Étienne Balibar (/bælɪˈbɑːr/;^[1]French:[etjɛnbalibaʁ]; born 23 April 1942) is a Frenchphilosopher. He has taught at theUniversity of Paris X, at theUniversity of California, Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) atKingston University and a visiting professor at the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University.

Étienne Balibar
Born	(1942-04-23)23 April 1942 (age 83) Avallon,Burgundy, France
Education
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure
Philosophical work
Era	20th-/21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Post-Marxism
Institutions	University of Paris X University of California, Irvine
Main interests	Political philosophy
Notable ideas	Equaliberty, critique of modern conceptions of thenation-state

Balibar was born inAvallon,Yonne,Burgundy, France in 1942, and first rose to prominence as one of Althusser's pupils at theÉcole Normale Supérieure. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1960.^[2]

In 1961, Balibar joined theParti communiste français. He was expelled in 1981 for critiquing the party's policy on immigration in an article.^[3]

Balibar participated inLouis Althusser's seminar onKarl Marx'sDas Kapital in 1965.^[4] This seminar resulted in the bookReading Capital, co-authored by Althusser and his students. Balibar's chapter, "On the Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism," was republished along with those of Althusser in the book's abridged version (trans. 1970),^[5] until a complete translation was published in 2016.^[6]

In 1987, he received his doctorate degree in philosophy from theKatholieke Universiteit Nijmegen in the Netherlands.^[2] He received hishabilitation from theUniversité Paris I in 1993. Balibar joined the University of Paris X-Nanterre as a professor in 1994, and the University of California—Irvine in 2000. He became professor emeritus of Paris X in 2002.^[2]

His daughter with the physicistFrançoise Balibar is the actressJeanne Balibar.^[7]

InMasses, Classes, Ideas (1994), Balibar argues that inDas Kapital (orCapital), the theory ofhistorical materialism comes into conflict with thecritical theory that Marx begins to develop, particularly in his analysis of the category oflabor, which incapitalism becomes a form ofproperty. This conflict involves two distinct uses of the term "labor": labor as the revolutionary class subject (i.e., the "proletariat") and labor as an objective condition for the reproduction of capitalism (the "working class"). InThe German Ideology, Marx conflates these two meanings, and treats labor as, in Balibar's words, the "veritable site of truth as well as the place from which the world is changed..."^[8]: 92

InCapital, however, the disparity between the two senses of labor becomes apparent. One manifestation of this is the virtual disappearance in the text of the term "proletariat." As Balibar points out, the term appears only twice in the first edition ofCapital, published in 1867: in the dedication toWilhelm Wolff and in the two final sections on the "General Law of Capitalist Accumulation". For Balibar, this implies that "the emergence of a revolutionary form of subjectivity (or identity)... is never a specific property of nature, and therefore brings with it no guarantees, but obliges us to search for the conditions in a conjuncture that can precipitate class struggles into mass movements..." Moreover, "[t]here is no proof… that these forms are always and eternally the same (for example, the party-form, or thetrade union)."^[8]: 147

In "The Nation Form: History and Ideology," Balibar critiques modern conceptions of thenation-state. He states that he is undertaking a study of the contradiction of the nation-state because "Thinking about racism led us back to nationalism, and nationalism to uncertainty about the historical realities and categorization of the nation".^[9]: 329

Balibar contends that it is impossible to pinpoint the beginning of a nation or to argue that the modern people who inhabit a nation-state are the descendants of the nation that preceded it. Balibar argues that, because no nation-state has an ethnic base, every nation-state must create fictive ethnicities in order to project stability on the populace:

"the idea of nations without a state, or nations 'before' the state, is thus a contradiction in terms, because a state always is implied in the historic framework of a national formation (even if not necessarily within the limits of its territory). But this contradiction is masked by the fact that national states, whose integrity suffers from internal conflicts that threaten its survival (regional conflicts, and especially class conflicts), project beneath their political existence to a preexisting 'ethnic' or 'popular' unity".^[9]: 331

In order to minimize these regional, class, and race conflicts, nation-states fabricate myths of origin that produce the illusion of shared ethnicity among all their inhabitants. In order to create these myths of origins, nation-states scour the historical period during which they were "formed" to find justification for their existence. They also create the illusion of shared ethnicity through linguistic communities: when everyone has access to the same language, they feel as if they share an ethnicity. Balibar argues that "schooling is the principal institution which produces ethnicity as linguistic community."^[9]: 351 In addition, this ethnicity is created through the "nationalization of the family," meaning that the state comes to perform certain functions that might traditionally be performed by the family, such as the regulation of marriages and administration of social security. In recent work following the "populist" wave, Balibar has called the incorporation of these different elements "absolute capitalism."^[10]

• 1965:Lire le Capital. With Louis Althusser et al.
• 1974:Cinq Etudes du Matérialisme Historique.
• 1976:Sur La Dictature du Prolétariat.
• 1985:Spinoza et la politique.
• 1988:Race, Nation, Classe. WithImmanuel Wallerstein.
• 1991:Écrits pour Althusser.
• 1992:Les Frontieres De La Démocratie
• 1993:La philosophie de Marx.
• 1997:La crainte des masses: politique et philosophie avant et après Marx. (French version ofMasses, Classes, Ideas, with extra essays)
• 1998:Droit de cité. Culture et politique en démocratie.
• 1998:John Locke, Identité et différence - L'invention de la conscience (Balibar's Monograph on John Locke)
• 2001:Nous, citoyens d'Europe? Les frontières, l'État, le peuple.
• 2003:L'Europe, l'Amérique, la Guerre. Réflexions sur la médiation européenne.
• 2005:Europe, Constitution, Frontière.
• 2010:La proposition de l'égaliberté.
• 2010:Violence et Civilité: Wellek Library Lectures et autres essais de philosophie politique
• 2011:Citoyen sujet et autres essais d'anthropologie philosophique
• 2012:Saeculum : Culture, religion, idéologie
• 2015:Violence, civilité, révolution (edited volumeabout Balibar's work)
• 2016:Europe, Crise et fin ?
• 2016:Des Universels. Essais et conférences
• 2018:Spinoza politique. Le transindividuel (French version of Italian original, which appeared in 2002)

• Occasional Notes on Communism. In: Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy
• Till Death Palestine,Philosophy World Democracy, 25 October 2023.
• The Genocide in Gaza and its Consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,Philosophy World Democracy,19 September 2024.
• “The Rectification of the Communist Manifesto”, translated by Patrick King, décalages journal,
• Theses for an Alter-Globalising Europe.
• Reading Capital (1968).
• Self-Criticism: Answers to Questions from Theoretical Practice (1973).
• On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1977).
• At The Borders Of Europe (1999).
• October 1917 After One Century, Crisis and Critique, Volume 4, Issue 2.
• “Ontological difference, anthropological difference, and equal liberty”, European Journal of Philosophy, 28(1), pp. 3-14, https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12512 .
• “Althusser’s dramaturgy and the critique of ideology”, The Roger B. Henkle Memorial Lecture at Brown University, Providence, October 7, 2013.

• “Etienne Balibar in Conversation: Revisiting European Marxism”, Theory, Culture & Society, 36(7-8) pp. 231–247.
• “Of Ambivalent Insurrections: Interview with Etienne Balibar”,Philosophy World Democracy, 15 January 2021.
• “Democracy, Oppression, and Universality: an Interview with Étienne Balibar”,Verso, 7 December 2017.
• “A Period of Intense Debate about Marxist Philosophy”: An Interview with Étienne Balibar, Viewpoint Magazine, March 17, 2015.
• “Étienne Balibar: Socialism and Democracy Are Intrinsically Related Ideas”,Jacobin, 2023.

• Stoler, Ann Laura (ed.), Thinking with Balibar: A Lexicon of Conceptual Practice, Fordham University Press, 2020.
• Montag, Warren; Elsayed, Hanan (ed.), Balibar and the Citizen Subject, Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
• Deleixhe, Martin, Etienne Balibar. L'illimitation démocratique, Michalon, 2014.
• Gaille, Marie; Lacroix, Justine et Sardinha, Diogo (ed.), "Pourquoi Balibar ?", Raison Publique, 2014.
• Hewlett, Nick, Badiou, Balibar, Rancière: Re-Thinking Emancipation, Continuum, 2010.
• Lacroix, Justine, La pensée française à l'épreuve de l'Europe, Grasset, 2008.
• Raynaud, Philippe, L'Extrême gauche plurielle. Entre démocratie radicale et révolution, Autrement, 2006.

• Guide to the Etienne Balibar Papers MS.C.023. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

• Selected bibliography (up to 1998).
• Review ofWe, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship.
• Anna-Verena Nosthoff, "Equaliberty: Notes on the Thought of Etienne Balibar",Critical Legal Thinking.
• Racisms, Migration & Citizenship in Europe: Etienne Balibar and Sandro Mezzadra in Conversation (Audio-English) - darkmatter Journal, 5 August 2007.
• intervention d'Etienne Balibar & Moishe Postone Congrès Marx International V : Altermondialisme/ anticapitalisme. Pour une cosmopolitique alternative. October 2007
• Debating with Alain Badiou on Universalism Opening statement, 2007 Koehn Event in Critical Theory. A dialogue between Alain Badiou and Etienne Balibar on "Universalism", University of California Irvine, 2 February 2007
• Etienne Balibar's LectureSpinoza's Three Gods and the Modes of Communication at the Conference of the Birkbeck Institute for the HumanitiesThinking with Spinoza: Politics, Philosophy and Religion, 7 & 8 May 2009 (podcast)
• For a phenomenology of cruelty;Interview with E.balibar
• http://nplusonemag.com/balibarism Bruce Robbins' "Balibarism!"
• http://heymancenter.org/events/thinking-with-balibar/ "Thinking with Balibar" Conference at Columbia University, fall 2014
• Wendy Brown,David Harvey, andEtienne Balibar at London Critical Theory Summer School – Friday Debate 2015[1], and Wendy Brown,Costas Douzinas, Stephen Frosh, andSlavoj Zizek at London Critical Theory Summer School – Friday Debate 2012[2].