Laruelle François, Hock Jessie. General Theory of Victims

Polity, 2015. — 119 p. — ISBN10: 0745679617. — ISBN13: 978-0745679617The most accessible expression of Fran?ois Laruelle's non-philosophical, or 'non-standard', thought, General Theory of Victims forges a new role for contemporary philosophers and intellectuals by rethinking their relation to victims. A key text in recent continental philosophy, it is indispensable for anyone interested in the debates surrounding materialism, philosophy of religion, and ethics.
Transforming Joseph de Maistre's adage that the executioner is the cornerstone of society, General Theory of Victims instead proposes the victim as the cornerstone of humanity and the key figure for contemporary thought. Laruelle condemns philosophy for participating in and legitimating the great persecutions of the twentieth century, and lays out a new vision of victim-oriented ethics. To do this, he engages the resources of both quantum physics and theology in order to adapt a key concept of non-philosophy, Man-in-person, for a new understanding of the victim. As Man-in-person, the victim is no longer exclusively defined by suffering, but has the capacity to rise up against the world?s persecution. Based on this, Laruelle develops a new ethical role for the intellectual in which he does not merely 'represent' the victim, but imitates or 'clones' it, thereby assisting the victim?s uprising within thought.Theoretical preparation and precautionThe intellectual and “his” victim
The Victim-in-Person
The axiom of man as victim
The defense of humans
The problematic of material formalism
Overexposed victim and superposed victim
Justice according to victims: from the tribunal-form to the matrix-form
The generic ultimatum
Glorious bodies
Repetition of bodies and resurrection of lived experiences
From pity to the principle of compassion
Media Intellectual and Generic Intellectual
First terms for a theory of intellectuals
The system of intellectual Reason
The unease of intellectuals: their unhappy consciousness
From the victimary to the victimological
The vicious circle of the victim and the intellectualThe Injustice Done to the Victim
Who has primacy in justice, the criminal or the victim?
Double death or continued victimization
Victims and the intellectuals’ betrayal
The concept of vectorial or “weak force”2
From the Victim-in-person to the ecology of the survivor
The two superposed rivers of life and deathDeduction of Murder and Persecution
Mechanism of the generic matrix
The cause of crime, an immanental appearance
Immanent but non-sufficient deduction of crime
Victimological aporias
From the animal persecutable in-the-last-instance to man
From man to “simple” animal
Insurrection and Resurrection
Victims as non-standard event
Insurrection, prior-to-the-first condition of resurrection
The insurrection of victims
The body of the event as clone
Our Ordinary Messiahs
Puppets of the powers or clones of the victims?
The intellectual under condition, neither subject nor object but vector of action
A victim-oriented matrix and its axiom-subjects
The imitation or cloning of the victim by the intellectual
The future-oriented intellectual
On compassion as insurrection
The dream of victims
Towards a non-standard ethics for the use of the philosophers
Restatement of the overall argument