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1
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80053878183
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La philosophie peut-elle dire quelque chose de la guerre?
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(lecture presented at Bologna University, Bologna, April 15)
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Alain Badiou, "La philosophie peut-elle dire quelque chose de la guerre?" ("Can Philosophy Say Something about War?") (lecture presented at Bologna University, Bologna, April 15, 2003)
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(2003)
Can Philosophy Say Something about War?
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Badiou, A.1
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2
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80053822502
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The existence of warlords in Afghanistan supposedly allied with the American army (the celebrated Northern Alliance) forms the model for the subjugation of local populations through armed gangs of unscrupulous predators. The same model was applied in the early days of the occupation of Baghdad, with the protection of the gangs of raiders provided by the American army. These episodes, far from being collateral effects of the occupation - or even the first step in the reconquest of liberty, as one American general had the impudence to say - are all consequences of the destructive American strategy toward every civil organization.
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The existence of warlords in Afghanistan supposedly allied with the American army (the celebrated Northern Alliance) forms the model for the subjugation of local populations through armed gangs of unscrupulous predators. The same model was applied in the early days of the occupation of Baghdad, with the protection of the gangs of raiders provided by the American army. These episodes, far from being collateral effects of the occupation - or even the "first step in the reconquest of liberty," as one American general had the impudence to say - are all consequences of the destructive American strategy toward every civil organization
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3
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80053865895
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It must be remembered that the decisive role of containing these warmongering tendencies was carried out by the internal and external politics of China, from its creation of a nonaligned front to its criticism of Soviet social imperialism, and ending with its mediation with the United States in the early 1970s to find a solution to the war in Vietnam
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It must be remembered that the decisive role of containing these warmongering tendencies was carried out by the internal and external politics of China, from its creation of a nonaligned front to its criticism of Soviet social imperialism, and ending with its mediation with the United States in the early 1970s to find a solution to the war in Vietnam
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4
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80053867569
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In this sense, the Fascist and Nazi parties were a very weak factor of limitation: they were quickly reabsorbed into the ritual-militaristic functions and ruined
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In this sense, the Fascist and Nazi parties were a very weak factor of limitation: they were quickly reabsorbed into the ritual-militaristic functions and ruined
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5
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84870081957
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(paper presented at "Les conferences du rouge gorges," held at the Maison des ecrivains, Paris)
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The theses of Sylvain Lazarus should be mentioned, particularly those in the recent Les trois régimes du siècle (The Three Regimes of the Century) (paper presented at "Les conferences du rouge gorges," held at the Maison des ecrivains, Paris, 2002), which we refer to in order to extend the category of party-state to the entire statehood of the twentieth century. As for the question of the ritual military nature of the state, we would propose the following path of reflection. Unlike what was believed in the past, the most radical political issue concerning the state, is not how "to extinguish" it, but how, by means of political invention, to limit its inborn, and finally disastrous, compulsion to act exclusively in terms of the monopoly of violence and of the general supervision to ritual hierarchies. The state in itself is a structurally apolitical entity that has no independent rationality. Only a political rationality decentralized with respect to the state can deal with its objectivity - by itself purely destructive - and transform it into a positive field, restricted but real, of subjective possibilities. In the modern era, such political rationality has equality as its decisive issue. Only by prescribing inventive policies of systematic reduction of social inequalities is it possible to govern and to limit the congenital ritual-military nature of the state, and to value instead its possible technical-administrative capacities in favor of the deployment of the infinite individual potentialities. The current crisis of the state, resulting from the exhaustion of the previous forms of possible application of egalitarian politics to the state, is in fact manifested both by the hypertrophy of its military and repressive functions and apparatuses, and by the parallel demolition of its civil capacities as well as by their subordination to the hierarchical rituals. The "market," to which, according to the present dominant ideologies, any possible civil egalitarian function of the state should be transferred, far from playing an economical role, is invoked as a guarantee of rituals of the social hierarchy
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(2002)
The Three Regimes of the Century
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