Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic

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Praise for Wild Materialism ‘‘An urgently contemporary study of the relation between ‘terror’ as a state of expectancy in relation to an event to come, and ‘terrorism’ as the deadly deployment of force in situations of radical exploitation and oppression .’’—Julia Lupton, University of California, Irvine ‘‘Jacques Lezra has written what is undoubtedly the most nuanced and complex analysis of the relation between terror, terrorism, and republicanism that we have today. Through a dazzling highway of theoretical engagements with the most important ethical and political thinkers of our day, Lezra brilliantly defends his own notion of positive freedom, which turns on an allegory of a wounded sovereignty. Wounded, in that ‘the city’ no longer walls itself off from that which would pierce its walls and its defenses. Lezra seeks to keep us awake at night by powerfully reminding us of our ‘terrible’ responsibility in an unjust world, where we truly leave ourselves open to an encounter with the suffering of others. Lezra also engages with the major works of Western literature from Greek tragedy on, to show us the pervasiveness of the theme of what happens to the city when it fails to live up to its own image. If this were not enough, Lezra’s careful enunciation of the difference between terror, terrible responsibility , and terrorism explores the political and ethical significance of both the actuality of terrorist acts and their phantasized presentation in the media, which leads them to become a justification for the protection of the city through grossly immoral acts, such as acts of torture. This is an extraordinarily rich and fearless book that will be must-reading in disciplines from law and politics to media studies and comparative literature.’’—Drucilla Cornell ‘‘Lezra sketches a fascinating trip from the archaic scene of Oedipus, beyond the time of the founding of the individual and collective subject, to the events of September 11, at the threshold of our contingent future. Wild Materialism’s path leads through the Paris of the fifteenth century, the Spanish empire, the war in Algeria, and on to the contemporary world, and delivers an analysis of the production of universals in and of political space, that prior instant from which dualisms and differences flow— inside/out, friend/enemy, private/public, terror/terrorism—divisions and reconstitutions of what is held in common. This is a work that refuses finally to dissolve politics into aesthetics and seeks out an innovative, apt vocabulary for the tasks of ethics and politics, far from the fiction of sover- eign, constituting power. Wild Materialism revises the sense of radical republicanism, basing itself in a fascinating interpretation of Levinas, Althusser, and Freud, which forces us to rethink the classic arguments of the twentieth century, from Arendt to Schmitt, from Koselleck to Habermas , Derrida to Negri.’’—José Luis Villacañas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid W il d M at er ia li sm W ild Materialism T h e E t h i c o f Te r r o r a n d t h e M o d e r n R e p u b l i c J a c q u e s L e z r a f o r d h a m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s New York 2010 Copyright 䉷 2010 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lezra, Jacques, 1960Wild materialism : the ethic of terror and the modern republic / Jacques Lezra.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-3235-2 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-08232 -3236-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978...