In Search of Universality for Politics of Emancipation: Thinking with Étienne Balibar and Alain Badiou

Date

2024-9-4

Author

Özcan, Büşra

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In this thesis, it is intended to discuss the comprehension of universality in relation to differences in the writings of Étienne Balibar and Alain Badiou. In light of the theoretico-political requisite to reflect upon universality in the face of both historical and present necessities, the crisis embedded in the birth of bourgeois universality is discussed at the beginning. Based on Karl Marx's interpretation regarding the doublet of man and citizen in On the Jewish Question, it is aimed to examine how the relation between these figures are conceived in the works of Balibar and Badiou, and how these respective configurations affected their discussion with regard to universality. With reference to the difficulties in articulating differences with universality, this thesis attempts to investigate the meaning and significance of anthropological differences in Balibar's thought and Badiou's interpretation of the figure of Paul and his indifferent position vis-à-vis differences. This thesis concludes with a discussion about the theoretical and political divisions between Balibar's antinomic and Badiou's evental conceptions of universality, as well as the probable affinities between them in the context of the contentious relationship between universality and differences.

Subject Keywords

Universality, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Anthropological Difference, Saint Paul

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111326

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis