Disappointed Utopia:
An abandoned book project

Table of Contents

The manuscript is also available in PDF format: Disappointed Utopia.pdf (41MB)
Preface
  Dedication
  Utopias are impossible
  Reflexivity by the throat
  Where feminism is not at home
  Men on pedestals
  How I met “French Theory”
  Un mot en français
Introduction: Utopia in a Shattered World
  Radical philosophy in Saint-Denis
  Utopia and disappointment
  Emancipation and fire
  The problem of left patriarchy
  The problem of a banlieue university
  A note on methods
  The shape of the story
Part I: Historical failures
Interlude
  In the hallway, at the cafeteria
1. Radical Philosophy After 1968
  The loss of the revolution
  May 68: The revolution became immediate
  Aimé Césaire on the street: Race and impossible identifications
  Revolutionary philosophy at Vincennes
  Michel Foucault and the birth of ambivalence
  The making of a radical reputation
  Precarious teachers on strike
  Death and historicity
  The revolution wrapped in cellophane
Interlude
  How I was welcomed
2. Left Patriarchy
  The reflexivity of patriarchy
  Warmth among men
  Sketch of a history of gender relations
  Women on the margins
  Our aggressors are already inside
Interlude
  I tried to join a feminist collective
3. The Neocolonial Bargain
  The spatial fix
  A “xenophilic agora”
  An earthquake in Haiti
  Very happy, very scared
  I had to take care of them somehow
  Care labor and the love of the Department
  Men aren’t disposable
  Bring your own precarity
Part II: Utopia in the present
Interlude
  The Basilica and the Stade de France
4. A Banlieue University
  The space of the masses
  Securitarian leftism
  A worn out walk through campus
  A door towards a thing
  Not an unmitigated success
  A student who was trapped
  Graffiti and recognition
  A self-managed space and its demise
Interlude
  Loneliness
5. Thought in Motion
  Philosophers in the knowledge society
  Thought goes beyond reality
  Thinking and writing
  Traveling by train
  Thought against world
  Writing after midnight
  Laughter and recognition
  Nomad thought
Interlude
  The end of the day
6. Whose Utopia Is This?
  The logics of utopianism
  Philosophers on strike
  A declaration of university independence
  A citation from Socrates
  Male students against hierarchy
  Ultra-masculinist attitudes everywhere
  The logics of disappointment
Afterward
  Utopia is possible
  Reading theory, reading the university
  The reflexivity of the Other
  Mourning and momentum
Miscellany
  What is this miscellany?
  Ten Disclaimers
  Brief chronology of the Philosophy Department
  Sociological sketch of the Philosophy Department
  In the courtyard
  A working class philosopher
  Letter from Georges Navet
  Le Doctrinal de Sapience
  A subaltern seminar on the university
  Marxism and the death of philosophy
  How philosophers made a living
  Philosophers on their workspaces
  At a philosophy conference
  An aging professor’s narrative
  The status of undocumented students
  On the archival sources
  Works Cited
  Is ending possible?