. Con relación al “objeto” de estos programas, es posible identificar y reconstruir una modelización recurrente en el qué se dice y cómo; construcción ideológica que encuentra en la macro forma compartida del panel, por ejemplo, una manera de presentar “diversidad de voces”, en tanto expresión resultante del proceso de trabajo que vincula estética y política en la construcción de una “verdad” sobre el contexto político actual.La estrategia expositiva y argumentativa es la siguiente: 1) Presentamos y caracterizamos estructuralmente a los programas seleccionados y los vinculamos con expresiones rescatadas de los grupos de discusión. 2) Seleccionamos ejes de comparación que posibilitan la precisión de recurrencias entre ellos. 3) Finalmente, con los resultados del recorrido descriptivo y analítico, exponemos rasgos y dinámicas de las novedosas formas de estetización de lo político —en el sentido benjaminiano— como proceso orientado a que las masas —en nuestro caso, los individuos— expresen sus demandas. (shrink)

This concise and accessible book is the perfect introduction to Badiou’s thought. Responding to Tarby’s questions, Badiou takes us on a journey that interrogates and explores the four conditions of philosophy: politics, love, art and science. In all these domains, events occur that bring to light possibilities that were invisible or even unthinkable; they propose something to us. Everything then depends on how the possibility opened up by the event is grasped, elaborated and embedded in the world – this is (...) what Badiou calls a ‘truth procedure’. The event creates a possibility but there then has to be an effort – a group effort in the case of politics, an individual effort in the case of love or art – for this possibility to become real and inscribed in the world. As he explains his thinking on politics, love, art and science, Badiou takes stock of his major works, reflects on their central themes and arguments and looks forward to the questions he plans to address in his future writings. The book concludes with a short introduction to Badiou’s philosophy by Fabien Tarby. For anyone wishing to understand the work of one of the most widely read and influential philosophers writing today, this small book will be an indispensable guide. (shrink)

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction -- Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism' -- 2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq -- 3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today? -- The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002 -- 5. The law on the Islamic headscarf -- 6. Daily humiliation -- (...) Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France -- 8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art -- Notes to part one -- PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction -- 1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews? -- 2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward) -- 3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus -- 4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier) -- 5. Against negationism -- 6. Local angel -- 7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz -- 8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter) -- 9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant -- Notes to part two -- PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics -- 2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution? -- A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels) -- Notes to part three. (shrink)

This article raises the question of how we acquire self-information through self-talk, i.e., of how self-talk mediates self-awareness. It is first suggested that two social mechanisms leading to self-awareness could be reproduced by self-talk: engaging in dialogues with ourselves, in which we talk to fictive persons, would permit an internalization of others' perspectives; and addressing comments to ourselves about ourselves, as others do toward us, would allow an acquisition of self-information. Secondly, it is proposed that self-observation is possible only if (...) there exists a distance between the individual and any potentially observable self-aspect; self-talk, because it conveys self-information under a different form , would create a redundancy -- and with it, a wedge -- within the self. (shrink)

A passionate critique of Enlightenment--both in its contemporary invocation and its historical and cultural use--and a call to arms to rethink human equality and liberty without the sacrifice of individual rights and ethnicities.

The present review of literature surveys two main issues related to self-referential processes: (1) Where in the brain are these processes located, and do they correlate with brain areas uniquely specialized in self-processing? (2) What are the empirical and theoretical links between inner speech and self-awareness? Although initial neuroimaging attempts tended to favor a right hemispheric view of selfawareness, more recent work shows that the brain areas which support self-related processes are located in both hemispheres and are not uniquely activated (...) during self-reflective tasks. Furthermore, self-awareness at least partially relies on internal speech. An activation of Broca's area (which is known to sustain inner speech) is observed in a significant number of brain-imaging studies of self-reflection. Loss of inner speech following brain damage produces self-awareness deficits. Inner speech most likely can internally reproduce social mechanisms leading to self-awareness. Also, the process of self-reflection can be seen as being a problem-solving task, and self-talk as being a cognitive tool the individual uses to effectively work on the task. It is noted that although a large body of knowledge already exists on self-awareness, little is known about individual differences in dispositional self-focus and types of self-attention (e.g., rumination vs. self-reflection). (shrink)

D’un point de vue patrimonial, le célèbre texte des Éléments de géométrie de Clairaut, publié la première fois en 1741, est traditionnellement considéré comme le début d’une riche histoire plutôt que son aboutissement, en raison notamment du succès considérable qu’il a eu dès sa parution et de la manière dont Clairaut en a défendu le projet, en rupture apparente avec le modèle euclidien. Nous proposons ici une image un peu différente qui s’appuie sur la nature très particulière de la production (...) géométrique foisonnante dans laquelle le traité de Clairaut s’insère et doit être compris. Nous présentons tout d’abord le côté paradoxal de l’ouvrage, qui revendique non seulement une grande originalité mais aussi une non moins grande conformité au genre des « éléments » de géométrie spéculative. Nous indiquons ensuite cinq raisons majeures qui montrent que le texte était en effet largement conforme aux attendus de l’époque, y compris dans sa revendication d’accessibilité et de rupture vis-à-vis du modèle euclidien. Nous dégageons deux originalités de l’ouvrage : le fait de confondre les caractéristiques des géométries spéculatives et pratiques dans un seul et même ouvrage ; et le fait d’écrire un ouvrage de géométrie suivant un « ordre analytique », mais sans algèbre. (shrink)

Les idées ici proposées ne dépendent point de quelque idée supérieure d'abord posée, et ne conduisent même point à quelque notion commune qui puisse définir tous les arts en peu de mots. Au contraire je me suis attaché à marquer les différences, les séparations, les oppositions, me réglant ainsi, autant que peut faire la critique, sur les oeuvres elles-mêmes, dont chacune s'affirme si bien et n'affirme qu'elle.

In the past, researchers have focused mainly on the effects and consequences of self-awareness; however, they have neglected a more basic issue pertaining to the specific mechanisms that initiate and sustain self-perception. The author presents a model of self-awareness that proposes the existence of 3 sources of self-information. First, the social milieu includes early face-to-face interactions, self-relevant feedback, a social comparison mechanism that leads to perspective taking, and audiences. Second, contacts with objects and structures in the physical environment foster self–world (...) differentiation in infants; this environment also contains self-focusing and reflecting stimuli, such as mirrors and video cameras. Third, the self can develop bodily awareness through proprioception and can reflect on itself using imagery and inner speech. Furthermore, self-awareness is mainly mediated by the prefrontal lobes. The author establishes various links among these different neurological, social, ecological, and cognitive elements of the model. (shrink)