Masculine domination: Gender and power in Bourdieu's writings

Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences

This article analyzes why immigrant religion is viewed as a problematic area in Western Europe in contrast to the United States, where it is seen as facilitating the adaptation process. The difference, it is argued, is anchored in whether or not religion can play a major role for immigrants and the second generation as a bridge to inclusion in the new society. Three factors are critical: the religious backgrounds of immigrants in Western Europe and the United States; the religiosity of the native population; and historically rooted relations and arrangements between the state and religious groups.

Immigrant Religion in the U.S. and Western Europe: Bridge or Barrier to Inclusion?

Preface Introduction Part I. Overseeing Democracy: 1. Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation 2. The overseers 3. The thread of history 4. Legitimacy conflicts Part II. The Sovereignty of Prevention: 5. From the right of resistance to complex sovereignty 6. Self-critical democracies 7. Negative politics Part III. The People as Judge: 8. Historical references 9. Almost legislators 10. The preference for judgement Part IV. Unpolitical Democracy: 11. The sense of powerlessness and symbols of depoliticization 12. The populist temptation 13. Lessons of unpolitical economy 14. Conclusion: the modern mixed regime.

Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust

How can an interpretive theory gain legitimacy in two cultural markets as different as France and the United States? This study examines the intellectual, cultural, institutional, and social conditions of legitimation of Jacques Derrida's work in the two countries and develops hypotheses about the process of legitimation of interpretive theories. The legitimation of Derrida's work resulted from a fit between it and highly structured cultural and institutional systems. In France, Derrida capitalized on the structure of the intellectual market by targeting his work to a large cultural public rather than to a shrinking group of academic philosophers. His work appealed to the intellectual public as a status symbol and as a novel and sophisticated way to deal with late 1960s politics. In the United States, Derrida and a group of prestigious literary critics reframed his theory and disseminated it in university departments of literature. His work was imported concurrently with the work of other French scholars with whom he shared a market. Derrida's support is more concentrated and stronger in one discipline than the support for other French intellectuals. In America, professional institutions and journals played a central role in the diffusion of his work, while cultural media were more central in France.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2131424_code1585413.pdf?abstractid=2131424&mirid=1

How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida

Since its publication in France in 1985, this critique of the main currents in contemporary French thought has prompted debate over the character of postmodern philosophy. Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut offer sociopolitical analysis of the May 1968 student uprising in France, explore the connection between the revolt and the rise of postmodern thought, and question whether student dissent was a genuine humanist reaction to conditions in France at that time. The book begins with a description of the style and intellectual structure of French philosophy in the 1960s, noting its hyperbolic use of themes borrowed from German thinkers, particularly Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marx and Freud. The authors then trace these themes in individual chapters on the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Lacan, focusing on the philosophers' antagonism to the idea of self and their assertions that philosophy has come to its end. The book raises serious questions about the meaning of the 1960s, arguing that the philosophical movements that emerged from this turbulent decade in France are politically irresponsible. Ferry and Renaut offer a basis for understanding the defence of humanism and the democratic and liberal ideals it supports.

Alain Renaut

Papers

French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism

La pensée 68 : essai sur l'anti-humanisme contemporain

Les révolutions de l'université : essai sur la modernisation de la culture

Alter ego : les paradoxes de l'identité démocratique

La fin de l'autorité