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[...] The fact that there was no programme behind the burning Paris suburbs is thus itself a fact to be interpreted. It tells us a great deal about our ideologico-political predicament. What kind of universe is it that we inhabit, which can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the …

What is most difficult to accept is precisely the riots’ meaninglessness: more than a form of protest, they are what Lacan called a passage à l'acte – an impulsive movement into action which can’t be translated into speech or thought and carries with it an intolerable weight of frustration.

What needs to be resisted when faced with the shocking reports and images of the burning Paris suburbs is what I call the hermeneutic temptation: the search for some deeper meaning or message hidden in these outbursts.

[...] She is aware that Beauvoir’s claim about the factual inferiority of blacks aims at something more than the simple social fact that, in the American South of (not only) that time, blacks were treated as inferior by the white majority and, in a way, they effectively were inferior. But her criti…