Serge Valdinoci

Serge Valdinoci (born: 1947) is a French thinker known for developing the method known as europanalysis. He taught philosophy at the Université de Reims (Champagne-Ardenne) for the majority of his career.

Born in Joudreville, in the working milieu of the mines, he pursued his studies in philosophy at the Université de Nancy, where he was notably taught by Raymond Ruyer.

His thesis defense was presided over by Emmanuel Levinas. Paul Ricœur, his mentor at the time and his adviser on the thesis, and Denise Souche-Dagues (whose Le Développement de l'intentionnalité dans la Phénoménologie husserlienne he had sharply critiqued just 5 years before) were also in the jury. The thesis was published in 1982 by Martinus Nijhoff as Les Fondements de la phénoménologie husserlienne. After this, his research oriented towards "existential" psychiatry (Ludwig Binswanger, Eugène Minkowski, Erwin Straus...); he then published Le Principe d'existence (Nijhoff).

From 1987 onwards, he contributed to the development of a radically critical thought with regard to the philosophical attitude, with François Laruelle with whom he founded the journal La Décision philosophique, a partnership that would last (until 1998 in terms of academic publishing) without one ever being able to directly assimilate europanalysis to Non-Philosophy, even if europanalysis and Non-Philosophy in its present condition (Non-standard Philosophy, Generic Science, Forced Philosophy, ...) are closer than ever before.

In 1990, he published Introduction dans l'europanalyse. Krisis 2, opening the field of research that we now know as europanalysis.

europanalysis

europanalysis is a method of thought presented under the form of a philosophic, scientific, and heuristic doctrine. It has been elaborated and proposed by Serge Valdinoci, at the end of the 20th century, as detaching itself from phenomenology, from which it initially endeavored to extract a kernel of invariance.

Although derived from anterior labors, europanalysis editorially emerges at the end of the 80s, in the context of the development of Non-Philosophy by a first working group gathered alongside François Laruelle. Strongly distanced from all religious folklore, it is nevertheless presented as a "mystique of thought" that seeks to translate/transduce (traduire) what immanence is (according to the exigencies initially posed by Edmund Husserl), and to produce within this epistemological frame a theory of invention that hinges on a method as much as a lived experience.

Etymology

The term "europanalysis" (without a capital 'E' in most of the published works) is forged from the 20th century's psychiatric terminology (Psychoanalysis, Daseinanalysis / Existential Analysis, Schicksanalyse, ...), for the relational and therapeutic matrix of which it poses the fundaments, and from "europe" (without a capital 'E') that designates the "domain of immanence" of which Europe, historical and contextual (political, cultural, economic, geographic, ...), is the culmination within the space of objectivation and representations (individual just as well as collective).

The choice of an orthography with capitals, orally imperceptible (like the "a" in Jacques Derrida's Differance), is inscribed on the one hand within the conceptual frame opposing minorities to Authorities, the authority of the order of representations relating to "Europe". It connotes, on the other hand, the invisible character, foreign to perception (to space-time, to the partes extra partes), of the domain of immanence explored, thus relaying the theoretical approaches of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, or indeed Raymond Ruyer.

Works

One can present, in chronological order, the books that punctuate the progressive advance and elaboration of this approach of immanence, the body, and invention, and that coincides with a tight analysis of problems of semantics and profound mechanisms of civilization. There exists, moreover, a fairly large mass of contributions under the form of articles (on Raymond Ruyer, Husserl, Psychiatry, Non-Philosophy...) that are disseminated in journals (principally La Revue de Métaphysique et de morale, L’Évolution psychiatrique and La Décision Philosophique).

Les Fondements de la phénoménologie husserlienne (The Fundaments of Husserlian Phenomenology) (Nijhoff, 1982)

This book, that is not yet a book of europanalysis in the strict sense, is a doctoral thesis, guided by Paul Ricœur and defended under the jury presidency of Emmanuel Levinas. Nevertheless, it attempts, this is its problematic, to disengage and identity of the phenomenological gesture, which has has historically burst forth since the Husserlian foundation.

Hard to read, it entails a labor on phenomenological research, leaning on Husserl's manuscripts. A very strong cognizance of the phenomenological field is required to unravel the technical stakes.

The book leads to the necessity of the auto-effacement of philosophical concepts elaborated by historical phenomenology in view of liberating their operative character and avoiding the freezing of thought once again—Husserl's very—within a the elaboration of a doctrine of a Neo-Kantian type of transcendental subject.

Le Principe d'existence. Un devenir psychiatrique de la phénoménologie (The Existence Principle: A Psychiatric Becoming of Phenomenology) (Nijhoff, 1988)

The work that follows the thesis opens onto the given of the passage from the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger towards psychopathological theories. Leaning on the great psychiatric modelings (Pinel, Jaspers, Freud), this work attempts to seize the cogs that permit thought to pass from the theory of man to the clinic (from Kant to Pinel for example, Dilthey etc.). The work is buttressed on the work of Erwin Straus, Minkowski, Binswanger, the errancies of research and theoretical trial-and-errors of whom are described, as well as the impasses, and with whom the strongest intuitions are confronted. The objective is to open phenomenology to its usage in medicine, and to commence to exhume the practice of the clinic as the affective fundament of mystique and invention.

Introduction dans l'europanalyse. Krisis 2. Transformer la phénoménologie de Husserl pour fonder la philosophie (Introduction Within europanalysis: Krisis 2, Transforming Husserl's Phenomenology to Found Philosophy) (Paris, Aubier, 1990)

The first book of europanalysis entitled such, this work equally marks the concretization of Serge Valdinoci's collaboration with François Laruelle.

A very short, dense, and picked up book, it constitutes an exit out of philosophy. Phenomenological conversion (as Eugene Fink describes it from Husserl) is convoked here. Serge Valdinoci looks into what European thought is, its functioning in terms of pathos (he prolongs some of Laruelle's analyses on the philosophies of Difference).

From this european crisis disengaged by Husserl (his concern at the end of his oeuvre, when he commences to elaborate the concept of the "lifeworld"), Valdinoci envisages the collapse/effoundment (effondrement) that constitutes the real as invention, as pure dispersive becoming, as a night refused to being on which everything nevertheless appears to lean. It is the first book where specifically europanalytic terminology is elaborated.

The principal advance is constituted by the description of the process of apposition from which the human inventive leap arises at the moment of its throw.

Vers Une Méthode d'europanalyse (Towards a Method of europanalysis) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1995)

This book, considered by most readers as the most accessible to students of philosophy (on the condition of knowing some major works), is that of Valdinoci's profound dialog with the writings of Heidegger, Henry, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Hegel, or even Marion...

It attempts to put in place a new unit of measure, a "masstab", reposing on this mystical approach of the real that it confirms as the essence of the phenomenological demarche. From concepts and discoveries of predecessors that he attempts to replace within a larger movement of thought, he draws a domain sketched by historical phenomenologists: the In, the Endon, the approach of which implies that the term of precedency (préséance) be substituted for the much decried, since Derrida and, before him, Levinas, Husserlian term of presence.

What is more, he commences to describe the internal structure of this inventive thought, its specific mode of apprehension of the real by commencing to build an aesthesiology (mystique is thus envisaged as the endo-skeleton of civilization, while the cultural domain of knowledges would only know to produce an exoskeleton, sclerosing every invention). It is equally from this work that the description of a thought in zig-zag emerges decisively from his labors on the basis of perceptive medical givens (proprioception, nociception, interoception, coenesthesia).

La traversée de l'immanence. L'europanalyse ou la méthode de la phénoménologie (The Traversal of Immanence: europanalysis or the Method of Phenomenology) (Paris, Kimé, 1996)

A more technical opus, the terminology put in place in the previous book enters into functioning at full speed [à plein régime]. This traversal that is attempted here reposes on the fact that the method of thought in zig-zag is established on the basis of a thought in crasis. We still see the intimate blend of a thought of sense (reformulating a linguistics that is not an articulation of atomic elements of the signifier but a lived semantics) and the body.

This crasis can be comprehended as a renewed description of the non-philosophical uni-duality from a clinical thought.

Increasingly supported by science rather than philosophy agonizing in the sill of Deconstruction (described as the auto-devouring or auto-immune disease of modern transcendental thought), Valdinoci's research primes a method of thought in-chaos, a method of affrontation of the unknown, invention, that attempts to remedy the cultural fragmentation of thought from the question: "How to invent the sciences?". A sort of civilizational therapeutics that is in strong consonance with certain Nietzschean apperceptions.

La Science première, une pensée pour le présent et l'avenir (First Science: A Thought for the Present and the Future) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1997)

The master book of europanalysis, at the vastest, densest, and the most dynamic. A plethora of cultural fields are traversed here (from Yi-king to Relativity, from Wittgenstein to Georg Cantor, from medieval mystique to Non-Philosophy, from Gestaltpsychologie to Gödel…). It is also the book of the epic breath and the one in which the research advances the furthest.

The exigency of immanence is maintained here more than ever, in the direction of a theory of contemplation and intuition. It is a book that demands a very slow reading, and leans on an enormous lexical labor. Nietzsche is confirmed here as a privileged companion, the Overman and the Eternal Return of the Same being rethought, from a description of founding effoundment (effondrement fondateur) already convocated but henceforth envisaged as intimate human insurrection (Erhebung).

The Germanizing terminology rethinks Hegelian logic to substitute a process without mediation for it. The work on the body and the theorization of carnal inscription of impressions is borne much further here. Above all, the meditation more precisely deploys a thought of writing, language, the Book as an envelop of civilization in labor: How to rethink language from the mystical in-hollow?

An encyclopedic idea is raised here according to Novalis' romantic project, founded on this "besides-tearing" (outre-déchirure) that would be the living subject. But before everything, it is a thought of the sacred that moors this book.

The first book in a trilogy that includes La Science avant-première et La Prescience mystique.

Abrégé d'europanalyse. La pensée analytique et continentale (Summary of europanalysis: Analytic and Continental Thought) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1999)

This book, that Serge Valdinoci often proposes as a base to students of his research seminar, is short, gathered around Hegel and Husserl; only a few axes of europanalysis are journeyed through: the problematic of language, as a stereonomy between affect and linguistic effectuations (affect being the invisible filligree of every writing); the analytic processes that undo the Hegelian synthetic dialectic of its predominance are given here a second time; terminally, the advances of previous works are reassembled here under their line of continuity and put back in perspective.

L'europanalyse et les structures d'une autre vie. Le feu de la pensée sacrée (europanalysis and the Structures of Another Life: The Fire of Sacred Thought) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2001)

An off-course book, renewing europanalysis' ambience of writing. From an extremely ecclesiastic vocabulary, it is a renewal of the meditation of civilization that is proposed, notable from a thought of the political figure of the mediator of the republic.

The thought of the sacred (Rudolf Otto) as resounding (retentissement) within human fright [effroi] (Pascal) is the node to which this work is gradually devoted.

Merleau-Ponty dans l'invisible. L'œil et l'esprit au miroir du Visible et l'invisible (Merleau-Ponty Within the Invisible: The Eye and the Mind in the Mirror of The Visible and the Invisible) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2003)

This work is presented as a most useful glossary of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's last two texts, one serving to clarify the other. Commentary structuring the subject, the work of art is profoundly meditated here across the great figures of the 20th century (Duchamp, ...).

It has been said that this book was supposed to be the first in a trilogy, the second and third books devoted to Bergson and Deleuze (although which one would have come first remains uncertain).

Phénoménologie affective. Essai d'europanalyse appliquée (Affective Phenomenology: An Essay in Applied europanalysis) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2008)

A more intimate book, that in any case marks a more personal turning of the oeuvre and the consummated distancing with the style and problematic of the French University, this work advances within the endo-universe of human depression, within the effoundment of the quotidian, and show which civilizing towards harbors this generalized state of contemporary culture effectuating nowhere else than in the human lived.

New figures of thought are inscribed (notably psy-schism, the mystical emblem of stylitis, the nothing but human...) within a journey of ordinary impressive states (the dream, awakening, waiting), and Valdinoci's analyses are applied to the civilizational dimensions of the common elements of the cultural dispositive of the administration of lives (the civil status card, the national identity card, the passport; of which he analyses the "trope" function...), by striving to restore to the part of sufferance and utopia that they attest to.

La Science avant-première (Before-First Science) (Paris, INgens, 2020)

The second book in the trilogy that includes La Science première and La Prescience mystique.

This book was the first to be printed in INgens' (an organization devoted to the promotion of europanalysis and Immanence, among other notable and wonderful activities) Cahiers d'immensité, a collection edited by Narciso Aksayam and Gérard Kponsou.

La Prescience mystique. La méditation réinventée (Mystical Prescience: Meditation Reinvented) (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2021)

The third book in the trilogy that includes La Science première and La Science avant-première.

europanalysis and Mystique

For europanalysis, mystical experience rarely thinks, it testifies to a lived (vécu) rather than attempting to theorize it; while philosophical thought, massively enfeoffed to the principle of perception (that is, the consideration of the human from mechanist postulates that pose the insertion of the human within space-time—a dominantly used model in western civilization), never affronts the human seizure as mystique, furtive night, moving and aberrant funds of existence, from the fact that conceptualization reposes on the principle of the putting-at-a-distance of negative determination (Spinoza, Hegel).

With europanalysis, Valdinoci attempts to render an account of each (mystique and philosophy) from the specific supports of the other (how philosophy points towards mystique where it finds its funds of invention, how mystique permits descriptions of the functioning of philosophical thought, notably as a repressed process of conceptual invention). It is not without being placed within the prolongment of this attitude of which Michel de Certeau attempted to restitute the archeology in his last works.

Works

The break between pre-europanalytic and europanalytic works is marked with a "———". Especially with the works not published as books, it is not so easy to discern a neat periodic break. Much of the themes explored in the early essays are reprised in much more profundity in later works. Not unlike Husserl, where the unity of each and every published book can be put into question, but in an altogether distinct manner, europanalysis, as a grand oeuvre in invention, far exceeds each and every one of the works in which it is developed and/or mobilized.

Books

• Les Fondements de la phénoménologie husserlienne., Paris: Nijhoff, 1982. (French)

• Le Principe d'existence. Un devenir psychiatrique de la phénoménologie., Paris: Nijhoff, 1988. (French)

———

• Introduction dans l'europanalyse. Krisis 2 : transformer la phénoménologie de Husserl pour fonder la philosophie, Paris: Aubier, 1990. (French)

• Vers une méthode d'europanalyse., Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995. (French)
  • Why Europe?, p. 5-10, trans. Jesse Newberg.

• La traversée de l'immanence. L'europanalyse ou la méthode de la phénoménologie., Paris: Kimé, 1996. (French)

• La Science première, une pensée pour le présent et l'avenir, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997. (French)
  • Valdinoci on Laruelle and the Last Instance, p. 274, trans. Jesse Newberg.
  • Valdinoci on Laruelle and Heidegger, p. 401, trans. Jesse Newberg.

• Dictionnaire de la non-philosophie, with François Laruelle, Tony Brachet, Gilbert Kieffer, Laurent Leroy, Daniel Nicolet, & Anne-Françoise Schmid, Paris: Kimé, 1998. (French)
  • Manuscrit de l'article Affect, INgens.
  • Dictionary of Non-Philosophy, trans. Taylor Adkins, Minneapolis: Univocal, 2013. (English)

• Abrégé d'europanalyse : la pensée analytique et continentale., Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999.(French)

• Le Feu de la pensée sacrée : L'europanalyse et les structures d'une autre vie., Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001.(French)

• Merleau-Ponty dans l'invisible. L'Œil et l'esprit au miroir du Visible et l'invisible., Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003.(French)

• Phénoménologie affective. Essai d'europanalyse appliquée., Paris: L'Harmattan, 2008.(French)

• La Science avant-première, Paris: INgens, 2020. Preview (French)

• La prescience mystique: La méditation réinventée., Paris: L'Harmattan, 2021.(French)

Essays, Articles, Reviews, Interviews

• Décomposition et recomposition phénoménologiques, Les Etudes philosophiques, 1977.
  • Phenomenological Decomposition and Recomposition, trans. Sylvia.

• Review: "Le Développement de l'intentionnalité dans la Phénoménologie husserlienne" de Denise Souches-Dagues, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1977.
  • Review: Le Développement de l'Intentionnalité dans la Phénoménologie husserlienne by Denise Souche-Dagues, trans. Sylvia.

• Mallarmé : le cheminement poétique vers le Livre, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1977.

• Les Incertitudes de l'Archéologie : Archè et Archive, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1978.

• "The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution" de R. Sokolowski, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1978.

• Phénoménologie et téléologie. Reprise des questions de fond., Analecta Husserliana, vol.IX, pp. 169-182, 1979.

• Vers la Fin des discours, Les Etudes philosophiques, 1979.

• Review: "Cartesianishe Meditationen" de Edmund Husserl, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1980.
  • Review: "Cartesianishe Meditationen" by Edmund Husserl, trans. Sylvia.

• Review: "Presence and Absence" de Robert Sokolowski, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1980.
  • Review: "Presence and Absence" by Robert Sokolowski, trans. Sylvia.

• La philosophie du déclin de la philosophie et l'idée de nouveau monde, Revue Universitaire des Marches de l'Est, 1982.

• Cette insensée philosophie…, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1982.

• Review: "Le Principe de minorité" de François Laruelle, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1984.
  • Review: "Le Principe de minorité" by François Laruelle, trans. Sylvia.

• Psychiatrie et psychiatrie phénoménologique. Binswanger, une métaphysique de la psychiatrie, L’Evolution psychiatrique, Volume 51, 1986.

• Review: Une Biographie de l'homme ordinaire. Des Autorités et des minorités. de François Laruelle, Revue de Synthèse, IVe S., No. 2 (April-June 1987), pp. 306-8
  • Review: Une Biographie de l'homme ordinaire. Des Autorités et des minorités. by François Laruelle, trans. Sylvia.

• Derechef. Qu'est-ce que s'orienter dans la pensée ?, Le Cahier, 1987.

• Au-delà du principe de philosophie, La Décision philosophique n°1, 1987.

• L'Un, une nouvelle condition de pensée, La Décision philosophique n°3, 1987, pp. 39-49.
  • The One, a New Condition of Thought, trans. Sylvia.

• La naissance de la science à l'époque de la philosophie, en Europe, La Décision philosophique n°5, 1988, pp. 5-39.

• Tout va bien !, La Décision philosophique n°7, 1989.

• Lettre ouverte aux philosophes, with François Laruelle, La Décision philosophique n°7 (reprint), 1989.
  • Open Letter to Philosophers, trans. Jeremy R. Smith.

• La science de l'homme immense, La Décision philosophique n°9, 1989.

• Le Concept de clinique généralisée, Revue internationale de psychopathologie, 1990.

• Le principe d'anarchie subjective et la psychiatrie, in Sujet et subjectivité, 1990.

• Ariane, petite musique, Lettres philosophiques n°1, 1990.

———

• L'amour incisif, Lettres philosophiques n°2, 1991.

• Une psychiatrie essentielle, in Psychiatrie et existence, 1991.

• Le Transcendantal d'existence en psychiatrie, in Figures de la subjectivité, 1992.

• Propos sur la crise de la philosophie, with Gérard Kponsou, Lettres philosophiques n°6, 1992, pp. 55-65.
  • A Talk on the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Sylvia.

• La non-philosophie, l'europanalyse et Husserl, in La non-philosophie des contemporains, 1995.
  • Non-Philosophy, europanalysis, and Husserl, trans. Jeremy R Smith.

• Vers l'autre démarche : Ruyer, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, in R. Ruyer, de la science à la théologie, 1995.

• L'économie du sacrifice chez Bataille, in Georges Bataille: L’économie du sacrifice, Reims: Le Clou dans le Fer, 2004.

• La terre interceptée, L'homme précaire, 2006.

• Les Entretiens de Trois Fontaines, 21-26 July 2009, INgens.
  • Entrée Jetée, with Foutre de Dieu. (French)
    • Thrown Entry, trans. Sylvia. (English)
  • Généalogie de la clinique, with Ali Hmiddouch and Foutre de Dieu. (French)
    • Genealogy of the Clinic, trans. Sylvia. (English)
  • Le poïen qui vient, with Christophe Samarsky and Foutre de Dieu. (French)
    • The Poïen that Comes, trans. Sylvia. (English)
  • Accompagnés, dans le sauvage, with Ali Hmiddouch and Foutre de Dieu. (French)
  • dé su, with Christophe Samarsky and Ali Hmiddouch.
  • Et puis après ça commence, with Ali Hmiddouch and Foutre de Dieu.

• Soirée aubuscule #3, DailyMotion/INgens, Dec 17 2011.

• L'Homme coïncidant, une approche de l'invention., INgens, 2018. (French)

• La Pensée accélérée, ou de l'invention, INgens, 2020. (French)

• Le Grand Jeu, YouTube/Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, recorded: Oct 18 2020, uploaded: Feb 6 2021.

• François Laruelle : Pour une pensée-fiction, Identities, Vol. 18, No. 1-2, 2021. (French)

• Doxologie vs. europanalyse (audio), with Gérard Kponsou, INgens, 4 Jan 2022. (French)

Links

• http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Valdinoci

• http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europanalyse

• https://ingens.eu/index.php/europanalyse-continent-d-invention

• https://europanalyse.blogspot.com/

• http://entretiens-de-trois-fontaines.over-blog.com/