French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Balibar, Violence et civilité
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
Violence et civilité. Wellek Library Lectures et autres essais de philosophie politique
Etienne Balibar
Published on: 11/02/2010
Publisher: Galilée
Series: la philosophie en effet
ISBN: 978-2-7186-0694-1
EAN: 9782718606941
Number of pages: 416 pages
Publisher's price: 35.00€
The origins of this book trace back to a presentation, "Violence and Politics," delivered in 1992 at the Cerisy colloquium dedicated to Jacques Derrida, "Crossing Borders."
It is structured into two main parts: the French adaptation, faithful to the original, of the 1996 Wellek Library Lectures delivered in Irvine, "Extreme Violence and the Problem of Civility," and a series of more recent texts (written between 2001 and 2006) that seek to articulate the categories of war, sovereignty, revolution, and class struggle. The conclusion is a 2003 essay "on the limits of political anthropology" and the modern philosophy of tragedy.
The book offers a reflection on the alternative scene of politics, where its constitutive relationship with violence is no longer normalized by the law, institutions, or the ideology that enact the "conversion" of extreme violence. It attempts to map out a topography of cruelty, superimposing without confusing its ultra-subjective forms (delusions of identity, extermination, vengeance of the law) and its ultra-objective forms (capitalist superexploitation, the production and elimination of life as waste).
It initiates a comparison between the strategies of civility that contend with the possibility of formulating a concept of politics as anti-violence, as outlined by various currents in contemporary philosophy. A critique of the positions held by Marx and Marxists occupies a central place here. However, this critique must be resituated within a broader and more contentious genealogy that traces back to Hegel and Clausewitz, while confronting the Schmittian conception of sovereignty, which the author of *The Nomos of the Earth* explored through his interpretation of Hobbes.
Conceived as a contribution to the theory of the real conditions of transformation and emancipation, the collection culminates in the "missed encounter" between Lenin and Gandhi, and the problem of a civilization of revolution: a unity of opposites whose absence, for politics, amounts to the barbarism already spoken of by Rosa Luxemburg in 1914.
Contents:
FROM EXTREME VIOLENCE TO THE PROBLEM OF CIVILITY
First Lecture, Hegel, Hobbes and the "Conversion of Violence"
Second Lecture, An "Inconvertible" Violence? An Essay in Topography
Third Lecture, Strategies of Civility
EXCEPTIONS, WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
War and Politics: Clausewitzian Variations
"Gewalt," Violence and Power in the History of Marxist Theory
Lenin and Gandhi: A Missed Encounter?
Schmitt's Hobbes, Hobbes's Schmitt
The work examines how political philosophy addresses the relationship between states, institutions, and violence. It maps a distinction between ultra-subjective forms of cruelty, such as identity-based conflicts, and ultra-objective forms, such as capitalist exploitation, while addressing the tension between political order and extreme violence. This inquiry draws upon a genealogy of thought that includes Hegel, Clausewitz, and Carl Schmitt, while interrogating the Marxist interpretation of power and the state within the context of historical revolutionary movements.
The essays explore the conceptual boundaries of political anthropology and the modern philosophy of tragedy through a comparative analysis of historical figures like Lenin and Gandhi. By investigating the possibility of a politics defined as anti-violence, the collection reflects on the conditions for social transformation and the risks of political barbarism. The analysis situates these themes within the broader discourse of contemporary philosophy regarding sovereignty and the limits of state control. Readers interested in the intersection of political theory, historical materialism, and the ethics of violence may find these reflections relevant.