Dany-Robert Dufour

Dany-Robert Dufour is a Philosophe French contemporary, professor in sciences of education at the university Paris 8, director of program to the international College of philosophy. He teaches regularly abroad, in particular in Brazil and Mexico. He collaborates regularly in artistic activities (literature, music, theater). Its work concerns mainly the processes symbolic systems and is at the junction of the philosophy of the language, political philosophy and the psychoanalysis.

Thought

In its first book ( stammering of the Masters ), it reconsiders the teaching of its structuralist Masters (Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Benveniste, Lacan…) to show that their proposals aiming at returning account, by binary structures, account (like, for example, believed cooked), of the stating and unconscious, rest in fact on not-binary axioms, but " unaires" , in the term, structured like a stammering. It is this paradoxical logic which is particularly made hear in the definition that gives of the subject speaking linguistics about the stating of Benveniste: " I am who say je" or the theory lacanienne of the mirror stage or the definition of the account lévi-strassienne of the account which develops by constituting itself like its own context.

In its second book ( mysteries of the trinity ), he works on another not-binary logic, but " trinitaire" who prevails in the narrative systems and symbolic systems setting up a third (a Other ) essential to the formation of the subject and social link. What enables him to oppose a binary logic (with work in sciences) to logics trinitaires with work in the stating, the unconscious one and the account.

In several of his later books, Dany-Robert Dufour makes a broad place with the concept of Néoténie that many philosophers and thinkers (of Plato to Lacan while passing by Kant and Freud) had a presentiment of under various names which all return to the incompletion of the man to the birth. It is this incompletion which obliges the man (contrary to the animals) has to compensate for this lack of nature by the culture - what does not fail to raise the question to know if the man is not committed, via the binary thought and techno-sciences, in a process of transformation of its own nature.

In his last books, Dany-Robert Dufour wonders about the post-modern change (what Lyotard calls " end of large the récits") who leaves the broken down contemporary subject of accounts founders. It makes the assumption that we passed from a modern subject ( critical with the Kantian direction of the term and nevrotic with the direction freudien of the term) to a post-modern subject ( have-critical and post-nevrotic ). However, this new subject (flexible, if it is not precarious) made well the deal of ambient liberalism insofar as it can agree well better than the old critical subject to always moving flows of the circulation of the goods. What leads Dany-Robert Dufour to develop an interrogation at the place of post-modern philosophies of the Sixties (Deleuze, Foucault…): they then seemed highly revolutionists in their criticism of the institutions, it wonders whether they would not have also to be thought like having accompanied the change by mode of regulation of capitalism giving up institutional control for the profit of a generalized desinstitutionnalisation, involving certain forms of desymbolisation supporting, less the appearance of the " schizo" deleuzien or of the " fou" foucaldien that the generalization of the state-limits (see " Psychoanalyze and states limites" in Personality disorder borderline).

In its last book, the Divine Market, the liberal Cultural revolution , it tries to show that, well far from being left the religion, we fell under the influence from a new conquering religion, the Market, functioning on a principle simple, but terribly effective, put at the day by Bernard of Mandeville in 1704: " the private defects make the virtue publique". This miracle being allowed by the intervention of a divine Providence (cf " the hand invisible" postulated by Adam Smith). Dany-Robert Dufour tries, in this last book, to make explicit the ten commands implicit of this new religion. Following the example Jean-Claude Michéa, it also shows how May 1968 can be analyzed as formidable a trick of the history where the students fights about it against old capitalism is not seen that their combat was going to be able to be used with the installation of a very new form as dérégulé and desinstitutionnalized capitalism. In this direction May 68 could raise of a liberal spirit rather than really libertarian, the permanent transgression offered to the individuals being able to go only in the direction of a generalization of universalization and marchandisation. Thus conjugées thoughts of Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu and of Michel Foucault having confused class struggles and transmission of the knowledge (the famous " to know = pouvoir") to the point to blame any culture, any identity (desymbolisation of the individual) contributed, without necessarily wanting it, to let the market conquer the spirits more easily.

Publications

Tests

stammering of the Masters: Lacan, Emile Benveniste, Lévi-Strauss , Réed. Mysteries, 1988.
mysteries of the trinity , Library of the Social sciences, Gallimard, 1990.
Madness and democracy , Gallimard, 1996.
Lacan and the mirror sophianic of Boehme , EPEL, 1998.
Letters on the human nature with the use of the survivors , Small philosophical library, Calmann-Levy, 1999.
Art to reduce the heads: On the new constraint of the man released at the era of total capitalism , Denoël, 2003 * One completes the men well: Of some current and future consequences of died of God , Denoël, 2005.
the Divine market , Denoël, 2007.

Novel

1993. Broken up moments , Julliard.

Articles on line

He collaborates regularly in the review the Debate published by the editions Gallimard and in the Diplomatic Monde where one can find on line: “Distresses of the individual-subject”, “Faintness in education - the factory of “the post-modern” child” and “Of the reduction of the heads to the change of the bodies”.

See also “Education, religions, reason and market” and “Portrait of the great Subject” in Political reasons (Sc Po Presses. )

External bonds

critical Articles of Rene Barber on work of Dany-Robert Dufour: the Divine Market (in the Newspaper of the researchers animated by Rene Barber)] and " Dany-Robert Dufour, Western philosophy and the direction of the éducation" * Article of Small Philippe published in " Marianne " of September 29th, 2007 * Interview of Dany-Robert Dufour by Joseph Rouzel, director of the European Institute of psychoanalysis and social work *Interview of Dany-Robert Dufour by Laurence Luret in the emission " Bracket " (France-Inter), on Saturday, November 10, 2007

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