Papers in english

Multitude’s english presentation

Multitudes is a political, cultural and artistic journal published quarterly. Established in March, 2000, it is the backbone of a transnational editorial collective that runs an electronic list-serve (Multitudes-Infos), places back issues on line one year after publication, and edits one book serie through Éditions Amsterdam (Multitudes-interventions). For Multitudes, politics lies outside the walls of … Continuer la lecture de Multitude’s english presentation →

From the January revolution to Sisi. How and why? (English version)

De la révolution de janvier à Sissi
Comment et pourquoi ?

Cet article tente de montrer que la révolution qui s’est produite en Égypte était porteuse d’un projet politique libéral-démocrate. Les groupes révolutionnaires et les opposants au régime de Moubarak ont réussi à mobiliser des couches sociales substantielles en 2011 en demandant le respect des droits humains de base et la représentation de la volonté du peuple. La forte présence d’ouvriers mécontents, de classes moyennes appauvries et de populations urbaines défavorisées dans le mouvement de protestation n’a jamais débouché sur un projet politique visant un changement économique et social. Leurs revendications sont restées figées dans une économie morale nassériste où les revendications économiques et sociales sont en grande partie apolitiques et totalement dissociées de la démocratisation des relations entre la société et l’État. L’absence de projet de changement socio-politique a privé le processus révolutionnaire d’une large et solide coalition sociale.

From the January revolution to Sisi
How and why?

The argument this article attempts to develop is that the revolution in Egypt had a relatively clear liberal democratic political project. Revolutionary groups and political opponents to the Mubarak regime managed to mobilize substantial social strata in 2011 asking for the respect of basic human rights and for the representation of the will of the people. The strong presence of disaffected laborers, impoverished middle classes and urban poor in the protest movement never evolved into a political project aiming at social and economic change. Their demands conversely remained by and large stuck in the Nasserist moral economy, where economic and social demands are largely apolitical and definitely dissociated from the democratization of society-state relations. The absence of a project of socio-political change deprived the revolutionary process of a solid and broad social coalition.

Ard-el-Lewa (English version)

Ard-el-Lewa

Entretien avec Hamdy Reda, artiste qui a créé un lieu d’art, Art-el-Lewa, dans le quartier informel très densément peuplé d’Ard-el-Lewa, situé entre deux autres grands quartiers informels Imbiba and Boulak El Dakrour. Art-el-Lewa est un espace de mise en œuvre de dialogue entre artistes et société. Cet espace indépendant aide les projets artistiques à se réaliser, offre des workshops aux membres de la communauté et aux artistes émergents ; il organise des expositions et reçoit des artistes en résidence ; il encourage les projets qui enrichissent la vie civique et culturelle d’Ard-el-Lewa ; il utilise l’art pour faire avancer les questions d’environnement. Hamdy Reda nous raconte pourquoi et comment il a ouvert cet espace, et quels projets le lieu a hébergés.

Ard-el-Lewa

Interview with Hamdy Reda, an artist who created an art space, Art-el-Lewa, in an informal densely populated area, Ard-el-Lewa, located between two of Cairo’s largest informal areas, Imbiba and Boulak El Dakrour. Art-el-Lewa is a space for the formation and activation of dialogue between artists and society. This independant agency facilitates artists projects, offers workshops for community members and emerging artists, exhibits art and hosts artists-in-residence in addition to providing special projects to enrich the civic and cultural life in Ard-el-Lewa, and using art to improve the urban environment. Hamdy Reda tells us why and how he opened this space what projects Art-el-Lewa hosted.

Cimatheque, Alternative Film Center (English version)

La Cimathèque, centre alternatif du film

La Cimathèque, un centre alternatif du film, situé dans le centre du Caire a ouvert ses portes le 3 juin 2015. Elle est née d’abord du désir de jeunes cinéastes de créer une société de production indépendante. Avec la révolution le projet s’est étoffé, et la Cimathèque est devenue un lieu de rencontre, de projection, de production, de digitalisation, d’archivage, de débats à l’adresse de tous les cinéphiles. L’Égypte possède une longue tradition cinématographique, interrompue par des années de négligence, de corruption et un manque d’ambition pour un art profondément aimé par la population. La question de l’archivage du patrimoine cinématographique mais aussi des productions contemporaines sur divers supports est centrale dans le projet de la Cimathèque, surtout dans une époque de déconstruction du sens de l’histoire collective.

Cimatheque, Alternative Film Center

Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre is a multi-purpose venue located in the heart of downtown Cairo. It opened its doors to the public on June 3 2015. It came from the wish of young filmmakers to create an independent production agency. Following the revolution, the scope of the project expanded, bringing about the idea to build an analogue hand-processing lab, the only one of its kind in the country, in the hopes of reviving a lost art form that capitulated in recent years to the cost-effectiveness of digital filmmaking. And because everything that was being implemented in Cimatheque till this point arose from a desire to at once respect legacies and collective histories, while deconstructing their meanings in the current political and social climate, the idea of devoting a room or two to film archives came into being. This concern is central to the way in which Cimatheque’s team approaches programming based on film history and archiving, with the hope that it can give voice and expression to peripheral memories, and material made on the margins of society.

Islamic Feminism and the Equivocation of Political Engagement. ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (English version)

Le féminisme islamique et l’ambiguïté de l’engagement politique
« Le beau est affreux et l’affreux est beau »

L’ascension et la chute récentes de la loi islamiste en Égypte appellent une réflexion, non seulement sur le rôle social des idées féministes islamiques, mais aussi sur les raisons des changements politiques, ainsi que sur les questions d’opposition éthique et de principe. Mon approche de ce sujet ne reprend pas l’opposition habituelle entre laïc et islamique, ni la critique du libéralisme laïc, mais propose une critique de tout mouvement féministe, qu’il soit laïc ou islamique, qui s’autorise de lui-même à coopérer ou à être réduit au silence par des régimes politiques corrompus. La première partie de l’article traite de la question des relations fragiles entre les féministes et l’État plus particulièrement dans le contexte égyptien contemporain. La deuxième partie examine les ambiguïtés morales des positions du féminisme islamique.

Islamic feminism and the Equivocation of Political Engagement
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”

The recent rise and fall of the Islamist rule in Egypt calls for reflection, not just on the role of Islamic feminist ideas in society, but also on the shifting political grounds and questions of ethical and principled opposition. The presentation of this subject does not take the approach of the usual secular/Islamist binary or a criticism of secular liberalism, but is rather focused on a critique of any feminist movement, be it secular or Islamic, that allows itself to be co-opted and silenced by corrupt political regimes. This article, in its first part, discusses the general issue of the precarious relationship between feminists and the state, especially in the modern Egyptian context, and, in its second part, looks into the moral ambiguities associated with Islamic feminism’s political stands.

Insects and Incest: From Bergson and Jung to Deleuze

I Deleuze’s 1961 essay on Masoch is a key text for anybody who wants to understand Deleuze’s idiosyncratic relationship to psychoanalysis and the theory of the unconscious. It contains Deleuze’s first serious discussion of the concept of the unconscious and unambiguously comes out in favour of Jung’s conception over Freud’s. Deleuze’s early studies had been … Continuer la lecture de Insects and Incest: From Bergson and Jung to Deleuze →

Multitudes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Multitudes is a french philosophical, political and artistic monthly review. The Editor is Yann Moulier Boutang. Thematically situated in the theoretical framework of the seminal work Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book, like the review, focuses on the further elaboration of the philosophical and political thought of the italian operaismo, but seems … Continuer la lecture de Multitudes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →

The coloured thickness of a problem

PREFACE A LA TRADUCTION ANGLAISE DE LA SIGNATURE DU MONDE (ED. AUGMENTÉE DE 2 APPENDICES), LONDON, CONTINUUM, 2004 A new Meno would say: it is knowledge that is nothing more than an empirical figure, a simple result which continually falls back into experience; whereas learning is the true transcendental structure which unites difference to difference, … Continuer la lecture de The coloured thickness of a problem →

Anti-Oedipus Thirty Years On

(Between Art and Politics) http://theater.kein.org/node/view/145 Conférence et séminaire au 5th International Summer Academy, Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt /”Anti-Oedipus – 30 Years On. Or, Can the Biopolitical Identity between Expression and Construction Give BODY to a New Aesthetic Paradigm ?” ). A kind of entrance into politics took place for me in May 68…’ Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations … Continuer la lecture de Anti-Oedipus Thirty Years On →

Standing on crossroads

Remilitarazing of Japan and gendered reconstruction of HistoryVoir l’article de Lisa Yoneyama publié dans le numéro 13 de Multitudes : art1096 —-We shall never again allow Japan to exercise state control over our bodies or over bodies of people in others countries. We shall not let the state ignore or forget its crimes from the … Continuer la lecture de Standing on crossroads →

Deleuze and Spinoza: An Aura of Expressionism, by Howie, Gillian (Palgrave, )

Ostensibly, Deleuze and Spinoza is a critical reading of Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza in his book Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Deleuze published two books on Spinoza, but this one, although published two years earlier than Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, constitutes Deleuze’s central work on Spinoza. Deleuze and Spinoza attempts to show that Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza … Continuer la lecture de Deleuze and Spinoza: An Aura of Expressionism, by Howie, Gillian (Palgrave, ) →

The BwO Condition or, The Politics of Sensation

This text had been written directly in English for the Symposium TransArt IV, « Theorie und Praxis des organlosen Körpers » (Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien, 8-10 november 2001) and published in E. Alliez, E. von Samsonow (Hg.), Biographien des organlosen Körpers, Wien, Turia + Kant, 2003, p. 11-29. This is the forth volume of … Continuer la lecture de The BwO Condition or, The Politics of Sensation →

Reverse Imagineering :Toward the New Urban Struggles

Or : Why smash the state when your neighborhood theme park is so much closer? “What are the steps in the creation of a Disney attraction? According to literature sent out by WDW [Walt Disney World, the steps are: storyboard, script, concept, show models, sculpture, show set design, graphics, interiors, architectural design, molds and casting, … Continuer la lecture de Reverse Imagineering :Toward the New Urban Struggles →

Radical machines against the techno-empire From utopia to network

Deleuze and Guattari took the machine out of the factory, now it is up to us to take it out of the network and imagine a post-internet generation. Everyone of us is a machine of the real, everyone of us is a constructive machine. — Toni Negri Technical machines only work if they are not … Continuer la lecture de Radical machines against the techno-empire From utopia to network →

Empire and the Regime of Unilateral Translation

Version originale de art1100 It has always seemed rather symptomatic of a critical, yet largely untheorized, problem in the new praxis of the multitudes that the intellectual project bearing that name, the journal Multitudes, should be undertaken in a single, national-and formerly imperial-language. Certainly, the interesting role of French in relation to global English as … Continuer la lecture de Empire and the Regime of Unilateral Translation →

Tales of Two Ruins and Beyond:

Politics of Memory at Hiroshima, the World Trade Center, and the Myriad Unnameable Sites of Japan’s Military Comfort StationsVersion originale de art1096The ruins of the 8.6 atomic attack on Hiroshima and those of the post-9.11 World Trade Center appear to conjure up entirely opposing sets of actions and sentiments. While Hiroshima’s ruins performatively urge critical … Continuer la lecture de Tales of Two Ruins and Beyond: →

Althusser and Machiavelli: Politics After the Critique of Marx

1. The Critique of Marxist Theory: Social Antagonism and the Autonomy of Politics There are two fundamental criticisms that have been repeatedly addressed to Marxist theory in the last century. This theory has been accused of lacking an adequate account of the state and of politics, due to its reliance on a flawed metaphor of … Continuer la lecture de Althusser and Machiavelli: Politics After the Critique of Marx →

Mishima Yukio: Everyone’s Favorite Homofascist

This project begins with a simple observation about one of Japan’s best known novelists. While Mishima Yukio is known outside of Japan primarily as a “gay” writer, enshrined along with Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust on a ceiling mural depicting famous “gays and lesbians” at the Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public … Continuer la lecture de Mishima Yukio: Everyone’s Favorite Homofascist →

Class composition in South Korea since the neoliberal economic crisis

1. Preface South Korea, a newly industrialized, influential country with an important emerging market, has been held up as a living specimen of success that gives pride in the potential energy of capitalist development. However, the gravitational shock of an economic crisis emanating from Thailand into East Asia at the end of 1997 hit Korean … Continuer la lecture de Class composition in South Korea since the neoliberal economic crisis →

Asian Peace Movements and Empire

American war and its impacts It started in a small way. In October 2001, we, a score of Asian social action groups, their coalitions, and NGOs met in Hong Kong and agreed to establish an Asian regional peace network titled the Asian Peace Alliance (APA).[1 We scrambled reacting to the massive U.S. military invasion of … Continuer la lecture de Asian Peace Movements and Empire →

Virtual world is possible : from tactical media to digital multitudes

Texte publié dans le Journal de l’Archipel des Revues (novembre 2003)I. We start with the current strategy debates of the so-called « anti-globalisation move-ment », the biggest emerging political force for decades. In Part II we will look into strategies of critical new media culture in the post-speculative phase after dotcommania. Four phases of the … Continuer la lecture de Virtual world is possible : from tactical media to digital multitudes →

Some thoughts on the idea of ‘hacker culture’

“The Theory of ‘Free Software’ as the seed of a post-capitalist society only makes sense where it is understood as the exposure of those very contradictions of the development of productive forces which are relevant to the process of emancipation. It does not, however, make sense as a discovery of a format for their deployment … Continuer la lecture de Some thoughts on the idea of ‘hacker culture’ →