étienne balibar

intro’d to and adding because of nika dubrovsky‘s fb post (image above and her words below):

Here is a very interesting person to me.

Need to find his latest works and read them.

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googling him:

Étienne Balibar (/bælɪˈbɑːr/; French: [etjɛn balibaʁ]; born 23 April 1942) is a French philosopher. He has taught at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, at the University of California Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University and a visiting professor at the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University.

Balibar argues that, because no nation-state has an ethnic base, every nation-state must create fictive ethnicities in order to project stability on the populace

marsh label law et al

In order to minimize these regional, class, and race conflicts, nation-states fabricate myths of origin that produce the illusion of shared ethnicity among all their inhabitants. In order to create these myths of origins, nation-states *scour the historical period during which they were “formed” to find justification for their existence. They also create the illusion of shared ethnicity through linguistic communities: when everyone has access to the same language, they feel as if they share an ethnicity. Balibar argues that “schooling is the principal institution which produces ethnicity as linguistic community” (351). In addition, this ethnicity is created through the “nationalization of the family,” meaning that the state comes to perform certain functions that might traditionally be performed by the family, **such as the regulation of marriages and administration of social security. In recent work following the “populist” wave, Balibar has called the incorporation of these different elements “absolute capitalism.”

*language as control/enclosure et al

**makes no diff who regs/performs them .. oi.. cancerous distractions (unless in sea world – great cope\ing time-passers)

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googling videos:

Communism: Return to the New Commons? | Étienne Baliba – at new school – june 2019 – 1:38 video – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzfZXY9_mqM]:

39 min – conditions of possibility..

43 min – the crucial idea.. marx system of social relations based on crucial idea that capital accum tendency to bypass qual/qaun limit in exploiting labor.. commodifying every form of use value.. but also misleading so needs rewritten..

45 min – he underestimated capacity of c to make its own contradictions as starting pt for innovations.. because.. his conviction that the proletariat id’d w the industrial working class.. incorp-ing all other dominated groups.. led him to one sidedly base his understanding of exploitation the very source of accumulation.. on the extraction unpaid surplus labor and only that.. add to this.. what i’m touching here.. his total blindness to question of domestic labor as the other side of wage labor.. which is unpaid/unrecognized as productive labor in his own terms.. on need for critique of econ

rather .. need to let go of any form of m\a\p.. other wise same song

46 min – but 5 strategic points: 1\ financialization 2\ total subsumption (absorb one thing in another) 3\ deconstruction of the welfare state 4\ new population law 5\ destabilization of the political thru reversal of conflict into violence

47 min – 1\ new form of profit/accum making.. quasi instantaneous switching of investing to highest profits.. law of max shareholders value rather than profit of industry itself.. leads to.. anti planning of industrial activities.. leading to atomization.. et al.. debt core aspect of this new form of c..

51 min – 2\ new info tech makes it possible to expand fragmentation of activities into intellectual labor itself.. new c has not incorp’d sphere of labor and reproduction into its mech of valorization thru bio techs/econs in c form.. what i call total subsumption

57 min – 3\ the always massive exclusions.. now normalized.. become center/norm.. create precariousness

58 min – 4\ every form of c has its pop law.. characterized by 2 contradictory 1\ unification of global space.. forced/repressed migrations et al 2\ heterogeneity of form of precariousness.. pits poor against others.. the new nomos of the earth

1:01 – 5\ transition of c.. doesn’t just push to extreme.. reverses some of them.. ie: neolib, post democracy, et al.. involves emergence of extreme violence.. vast zones of death extended..

1:02 – now what to do if history progresses in neg sense..

1:05 – framework to transform.. 2 general ideas.. 1\ social strategy must combine global demands.. beginning w reg which push c to limits of acceptability.. not known in advance.. therefore reverse post socialist tendency and local insurrections.. create various modes of rad democracy that tend to cross borders

1:06 – 2\ why combo of compulsory regs and autonomous insurrections.. not identical not from same forces.. but complimenting each other keeps/resurrects something of the old idea of progress.. whole idea of socialist strategy must nevertheless become subjected to diff temporality.. catastrophe.. linking it to the destruction of environ.. and social violence.. politics not made of constructions and projects but of resistances.. catastrophe must be made dominate because it is most urgent.. important to gather under single flag.. most difficult challenges.. ie: destruction of planet.. w/o deeper understanding w what living in the world means.. socialism is a means for ecology.. can’t be minimized.. by technocrats or scientists w good intent.. et al.. will impose only in democratic forms.. along w drastic reductions of ineq’s.. against all forms of exclusions..

1:10 – important regs: environ, fin, most important production and safe weaponry, regs of monopolies of info/communication.. these will clash w security et al.. so call for is a compliment on the other side.. permanent return of insurrections at diff levels/places.. ones that escape boundaries of national borders..

gershenfeld something else law

1:13 – his talk ends starts q&a

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Utopia 1/13: Étienne Balibar and Bernard E. Harcourt (September 28, 2022) – 2:42 video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlJS6VowQ4w] 

37 min – key issue at stake in utopian imagination is a request for a retrieval of the last community.. the privilege of private property has destroyed.. but bring in theme of catastrophe.. utopias are catastrophes against catastrophe.. turning world upside down to avoid destructions 

need something legit new.. not even an upside down ness.. oi

ie: a nother way

38 min – utopias not just modulations of idea of progress.. they invent/illustrate an opening of the limits of the possible beyond limitations observable in the real.. the dominate social relations.. which itself can be interp’d as a reaction against the catastrophic distraction of these possibilities.. t

to me.. if reaction.. then not legit diff/utopia.. just perpetuating same song

40 min – utopia imagines an alt to dominate form of life.. associated w neg relationship to progress.. but in feeling of urgency to prevent the doom.. *element of hope becomes compounded w element of anxiety/fragility/risk.. t

*until now.. now have means to facil ie: gershenfeld something else law

41 min – all of this illustrates the intrinsic orientation of the utopian gesture w the idea of negativity.. utopias do not contend themselves w a neg/critical attitude of rejection of existing order of things.. they want to concretely/empirically/experimentally offer alts.. embark on projects.. but utopias at closure look.. incorporates the neg into their projects/dreams of another world.. that reverse or internally negates the pending catastrophe.. or they want confer a concrete reality to the negation of the negation..t

part\ial ness is killing us.. keeping us from legit utopia ness

42 min – seems this is particularly relevant in an age like ours which is replete w catastrophes in a grand state.. at the scale of globalization itself.. which corresponds to fact that we observe around us and feel w/in self a renewed urgency to invent alt modes of life.. emancipated from the brutality/inhumanity of the dominate.. t neocap/neoempirialist institutions

to (virus) leap et al

43 min – the mutual strengthening of despair/hope/neg/capacity-to-create.. more than ever on order of the day.. but catastrophes seem to block.. so block hope itself.. no future left.. or a reproductive tendency of global disorder at new magnitude.. destruction.. utterly diff from utopian orientation.. comes from extreme dimension s of catastrophes themselves..

3 major ones: of course environ but 1\ nuclear 2\ climatic 3\ digital

55 min – on 3\ digital .. *the greatest paradox.. the digital catastrophe.. pos side: qualitative leap in communications.. and productions rad transformed.. t.. resulting in ai.. **and neg side: digital disaster .. cyber attack.. et al.. using giant energies.. et al.. for neg..

*and we’re missing it

ie: use  itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday as data to connect us (tech/ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

**again.. now have means for that to not happen.. ie via gershenfeld something else law

56 min – creating new humans as result of artificial communication.. and govt conduct into each part of life.. which construct (us) in all parts of life.. total subsumption

57 min – this catastrophe has intimate links w global c base.. new level of commodification of our lives.. care of selves commodified et al.. surveillance .. zuboff et al..

shoshana zuboff.. age of surveillance capitalism et al

58 min – main point.. chain of consequences.. production of new world.. in which new humans live.. metaverse.. augmented reality..

59 min – alteration of perception of history works in opp directions.. planned to unfold.. utopian thinking opp.. mass voluntary servitude.. dovetails w special kind of utopian thinking.. acceleration ism in general.. confronts utopians w paradox.. that they are not ahead of their time but lacking behind it’s own acceleration

1:02 – contrast w pos..

1:03 – need to avoid paradox: utopia seems fragile.. but should be no doubt that utopias exist more than ever.. showing capacity to last/survive

1:04 – 1\ to exist is to emerge in the world.. and not to exist forever.. but never disappears w/o leaving some trace..

to me.. no legit utopias to date.. all same song

1:05 – 2\ real/concrete utopias are anti c’s.. express not from the causes.. but from pov of consequences.. questions they try to solve not transhistorical.. but questions that are immediately accessible.. t

today can do both.. for (blank)’s sake

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set so we can org around legit needs

ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free

1:07 – 3\ almost (opp) to moore et al.. reducing to single cause: private property..

1:08 – 4\ explains why i’m not so keen on reducing logic to single notion of c.. or domination of c.. not to deny connection to c.. but because chances to create alts don’t reside at abstract level of putting an end to c mode of production.. reside in the capacity to address the questions of war and peace.. ways of life.. distribution of resources.. modes of interaction w the digital equip et al.. t

only if we let go enough.. ie: sans any form of m\a\p

1:10 – 3\ concrete utopias ought to be considered as heterotopias.. foucault’s other spaces.. lives governed by other norms rather than dominate norms.. making room for otherness/deviancy

1:18 – is there ever a guarantee that a cessation from dom norms will not create a prison for its own members.. ie: for the children of those who invented the utopian community and for whom it is not a choice.. a heritage.. my response.. no.. no guarantee.. utopian struggles against self as well as against enemy or dom order.. t

again.. until now.. today have means to facil gershenfeld something else law et al

1:20 – on struggle and life needing to be together

end of his talk

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