Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Lefort, Claude'

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 1986.
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La ricerca propone una duplice tesi interpretativa in rapporto al pensiero di Claude Lefort. In primo luogo, desume dall'opera di Lefort il concetto di "incertezza democratica", evidenziandone i tratti di originalità in riferimento alle teorie della democrazia di stampo normativo e realista. L'obiettivo è collocare tale concetto all'interno di una peculiare genealogia del politico, centrata sulla funzione simbolica del potere es sul ruolo istituente dei conflitti. In secondo luogo, il lavoro individua nella rielaborazione del concetto di ideologia - cui Lefort dedica diversi scritti negli anni Settanta - uno snodo teorico ancora fecondo per l'analisi di alcuni fenomeni politici contemporanei. La ricerca intende restituire in tal modo un'immagine unitaria della filosofia politica lefortiana, pur analizzandone diffusamente i momenti di discontinuità interna; al tempo stesso, prova a tematizzare le categorie-cardine del pensiero di Lefort in rapporto al dibattito attuale sulla crisi e sul futuro della democrazia.

Esta tese realiza uma investigação da obra de Claude Lefort (1924-2010), com o objetivo de mostrar que a ideologia é central no entendimento, tanto do seu pensamento, como de sua teoria da democracia. Pressupõe-se que a ideologia não é simplesmente um objeto privilegiado de interpretação em seus escritos, pois o seu pensamento, seu trabalho sobre a obra de Maquiavel e de Marx, suas teorizações a respeito da democracia e do totalitarismo, fundamentam-se neste movimento de desvelar o significado das representações ideológicas, das certezas. Por meio da ideologia, podemos compreender o estatuto de seu discurso, o qual interroga e sabe ser habitado por ela, ao mesmo tempo que dela não se distancia e, estando nela enredado, busca a constância de uma interrogação acerca de seu conteúdo latente e das denegações por ela proferidas. Considera-se, por conseguinte, que, contrário a todo ponto de vista de certeza, o pensamento de Lefort aponta para uma reflexão sobre as ambiguidades da democracia, preocupando-se com aquilo que há de paradoxal nesta forma de sociedade e que a faz passar para o totalitarismo. Esta tese está estruturada em duas linhas de discussão: a primeira delas procura compreender a obra da ideologia na obra de Lefort, ou seja, parte da hipótese de que os seus movimentos de pensamento foram engendrando-se ao longo de sua trajetória com o objetivo de abrir novas vias para uma reflexão crítica, capaz de colocar a ideologia em questão. Nesse ponto, considera-se que a sua filosofia, enquanto pensamento do político, pode ser compreendida como aquela que se elaborou como crítica, deciframento e desvelamento da ideologia. A segunda discute a ideologia na obra de Lefort, preocupando-se em compreender a construção de sua reflexão e a significação atribuída pelo autor a ela, o que implica considerar os autores e acontecimentos que o influenciaram nesse processo, bem como a dinâmica de sua própria produção intelectual, isto é, os momentos em que o autor a tem como algo latente em seus artigos e naqueles em que ela se torna objeto explícito de discussão. Propõe-se que a ideologia está em toda a sua obra, até mesmo quando Lefort reflete sobre um tema central em seus estudos: a invenção democrática. Para isso, discutem-se os efeitos e consequências políticas da ideologia na democracia, pois embora ela seja instituída pela interrogação, movida pelo princípio de invenção e reinvenção permanentes, pela indeterminação, ela também se mostra petrificada, cristalizada e determinada pelo discurso ideológico.
This thesis investigates the work of Claude Lefort (1924-2010) aiming to demonstrate that ideology is seminal to understand both his thought and his theory of democracy. We presume that ideology is not merely a privileged object of interpretation in his writings, since his thinking, his work on the writings of Machiavelli and Marx, and his theorizing on democracy and totalitarianism are based on the effort to reveal the meaning of ideological representations, of certainties. Ideology helps us to understand the statute of his discourse, which interrogates ideology and knows how to be inhabited by it and, at the same time, doesn\'t veer away from it. By being entangled in it, his discourse seeks the constancy of an interrogation on its latent content and the denials it pronounces. We defend therefore that, contrary to all points of views of certainty, Lefort\'s thought points to a reflection on the ambiguities of democracy; he is preoccupied with the paradoxical aspects of that form of society that make it shift toward totalitarianism. This thesis features two different lines of discussion. The first one seeks to understand the \"work\" of ideology in the work of Lefort, i.e., it is based on the assumption that his thought processes developed together with his pathway aiming to open new avenues for critical reflection that may question ideology. At this point, we assume that his philosophy - as the thinking of the political - can be understood as one which developed as criticism, the deciphering and unveiling of ideology. The second line discusses ideology in the work of Lefort and aims to understand the construction of his reflection and the meaning he gives it, which implies taking into account the authors and events that influenced that process, as well as the dynamics of his own intellectual production, i.e., the moments ideology appears as something latent in his articles and those where it becomes an explicit object of discussion. We suggest that ideology permeates his entire work, even when Lefort reflects on a central theme of his studies: the democratic invention. To demonstrate that, we discuss the political effects and consequences of ideology on democracy, because although the latter is established by interrogation, driven by the principle of permanent invention and reinvention, by indeterminacy, it is also petrified, crystallized and defined by the ideological discourse.

The conviction that guides this research is that the capital point of Claude Lefort's thought is within the political application of the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his design of the chiasmus, that of the imbrication of all levels that form reality. We can say that the phenomenology of the political, conceived by Lefort, it is an application of the Merleau-pontyan lesson to the political dimension of the social. The heart of this reading is represented by the book Le travail de l’œuvre Machiavel where the role of power and its relationship with the people, on the one hand, and the Greats, on the other, outlines a conception of the political in which there is no possible separation between grantor and composed, real and imaginary, immanent and symbolic. Therefore the first chapter analyses the genesis of the Lefortian philosophy, which dates to the years of Socialisme ou barbarie, the group the French philosopher participates to between 1948 and 1957. In this period his reflection, even if still internal to Marxism, already shows the signs of phenomenology. Such connection is clear in his critiques towards the philosophies of history and in his notion of "proletarian experience". While the most famous studies concerning the Parisian philosopher find in the detachment from Marxism the origin of his thought, we will try to show how all the main categories of the Lefortian philosophy appear in the critical reading of Marx. 3 As we show in the second chapter, it is within his phenomenological reading of Marx’s works that are taking shape the ideas of division of the social, of the symbolic dimension and of the chiasmus. In such frame it is important the role played by ethnology: the studies of Marcel Mauss on the donation, in primis, and those of Abram Kardiner, Gregory Bateson and Claude Levi-Strauss. The third chapter deals with the Lefortian design of modernity, the idea of the symbolic institution and the question of the division of the social. We can interpret this phase of his work as a sort of a preparation for the interpretation of Machiavelli. Indeed, the following chapter is dedicated to the work Lefort dedicates to the study of Machiavelli. We examine here the division between "the humors”, the role of power as a symbolic pole and the relationship between power, the Greats and the people. We show how the interpretative work of the Discours and of the Prince compose the phenomenology of politics in Lefort’s thought. The last chapter, in closing, analyses democracy and totalitarianism as a result and summit of the Lefortian phenomenology. We can see here how the confrontational dynamic of democracy translates in a political language the movement of the being proposed by Merleau-Ponty. In conclusion we consider the novelty of the Lefortian phenomenology of the political in its distinction with the "insurgent democracy" proposed by Miguel Abensour.

Claude Lefort est un penseur majeur du totalitarisme soviétique et un théoricien original de la démocratie ; mais cette pensée souffre d’être encore trop peu étudiée, et surtout peu comprise dans son articulation générale. Ce travail se propose de remédier à cette carence, et s’efforce, au travers d’une reconstruction des dimensions fondamentales de l’œuvre, de restituer à la pensée de l’auteur sa cohérence interne. Nous postulons ici que cette cohérence se dévoile à bien vouloir identifier le projet central de Claude Lefort, qui fut de penser les conditions de possibilité de la liberté politique, et partant, la démocratie comme un régime de la liberté. Un tel projet, d’abord envisagé dans le cadre de la théorie marxiste, va progressivement être réévalué à l’aide de la philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, pour aboutir à une récusation des acceptions traditionnelles – telles que comprises en droit public – des notions de pouvoir et de liberté. Il s’agit alors pour Lefort de permettre la liberté politique, c’est ce que s’efforce de montrer la première partie. Il faut ensuite tirer les conséquences logiques d’une telle récusation. Elle amène à reconsidérer en profondeur la nature des deux termes : le pouvoir gagne une dimension « symbolique », et les libertés se pensent comme indissociablement individuelles et collectives. Cette construction se veut une manière spécifique d’organiser la liberté politique, c’est ce que s’emploie à révéler la seconde partie
Claude Lefort is a major thinker of Soviet totalitarianism and an original theorist of democracy. However, his contributions remain much overlooked, and the overall coherence of his body of work is often misunderstood. This work aims to remedy this deficiency, and endeavours to identify and organize the fundamental dimensions of his thought, in order to re-establish its internal coherence. The hypothesis of this doctoral thesis is that this coherence is revealed through the identification of the central project of Claude Lefort, which was to apprehend the necessary conditions for the advent of political liberty, and therefore democracy as a “regime of liberty” (régime de la liberté). This intellectual project, developed first of all in the context of Marxist theory, was progressively reassessed in the light of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, eventually resulting in a rejection of the traditional understanding – that of public law – of the two concepts of power and liberty. The problem, for Lefort, is how to bring about the existence of political liberty ; which the first part of this work aims to demonstrate. It then becomes necessary to draw the logical consequences of such a rejection. It leads to a profound reconsideration of the nature of the two concepts : power gains a “symbolic” dimension, and liberties are inseparably thought as both collective and individual. Lefort’s construction must thus be understood as a specific way to organise political liberty ; as the second part of doctoral work attempts to reveal

Au fondement de ce travail, il y a une interrogation sur la relation entre philosophie et politique. C'est en étudiant la rencontre de Claude Lefort et Leo Strauss avec Machiavel que l'on aborde cette relation. Comment Machiavel expose-t-il ses idées et quels effets cela a-t-il sur la pensée et la politique moderne ? Le travail de Machiavel, tel que présenté par Lefort et par Strauss, s'offre comme un outil, un « matériau » permettant de réfléchir - avec ou contre lui - à un événement politique en particulier, celui du développement du totalitarisme ou de ce que Strauss appelle la « tyrannie moderne ». L'expérience totalitaire peut-elle être appréhendée comme l'échec ou, au contraire, comme l'aboutissement de l'œuvre machiavélienne ? Ce questionnement nous conduit au cœur de la pensée politique de Lefort et de Strauss, il permet de créer entre eux un éclairant dialogue sur le politique et sur le rôle de la philosophie. En somme, de faire émerger un nouvel outil pour penser le monde
The subject of this dissertation is the relationship between philosophy and politics. It is by studying Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss' interpretations of Machiavelli that I choose to examine this relation. How does Machiavelli present his ideas, and what does this mean for modern thought and modern politics ? I used Machiavelli's work, as it is described by Lefort and by Strauss, as a "material", and attempted to think "with" or "against" it. The event I analysed is the development of totalitarianism, or of what Strauss calls "modern tyranny". Is totalitarianism the result of or, on the contrary, does it suppose the non-accomplishment of the possibilities opened up by Machiavelli ? These questions bring us back to Lefort and Strauss' own political ideas and allow us to create between them a fruitful dialogue on politics and on the role of philosophy - dialogue wich is, therefore, another "material" wich we can use to understand the world

¿Cómo fundar regímenes políticos duraderos cuando resulta imposible encontrar un polo incondicionado desde el cual derivar la legitimidad de la ley? ¿Cómo establecerlos en las condiciones políticas de la modernidad, en una situación en que las fuentes tradicionales de legitimidad han desaparecido o se han vuelto ineficaces? ¿Sobre qué –o sobre quién– asentar la fundación? Estas preguntas configuran los contornos generales del problema que pretendo interrogar en esta tesis. Fueron formuladas a partir de la intuición de que la modernidad política nos confronta, de modo inédito, con el enigma de la institución del régimen político y con la pregunta por su fundamento. En ausencia de absolutos, sin criterios últimos que permitan diferenciar la fundación de la usurpación, la legitimidad de la arbitrariedad, el problema del comienzo –el doble problema de cómo fundar un nuevo orden y de cómo sustraer la fundación de la arbitrariedad que parece caracterizarla– emerge en toda su radicalidad. Esta cuestión atravesó de parte a parte toda la historia política de la modernidad: apareció en la experiencia práctica de los hombres y mujeres de acción que se embarcaron en la constitución de un cuerpo político completamente nuevo, en las revoluciones del siglo XVIII, y en la reflexión teórica de quienes intentaron pensar las dificultades que esta nueva situación generaba. Pero adquiere especial relevancia en el transcurso del siglo xx: atravesado por las guerras y las revoluciones, por la crisis del Estado como forma política y por la emergencia de los totalitarismos; en suma, por la entrada en escena de fenómenos políticos que pulverizaron todas nuestras categorías de pensamiento y nuestros criterios de juicio, el siglo XX confrontó de modo inédito al pensamiento de lo político con el problema de los fundamentos de la ley y de la legitimidad. En esta escena se insertan las reflexiones de Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt y Claude Lefort. Los tres parten de la constatación de que los acontecimientos que les eran contemporáneos han hecho estallar por los aires los modos en los que la tradición pensó la política y las formas en las que los seres humanos organizaron su vida en común a lo largo de la historia. Aquello que aúna la empresa de estos autores está vinculado, por tanto, al interés por responder al enigma de la institución partiendo del reconocimiento de que los fenómenos políticos que les eran contemporáneos no podían ser interpretados con las herramientas ofrecidas por la tradición. Ni ciencia ni filosofía, el nuevo pensamiento que desarrollan se caracteriza por una sensibilidad para pensar lo político conservando la posibilidad de juzgar lo existente más allá de toda determinación exterior, de todo criterio anclado en la naturaleza o en la trascendencia. Sin fundamentos (Schmitt), sin barandillas (Arendt), indeterminado (Lefort), el pensamiento sólo puede arraigarse en la experiencia. Orientado por las preguntas formuladas al inicio, esta tesis interroga el modo particular en el que Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt y Claude Lefort confrontan el problema de la fundación y la cuestión de la legitimidad en la modernidad política.
How are political regimes established under modern political conditions once the absolute pole of political legitimacy has fallen and its sources have disappeared or become ineffective? Upon what does foundation rest? Such are the questions which create the framework of this dissertation arising from the intuition that political modernity confronts us with the enigma of the institution of the political regime and the question of its foundation. In the absence of absolutes, the problem of beginning emerges in all its radicalism. This problem has run through the entire political history of modernity but only became inescapable in the twentieth century. Marred by wars and revolutions, by the crisis of the state as a political form and by the emergence of totalitarianism (in short, by the emergency of political events that have ignited all our categories of thought and our criteria of judgment), the experience of the twentieth century has forced political thought to radically rethink the paradox of foundation. The thought of Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Claude Lefort emerges from these events. They tried to respond to the problems that were posed by their present. Their questions arise from the political experience of the twentieth century. We can link the intellectual enterprise of Schmitt, Arendt and Lefort starting from their common interest in answering the enigma of the institution beyond the tradition of political philosophy. The new thinking that the three want to develop is characterized by a sensitivity to judge the political events beyond all external determination, beyond any criteria anchored in nature or in transcendent sources. Groundlessness (Schmitt), without bannister (Arendt), indeterminate (Lefort), the thought itself arises out of the experience. Oriented by the questions raised at the beginning of this abstract, in this dissertation I interpret the way in which Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Claude Lefort reflect on the problem of foundation and on the question of legitimacy in political modernity.

El resultado de la investigación que aquí presentamos se dispone a concretar una reapertura de la crítica de Karl Marx a los derechos humanos desde el pensamiento de lo político. En esta reapertura es determinante la revisión que el intelectual francés Claude Lefort desarrolla sobre las argumentaciones de Marx acerca de los mencionados derechos. Lefort, nacido en 1924 y fallecido en 2010, fue una destacada figura de la filosofía política contemporánea, aún no suficientemente conocida y estudiada en nuestro medio. Tempranamente influido por la persona y la obra de Maurice Merleau Ponty, su filosofía está marcada, al mismo tiempo, por la crítica al totalitarismo y la reflexión sobre la democracia. La importancia de la perspectiva de Lefort radica en su inscripción dentro de una constelación de pensadores franceses posfundacionalistas que comparten el supuesto de la ausencia de un fundamento positivo de lo social. El posfundacionalismo hunde sus raíces en la teoría filosófica y, según la interpretación de Jonathan Dancy (1993), está en el centro de la reflexión epistemológica debido a que divide nuestras creencias en dos grupos: las creencias básicas, que no necesitan ninguna justificación, y las creencias no básicas, derivadas de las anteriores. En esta distinción encontraríamos, entonces, el fundamento epistemológico de una teoría, cuya verdad es incuestionable, y una superestructura que se sigue y se justifica a partir de él

Dans cette thèse, nous cherchons à penser les enjeux philosophiques de l’application de méthodes herméneutiques en histoire de la philosophie politique. À partir d’une étude comparative des interprétations de l’œuvre de Nicolas Machiavel offertes par Leo Strauss, Quentin Skinner et Claude Lefort, nous interrogeons le rapport que l’interprète institue avec le texte qu’il étudie. Nous montrons qu’il y a dans les trois cas un écart entre l’exposition théorique des principes herméneutiques et l’application effective de ces derniers. Nous soutenons que les divergences fondamentales entre les trois lectures des écrits machiavéliens ne trouvent pas leur fondement dans la différence des méthodes employées, mais proviennent en dernier lieu de la compréhension particulière qu’ils ont du rôle et du statut de la pensée de Machiavel. Autrement dit, nous cherchons à montrer que l’intérêt pour la signification de l’œuvre machiavélienne dépasse la simple analyse des écrits d’un auteur du passé; les trois interprètes entretiennent un rapport singulier à la pensée du secrétaire florentin. En ce sens, l’étude des herméneutiques de Strauss, Skinner et Lefort appliquées à Machiavel est indissociable d’une interrogation sur l’articulation entre interprétation et politique.

L'Affaire Salman Rushdie possède des caractéristiques spécifiques---le contexte politico-historique, la particularité de la fatwa promulguée par Khomeyni, la critique de l'altérité par la fiction---qui participent d'un débat riche en idées à partir duquel il est intéressant de dégager une réflexion particulière sur la compréhension du social aujourd'hui en Occident. Dans le présent travail, nous étudierons trois réflexions utilisant chacune un cadre d'analyse spécifique pour aborder l'Affaire: Milan Kundera et le roman européen; Claude Lefort et l'idéal démocratique; Fethi Benslama et le pouvoir de la fiction de l'origine. Il sera intéressant, au final, de constater que bien que l'angle d'analyse différé, les conclusions tirées par ces auteurs pointent dans une direction similaire, que nous résumerons en quatre temps: (1) le roman est un outil de questionnement de la réalité; (2) le questionnement de la réalité s'articule autour d'une remise en cause des fondements de la société, plus précisément autour d'une réflexion sur l'origine; (3) la remise en question de ces fondements repose sur la valorisation du doute, lequel est indissociable de la division et du conflit; (4) la réflexion sur l'Affaire Rushdie amené à constater que les sociétés occidentales traversent une période de transition qui se caractérise par une difficulté à défendre les valeurs qui leurs sont propres quand elles sont confrontées à l'altérité.

Esta investigación es una reflexión teórico-práctica desde el pensamiento filosófico de lo político, cuya línea argumentativa emerge con la pregunta por lo político postotalitario, planteada por: Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt y Claude Lefort. La primera, como crítica a la tradición filosófica de lo político y su “olvido” de la acción, así como la relación entre pensamiento y acción, y la Crisis de la Cultura; el segundo, sobre: lo estatal y lo político, el enemigo interior y la legitimidad de la lucha política al interior del mismo Estado moderno, y su original crítica a la paradoja democrática liberal; y, el tercero, la política y el movimiento de Mai 68, así , como la dramática tensión entre imperialismo liberal económico versus marxismo social, modelos hegemónicos del siglo XX, como el fracaso de los dos. Lefort plantea la invención democrática, a partir de su confirmación del rol político de los Derechos del Hombre/humanos como fórmula de Resistencia anti-dominación totalitaria. Ya, para el estudio del caso colombiano, retomamos la problemática relación: violencia versus política, en el marco de la “paradoja democrática” colombiana y sus períodos de legislatura constitucional, procesos electorales a corporaciones públicas, vigencia y alternancia de partidos políticos, junto a una tragedia humanitaria que exige la apertura de la oficina de DH de la ONU en 1997 en Bogotá. Obtenemos, de esta forma una crítica al contexto social usurpado por la Guerra Fría y los imperios URSS y USA, como las secuelas socioculturales de toda sociedad postcolonial, oligárquica, que termina fagocitada a partir 1980 por el mercado mundial de la droga, carteles organizados en la que participan: oligarquía política, guerrillas FARC, ELN, M19, paramilitares, delincuencia común, quebrando todos los parámetros analíticos de las ciencias sociales.
This research is a practical and theoretical reflection of Politics from a philosophical approach. The main idea emerges from the quest for post-Totalitarian Politics, as proposed by Hanna Arendt, Carl Schmitt and Claude Lefort. The first as seen by Hanna Arendt, is a critic to philosophical tradition of Politics and its “forgetfulness” of the political action, and the relation between thought and action, and the Crisis in Culture; the second by Carl Schmitt, is the State and Politics, the enemy within and the legitimacy of the political struggle within the modern State, and Schmitt's original critic to the Liberal Democracy Paradox. Third is Politics and the “May of 68” movement, as the dramatical tension between Liberal Economical Imperialism and Social Marxism as hegemonic models of the XXth century, and the failure of both. With the Democratic Invention Claude Lefort confirms the importance of Man / Human rights (DH) as a form of anti-Totalitarian Resistance. In the analysis of the Colombian case, we will study the conflictual relationship of Violence vs Politics, within the frame of the Colombian Political Paradox composed of constitutional legislature, electoral processes, public corporations, permanence and alternation of political parties and a humanitarian crisis that required the opening of a UN Human Rights office in Colombia in 1997. Having this elements in mind, we can elaborate a critic to the Colombian social context that ends being defined by the Cold War proxy wars between the USSR and the USA, as by the sociocultural scars of any post-colonial oligarchical society. A society that ends being devoured in 1980 by the globalisation of drug trafficking and the organisations that profit from it: The Political oligarchy, the FARC, ELN, M19, Paramilitary organisations, Drug Cartels and criminals. All this elements end defining Colombia as an outlier that breaks all analytical parameters of Social Sciences.

O eixo principal que estrutura este trabalho é, num sentido amplo, a busca pelo entendimento dos modos de dominação característicos das sociedades modernas. É nessa direção que retomamos a clássica noção de ideologia cunhada em seu teor crítico pela obra de Karl Marx , pois ela aponta, no interior das sociedades capitalistas, para o processo social de produção de ideias, valores e representações cuja função é ocultar e legitimar as divisões de uma determinada ordem social. Nosso objetivo é acompanhar os desdobramentos desse debate na cena francesa do século XX, elegendo duas importantes contribuições: uma fornecida pelo filósofo Claude Lefort, outra, pelo sociólogo Pierre Bourdieu. Embora situados em campos disciplinares diferentes, os trabalhos de Lefort e Bourdieu confluem em direção a uma reformulação das bases a partir das quais os fenômenos ideológicos são tratados, ampliando as perspectivas de análise e lançando uma nova luz sobre eles. Tecida por uma relação crítica com o marxismo, a trajetória lefortiana permite acompanhar o trabalho histórico de um pensamento que busca apreender o surgimento, a especificidade, as formas e as transformações da ideologia nas sociedades modernas. Os trabalhos de Bourdieu, por sua vez, desvelam e caracterizam o modo de dominação moderno concebido enquanto violência simbólica, fenômeno baseado no acordo objetivamente orquestrado entre as estruturas sociais objetivas e as estruturas cognitivas dos agentes. Envolvendo e ultrapassando a noção de ideologia, a violência simbólica é operante na medida em que os agentes participam da dominação e conferem a ela um reconhecimento baseado no desconhecimento dos mecanismos pelos quais a ordem social se produz, reproduz e se legitima. Situando suas heranças e distanciamentos perante a tradição inaugurada por Marx, buscamos refletir sobre o alcance das concepções que esses dois pensadores nos legaram: ideologia enquanto recusa da historicidade, do conflito e da indeterminação constitutiva do político, em Lefort, e enquanto conjunto de práticas e estilos de vida fundados na dominação simbólica, em Bourdieu.
This work is structured, in a broad sense, as an attempt to understand the modes of domination characteristic of modern societies. It is in this perspective that we take into account the classical notion of ideology, as it was critically developed by Karl Marx. This term points out the social process of production of ideas, values and representations within capitalist societies, whose function consists in hiding and legitimizing the divisions of a social order. Our aim is to follow the developments of this debate in the French philosophical scene of the twentieth century, choosing two important contributions in particular: one provided by the philosopher Claude Lefort, another by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Although located in different fields, Bourdieu and Lefort\'s works converge towards a reformulation of the bases from which the ideological phenomena are conceived, by enlarging the analytical perspectives and casting a new light on them. In a constant critical relationship with the Marxism, the lefortian trajectory allows us to follow the historical movement of a thought, which seeks to apprehend the rise as well as the specificities, forms and transformations of ideology in modern societies. The work of Bourdieu, in turn, unveils and characterizes the modern way of domination conceived as a symbolic violence; it is a phenomenon based on the agreement objectively orchestrated between social structures and the cognitive structures of agents. Involving and overcoming the notion of ideology, the concept of symbolic violence becomes effective when the agents participate in the domination. They give it a recognition based on ignorance of the mechanisms by which social order is produced, reproduced and legitimized. Considering the heritages and distances of the two thinkers with reference to a tradition inaugurated by Marx, we try to reflect on the scope of the main concepts that they leaved us: ideology as a refusal of historicity, of conflict and of political indeterminacy in Lefort, and as a set of practices and styles of life grounded in symbolic domination in Bourdieu.

La notion de « corps politique » est une notion à la fois suspecte et incontournable. De prime abord, la notion de corps politique paraît suspecte parce qu’elle évoque l’idée d’une totalité organique, dans laquelle l’autonomie individuelle est réduite et l’universalité humaine, occultée. Mais cette notion semble en même temps incontournable parce qu’elle exprime certains aspects constants de l’expérience politique, comme l’interdépendance des citoyens entre eux et leur inscription dans une communauté de vie plus ou moins particulière. Comment penser ensemble la réalité du corps politique et celle de l’individu et de l’universalité humaine ? Cette thèse tente de reconstituer une théorie contemporaine du corps politique à partir de la lecture d’un ensemble de textes de la phénoménologie politique. Les œuvres retenues sont celles d’Arendt, Lefort, Merleau-Ponty et Ricœur. L’hypothèse fondamentale de cette étude est que la conception phénoménologique de l’homme et du corps humain peut servir de fondement à une pensée du corps politique qui ne retombe pas dans l’organicisme
Today, we are reluctant to use the expression body politic to designate the political community. This expression calls immediately to our mind the image of an organic society: a society based on the negation of the individual’s autonomy on the one hand, and on the negation of the idea of mankind, on the other hand. However, we can hardly give up the notion completely. For the body politic is a clear figure of our political experience: the experience of an active life, lead together with our fellow citizens, within a particular society or State. The question is therefore the following: can we develop the notion of body politic in order to think our political experience, without adopting an organic view of society? In this work, we try to elaborate a phenomenological version of the body politic, through the reading of Arendt, Lefort, Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur’s works. Our attempts is based on the central hypothesis that the phenomenological interpretation of human existence and of the human body can serve as a foundation for a non-organic conception of the body politic

Dans cette thèse de pensée politique, nous examinerons certains des effets engendrés par l’œuvre du marquis de Sade. Nous chercherons à démontrer que le principal de ces effets est la destitution de toutes les tentatives d’ériger des « idoles ». Par « idoles » nous entendons tout ce qui est susceptible de se poser comme un « absolu » – qu’il s’agisse des idoles que l’on peut associer à l’Ancien régime (la monarchie de droit divin par exemple) ou celles, nouvelles, que la révolution pourrait être tentée de leur substituer (la vertu républicaine par exemple). Notre travail s’inspire d’un article de Claude Lefort, « Sade : le Boudoir et la Cité », selon lequel Sade ne peut être ramené à un promoteur du vice ou de la corruption – ce qui ne veut aucunement dire que son œuvre devrait être lue, à l’inverse, comme une défense de la vertu ou de l’incorruptibilité (révolutionnaires ou républicaines). Nous chercherons dans un premier temps à démontrer de quelle manière la destitution des idoles s’applique à des postures littéraires et philosophiques dont Sade a lui-même participé : libertinage, matérialisme et athéisme. Dans un second temps, nous nous concentrerons sur les opuscules politiques de Sade et sur ses engagements politiques. Aux termes de notre travail, apparaîtra alors un Sade, penseur d’une République fondée sur un mouvement d’ « institution/destitution », qui, à la lumière de ce qu’a théorisé Lefort, permet d’intégrer le doute et l’indétermination au sein d’une réflexion sur le politique.

Depuis la fin des années 1980, les Coopératives de production agricole (CPA) du Mouvement des travailleurs ruraux sans-terre (MST) au Brésil symbolisent, selon celui-ci, une « forme supérieure de coopération ». Pour le MST, la Cooperativa de Produção Agropecuária Nova Santa Rita (Coopérative de production agricole Nova Santa Rita, COOPAN) représente un modèle de réussite socio-économique d’une coopérative entièrement gérée selon le modèle du « travail collectif » : une communauté stable, rentable économiquement, respectant les principes environnementaux de l’agroécologie et où le travail et la vie quotidienne sont organisés de manière collective et démocratique. Une enquête de terrain attentive révèle, cependant, les soubassements conflictuels de la construction d’une communauté démocratique. Dans ce que nous appelons une « dialectique du conflit », les acteurs sociaux du MST doivent constamment équilibrer le rapport fragile et mouvant entre l’individuel et le collectif, l’horizontalité et la verticalité, l’économique et le politique. Appuyée sur une enquête de terrain s’étalant sur cinq ans et inspirée d’un cadre théorique construit principalement à partir de la phénoménologie politique de Maurice Merleau-Ponty et complété par les pensées de Claude Lefort et d’Hannah Arendt, cette thèse propose la phénoménologie politique comme méthode ethnographique. Nous examinons ainsi la construction de la communauté COOPAN en tentant de comprendre l’institution politique d’une communauté et de ses sujets. Les trente et une familles qui composent COOPAN font la route ensemble depuis presque trois décennies. Nous avons reconstitué cette trajectoire de vie et son fonctionnement actuel dans le but de saisir les différentes formes d’apparition et de transformation du politique ou, autrement dit, les manières par lesquelles se construisent les liens sociaux, les sentiments d’appartenance, les pratiques et les normes à partir desquels se déploie une communauté politique et ses sujets, toujours en mouvement. En d’autres mots, le but est de saisir comment les expériences politiques des sujets participent à instituer un ordre social autour d’un projet politique commun, en construction permanente.

This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice.

This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice.

Pretendendo evidenciar uma leitura jurídico-política sobre o começo da integração europeia - iniciada por meio da fundação jurídica da CECA, esta Tese visa a responder à pergunta: quando, como e por meio de quais instituições, países europeus tradicionalmente opostos em termos militares estabeleceram entre si, após o término da Segunda Guerra Mundial, de maneira inédita e inaudita em sua História, um novo modo de relações responsável por tornar impossível e impensável a deflagração de nova Guerra regional? Para responder a essa pergunta, o presente trabalho assume a perspectiva de uma Pesquisa interdisciplinar em Direito, recorrendo não apenas ao Direito Positivo, mas também a outras áreas do conhecimento, tais como a Filosofia Política Antiga e Contemporânea e a História Contemporânea da Europa. O objetivo consiste em formular um aparato discursivo racional conceitual a partir de matriz de leitura fornecida pela Filosofia Política Antiga e Contemporânea para, em seguida, aplicá-lo sobre elementos da experiência histórica e jurídico-normativa positiva da CECA. A chave de leitura conceitual formada a partir de contribuições da Filosofia Política tem sua origem principalmente na aproximação das reflexões de POLÍBIO e de Claude LEFORT. O trabalho evidencia a importância de normas jurídicas institucionalmente previstas para lidar com oposições escalares na construção e na manutenção de um sistema de relações jurídico-Politicamente organizado, de maneira a que tensões entre distintas dimensões existenciais - institucionalmente absorvidas e encaminhadas - não possam significar a ruptura violenta desse sistema. Este aparato racional conceitual pode ser aplicado sobre os elementos da experiência histórica e normativa originária (Tratado de Paris de 1951) da CECA, o que permite diferenciar histórica e institucionalmente esta iniciativa em particular dos demais Projetos de Europa Unida do imediato pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. Para os fundadores da CECA (Konrad ADENAUER, Jean MONNET e Robert SCHUMAN), um regime juridicamente regulado de simples cooperação política (Unionismo Europeu) não era considerado como suficiente para instaurar um novo modo de relações na Europa. Ao mesmo tempo, eles não visavam à construção jurídica de uma Unificação Política da Europa em torno de um Estado Federal Europeu (Federalismo Europeu). Nesse sentido, a CECA pode ser entendida como exemplo histórico singular de organização jurídico-Política de países europeus. Foram criados pelo Tratado da CECA órgãos comunitários supranacionais e intergovernamentais voltados a compartilhar com os Estados-Membros e com os respectivos povos europeus a formação do sentido normativo que deveria ser impresso sobre questões concretas sensíveis tornadas comuns. A nenhum deles foi atribuída uma posição central na nomogênese comunitária. A leitura jurídico-política da integração europeia iniciada com a CECA se mostra possível assim a partir da constatação de que a arquitetura das instituições do Tratado desta Organização Internacional mesmo das instituições que se referiam a normas jurídico-econômicas - foi responsável pela afirmação e pela conservação de um novo modo de relações entre os países europeus. Buscava-se, não um Estado Europeu, nem uma singela cooperação intergovernamental institucionalizada, mas um meio termo de organização jurídico-Política: um sistema de relações estruturado por um engenhoso mecanismo institucional orientado para promover, por meio de freios e contrapesos, de forma ininterrupta, oposições entre os participantes da vida comunitária.
Aiming to unveil a legal-political reading of the beginning of European integration - initiated by the legal foundation of the ECSC, this Thesis intends to answer the question: when, how and through which institutions, European countries traditionally opposed militarily established between themselves, after the end of the Second World War - unprecedentedly and unparalleled in their history, a new kind of relationship, which was responsible for making impossible and unthinkable the outbreak of new regional war? In order to answer this question, this study follows the path of an interdisciplinary Research in Law, resorting not only to Positive Law, but also to other fields of knowledge, such as Ancient and Contemporary Political Philosophy and Contemporary History of Europe. The objective is to read experience elements given by ECSCs History and positive legal rules through lens framed according to a rational conceptual apparatus grounded on Ancient and Contemporary Political Philosophy. The hermeneutical key framed according to Political Philosophy has its main origins in the conjoint discussion of POLYBIUS thought and Claude LEFORTs contributions. This work highlights the importance of legal institutions dealing with dimensional oppositions within the construction and maintenance of a legal-Politically organized relationships system, by which tensions institutionally absorbed and addressed - between different existential dimensions do not disrupte violently this system. This conceptual apparatus can be applied to understand ECSCs historical and and normative (Treaty of Paris, 1951) experience and helps differentiating from both a historical and institutional perspective this peculiar initiative from alternative European Union Projects immeadiately proposed after the Second World War. For ECSC founding fathers (Konrad ADENAUER, Jean MONNET and Robert SCHUMAN), a mere legal regime of political cooperation (European Unionism) was not regarded as sufficiently capable of creating a new kind of relationship in Europe. At the same time, they did not pursue a legal Political Unification of Europe within a European Federal State (European Federalism). In this sense, the ECSC can be seen as an unique historic example of a legal-Political organization of European countries. Supranational and intergovernmental community bodies were created by ECSCs Treaty in order to share with its own member-States and their respective peoples the construction of the normative sense which would conduct issues concerning sensitive common problems. To none of them was assigned a central position in Communitys normative process. A legal-political reading of European integration - started with the ECSC - seems possible because the institutional framework whithin its Treaty - even when referred to legal and economic rules - was responsible for the affirmation and preservation of a new kind of relationship between European countries. It was envisaged, neither a European State, nor an institutionalized intergovernmental cooperation, but a middle-way legal-Political organization: a relationship system erecte by an ingenious institutional mechanism conceived to promote - through checks and balances - nonstop oppositions between participants of Communitys life.

Depuis le début des années 1990, les pays industrialisés cherchent à promouvoir le retour au travail des allocataires sociaux et multiplient les réformes visant à les « activer ». On observe une tendance lourde au renforcement des obligations liées au travail, pouvant aller jusqu’à l’instauration de programmes de travail obligatoires. L’activation peut également passer par le développement d’aides à la recherche d’emploi, de formations ou de stages professionnels.La thèse propose une analyse inédite de l’ensemble de ces mesures sous le prisme des droits humains, plus particulièrement du droit au travail. Favorisent-elles la réalisation du droit au travail ou constituent-elles une restriction à la liberté de choisir son emploi ?Pour répondre à cette question, l’auteure procède à une analyse systématique et rigoureuse de la jurisprudence internationale relative au droit au travail. Ce corpus jurisprudentiel, largement méconnu par les praticiens, se révèle particulièrement fécond, notamment parce que le droit au travail comprend le libre choix de l’emploi et l’interdiction du travail forcé.L’auteure mène parallèlement une réflexion théorique et normative sur le rôle et le pouvoir d’action des droits humains. Le recours aux droits sociaux se meut, pour l’essentiel, dans une logique défensive des acquis du modèle social. Face à la crise de l’Etat providence, l’auteure propose de se détacher de cette approche et de mobiliser les droits humains comme cadre de discussion, d’apprentissage et de recomposition progressive des politiques sociales. Elle combine les apports de deux théories contemporaines, l’expérimentalisme démocratique de M. Dorf et C. Sabel et l’approche par les capacités d’A. Sen, pour proposer une théorie pratique de la fonction jurisprudentielle, qui reconnecte les droits et le politique, en vue d’assurer une transformation démocratique du modèle social sous l’égide des droits.
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In complex clause constructions, the dependent clause can either precede or succeed the main clause. In a study on a selection of Indo-Aryan languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent (Hook 1987), a gradual transition between pre- and postposing languages was found, when moving from the southeast to the northwest in the area. In their relative vicinity in the Hindukush area, a sub-group of Indo-Aryan languages are spoken, commonly known by the tentative term “Dardic”. These languages are said to mainly have the dependent clause preceding the main clause (left-branching), and that this feature is shared by the neighbouring languages. This would mean a breach with the continuum described by Hook. In the present comparative study on the Dardic languages spoken in northern Pakistan, complex clauses of adverbial and complement types were studied in an attempt to confirm this proposition. The languages were found to have two competing branching structures where the indigenous, dominating left-branching structure possibly is being challenged by an imported right branching pattern, especially in complement clauses, possibly due to Persian or Urdu influence. A similar transition between more left-branching languages towards languages with a higher degree of right branching structures were found when moving from east to west in the geographical area studied.
I underordnande satskonstruktioner kan bisatsen antingen föregå eller följa på huvudsatsen. I en studie på ett urval indoariska språk som talas på den indiska subkontinenten (Hook 1987) fann man en gradvis skiftning mellan språk med bisatsen till vänster om huvudsatsen (vänsterställda), via språk som tillät båda placeringar av bisatsen, till språk som enbart hade bisatsen till höger om huvudsatsen (högerställda). Detta när man rörde sig från sydöstra Indien i riktning mot nordväst. I Hindukush-området, inte allt för långt ifrån denna region, talas en undergrupp av indoariska språk som länge gått under den provisoriska termen ”dardiska” språk. Om dessa språk har det hävdats att de har bisatsen till vänster om huvudsatsen, ett drag som också ska delas med närliggande språk i området. Om detta stämmer skulle det innebära en brytning av det kontinuum Hook beskrev. I denna jämförande studie på några indo-ariska språk som talas i norra Pakistan studerades underordnade adverbiala och nominala bisatser i ett försök att utreda om dessa verkligen är vänsterställda. Språken befanns ha två konkurrerande placeringsmönster där en inhemsk och starkt dominerande vänsterställd struktur eventuellt håller på att utmanas av en importerad högerställd struktur, särskilt i nominala objektsatser, som möjligen kommit in i språken via inflytande från persiska eller urdu. Ett kontinuum liknande Hooks mellan språk med primärt vänsterställda bisatser till språk med en allt högre andel högerställda bisatser hittades i en rörelse från öst till väst i området.

Cette thèse espère contribuer au dépassement du récit dominant qui a longtemps marqué l’historiographie du mouvement des droits civiques. Différents mécanismes de production du consensus, tant externes au mouvement qu’internes, ont contribué à masquer les tensions qui le traversaient et à le délimiter étroitement autour du seul aspect racial. Ce récit unifiait artificiellement la minorité noire en minorant les clivages de classe, de genre, les tensions générationnelles ou spatiales qui préexistaient aux années 1960 et en limitant les objectifs de ces mobilisations à la revendication de l’égalité des droits raciaux. Par ailleurs le maccarthysme et le triomphe du consensus libéral ont marginalisé la gauche noire et relégué les femmes à l’arrière-plan. Marginalisés en tant que forces politiques, les courants radicaux et les femmes ont aussi été d’abord effacés du récit historique. Cette représentation restrictive du mouvement des droits civiques a pu s’intégrer au récit national américain, aux dépens des voix radicales discordantes et du Nationalisme Noir de la période postérieure à 1966. Cependant ces clivages préexistaient : ce travail s’inscrit dans la perspective d’une histoire longue du mouvement des droits civiques qui met l’accent sur les continuités qui, des années 1930 aux années 1970, lient les générations entre elles. Il s’agit alors de dépasser les limites chronologiques traditionnelles et les clivages spatiaux qui opposent un Nord et un Sud essentialisés pour se situer à l’échelle locale, à la hauteur des militants dans la multiplicité des mouvements locaux. Nos sources en majorité autobiographiques, mais aussi photographiques, permettent de rendre compte de l’écart entre les militants locaux et leurs leaders nationaux du New Deal au Black Power. Les autobiographies militantes constituent des contre-récits qui remettent en question le récit dominant et dévoilent les tensions politiques et les projets minoritaires : ceux de la gauche noire, mais aussi les clivages genrés, générationnels ou spatiaux. Les revendications économiques et féministes de même qu’une dimension internationale sont aussi mis en lumière. La photographie de presse participe à cet effacement des clivages, par l’iconisation de figures célèbres. Malgré le maccarthysme, les thèmes et les idées de la gauche noire perdurent pourtant par le biais de l’image. Cette thèse tente de redonner leurs voix aux leaders anonymes du mouvement, à ceux dont les idées ont été masquées ou déformées et qui témoignent de la complexité d’un combat où classe, genre et race sont liés mais aussi en concurrence
In this dissertation I hope to contribute to the criticism of the dominant narrative that has long been at the center of the historiography of the black liberation movement. Different consensus-building mechanisms, both external and internal to the movement, masked its tensions and tended to delineate it exclusively around race. This narrative artificially unified the black mi-nority by mostly obliterating the movement’s class divisions as well as the gender, generation-al, and spatial tensions, that existed prior to the 1960s, and by limiting its objectives to the demand for legal rights. Furthermore, McCarthyism and the triumph of the liberal consensus marginalized the black left and relegated women to the background while politically radical currents and the demands of women were also erased from the historical narrative. This nar-row vision of the black liberation movement was integrated into the US national narrative at the expense of the discordant voices of radicalization and Black Nationalism of the post-1966 era. This work adopts the perspective of a long civil rights movement by focusing on the con-tinuities that linked various generations, from the 1930s to the 1970s, thus going beyond the traditional and the spatial divides, which oppose an essentialized regional divide between North and South in the dominant narrative to focus instead on the diversity of local movements The sources used focus on autobiographies and on photography, making it possible to account for the differences in point of view between local activists and their national leaders, from the years of the New Deal to the Black Power era. Militant autobiographies constitute counter-narratives that challenge the master narrative and reveal political tensions and minority projects, including those of the black left; they also point to gendered, generational and spatial divides as well as to economic and feminist demands, and they show the international dimen-sion of the black liberation movement. Mainstream photography participated in the erasure of the tensions in the movement through the iconization of famous figures. Still, in spite of McCarthyism, the themes and ideas of the black left are visible through their own images. With such sources, this doctoral dissertation attempts to give voice to the anonymous leaders of the movement, to those whose ideas have been masked or distorted and whose testimony testifies to the complexity of a struggle where class, gender and race both concur and compete

Le débat au sein du mouvement ouvrier autour de la relation entre la guerre et la révolution a toujours été de nature stratégique, déjà à l’époque de la Première Internationale. Trancher sur l’attitude face à la guerre a produit débats, clivages et scissions : entre réformistes et révolutionnaires, entre défaitistes et défenseurs de l’« Union sacrée », entre pacifistes absolus et "militaristes révolutionnaires". À la fin des années 1930, alors que le monde précipite à nouveau vers un conflit à l’échelle mondiale, l’actualisation – ou bien la répétition - de la démarche suivie par Lénine pendant la Première Guerre mondiale (le défaitisme révolutionnaire) est au cœur des analyses et des perspectives débattues par les minorités révolutionnaires. Cette recherche vise à établir les données du débat théorique et d’orientation politique et programmatique au sein de la Quatrième Internationale (QI) et dans l’archipel hétérogène du socialisme de gauche. Ces deux courants politiques se voulaient alternatives au réformisme et au stalinisme et furent celles où la possibilité d’un dénouement révolutionnaire de la guerre fit l’objet d’un débat passionné et d’une action tout au moins conséquente.Il s’agira de comprendre comment ces deux courants firent face à une révolution qui n’était pas venue ou qui avait été contrôlée par les staliniens et les sociaux-démocrates, et aux nouvelles relations internationales engendrées par le dénouement de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale
The debate within the workers' movement about the relationship between war and revolution has always been of a strategic nature, even at the time of the First International. Deciding on the attitude to the war produced debates, cleavages and splits: between reformists and revolutionaries, between defeatists and defenders of the "Union sacrée", between absolute pacifists and "revolutionary militarists". At the end of the 1930s, as the world once again rushed towards a conflict on a global scale, the actualization - or repetition - of Lenin's approach during the First World War (revolutionary defeatism) was at the heart of the analyses and perspectives debated by revolutionary minorities. This research aims to establish the data for the theoretical debate and political and programmatic orientation within the Fourth International (FI) and the heterogeneous archipelago of left-wing socialism. These two political currents were trying to build an alternative to reformism and Stalinism and were the ones where the possibility of a revolutionary outcome to the war was passionately debated and at least acted upon

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Studies, 2020
The thesis looks at both the flexibility and rigidity of South African politics. Using Claude Lefort’s theory of the ‘Empty Place of Power’, I compare the three main political parties in South Africa, namely: the African National Congress, Economic Freedom Fighters and the Democratic Alliance, and investigate how they construct the notion of ‘the people’ within the context of the Afrophobia and Xenophobia debate. I use some of Lefort’s key concepts such as the ‘Ontology of the Social’ and the ‘Dissolution of the Markers of Certitude’ to frame an argument of how these concepts can be read through the policies of the said political parties. I then analyse the level of openness in these parties and whether or not they meaningfully represent the people within the broader debate of citizenship and foreign nationals .I conclude by suggesting that all three parties base the identity of the people onto something grounded either in the race-nationalist conception of identity or a political articulation of community, and thus, that the place of power is not entirely empty
CK2021

Tra gli intellettuali del XX secolo Claude Lefort si è distinto per l’acume e l’originalità con cui ha affrontato le principali questioni filosofico-politiche dell’Europa post-bellica, dopo la caduta dei regimi totalitari centrali ed il contestuale emergere, ad Oriente, del colosso sovietico-staliniano come alternativa al vittorioso costituzionalismo occidentale. Questa tesi si propone di ripercorrere, attraverso una ricognizione e un approfondimento dell’opera di Claude Lefort, il percorso intellettuale di un pensatore che ha interrogato il suo tempo consegnando alla posterità un lavoro imponente, che lo rende uno dei maggiori interpreti del totalitarismo sovietico e un teorico innovativo nella comprensione della democrazia. Nel passaggio dall’antropologia alla storia, dalla filosofia alle scienze sociali, l’eredità lasciata dagli scritti di Claude Lefort possiede una ricchezza analitica tra le più profonde nell’alveo delle ricerche filosofiche dedicate alla modernità politica. La ricerca che questo lavoro propone al lettore, concentrandosi sulle principali direttive e coordinate dell’opera lefortiana, vuole dunque tentare di aggiungere un’ulteriore testimonianza sull’energie scrupuleuse di uno stile di scrittura e di un travail di pensiero di un filosofo che ha messo al centro della sua riflessione teorica l’uomo e lo spazio politico che abita.

Although the syntax of the left periphery of the Irish clausal architecture has been the subject of considerable research within the generative paradigm, many questions remain unresolved. The general goal of this thesis is to explore some of these understudied territories. Specifically, I consider two distinct, but ultimately related phenomena: headless relative clauses and dependent verbal morphology. I will make four major claims: The first two concern the syntax (and semantics) of the headless relative clause. First, despite the fact that the particles that appear in resumptive relative clauses and in headless relative clauses are morpho-phonologically identical as aN, headless relative clauses are derived by movement, not by means of resumption, and thus the particles in these two constructions are not the same. Second, headless relative clauses are amount relative clauses, in the sense of Carlson (1977); and thus I claim, adopting Grosu and Landman's (1998) notion of complex degree, that the element that undergoes A$'$-movement in a headless relative clause is a complex degree, causing degree-abstraction in the semantics. The maximalization operator then applies to the degree-abstracted relative CP. I argue that it is this operator that triggers the appearance of the particle aN in the headless relative construction. The latter two claims concern the morphosyntax of the left periphery of Irish syntax: First, I claim that there are two tense features in a single finite clause domain of Irish, and that the so-called dependent forms of irregular verbs are the surface realization of the two tense features. This account provides a stepping stone to my final claim that a feature agreeing with the maximalization operator, but not the operator itself, is realized in the headless relative particle aN and that the particles found in resumptive relative clauses and in headless relative clauses are in fact distinct Vocabulary Items and thus they are homophonous. This thesis thus fills a gap in the descriptive account of Irish syntax, and provides new insights to the theory of relativization.

Abstract The democratic theory of Claude Lefort, a French philosopher, is established on the idea of a society in continuous construction. According to Claude Lefort, a society is not determined in advance. The forms that it can take continuously change. From this point of view, Lefort attempts to understand modern democracy as it emerges from the breakdown of the monarchy. The monarchistic mutation of the 18th century provokes a new perception of power, because of the death of the king, the guarantor and representative of the unity of the kingdom. Because of the fact that power was embodied in the prince, and therefore gave society a body, an effective knowledge of what one meant to the other existed through the social. From this point of view, Lefort draws a revolutionary and unprecedented conclusion concerning democratic society. In democratic society, the locus of power becomes an empty place. That means power belongs to none or to everyone. The point is that the institutional apparatus prevents governments from appropriating power for their own ends, from incorporating it into themselves. The exercise of power is subject to the procedures of periodical redistribution. It represents the outcome of a controlled contest with permanent rules. This phenomenon implies an institutionalization of conflict, i.e. of competition. The empty place of power refers to the idea that it cannot be occupied – it is such that no individual and no group can be consubstantial with it – and it cannot be represented. In this sense, then, democracy is a politico-social form in which the “openness” or the “indeterminacy” of the social is institutionally registered. Concretely, the legitimacy of power emanates from popular suffrage, as long as it is recognized that the identity of the People itself changes over time. Through this approach, I try to consider the “Conférence Nationale Souveraine” (CNS) and the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) of the earlier 1990’s – in ex-Zaire and in South Africa – as important events in terms of the definition of new social visions. My assumption is that these events are genuine foundations of democratic societies. Through the Constitutions adopted in these two negotiating forums, it seems clear that the break between the past and the future is established. From the processes of negotiating to the agreed constitutions, all the elements conducive to build a democracy (in Lefort’s terms) are combined.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004.
Advisor: Dr. Valerie Jean Conner, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6/15/04). Includes bibliographical references.