Class struggle

Summary

Dominique Pagani takes from Marx the idea that class struggle is the motor of history. He draws on Clouscard, who describes its metamorphoses from the Liberation to the present day, while the dominant consensus declares it gone1. In his view, everything is done so that it is not spoken of: a dominant language conceals it, and he calls it "the unconscious of the Freudian unconscious"2. He often comes back to the forms this disguise takes. The powerful present class struggle as conflicts between ethnic groups or between regional and national identities3. Identity wars thus hide the war that bloodies humanity4. In 2020 he already fears that race struggle may obscure it5. He adds that a population must pass through many fantasy-driven stages before it can put its sufferings in these terms6. He also finds it in intimate relations, such as those between the miserly father and the prodigal son7. He finds it as well where it is not expected: in Mallarmé, an imagined fistfight with a drunken worker stages a "class struggle on the lawn", from which point the text turns around89.

1. 1Clouscard: The metamorphoses of class struggle2 Sept 2024 · 12:30
2. 2Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 687 Feb 2025 · 14:52
3. 3#8 Philosophising under threat27 Jan 2022 · 1:29:00
4. 4Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative29 Jun 2023 · 1:36:45
5. 5#10 Return to the logics of the subject11 Jun 2020 · 1:17:29
6. 6#8 Philosophising under threat27 Jan 2022 · 1:27:34
7. 7Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative29 Jun 2023 · 59:20
8. 8Mallarmé, or class struggle on the lawn31 Jan 2023 · 1:56
9. 9Mallarmé, or class struggle on the lawn31 Jan 2023 · 8:20

Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.