Summary
Dominique Pagani approaches war under the title of his first cycle, "Philosophising between crises and wars". For him, war is the effect of crisis: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall leads capitalism to find no way out except through carnage1. He disputes the argument that "Europe means peace". In his view, the peace after 1945 rested on the balance of terror, and war returned in Yugoslavia as soon as the Soviet Union fell2. He reads the Odyssey, framed by the sack of Troy and the slaughter of the suitors, as the repetition of carnage, drawing on Freud's death drive. He contrasts it with Daedalus, the slave who frees himself through work. From 2022 on, he treats Ukraine, Gaza and the Sahel as aspects of one and the same war, that of "Atlanticist imperialism", a term he substitutes for the obscuring concept of "the West"3. He analyses proxy war, which he calls "blackening the corpses", and the media's silence about the Sahel4. Finally, he presents war, made commonplace by European leaders, as the worst expression of fascism5.
- 1#8 Philosophising under threat27 Jan 2022
- 2The EU means war! (excerpt)18 Sept 2014
- 3Too late?14 Aug 2024
- 4Niger special: should we “blacken the corpses”?7 Aug 2023
- 5Their “Europe” means war28 Feb 2026
Introduction produced automatically from the 22 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.
The 22 videos
Cycle 14Their “Europe” means war
28 Feb 2026What is meant by fascism today, and why is war its worst expression?
Cycle 14The silences of the media uproar: the Atlanticist re-Nazification
21 Oct 2025Why, in the media uproar, is the history linking Atlanticist capitalism to Nazism and to the present danger of war passed over in silence?
Cycle 14State and state apparatus: the conflict between public and private
29 Aug 2025Why must the State, understood as general will, be distinguished from the State apparatus that oppresses?
Cycle 12Too late?
14 Aug 2024Is it already too late to prevent the war waged by Atlanticist imperialism from becoming a world conflict?
Cycle 12After the vote: entering a zone of turbulence
11 Jul 2024The day after the legislative elections, what fascism are we talking about, and how can it be identified through a concrete analysis of our era?
Cycle 12Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: Clouscard, as relevant as ever
2 May 2024What does Michel Clouscard denounce in Néo-fascisme et idéologie du désir: desire and consumption, or the discourse claiming that the working class wallowed in the "consumer society"?
Cycle 12The quest for the Grail, sanctimony or sacrilege?
1 Apr 2024The quest for the Grail, as Wagner takes it up again in Parsifal, is it a Christian piety or a sacrilegious work?
Café marxisteSahelian Africa and imperialism: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger
23 Mar 2024What is today the dominant element exploiting the Sahelian Africa, and why must it be called imperialism rather than colonialism?
Cycle 12I am not who you think I am: the elusive identity
4 Jan 2024How can the notions of identity, indeterminacy and negativity, which lie at the heart of internal determination, be made concrete?
Cycle 11Niger special: should we “blacken the corpses”?
7 Aug 2023What does the coup in Niger reveal about the situation in the Sahel and about the way Western powers wage their wars while managing public opinion?
Readings on the spotAragon, “The Paris Peasant Sings”
5 Aug 2023What does Aragon's "Le Paysan de Paris chante" say about working-class Paris and demonstrations, and how does this poem from the Resistance connect with current events?
Cycle 11Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative
29 Jun 2023How does the positivity of the negative, read in a poem by Aragon and in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, shed light on Clouscard's concept of worldliness and the critique of neopositivism?
Cycle 11Roots or migration? From analytical reverie to current events, from Hölderlin to the war
17 Feb 2023Between roots and migration, between the measure of the inhabited place and the pull of the infinite, how does man find his place, while war looms?
Readings on the spotNietzsche, or the Great Ninny
7 Feb 2023What do two paragraphs of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil reveal about the music to come and the German soul?
Cycle 11Hesitation fascinated by hearing and by sight: Siegfried and Perceval
12 Dec 2022How do Perceval, Parsifal and Siegfried figure hesitation, fascinated by sight or by hearing, and the passage to decision?
Cycle 10#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge
7 Apr 2022How can we think the dialectic between the security of the hinterland and the peril of the edge, and what does it mean to stand on a "perpetuated edge"?
Cycle 10#8 Philosophising under threat
27 Jan 2022What does the geopolitical situation in eastern Europe and the Sahel reveal about the crisis of capitalism and the danger of war?
Cycle 4#4.0 Presentation of the 2017-2018 workshop: Nerval's “Angélique”
24 Sept 2017Why devote the 2017-2018 workshop to a continuous reading of Nerval's Angélique in order to continue the path "from Ulysses to Daedalus, from repetition to liberation"?
Cycle 3#3.1 From Ulysses to Daedalus
1 Aug 2017Can man free himself from the fatality of the return of carnage, figured by Ulysses, through the labor that transforms reality, figured by Daedalus?
A Philosophical AlphabetX for Xanthippe
7 Jan 2015Why does Socrates choose Xanthippe, the shrew, and refuse Alcibiades, the most beautiful man in Athens?
Interviews for L’Affranchi#1 Presentation: the EU, Clouscard, Rousseau
20 Sept 2014Who is Dominique Pagani, and how does he judge the railway workers' strike and the European Union?
Interviews for L’AffranchiThe EU means war! (excerpt)
18 Sept 2014Did the European Union bring peace to Europe?