Vladimir Safatle
  |
Vladimir is Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo. He examines the relationship between philosophy and human sciences, especially psychoanalysis and psychology, in contemporary French thought and the Frankfurt School. His research interests also include Hegelian philosophy, post-Hegelian dialectical tradition, as well as the philosophy of music. He was invited-professor at the Universities of Paris I, Paris VII, Paris VIII, Paris X, Toulouse, Louvain, Essex, Ca’Foscari, fellow at the STIAS/ South Africa, The New Institute (Hamburg), and visiting professor at University of California- Berkeley. He was welcomed by the Programme Pause of the French Government for academics in danger during the extreme-right government in Brazil.
He was also pre-candidate of the government of São Paulo State and he is actually surrogate of the Brazilian National Assembly.
In December 2023, he joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Theory of recognition, theory of the subject, Genealogy of clinical concepts concerning psychic suffering, Social practices of autonomy, theory of affects, aesthetic experience.
Nature can only exist where it is destroyed: Politically constructing freedom as heteronomy without servitude
What we call the "West" is, above all, a way of understanding the system of living as "nature". In other words, it is the invention of "nature" that marks Western societies. For with it comes a series of dichotomies that will define our horizon of experience and the way in which we relate to the system of living.
It is possible that the situation of related crises that we are experiencing (ecological, demographic, socio-economic, political, psychic and epistemic crises) will create the conditions for these dichotomies to be deeply questioned. These crises, each in their own way, indicate the exhaustion of values and normative horizons that, for centuries, seemed to guarantee the paths to our emancipation and freedom. Progress, development, abundance, wealth, growth: these terms are loaded with a profound normative dimension because they seem to ensure the material conditions for emancipation. And all these terms are deeply related to the fate we have given nature so far.
I would then like to defend the thesis that the crises in which we find ourselves do not call for a "new alliance" with nature, but a "new destruction" of nature. Not the physical destruction that we see more and more dramatically every day, but the destruction of the system of dichotomies that animates our metaphysics, especially the metaphysical distinction between people and things that has guided our hegemonic relationship to nature until now. And I would like to show how certain social struggles and legal changes taking place on the Latin American continent can push the social imagination in this direction. Struggles that, in our historical context, can be understood as social actions aimed at the constitution of a freedom that will now be thought of in another way, beyond the traditional notion of autonomy. A freedom as heteronomy without servitude.
Key Publications
Safatle, Vladimir; Le circuit of affects: corps politique, détresse et la fin de l’individu, Paris: Le bord de l’eau, 2022, 350p.
Safatle, Vladimir; Grand Hotel Abyss: desire, recognition and the restoration of the subject, Leuven University Press, 2016, 367p.
Safatle, Vladimir; « Against autonomy: freedom as heteronomy without servitude » In Marjan Ivković, Adriana Zaharijević & Gazela Pudar Draško (eds.), Violence and Reflexivity: The Place of Critique in the Reality of Domination. Lexington Books (2022)
Safatle, Vladimir; Em um com o impulso: experiência estética e emancipação social, Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2022, 210p.
 New session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" talk series, with the participation of Vladimir Safatle, University of Sao Paulo,, Paris IAS Fellow |
|
|
