Matthieu Renault: The Empire of European Philosophy

The American University of Paris presents a talk by Matthieu Renault (Maître de conférences at Université Paris 8) titled The Empire of European Philosophy: A Global Perspective on the History of Philosophy. The talk is followed by a discussion with the members of the audience. All external guests should RSVP to osurelaup.edu to be on the list.

THE EMPIRE OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

In 1972, in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari showed not only that the state, as an “apparatus of capture”, comes to permeate all forms of social life, but also that it determines the very way one thinks about these forms. But it must be added that such a “statification” of thought, which is inseparable from its nationalization, also rules philosophy (political, but not only) up until today, and, even more so, history of philosophy, in a manner unaddressed in Deleuze’s own philosophical practice. We should remember that the emergence of history of philosophy as a discipline at the end of the eighteenth century was contemporary with the birth of the nation-state as the dominant form of polity. 

From that date, the inner geography of philosophy and of its history was shaped according to state-national borders and imaginaries, even as philosophy had long developed in historical contexts where nation-states did not exist, and continued to develop where it was coextensive with other modes of government and territorial rule. In this respect, it is obvious that empires lasted much longer – in various configurations, from ancient empires to modern colonial empires – than nation-states.

Matthieu Renault is also the author of four books:

• Frantz Fanon. De l'anticolonialisme à la critique postcoloniale (Paris, Editions Amsterdam, 2011);
• L'Amérique de John Locke. L'expansion coloniale de la philosophie européenne (Paris, Editions Amsterdam, 2014);
• C.L.R. James. La vie révolutionnaire d'un Platon noir (Paris, La Découverte, 2016).
• L'empire de la Révolution. Lénine et les musulmans de Russie (Paris, Syllepse, 2017).