Volume 61, Issue 4, Fall 2017
Dimitris Vardoulakis
Pages 909-928
What Comes Before the Citizen?
Violence and the Limits of the Political in Balibar
Vardoulakis traces the function of violence in Balibar’s theory of the subject/citizen. Doing so, Vardoulakis brings together areas of Balibar’s philosophy that are usually discussed separately, such as his work on Spinoza, his anthropology and his lectures on violence. Finally, Vardoulakis uses the presentation of the way violence figures in all these fields to offer a critique of Balibar’s conceptions of democracy and power.