What and how should individuals resist in political situations? Chris Henry brings together the work of Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze in order to offer a new idea of political practice He develops a structural ontology that gives rise to non-idealist, non-dogmatic, yet ethical practices of resistance against the return of classical ontological dualities.
Chris Henry is an Associate Lecturer in the Centre for Critical Thought at the University of Kent.
Introduction 1. Badiou: Being and Failure A question of dualities Being resistant Political ontology Presuppositions The truth of mathematics Who resists? Just Some-One The failure of being 2. Contra axiomatics: the persistence of Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze An Althusserian conjuncture Which Althusser? Relative autonomy within unity Philosophical dualisms A very full void Time and persistence The subject as practice Non-dogmatic philosophy? 3. A time for practice Speculative or problematic? Meillassoux’s problem with Hume The way the world really works The hope of speculative resistance Ideas and the social formation Time and the syntheses of Ideas An ontology proper to structuralism Philosophy and idealism 4. Genius and ethology Deleuze, morality and ethics Ethical mediation The necessity of ethics Genius and the art of life The repetition of genius Mediated geniusConclusion: The art of practical resistance Bibliography
In this rigorous reflection on the form and basis for resistance, Chris Henry gives a critical reading of the most influential political thinkers of our age, including Badiou, Deleuze and Althusser. He arrives at a powerful concept of situated practice, with challenging implications for activists and researchers charting a way between states and resisting individuals and groups.
