[spectre] Philosophy from individual to the commons as overpassing practice

[Louise Desrenards]

Hello,
Please receive this information in English (which I hope nearly correct)
about an article in French
@ "La revue des ressources"
this page:

http://www.larevuedesressources.org/spip.php?article1185

May be some of you understanding French will be interested in the 
references
on Mehdi Belhaj Kacem which are quoted in the article and in the notes.

Title: I love Mehdi Belhaj Kacem


Abstract

Strictly speaking, the following text does not consist of a review on 
the last book from Mehdi Belhaj Kacem "L'esprit du nihilisme : un 
Ontotlogique de l'Histoire". It consists of a study on the following 
subject: the creating process of conceptualizing the new as an 
overpassing practice to the act which we called 'Transgression" (a part 
of "Evil" but not at all Malpractice)--in French--from the Mehdi Belhaj 
Kacem's thinking. That is both a social individualized "Transgression" 
regarding the fields of the knowledge but in the same time a 
contributing activity of the "general transgression" concerning the 
insurrectionary society moving the laws, or else the crossing of the 
genre of writings such as Poetry, Novel, Essay turning into the 
Philosophy. From individualizing the writing by integrating the 
experimental body of the author till getting rid of the 
individualization thanks to the abstracting process by exceeding the 
affect to make happen the thought (what does not deprive it of the 
emotion from the writing to the reading). This thought being the "cursed 
part" of the economy of writing, an energy of the body (all the sources 
of included information) converted by the intellect into energetic and 
dynamic concepts, a gift from the individual to make happening in the 
common sense of the silent community. On one hand it throws back the 
notion of universality of the truth, for a cognitive consensus of the 
thought so expressed, not the truth but an event demonstrating what it 
discovers of common with the others by this own means; on the other hand 
it is not any more the organic intellectual, it is the insurrectionary 
intellectual in the unacceptable community.

Process from an open masterwork--since his first book "Cancer" 
(published by Tristram in 1994) untill the last one just out: "L'esprit 
du nihilisme : une ontologique de l'Histoire" (published by Fayard the 
last month) of which I think that his subject being the proper 
revolution moving as subject. The appropriate subject of the great work 
of philosophy from Mehdi practice to the act being at the same time the 
performance of an irreproachable philosophic speech and a "malpractice" 
consisting of the reversal of the ethics : "(...) It is not the Law 
which is the condition of the "Transgression", but the opposite. The 
"Trangression" is the condition of possibility of any legislation: not 
only "moral", political and civic, but furthermore technical and 
cultural." So, he says may be, if the tragedy has been able to take 
sense in the modernity of the human without god(s), so the meaning is 
that the proper body of the modern theater of the History after the Myth 
is not the religion but the politics itself as the appropriate faith.

Anyway, in his abtract summarizing his last book, he certainly says, 
"(...) in it the withdrawal of which, for thirty years, is the true name 
of the "nihilism" and the " return of the Religious ": the politics." 
See by yourself...


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À propos de L’esprit du nihilisme : Une ontologique de l’Histoire, de 
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem ; collection "Ouvertures", éditions Fayard, Paris ; 
mars 2009.

Abstract de l’ouvrage (par son auteur)

"L’esprit du nihilisme : titre doublement paradoxal, puisque ce livre 
entreprend parallèlement, et souvent en même temps, de déconstruire le 
(pseudo-)concept nietzschéo-heideggerien de "nihilisme" et de décrire ce 
que, par provocation provisionnelle nous appellerons "nihilisme 
démocratique". C’est graduellement, par la description phénoménologique 
de la spiritualité exprimée dans la voix moyenne de toute une époque, 
que se rouvre alors la voie qui a traversé toute la modernité pensante 
depuis deux siècles : la "redécouverte" de la Tragédie par l’homme sans 
dieu(x). S’y établit le "secret" découvert à tâtons par cette modernité, 
sans avoir jamais été énoncé comme tel : renversant la tradition 
métaphysico-politique de l’Occident, on démontre que ce n’est pas la Loi 
qui est la condition de la Transgression, mais le contraire. C’est la 
Transgression qui est la condition de possibilité de toute législation : 
non seule-ment "morale", politique et civique, mais technique et 
culturelle. L’enjeu est considérable : si la philosophie, pour la toute 
première fois de sa tradition, parvenait à renverser le rapport qu’elle 
a toujours posé entre législation et transgression, démontrant que 
celle-ci est la condition de possibilité de celle-là et pas l’inverse ; 
bouleversant au passage le sens même qu’on a toujours accordé au concept 
de "Transgression", alors la philosophie destituerait enfin la région de 
pensée qui, avec l’irrationalisme qui lui est propre, et qu’on a plus 
que jamais raison de qualifier d’"obscurantisme", a toujours "pensé" la 
précession de la transgression sur la législation : nommément la 
religion (le "péché originel"). Cette destitution non seulement 
court-circuiterait le pouvoir du religieux, mais restituerait ce 
pouvoir, et la tâche d’en penser les conséquences, à cela dont le 
retrait, depuis trente ans, est le vrai nom du "nihilisme" et du "retour 
du religieux" : la politique. "

http://www.editions-fayard.fr/livre/fayard-321202-L-esprit-du-nihilisme-hachette.html