A new ontology which forms the groundwork for ethical practices of resistance
What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While these questions recur regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to them have often relied on dogmatically held ideals, such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense. In particular, the strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, employs dualities that reduce the complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment.
Chris Henry brings together the work of Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze in order to offer a new idea of political practice. He develops a structural ontology that gives rise to non-idealist, non-dogmatic, yet ethical practices of resistance against the return of classical ontological dualities.
Chris Henry is an Associate Lecturer in the Centre for Critical Thought at the University of Kent.