Bruno Bosteels | Columbia University (original) (raw)

Papers by Bruno Bosteels

Research paper thumbnail of The Eternal Return of the Modern

Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially ... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!

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Research paper thumbnail of Borges in French Theory

Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 17, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Marx con Morgan: La vía mexicana hacia la comuna

Antrópica: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2022

Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and ... more Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and linear view of history towards a multilinear perspective in which there is room for uneven development, leaps and returns from the “archaic” past into the future of communism. It also enables Marx, based on the profound history of ancient Mexico, to anticipate the possibility of the revolutionary uprising of the community as a commune, just as it would in fact occur in Morelos. Marx in his final stage was approaching a new understanding of the link between the community as a form of reproduction of collective life and the commune as an expansive political form that cannot be limited exclusively to its best-known version, associated with the Paris Commune of 1871. In Mexico, this understanding places Marx in the company of famous historians of the Mexican Revolution such as Jesús Sotelo Inclán or Adolfo Gilly, who--already in the twentieth century but without explicitly referring to each other--will contribute new chapters to the history of that other commune, the Mexica or Mexican one on whose
tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.

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Research paper thumbnail of Borges Revisited

Hispanic Review, 1993

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Research paper thumbnail of Olea Franco, Rafael (Ed.). Borges:desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secretos. México: El Colegio de México, 1999, 312 p

Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 2001

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Research paper thumbnail of An Italian Rupture: Production against Development

Diacritics, 2009

How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar ... more How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar Europe? I begin with the end of the 1950s, when a group of politicized intellectuals began to question the extent of the immanence of work in the development of capitalist technologies.1 What were the transformations that from within the modern factory foisted labor-power on machines? Questions like these continued to be elaborated upon with respect to the violent social development of the postwar economic expansion. What, it was asked, was the impact of human activity on how society is structured, passing from the factory to society? On the one hand is this question: what was the effect of capitalist command (and its technological instrumentation) on social life? And vice versa: what transformations did social movements force upon the structures and the institutions of capitalist command? Capitalist power was quickly extended to the control of social life until being configured as biopower, in spite of widespread and effective resistance. How could biopolitical relations be lived and organized so as to create alternatives to biopower?

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Research paper thumbnail of Philosophy for Militants

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Research paper thumbnail of Theory of the Subject

... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, ... more ... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, the reader will come to appreciate a side of Badiou's work that usually is not as visible as it is in Theory ofthe Subject or, once again, in Logics of Worlds, that is, his flair for ... Not only does he present

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Research paper thumbnail of Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence-showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning-Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. In the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein's anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels' introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou's overall project-and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.

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Research paper thumbnail of Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism

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Research paper thumbnail of Literature and Insurrection

Inaugural Lecture, 2018

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Research paper thumbnail of Literature and Revolution in Transition

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 8, 2022

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Research paper thumbnail of The Subject's Turn : Elements of a Materialist History

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Research paper thumbnail of Badiou and Politics

Duke University Press eBooks, Oct 6, 2020

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Research paper thumbnail of Twenty Theses on Politics and Subjectivity

ZINBUN, Mar 1, 2016

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Research paper thumbnail of ReadingCapitalfrom the Margins

Duke University Press eBooks, Aug 13, 2017

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Research paper thumbnail of Universality and Its Discontents

Routledge eBooks, Feb 28, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Enjoy Your Truth

Duke University Press eBooks, May 17, 2015

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Research paper thumbnail of 16. What Are Philosophers For in the Age of the Poets? Badiou with and Against Heidegger

Columbia University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

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Research paper thumbnail of The Psychic Life of the Power of Rebellion: Introducing León Rozitchner’s “Philosophy and Terror”

Theory & Event, 2017

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Research paper thumbnail of The Eternal Return of the Modern

Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially ... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!

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Research paper thumbnail of Borges in French Theory

Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 17, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Marx con Morgan: La vía mexicana hacia la comuna

Antrópica: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2022

Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and ... more Karl Marx’s reading of Lewis H. Morgan not only produces a paradigm shift from a progressive and linear view of history towards a multilinear perspective in which there is room for uneven development, leaps and returns from the “archaic” past into the future of communism. It also enables Marx, based on the profound history of ancient Mexico, to anticipate the possibility of the revolutionary uprising of the community as a commune, just as it would in fact occur in Morelos. Marx in his final stage was approaching a new understanding of the link between the community as a form of reproduction of collective life and the commune as an expansive political form that cannot be limited exclusively to its best-known version, associated with the Paris Commune of 1871. In Mexico, this understanding places Marx in the company of famous historians of the Mexican Revolution such as Jesús Sotelo Inclán or Adolfo Gilly, who--already in the twentieth century but without explicitly referring to each other--will contribute new chapters to the history of that other commune, the Mexica or Mexican one on whose
tracks the American ethnologist in our opinion had already put Marx.

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Research paper thumbnail of Borges Revisited

Hispanic Review, 1993

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Research paper thumbnail of Olea Franco, Rafael (Ed.). Borges:desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secretos. México: El Colegio de México, 1999, 312 p

Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 2001

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of An Italian Rupture: Production against Development

Diacritics, 2009

How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar ... more How can I begin to define the Italian “difference” within the philosophical framework of postwar Europe? I begin with the end of the 1950s, when a group of politicized intellectuals began to question the extent of the immanence of work in the development of capitalist technologies.1 What were the transformations that from within the modern factory foisted labor-power on machines? Questions like these continued to be elaborated upon with respect to the violent social development of the postwar economic expansion. What, it was asked, was the impact of human activity on how society is structured, passing from the factory to society? On the one hand is this question: what was the effect of capitalist command (and its technological instrumentation) on social life? And vice versa: what transformations did social movements force upon the structures and the institutions of capitalist command? Capitalist power was quickly extended to the control of social life until being configured as biopower, in spite of widespread and effective resistance. How could biopolitical relations be lived and organized so as to create alternatives to biopower?

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Research paper thumbnail of Philosophy for Militants

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Research paper thumbnail of Theory of the Subject

... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, ... more ... Word of the Living!' The inexistent Logic of the excess Part VI. ... Perhaps above all, the reader will come to appreciate a side of Badiou's work that usually is not as visible as it is in Theory ofthe Subject or, once again, in Logics of Worlds, that is, his flair for ... Not only does he present

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Research paper thumbnail of Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence-showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning-Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. In the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein's anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels' introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou's overall project-and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.

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Research paper thumbnail of Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism

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Research paper thumbnail of Literature and Insurrection

Inaugural Lecture, 2018

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Literature and Revolution in Transition

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 8, 2022

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Research paper thumbnail of The Subject's Turn : Elements of a Materialist History

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Badiou and Politics

Duke University Press eBooks, Oct 6, 2020

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Research paper thumbnail of Twenty Theses on Politics and Subjectivity

ZINBUN, Mar 1, 2016

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Research paper thumbnail of ReadingCapitalfrom the Margins

Duke University Press eBooks, Aug 13, 2017

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Research paper thumbnail of Universality and Its Discontents

Routledge eBooks, Feb 28, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Enjoy Your Truth

Duke University Press eBooks, May 17, 2015

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Research paper thumbnail of 16. What Are Philosophers For in the Age of the Poets? Badiou with and Against Heidegger

Columbia University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

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Research paper thumbnail of The Psychic Life of the Power of Rebellion: Introducing León Rozitchner’s “Philosophy and Terror”

Theory & Event, 2017

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Research paper thumbnail of Alain Badiou, une trajectoire polémique

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Research paper thumbnail of Caballero Vázquez, Miguel & Rodríguez Carranza, Luz & Soto van der Plas, Christina (eds.) (2014): Imágenes y realismos en América Latina. Leiden: Almenara

Imagen y realismo son temas recurrentes en las discusiones estéticas, filosóficas y políticas cad... more Imagen y realismo son temas recurrentes en las discusiones estéticas, filosóficas y políticas cada vez que hay una preocupación por lo contemporáneo: sus orígenes y destinos cruzados comparten la pregunta por el presente. La relación clásica entre ambas cuestiones –la mimesis– se ha transformado hoy. En este libro se analizan obras visuales, cinematográficas, teatrales, poéticas y narrativas de América Latina que activan la experiencia de la temporalidad. En diálogo con dos ensayos de Raúl Antelo y Bruno Bosteels, se enlazan aquí múltiples enfoques que parecen privilegiar uno de los dos aspectos pero son atravesados por el otro, abriendo un espacio político entre ambos.

Raúl Antelo · Bruno Bosteels · Adriana Rodríguez Pérsico · Mario Cámara · Ana Amado · José Ramón Ruisánchez · Luz Rodríguez Carranza · Gabriel Inzaurralde · Dolores Lima · Graciela Goldchluk · Constanza Ceresa · Santiago Deymonnaz · Silvana Mandolessi · Rose Corral · Susana Scramim · Brigitte Adriaensen · Ana Chiara · Miguel Caballero Vázquez

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Research paper thumbnail of My Own Private Anti-Oedipus

My relationship to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus has always been marked by a p... more My relationship to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus has always been marked by a productive tension.

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Research paper thumbnail of El sueño de una cosa: De Marx a Gramsci

Pasolini transatlántico, 2024

Con la típica mezcla de lucidez y mordacidad que caracteriza toda esa jerga lacerada de la finitu... more Con la típica mezcla de lucidez y mordacidad que caracteriza toda esa jerga lacerada de la finitud acerca de la historia—a la vez finita y terminada—del comunismo, Pasolini es el santo ideal para una izquierda postmarxista en cuya hoja hagiográfica se podrá siempre recalcar el mérito de su afiliación con el nombre de Gramsci. Ofrece un diagnóstico poético irrefutable de la derrota que globalmente sufrió la izquierda revolucionaria. Es en efecto irrefutable, porque cualquier intento de refutación inmediatamente corre el riesgo de ser tildado de nostálgico, metafísico o dogmático, siguiendo las pautas de un discurso cuyos restos se encuentran en la tumba. Pero entre el sueño de una cosa que se va volando como un pajarraco gris y las cenizas de los fuegos fatuos de la militancia comunista, también es un diagnóstico que acaba sirviendo de coartada para una internalización derrotista de la derrota.

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Research paper thumbnail of The Eternal Return of the Modern

Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The I... more Much of Alain Badiou's writing on poetry indeed has been and continues to be, especially in The Immanence of Truths, an attempt to come up with a defense in prose of poetry's ability to sustain the self-evidence of the True. This also means to overcome the captivating seduction of the affects and identities of bodies, languages, and communities, united in their mimetic reproduction for easy mass consumption. Now, insofar as a historicist approach to poetry and to art in general, according to this philosopher, tends to reinscribe their meaning into the archive of their respective identities, languages, epochs, cultures, and other such worldly settings, the challenge necessarily would appear to include a radical break with history. In Badiou's version of Plato's ideal city-state, that is, the fifth system of government which he relabels communism, it is not just mimeticism but also and above all historicism and academicism that constitute the principal obstacles for the inclusion of the poets as the bearers of absolute truths. By contrast, insofar as literary critics and art historians according to Badiou tend to reduce art and poetry to the variable conditions of their historical emergence, perhaps it is they who should be banned from the new system of government more so than the poets and artists themselves!

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Research paper thumbnail of Preface to the Japanese translation of The Actuality of Communism

The Actuality of Communism

Preface to the Japanese translation

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Research paper thumbnail of De Marx a Heidegger: Un itinerario paradigmático (El caso de Oscar del Barco

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Research paper thumbnail of The Jargon of Finitude A Conversation with Bruno Bosteels

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Research paper thumbnail of State or Commune: Viewing the October Revolution from the Land of Zapata

What is the fate of communism today, a full century after the October Revolution? Can we think of... more What is the fate of communism today, a full century after the October Revolution? Can we think of 1917 from an internationalist perspective that would not be limited to the Soviet Union? Does our view change significantly if we consider the fact that the short twentieth century, which could be said to run the complete gamut of the revolutionary ideal from 1917 to 1979 with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua marking perhaps the last revolutionary experience of the cycle in question, might also have begun in Latin America with the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920? Aside from the scholastic issue of finding out what was really known about the October Revolution south of the Río Grande, what other problems come into focus if we look back at the year 1917 from the land of Emiliano Zapata?

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Research paper thumbnail of Trepando en la oscuridad

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Research paper thumbnail of Bosteels Marxism and Subalternity Short.pdf

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Research paper thumbnail of Bosteels MLA Rulfo Roundtable

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Research paper thumbnail of Deposing Paul MLA 2018 short.pdf

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