Warren Montag’s "Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries" - #Spinoza

Warren Montag

 

In het verlengde van de blogs over Étienne Balibar, wil ik een kort blog wijden aan Warren Montag en i.h.b. een boek van hem.

“Warren Montag (born March 21, 1952) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. He is known primarily for his work on twentieth-century French theory, especially Althusser and his circle, as well as his studies of the philosopher Spinoza.” Aldus de opening van de en.wikipedia over hem. Zie hier zijn pagina bij het Occidental College.

 

Ik had al eerder blogs over hem: op 28-09-2013 had ik het blog: “Warren Montag over Louis Althusser (1918 - 1990) en Spinoza” en op 05-02-2017 had ik het blog: "Warren Montag geïnterviewd over Althusser en Spinoza"

Als het gaat om de introductie van Balibar in het Angelsaksische, komt steeds Warren Montag in beeld. Dat vooral ook door het overzicht van de Franse Spinozastudie dat hij in 1998 bracht in de "Preface" tot Etienne Balibar's Spinoza and Politics [Verso, 1998]. Ik heb nu al zo vaak verwezen naar dit voorwoord, dat ik erg goed en helder vind, dat ik het voor dit blog apart als PDF breng. Ik beveel lezing uiteraard zeer aan.

Een jaar vóór Balibar's Spinoza and Politics was verschenen:

 

Warren Montag & Ted Stolze (Eds.) The new Spinoza. University of Minnesota Press, 1997 - een anthologie van vooral Franse teksten over Spinoza - van Gabriel Albiac, Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Gilles Deleuze, Emilia Giancotti, Luce Irigaray, Pierre Macherey, Alexandre Matheron, Pierre-François Moreau, Antonio Negri, André Tosel -  vertaald door Ted Stolze. Cf. books.google cf. het PDF [niet van kopieerbare tekst, maar van jpg-plaatjes]

Naar aanleiding daarvan had ik op 03-01-2011 een blog over het hoofdstuk in dat boek van Gilles Deleuze, « Spinoza and the Three "Ethics" » .
Vervolgens verscheen:

Warren Montag: Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. (London / New York: Verso, 1999. Pp. xxi, 136.)  - books,google

Het wordt als een groundbreaking interpretation of Spinoza as materialist” getypeerd. En de uitgeversblurb luidt: “This book seeks to show, against the grain of English language commentary, that Spinoza is neither a Cartesian nor a liberal but precisely the most thoroughgoing materialist in the history of philosophy. The work begins by examining Spinoza’s notion of the materiality of writing, a notion developed through his examination of scripture. It then postulates the three fundamental principles of Spinoza’s philosophy: there can be no liberation of the mind without a liberation of the body, and no liberation of the individual without a collective liberation, and that the written form of these propositions itself possesses a corporeal existence, not as the realization or materialization of a pre-existing mental, spiritual intention, but as a body among other bodies. Ultimately, the book prompts us to consider Spinoza’s philosophy anew, by replacing questions like “Who has read it?” and “Of those, how many of us have understood it?” with “What material effects has it produced, not only on or in minds, but on bodies as well?” and “To what extent has it moved bodies and what has it moved them to?”

Nu stuitte ik op twee uitgebreide en informatieve reviews

[1] door Michael S. Kochin, “SPINOZA OUR CONTEMPORARY” [in: The Review of Politics Volume 63, Issue 1, Winter 2001, pp. 203-206 – cf.]. Van dat review is hier het PDF te vinden; het bespreekt de volgende twee boeken – niet apart, maar door elkaar heen:

Etienne Balibar: Spinoza and Politics, trans. Peter Snowdon. (London and New York: Verso, 1998. Pp. xxiv, 136. $60.00, cloth; $18.00, paper.) en

Warren Montag: Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. (London and New York: Verso, 1999. Pp. xxi, 136. $45.00.)

Ik citeer de slotalinea:
“Montag and Balibar lead the reader to question the future of empire (imperium). Will the American hegemony and the European Union, for example, be organized as modern states, that is to say, as technocratic oligarchies that aspire to monopolize knowledge but in fact monopolize ignorance (Balibar, p. 123)? Or will these empires organize the stateless rule of the people themselves, through the communication and distribution of knowledge? As Balibar realizes, there are still, despite all of the globalizing forces, not one people but many peoples, divided into imagined communities. Can there be a world of empires in which some, but only some peoples are free, and rule over others despotically? Or does domination tend to leak back from the provinces to the metropole? In meditating on Spinoza, our contemporary, we are led inexorably to the most salient questions about the possibilities for politics in the postmodern world order.
                                                                        —Michael S. Kochin

[2] Een ander lang review door William E. Connolly, getiteld “SPINOZA AND US,” in: POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 29 No. 4, August 2001 583-594 [PDF] behandelt tezamen:

BODIES, MASSES, POWER: SPINOZA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES by Warren Montag. New York: Verso, 1999. 136 + xxi pp.

COLLECTIVE IMAGININGS: SPINOZA, PAST AND PRESENT by Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd. New York: Routledge, 1999. 169 pp.

THE NEW SPINOZA (THEORY OUT OF BOUNDS) edited by Warren Montag and Ted Stolz. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 258 + xvix pp.

Connolly geeft meer dan een review, eerder een essay waarin hij de genoemde auteurs kritisch bespreekt, maar er ook Stuart Hampshire en Harry Frankfurt bij haalt.