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Claude Lefort

Other affiliations: Collège de France
Bio: Claude Lefort is an academic researcher from École Normale Supérieure. The author has contributed to research in topics: Democracy & Politics. The author has an hindex of 23, co-authored 52 publications receiving 2468 citations. Previous affiliations of Claude Lefort include Collège de France.


Papers
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Book
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: The authors examines the central questions of democracy and politics in modern societies through an analysis of some of the key texts of 19th and 20th century thought, from Marx, Michelet and de Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt.
Abstract: This book examines the central questions of democracy and politics in modern societies. Through an analysis of some of the key texts of 19th and 20th century thought - from Marx, Michelet and de Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt - the author explores the ambiguities of democracy, the nature of human rights, the idea and the reality of revolution, the emergence of totalitarianism and the changing relations between politics, religion and the image of the body. While developing a highly original account of the nature of politics and power in modern societies, he links political reflection to the interpretation of history as an open, indeterminate process of which we are part. This work should interest specialists in social and political theory and philosophers.

605 citations

Book
26 Aug 1986
TL;DR: Claude Lefort as mentioned in this paper is a French social and political theorist whose analysis of contemporary political events are often related to a consideration of one or more of the major contributions to the history of political thought.
Abstract: Claude Lefort is a French social and political theorist. His analysis of contemporary political events are often related to a consideration of one or more of the major contributions to the history of political thought. His accounts of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and of the role of symbolism in modern societies are set against a study of Marx's theory of political ideology. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what democracy means today.

251 citations

Book
01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: The work that Maurice Merleau-Ponty planned to call "The Prose of the World" was unfinished at the time of his death as discussed by the authors, and the first section of a two-part work whose aim was to offer, as an extension of his Phenomenology of Perception, a theory of truth.
Abstract: The work that Maurice Merleau-Ponty planned to call "The Prose of the World, " or "Introduction to the Prose of the World, " was unfinished at the time of his death. The book was to constitute the first section of a two-part work whose aim was to offer, as an extension of his Phenomenology of Perception, a theory of truth. This edition's editor, Claude Lefort, has interpreted and transcribed the surviving typescript, reproducing Merleau-Ponty's own notes and adding documentation and commentary.

234 citations

Book
01 Jan 1986

180 citations

Book
01 Jan 1971

144 citations


Cited by
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Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the logic of sovereignty and the paradox of sovereignty in the form of the human sacer and the notion of potentiality and potentiality-and-law.
Abstract: Introduction Part I. The Logic of Sovereignty: 1. The paradox of sovereignty 2. 'Nomos Basileus' 3. Potentiality and law 4. Form of law Threshold Part II. Homo Sacer: 1. Homo sacer 2. The ambivalence of the sacred 3. Sacred life 4. 'Vitae Necisque Potestas' 5. Sovereign body and sacred body 6. The ban and the wolf Threshold Part III. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern: 1. The politicization of life 2. Biopolitics and the rights of man 3. Life that does not deserve to live 4. 'Politics, or giving form to the life of a people' 5. VP 6. Politicizing death 7. The camp as the 'Nomos' of the modern Threshold Bibliography Index of names.

7,589 citations

Book
04 Apr 1996
TL;DR: Hall and Donald as discussed by the authors discuss the history of identity in a short history from Pilgrim to tourist, from Tourist to Tourist, and the role of identity as a marker of identity.
Abstract: Introduction - Stuart Hall Who Needs 'Identity'? From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a Short History of Identity - Zygmunt Bauman Enabling Identity? - Marilyn Strathern Biology, Choice and the New Reproductive Technologies Culture's In-Between - Homi K Bhabha Interrupting Identities - Kevin Robins Turkey/Europe Identity and Cultural Studies - Is That All There Is? - Lawrence Grossberg Music and Identity - Simon Frith Identity, Genealogy, History - Nikolas Rose Organizing Identity - Paul du Gay Entrepreneurial Governance and Public Management The Citizen and the Man about Town - James Donald

2,090 citations

Book
15 Apr 1996
TL;DR: Sassen argues that a profound transformation is taking place, a partial denationalizing of national territory seen in such agreements as NAFTA and the European Union as discussed by the authors, and that two arenas stand out in the new spatial and economic order: the global capital market and the series of codes and institutions that have mushroomed into an international human rights regime.
Abstract: From the Publisher: What determines the flow of labor and capital in this new global information economy? Who has the capacity to coordinate this new system, to create a measure of order? And what happens to territoriality and sovereignty, two fundamental principles of the modern state? Losing Control? is a major addition to our understanding of these questions. Examining the rise of private transnational legal codes and supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organization and universal human rights covenants, Saskia Sassen argues that sovereignty remains an important feature of the international system, but that it is no longer confined to the nation-state. Sassen argues that a profound transformation is taking place, a partial denationalizing of national territory seen in such agreements as NAFTA and the European Union. Two arenas stand out in the new spatial and economic order: the global capital market and the series of codes and institutions that have mushroomed into an international human rights regime. As Sassen shows, these two quasi-legal realms now have the power and legitimacy to demand accountability from national governments, with the ironic twist that both depend upon the state to enforce their goals.

1,635 citations

Book
03 Oct 2011
TL;DR: Fassin this paper traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices - what he terms "humanitarian reason" - and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence.
Abstract: In the face of the world's disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration and asylum, disease and poverty, disaster and war. He traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices - what he terms "humanitarian reason" - and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence. Deftly illuminating the tensions and contradictions in humanitarian government, he reveals the ambiguities confronting states and organizations as they struggle to deal with the intolerable. His critique of humanitarian reason, respectful of the participants involved but lucid about the stakes they disregard, offers theoretical and empirical foundations for a political and moral anthropology.

1,007 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the present consensual vision of the urban environment presenting a clear and present danger annuls the properly political moment and contributes to what a number of authors have defined as the emergence and consolidation of a postpolitical and post-democratic condition.
Abstract: In recent years, urban research has become increasingly concerned with the social, political and economic implications of the techno-political and socio-scientific consensus that the present unsustainable and unjust environmental conditions require a transformation of the way urban life is organized. In the article, I shall argue that the present consensual vision of the urban environment presenting a clear and present danger annuls the properly political moment and contributes to what a number of authors have defined as the emergence and consolidation of a postpolitical and postdemocratic condition. This will be the key theme developed in this contribution. First, I shall attempt to theorize and re-centre the political as a pivotal moment in urban political-ecological processes. Second, I shall argue that the particular staging of the environmental problem and its modes of management signals and helps to consolidate a postpolitical condition, one that evacuates the properly political from the plane of immanence that underpins any political intervention. The consolidation of an urban postpolitical condition runs, so I argue, parallel to the formation of a postdemocratic arrangement that has replaced debate, disagreement and dissensus with a series of technologies of governing that fuse around consensus, agreement, accountancy metrics and technocratic environmental management. In the third part, I maintain that this postpolitical consensual police order revolves decidedly around embracing a populist gesture. However, the disappearance of the political in a postpolitical arrangement leaves all manner of traces that allow for the resurfacing of the properly political. This will be the theme of the final section. I shall conclude that re-centring the political is a necessary condition for tackling questions of urban environmental justice and for creating egalibertarian socio-ecological urban assemblages.

728 citations