The role of the proletarian experience and the construction of concept of society in Claude Lefort

• Grant number: 19/17635-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2019
• End date: October 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Silvana de Souza Ramos
• Grantee: Elizete Waughan da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/19880-4 - Power, conflict and freedom: Spinoza and the ways of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy about democracy, AP.TEM

Abstract

Firstly, this research aims to elucidate the construction of the concept of the proletarian experience in Claude Lefort. We note that the understanding of this concept requires the mobilization of several notions from the author, as well as the investigation of events that support the analyses proposed by him. Focused on reading the Russian experience of the Bolshevik party and the nefarious developments that followed the 1917 revolution, Lefort criticizes bureaucracy for it undermines the creativity of the proletariat, not only because it separates theory from praxis, but also because it deprives the proletariat's action from its spontaneous and inventive nature.. It is then a matter of counteracting bureaucracy with the productive power of the proletariat in order to exploit and make readable the complexity of the concepts of experience and proletarian nature. After clarifying the role of proletarian experience, we will investigate the hypothesis that the Lefortian notion of democratic invention is in some way inherited from these discussions, presented above all in Éléments d'une critique de la bureaucratie. If this hypothesis is confirmed, we can elucidate the link between the essays on bureaucracy and some works by Lefort dedicated to the study of the institution of the social and the peculiarity of democracy, subjects presented in Les formes de l'histoire and L'invention démocratique: les limites de la domination totalitaire, which will serve as a guide for the further development of our research. (AU)