Gareth Williams | University of Michigan (original) (raw)

Books by Gareth Williams

Política común, 2016

The publication in recent years of John Beverley's Latinamericanism after 9/11 (2011) and Abraham... more The publication in recent years of John Beverley's Latinamericanism after 9/11 (2011) and Abraham Acosta's Thresholds of Illiteracy (2014) places the legacies of the subalternist turn in Latin American postcolonial studies once again at the center of interest. These are, however, very different books. Latinamericanism after 9/11 forges a rationality of expedience and instrumentality that is guided exclusively by a pre-ordained desire to bring If you want, not to construct a theory, but to ascertain the condition in which man is actually placed, you will not ask yourself how it happens that the world is known, but how, in fact, man knows the world; and you will have to acknowledge the existence both of a world which lies beyond the mind, and of a mind which, far from passively reflecting the world, exercises itself on the world with the double aim of knowing it and transforming it.

Res pública: Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, 2022

In this essay, hegemony in traditional Marxism is posited as a social ontology based on overcomin... more In this essay, hegemony in traditional Marxism is posited as a social ontology based on overcoming the alienation of the masses. The aim of hegemony is to produce the full realization through the work of the proletariat as one specific political subject, as a collective version of the bourgeois subject. The emancipation through hegemony marks the self-realization of the proletariat as the subject of history, as one subject that somehow imposes itself on the alienated forms of capitalism. On the other hand, poshegemony is thought from the decline of the subjectivist and productivist idolatry of hegemony, from the end of its expired truth, in the name of another promise.

Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2023

Culture Machine, 2023

As long as we do not thoughtfully experience what is, we can never belong to what will be. (M. He... more As long as we do not thoughtfully experience what is, we can never belong to what will be. (M. Heidegger, 'Insight into That Which Is', Bremen and Freiburg Lectures) Anxiety. .. is the central affect, the one around which everything else is organized.

In the 1930s Heidegger had already referenced the dilemma in question as "the disappearance of th... more In the 1930s Heidegger had already referenced the dilemma in question as "the disappearance of the distinction between war and peace," adding that as a result "nothing remains any longer in which the hitherto accustomed world of humankind could be salvaged; nothing of what has gone before offers itself as something that could still be erected as a goal for the accustomed selfsecuring of human beings" (The History of Beyng, 154). This leads us to the second point of mediation between the two instances and languages in question, namely, the question of intellectual responsibility in the face of globalization as a tumultuous world of war, as much as in world war. It is, of course, well documented how despicably Heidegger fared in this regard. 4 On the other hand, it is precisely the end of the juridical concept of war that upholds the relation between the end of world war, the planetary devastation of the present under the auspices of a world of endemic war, infrapolitical actions such as those of the Extinction Rebellion, and the everyday language of Greta Thunberg and of millions of others. For Derrida, in his incessant distancing from Heidegger's Nazi commitment, the stakes and responsibility unveiled by the end of the concept of war "appear inseparable, in fact, from the future of reason, that is, of philosophy, everywhere that the concepts of international law, nationstate sovereignty, or sovereignty in general, tremble from this tremor that is so confusedly called "globalization" [mondialisation])" (Rogues, 124). 5 Likewise, Infrapolitical Passages is an attempt to contribute, from within the neoliberal university, which is as deficient in this regard as it was in the 1930s, to the question of the inseparable relation between existence, responsibility, and the future of reason. The extent to which this endeavor fails or succeeds is an entirely different matter.

Papers by Gareth Williams

The Mexican Exception: Sovereignty, Police, and Democracy Gareth Williams The war on drugs has op... more The Mexican Exception: Sovereignty, Police, and Democracy Gareth Williams The war on drugs has opened up a discussion on whether Mexico is living a state of exception or even becoming a failed state. This book argues that sovereign exceptionality has always been central to Mexican modernity. The question is how to understand the way the sovereign exception has worked and continues to work in cultural, historical, and institutional terms since this holds the key to understanding the nature of contemporary democracy. Each chapter of The Mexican Exception examines an event or particular historical sequence that sheds light on the relation between culture, sovereign exceptionality, and the political. Drawing on literature, photography, critical theory, and the history of social movements and state formation, The Mexican Exception proposes a partial history of the state of exception by examining the electoral stand-off of 2006; Zapatismo past and present; the humanist representation of history; sovereignty and caciquismo; popular culture and the figure of the rogue; the events and political imagination of 1968; the 'dirty war' of the 1970's and the militarization of the social sphere in recent decades. In this book Williams maps out political and cultural counter-genealogies in order to shed light on the workings of the constitutive couple of democracy (equality and freedom) in modern and contemporary Mexico.

Soft Power: Revista euro-americana de teoría e historia de la política y del derecho, 2018

The infrapolitical is the thinking that flickers on the tremorous limit at which the end of the r... more The infrapolitical is the thinking that flickers on the tremorous limit at which the end of the representation of historical progress is finally realized and the metaphysical indulgences of previous vital, political and ideological illusions (such as the bourgeois foundations of fraternity, equality, and liberty) founder and run aground, rising up, nevertheless, in increasingly vitriolic forms as subjectivist reactionary demands for definitive (nationalist, populist, or identitarian) decisions, resolutions, or truths regarding the twilight of the modern. Attunement to a specifically infrapolitical register in thinking gives no credence to the overcoming of political disenchantment in the name of fidelity to the unifying inheritance of 'the commons' since the infrapolitical comes to the fore in the realization (which cannot be merely confused with eschatology) that "nothing remains any longer in which the hitherto accustomed world of humankind could be salvaged; nothing of what has gone before offers itself as something that could still be erected as a goal for the accustomed self-securing of human beings" (Heidegger, 2015, p. 154).

El otro lade de lo popular: Neoliberalismo y subalternidad en América Latina, 2020

#lacanemancipa, 2020

of philosophy in France, he observes-and, indeed, he observes this before saying anything else-is... more of philosophy in France, he observes-and, indeed, he observes this before saying anything else-is an essentially Hegelian, and therefore an essentially spiritual, and therefore an essentially instrumentalist, a!air. 'Hegel' is the name of an institutional arrangement that holds free thinking firmly tethered to the old ground of the (German) university, and therefore to "the concept of position and the position of the concept, self-positioning and opposition". Philosophy in France is bound to the thinking of causality, to the force of the dialectic, and therefore to the re-presentation and re-production of an unceasing "battle to the death" via consciousness's recognition and determinate negation in the desire of the other:

#lacanemancipa: Frente al Uno del capitalimso el no-Todo de la emancipación, 2020

La biología aún no ha sido capaz de decidir si la muerte es el destino inevitable de todo ser viv... more La biología aún no ha sido capaz de decidir si la muerte es el destino inevitable de todo ser viviente o si es únicamente un evento regular pero evitable en la vida. Es cierto que la proposición "Todos los hombres son mortales" desfila por los libros de texto de lógica como ejemplo de generalización, pero ningún ser humano realmente la comprende, y nuestro inconsciente encuentra, hoy como ayer, completamente inútil la idea de su propia mortalidad.

Paramilitarism and the End of the Katechon: Decontainment and Extreme Theology in Mexico.

The question of secularization presents us first with the problem of definition, and second with ... more The question of secularization presents us first with the problem of definition, and second with the issue of methodology and conceptual approach. It also presents us with the question of the future of the postcolonial paradigm in its Latin Americanist vein. It is clear that postcolonial secularization can never be disengaged from what Dipesh Chakrabarty referred to as the "civilizing process that the European Enlightenment inaugurated in the eighteenth century as a world historical task" (1996, 61). But neither does it refer to a modern process of de-Christianization-or to the modern replacing the traditional-for secularization does not actually touch the ground of religious faith and practice per se (Chadwick). Clearly, if we were referring exclusively to Europe the conceptual genealogy of secularization would have to pass through, among others, Newton, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Diderot and Voltaire, perhaps with Marx as the most forceful philosopher of secularization in the nineteenth century. In Latin American postcoloniality, however, we are closer to the relation between certain legacies of the

Política común, 2016

The publication in recent years of John Beverley's Latinamericanism after 9/11 (2011) and Abraham... more The publication in recent years of John Beverley's Latinamericanism after 9/11 (2011) and Abraham Acosta's Thresholds of Illiteracy (2014) places the legacies of the subalternist turn in Latin American postcolonial studies once again at the center of interest. These are, however, very different books. Latinamericanism after 9/11 forges a rationality of expedience and instrumentality that is guided exclusively by a pre-ordained desire to bring If you want, not to construct a theory, but to ascertain the condition in which man is actually placed, you will not ask yourself how it happens that the world is known, but how, in fact, man knows the world; and you will have to acknowledge the existence both of a world which lies beyond the mind, and of a mind which, far from passively reflecting the world, exercises itself on the world with the double aim of knowing it and transforming it.

Res pública: Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, 2022

In this essay, hegemony in traditional Marxism is posited as a social ontology based on overcomin... more In this essay, hegemony in traditional Marxism is posited as a social ontology based on overcoming the alienation of the masses. The aim of hegemony is to produce the full realization through the work of the proletariat as one specific political subject, as a collective version of the bourgeois subject. The emancipation through hegemony marks the self-realization of the proletariat as the subject of history, as one subject that somehow imposes itself on the alienated forms of capitalism. On the other hand, poshegemony is thought from the decline of the subjectivist and productivist idolatry of hegemony, from the end of its expired truth, in the name of another promise.

Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2023

Culture Machine, 2023

As long as we do not thoughtfully experience what is, we can never belong to what will be. (M. He... more As long as we do not thoughtfully experience what is, we can never belong to what will be. (M. Heidegger, 'Insight into That Which Is', Bremen and Freiburg Lectures) Anxiety. .. is the central affect, the one around which everything else is organized.

In the 1930s Heidegger had already referenced the dilemma in question as "the disappearance of th... more In the 1930s Heidegger had already referenced the dilemma in question as "the disappearance of the distinction between war and peace," adding that as a result "nothing remains any longer in which the hitherto accustomed world of humankind could be salvaged; nothing of what has gone before offers itself as something that could still be erected as a goal for the accustomed selfsecuring of human beings" (The History of Beyng, 154). This leads us to the second point of mediation between the two instances and languages in question, namely, the question of intellectual responsibility in the face of globalization as a tumultuous world of war, as much as in world war. It is, of course, well documented how despicably Heidegger fared in this regard. 4 On the other hand, it is precisely the end of the juridical concept of war that upholds the relation between the end of world war, the planetary devastation of the present under the auspices of a world of endemic war, infrapolitical actions such as those of the Extinction Rebellion, and the everyday language of Greta Thunberg and of millions of others. For Derrida, in his incessant distancing from Heidegger's Nazi commitment, the stakes and responsibility unveiled by the end of the concept of war "appear inseparable, in fact, from the future of reason, that is, of philosophy, everywhere that the concepts of international law, nationstate sovereignty, or sovereignty in general, tremble from this tremor that is so confusedly called "globalization" [mondialisation])" (Rogues, 124). 5 Likewise, Infrapolitical Passages is an attempt to contribute, from within the neoliberal university, which is as deficient in this regard as it was in the 1930s, to the question of the inseparable relation between existence, responsibility, and the future of reason. The extent to which this endeavor fails or succeeds is an entirely different matter.

The Mexican Exception: Sovereignty, Police, and Democracy Gareth Williams The war on drugs has op... more The Mexican Exception: Sovereignty, Police, and Democracy Gareth Williams The war on drugs has opened up a discussion on whether Mexico is living a state of exception or even becoming a failed state. This book argues that sovereign exceptionality has always been central to Mexican modernity. The question is how to understand the way the sovereign exception has worked and continues to work in cultural, historical, and institutional terms since this holds the key to understanding the nature of contemporary democracy. Each chapter of The Mexican Exception examines an event or particular historical sequence that sheds light on the relation between culture, sovereign exceptionality, and the political. Drawing on literature, photography, critical theory, and the history of social movements and state formation, The Mexican Exception proposes a partial history of the state of exception by examining the electoral stand-off of 2006; Zapatismo past and present; the humanist representation of history; sovereignty and caciquismo; popular culture and the figure of the rogue; the events and political imagination of 1968; the 'dirty war' of the 1970's and the militarization of the social sphere in recent decades. In this book Williams maps out political and cultural counter-genealogies in order to shed light on the workings of the constitutive couple of democracy (equality and freedom) in modern and contemporary Mexico.

Soft Power: Revista euro-americana de teoría e historia de la política y del derecho, 2018

The infrapolitical is the thinking that flickers on the tremorous limit at which the end of the r... more The infrapolitical is the thinking that flickers on the tremorous limit at which the end of the representation of historical progress is finally realized and the metaphysical indulgences of previous vital, political and ideological illusions (such as the bourgeois foundations of fraternity, equality, and liberty) founder and run aground, rising up, nevertheless, in increasingly vitriolic forms as subjectivist reactionary demands for definitive (nationalist, populist, or identitarian) decisions, resolutions, or truths regarding the twilight of the modern. Attunement to a specifically infrapolitical register in thinking gives no credence to the overcoming of political disenchantment in the name of fidelity to the unifying inheritance of 'the commons' since the infrapolitical comes to the fore in the realization (which cannot be merely confused with eschatology) that "nothing remains any longer in which the hitherto accustomed world of humankind could be salvaged; nothing of what has gone before offers itself as something that could still be erected as a goal for the accustomed self-securing of human beings" (Heidegger, 2015, p. 154).

El otro lade de lo popular: Neoliberalismo y subalternidad en América Latina, 2020

#lacanemancipa, 2020

of philosophy in France, he observes-and, indeed, he observes this before saying anything else-is... more of philosophy in France, he observes-and, indeed, he observes this before saying anything else-is an essentially Hegelian, and therefore an essentially spiritual, and therefore an essentially instrumentalist, a!air. 'Hegel' is the name of an institutional arrangement that holds free thinking firmly tethered to the old ground of the (German) university, and therefore to "the concept of position and the position of the concept, self-positioning and opposition". Philosophy in France is bound to the thinking of causality, to the force of the dialectic, and therefore to the re-presentation and re-production of an unceasing "battle to the death" via consciousness's recognition and determinate negation in the desire of the other:

#lacanemancipa: Frente al Uno del capitalimso el no-Todo de la emancipación, 2020

La biología aún no ha sido capaz de decidir si la muerte es el destino inevitable de todo ser viv... more La biología aún no ha sido capaz de decidir si la muerte es el destino inevitable de todo ser viviente o si es únicamente un evento regular pero evitable en la vida. Es cierto que la proposición "Todos los hombres son mortales" desfila por los libros de texto de lógica como ejemplo de generalización, pero ningún ser humano realmente la comprende, y nuestro inconsciente encuentra, hoy como ayer, completamente inútil la idea de su propia mortalidad.

Paramilitarism and the End of the Katechon: Decontainment and Extreme Theology in Mexico.

The question of secularization presents us first with the problem of definition, and second with ... more The question of secularization presents us first with the problem of definition, and second with the issue of methodology and conceptual approach. It also presents us with the question of the future of the postcolonial paradigm in its Latin Americanist vein. It is clear that postcolonial secularization can never be disengaged from what Dipesh Chakrabarty referred to as the "civilizing process that the European Enlightenment inaugurated in the eighteenth century as a world historical task" (1996, 61). But neither does it refer to a modern process of de-Christianization-or to the modern replacing the traditional-for secularization does not actually touch the ground of religious faith and practice per se (Chadwick). Clearly, if we were referring exclusively to Europe the conceptual genealogy of secularization would have to pass through, among others, Newton, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Diderot and Voltaire, perhaps with Marx as the most forceful philosopher of secularization in the nineteenth century. In Latin American postcoloniality, however, we are closer to the relation between certain legacies of the

Res pública, forthcoming, 2022

Thought at work trying to grasp the drama of man, which is the tragedy of alienation, within the ... more Thought at work trying to grasp the drama of man, which is the tragedy of alienation, within the context of the horizon of history and society. Kostas Axelos, Alienation, Praxis, and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx Posthegemony provides insight into two intertwined experiential and conceptual registers: 1. It raises the question of our understanding of epochality. The point of departure for posthegemony is the working realization that even before the advent of neoliberalism in the 1970s the guiding principles and imperatives of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century Left had traversed a historical, and therefore a conceptual, limit and, perhaps, a point of no return. 1 Those guiding principles have not disappeared, but the conceptual systems that allowed for their formulation in the past, and from which we derived their meaning and our understanding, no longer appear to be viable in the present. The knowledge and consequences of this historical limit explains why posthegemony takes a distance from staking commemorative claims on past utopias, or on the philological revelation of a new and unforeseen proletarian consciousness for the twenty-first century. Posthegemony is not a quest for the recuperation and re-translation of exhausted forms, systems, beliefs, and metaphors. This does not mean, however, that 1 The passing of this historical limit is the main area of concern for both the form of subaltern studies extended in The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America (Williams, 2002) and for the question of the infrapolitical elaborated in Infrapolitical Passages: Global Turmoil, Narco-Accumulation and the Post-Sovereign State (Williams, 2021). In both works, the question of posthegemony is central.

All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking.