Qu'est-ce que le sexe ?

Raphaëlle Milone's first novel, a dive into the heart of desires, acclaimed by Simon Liberati as well as by Jean-Luc Nancy.

Raphaëlle Milone (born 1991 in Riom) is a French writer.

David Graeber's interviews (with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Nika Dubrovsky, and Assia Turquier-Zauberman) redefine the contours of what an anarchist morality could be today.

David Graeber's influential thinking was always at odds with the liberal and left-wing mainstream. Drawing on his huge theoretical and practical experience as an ethnologist and anthropologist, activist and anarchist, Graeber and his interlocutors develop a ramified genealogy of anarchist thought and possible perspectives for 21st-century politics.

Diverging from the familiar lines of historical anarchism, and against the background of movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Gilets Jaunes, the aim is to provide new political impulses that go beyond the usual schemata of unavoidableness. The spontaneous and swift-moving polylogue shows Graeber as a spirited, unorthodox thinker and radical activist for whom the group can always achieve more than the individual.

David Graeber (1961-2020) was an American anthropologist, anarchist, political activist, the author of several books, and a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Until 2007 he was assistant and associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, until 2013 a reader for Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and until last a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

This book argues that the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal best renders the structure underlying our contemporary social response to traumatic and disturbing events, from climate change to unsettling tectonic shifts in our social tissue. Unlike denialism and negation, disavowal functions by fully acknowledging what we disavow. Zupancic contends that disavowal, which sustains some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite, is becoming a predominant feature of our social and political life. She also shows how the libidinal economy of disavowal is a key element of capitalist economy.

The concept of fetishistic disavowal already exposes the objectified side of the mechanism of the disavowal, which follows the general formula: I know well, but all the same, the object-fetish allows me to disregard this knowledge. Zupancic adds another twist by showing how, in the prevailing structure of disavowal today, the mere act of declaring that we know becomes itself an object-fetish by which we intercept the reality of that very knowledge. This perverse deployment of knowledge deprives it of any reality.

This structure of disavowal can be found not only in the more extreme and dramatic cases of conspiracy theories and re-emerging magical thinking, but even more so in the supposedly sober continuation of business as usual, combined with the call to adapt to the new reality. To disrupt this social embedding of disavowal, it is not enough to change the way we think: things need to change, and hence the way they think for us.

When Socrates was standing before the Athenian tribunal in 399 BC, he said in his defence that the opponents he feared most were the invisible ones, those who had been spreading rumors against him for years but none of whom were being brought to court – it was like fighting shadows. The moment was Socrates, the harbinger of logos and true knowledge, was eventually defeated by rumors and mendacious slander.

Where does the strange power of rumors come from? Everyone knows that rumors are unfounded and based on thin air, but still they pass them rumors spread, and what appeared as a small breeze can grow into a mighty whirlwind and produce serious effects, ruin people’s lives and change the course of events. This book scrutinizes the mysterious power of rumors and seeks to analyse it philosophically, examining along the way some key moments of our cultural history concerning rumors, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Gogol and Kafka.  It also underlines the fact that, although rumors are as old as humankind, the advent of the internet and social media has raised the spreading of rumors to an entirely new level, to the point where we could speak of the rumorization of the social.  The more communication there is, the more the social fabric threatens to fall apart – and the more urgent it becomes to find strategies to counteract this.

What is the relation between family misfortune and desire? Why must we bury the dead? What is to come for those unburied? How to distinguish the endless stream of graphic violence from violence that goes straight to the bone? How does language make up not only the law, but also unwritten laws?

In Let Them Rot Alenka Zupančič takes up the ancient figure of Antigone and finds a blueprint for the politics of desire. Not desire as consumption, enjoying what is offered, but desire’s oblivion to what came before. Such politics says: “No, this world must end and I will be the embodiment of that end.” This is not self-satisfied destruction for destruction’s sake; it is existence with consequences beyond the predictable. Zupančič asks: “Why desire?” And this question of desire, which may be the only question, takes the form of a no that is also an “I".

"Zupančič’s ideas are fresh, as if they hailed from some open air beyond the clutter of current theoretical quarrels. This brilliant account of Sophocles’s Antigone breaks new ground for philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political and feminist theory." — Joan Copjec, Brown University

"Writing my book on Antigone, I thought: “There we go, the subject is closed—let’s go to sleep.” And then along came Zupančič with her take and compelled me to rethink everything I did. In other words—and this is difficult for me to say—she is better than me here." — Slavoj Žižek

Alenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher and social theorist. She is a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is the author of many books, including What Is Sex? (MIT Press, 2017), The Odd One In: On Comedy(MIT Press, 2008), and Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan (Verso, 2000).

Dans Palma africana, l’anthropologue australien Michael Taussig explore la production d’huile de palme en Colombie. Alors que cette dernière envahit tout, des chips au vernis à ongles, l’auteur examine les conséquences écologiques, politiques et sociales de cette exploitation.

Bien que la liste des horreurs induites par la culture du palmier à huile soit longue, nos terminologies habituelles ne permettent plus de rendre compte des réalités qu’elles décrivent. À travers cette déambulation anthropo-poétique au cœur des marécages colombiens, c’est donc la question du langage que l’auteur interroge. Comme William Burroughs, pour qui les mots sont aussi vivants que des animaux et n’aiment pas être maintenus en pages – Michael Taussig souhaite couper ces dernières, et les rendre à leur liberté.

Pensé à partir d’une vie d’exploration philosophique et ethnographique, Palma africana cherche à contrecarrer la banalité de la destruction du monde et offre une vision pénétrante de notre condition humaine. Illustré de photographies prises par l’auteur et écrit avec la verve expérimentale propre à l’anthropologue, ce livre est le Tristes Tropiques de Michael Taussig pour le XXIe siècle.

Traduit de l’anglais par Marc Saint-Upéry.

Drawing on a range of sources, including the fiction of Toni Morrison and Luisa Valenzuela (He Who Searches), Avery Gordon demonstrates that past or haunting social forces control present life in different and more complicated ways than most social analysts presume. Written with a power to match its subject, Ghostly Matters has advanced the way we look at the complex intersections of race, gender, and class as they traverse our lives in sharp relief and shadowy manifestations.

“Ghostly Matters immediately establishes Avery Gordon as a leader among her generation of social and cultural theorists in all fields. The sheer beauty of her language enhances an intellectual brilliance so daunting that some readers will mark the day they first read this book. One must go back many more years than most of us can remember to find a more important book.” —Charles Lemert

L’or et la cocaïne sont les deux matériaux bruts de Mon musée de la Cocaïne. C’est au cours de leur transformation et raffinement que ces deux substances ramènent avec elles une histoire de l’oppression et de l’esclavage.

Dans ce livre, l’anthropologue australien Michael Taussig prend comme point de départ la proposition de bâtir un musée de la Cocaïne (qui serait l’image reflétée du musée de l’Or de la Banque de la République à Bogotá) et dresse un portrait sans concession de la vie des mineurs afro-colombiens aspirés dans le monde dangereux de la production de cocaïne au fin fond de la forêt tropicale, sur la côte pacifique de la Colombie. Il décrit la violence, la pauvreté, mais aussi les croyances qui surgissent des marais envahis de mangroves et des rivières tropicales qui, pendant plus de cinq cent ans, ont attiré, ruiné et décontenancé Amérindiens, orpailleurs, conquistadors et pirates, esclaves africains, ingénieurs russes et guérilleros marxistes.

Mon musée de la Cocaïne se présente comme un assemblage éclectique d’histoires et d’anecdotes, présenté comme autant de salles d’un hypothétique musée de la Cocaïne, au sein desquelles le lecteur est invité à déambuler, en croisant des références qui vont de Charles Dickens à Franz Kafka en passant par la poésie de Seamus Heaney.