Translated by Gila Walker for the first time into English, Anthropology of the Name is French thinker Sylvain Lazarus's response to the intellectual caesura of May 1968. Taking up thought, politics, and the name, Lazarus presents an original doctrine on the nature of politics and the relationship of politics to thought. Whereas most theoreticians of politics start with their ideas on its specific empirical objects?its institutions, such as parties, or its structures, such as the state?Lazarus analyzes politics from within itself. ??????????? Lazarus's discussion is divided into two parts: a general methodology and a series of case studies. He fiercely argues that politics is a thought with its own field and categories, distinct from political science, economics, history, or philosophy. Politics, Lazarus drives home, is not a permanent feature of society: it is rare and sequential. ? ?The most radical critique of the very grounds of social science.??Alain Badiou

Author Biography

Sylvain Lazarus, a French sociologist, anthropologist, political theorist, and philosopher, is a professor at Universite Paris VIII. He was a founding member of the Union des Communistes de France Marxiste-leniniste and the militant French political organization L'Organisation Politique. Gila Walker is the translator of more than a hundred books and articles from French, including texts by Jacques Derrida, Tzvetan Todorov, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Shmuel Trigano. She divides her time between her homes in New York City and the southwest of France.