French Thinker Research Articles

Рецепция идей Блеза Паскаля в философии Льва Шестова

L.I. Shestov and B. Pascal are extremely popular both in our country and in the West. The philosophical ideas of Shestov and Pascal often overlap despite the different epochs of the thinkers' lives. However, the philosophical ideas of Shestov and Pascal often overlap despite the fact that they lived in different eras. Shestov felt this connection only in the late period of his work, which was undoubtedly associated with the Pascalian renaissance in European thought. However, Shestov still managed to say his word about the life and thought of the French philosopher. The article provides brief information about the period of Shestov's life, when he began to seriously study the philosophy of Pascal. In addition, information is provided about the response in the Russian and French intellectual public that Shestov’s short work on Pascal “The Night of Gethsemane” received. The author's main attention is focused on the analysis of the views expressed by Shestov in his works about the French thinker. Based on the results of the study, it was established that in spiritual experience Pascal can be called the philosophical double of Shestov. In the experiment of Pascal, Shestov was primarily interested in the experience of the abyss, which was so close to the Russian thinker. However, other important aspects of Pascal’s philosophy: his concept of «the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob», and not «the God of philosophers and scientists»; the French thinker's interest in the individual, etc., were also extremely interesting to Shestov. Thus, many of B. Pascal’s philosophical and religious ideas were developed in the works of Shestov.

Бенжамен Констан как философ религиозного чувства

The paper deals with Benjamin Constant’s philosophy of religious sentiment. Constant is known primarily as political philosopher defender of Liberalism; at the same time, during his life Constant was interested in religion. The paper follows development of Constant’s views till his Athenaeum Lectures of 1818 and mature opus magnum “On Religion” (5 vols., 1824–1831). Constant’s philosophy of religious sentiment in many traits differs of the similar projects that were elaborated in the German-speaking space. Constant visited Germany for a long time, accordingly, he was acquainted with German-speaking philosophy and theology (Semler, Kant, Schleiermacher and many others); however, it did not shape Constant’s worldview. Rather, Constant used German ideas to answer on his own questions. Hence, Constant’s views are original in some traits. Firstly, unlike German colleagues he does not concentrate on epistemology of religious sentiment, but on the political and ideological aspects of religious feeling. Secondly, Constant opposes the sentiment itself to its forms changing in history as well as illustrates the latter by materials of ethnology and anthropology. Thirdly, this opposition represents the key scheme of phenomenology of religion, that is why Constant influenced not German but Dutch researchers, more precisely C. P. Tiele and G. van der Leeuw. Fourthly, Constant unlike German thinkers due to his explicite liberal views strongly criticizes church institutions. In general, despite of considerable distance between Constant’s and his German collеagues philosophers’ views, Constant is one of the closest to the German philosophy French thinkers. Constant's philosophy of religion is known primarily because of his political fame.

Eco-Nomads of American Wilderness: An Analysis of the Auto/Biographies of Christopher McCandless and Everett Ruess

Everett Ruess and Christopher McCandless were two young wanderers setting on adventures in the American wilderness. Despite living in different decades, they showed a similar disdain for society and left behind their traditional and socially accepted lifestyles and journeyed into the wilderness with a drive fueled by their love for nature. Gradually cutting their ties to the civilized world, they turned into deterritorialized nomads, as defined by the French thinkers Deleuze and Guattari, wandering freely in the American wilderness. These journeys and their departure from society can be seen as both an anti-authoritarian attitude and a process of self-discovery in nature. Ruess and McCandless did not see nature as a place to be domesticated and dominated, but as a place to exist and become ecologically conscious nomads or, in short, eco-nomads. This article examines McCandless and Ruess as eco-nomads. The auto/biographical works written about these two explorers offer exemplary life stories to protect the environment in today’s world of environmental challenges.

W. SHAKESPEARE’S “HAMLET” IN CONTEXT OF E. LEVINAS’S PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT OF MAN: DISCOVERING ‘THE OTHER’ AS A MEANINGFUL SUBTEXT OF THE TRAGEDY

The article concentrates on the study of the relationship between literary-artistic and philosophical discourses in the process of verbalizing universal cultural meanings of existence and building a holistic concept of man as an uppermost task of creation and re-creation (interpretation) of a literary work through the example of W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet”. The article aims to interpret W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” in the context of ideas of the French thinker E. Levinas, one of the founders of the philosophy of dialogue. The tasks of the study are to characterize the significance of the dialogical vision of personality for the contemporary interpretation of the classics of world literature, to reveal the importance of dialogue between artistic and philosophical discourses while cognizing the human being in his interaction with the world and to consider the system of images in W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” with regard to the philosophy of the Other, developed in E. Levinas’s works “Time and the Other” and “Humanism of the Other”. The main research methods include culture-historical and hermeneutic methods applied in addition to the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of dialogue. The article deals with the tragedy “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare as a prototext for E. Levinas’s philosophical work “Time and the Other”. Shakespearean reminiscences are characterized as important in terms of the development of the Levinasian concept of man. According to Levinas, the essence of the person is revealed in the dialogical interaction with the Other, which allows one to go beyond the present as captivity, discover the connections with the future in which the subject no longer exists, and achieve the eventful fullness of being, which leads to harmony and opens the way to the transcendental subject and eternity. The system of images in W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” allows one to associate the title character with different variants of the Other, which become significant for him as he fulfils the Ghost’s will. The unfolding of the action can be interpreted as such that it features the establishment of dialogical interaction between the father and the son in its meaningful subtext. At the level of events, the achieved interaction is seen as the fullness of the characters’ personal existence (above all, that of Hamlet and the Ghost), which manifests itself in overcoming the boundary between life and death, restoring the normal course of history and asserting the necessity for the superiority of good over evil. Horatio, the actor (i.e. the First Player), and jester Yorick (an offstage character in the prince’s memories), each of whom represents the conditions necessary for genuine dialogical interaction (belonging to a tradition, empathy, carnival freedom and, therefore, the familiarity of contact with another person), become significant variants of the Other to Hamlet, metonymically equivalent to his father the king.

Феномен массового нарциссизма как характерная черта современного общества в социальной философии Жана Бодрийяра

Currently, it can be seen that the theory of mass narcissism is gaining popularity in various scientific circles. If narcissism was previously a part of psychoanalytic theory, then over time this concept became the subject of research by some philosophers. One of these researchers was Jean Baudrillard. This philosopher not only made up his own idea of modern society, but also demonstrated the fact that narcissism plays a rather significant role in it because many human desires and drives strongly resemble what is commonly considered narcissism. This article attempts to show exactly how, from the point of view of the French thinker, the phenomenon of mass narcissism manifests itself in modern society. In addition, the difference between the classical understanding of narcissism in psychoanalytic theory and its more modern interpretation is considered. Such an approach can demonstrate how Baudrillard himself understands the phenomenon of mass narcissism, what exactly he puts into this concept and why, despite some similarities with classical psychoanalytic theories, it is not necessary to identify his idea of narcissism with the psychoanalytic understanding of this phenomenon. Starting from the philosopher’s ideas about the structure of modern society (about the influence of information technology on personality and the consequences that the growing philosophy of consumption brings for a person), it is possible to understand quite clearly why Baudrillard turned to this phenomenon and decided to use it to describe a modern person.

Восприятие Блеза Паскаля и его наследия советской официальной культурой 1920–1930-х гг.

The perception of Blaise Pascal by the official Soviet culture of the 1920–1930s has not yet become the subject of a special study. At a new historical turn, the scientific and spiritual legacy of the French thinker was inevitably subject to revision. The authors set themselves the task of revealing the peculiarities of constructing the image of Pascal and interpreting his ideas in the society of mass intellectual culture. The main material for the article was information about Pascal, which a Soviet citizen could obtain from encyclopedic dictionaries, textbooks, popular science articles and periodicals. It is concluded that the personality and works of the French genius of the 17th century were important in arranging a dialogue between the new Soviet culture and traditional European culture in general, and the French culture in particular. In the 1920–1930s the “Soviet traditionalism” was emerging, i. e. the practice of the Soviet state to create boundaries of loyalty for traditionalism, which, first of all, affects intellectual culture. The European bourgeois culture and the specific case of Pascal were inscribed into the new coordinates. The “boundaries of loyalty” set for the legacy of the French genius brought to the fore Pascal the scientist and Pascal the philosophizing writer. The emphasis on the Descartes/Pascal opposition, which reflects the spiritual, philosophical, cultural and ideological conflicts of the new Soviet state, is meaningful. In this conflict, Pascal became a kind of “hidden man”, whose spiritual experience is disguised under the proclaimed atheistic mundanity. However, the essence of the internal structure of Pascal’s personality turns out to be close to the asceticism and anti-bourgeois nature of the Soviet culture. Pascal becomes a role model for the Soviet people in terms of shaping themselves on the path to a bright and just society.

Joseph Fletcher on Agapeic Love: An Evaluation

Joseph Fletcher offers a Christian Situation Ethics when he affirms that belief in God and belief in God’s agape’ as the central value of ethics cannot be proven by natural reasoning but can only be held by a free action, chosen by the believer. He interprets 1 John, chapter 4: 16, especially v. 19: “We love because he first loved us,” as establishing that humans only know agapeic love because they have first known and believed in God’s agapeic love as revealed in the greatest love in the actions and teachings of Jesus. However, Bernard Haring a Catholic, 20th century German moral theologian, disagrees with that interpretation, noting that both Augustine and Aquinas hold that although God’s creative love is first in the order of being, it is not first in the order of learning. They hold that humans first experience generous human love amongst humans before they even accept that God’s creative love is first in the order of being. Also, even Karl Barth, the great Swiss Calvinist theologian, has a remarkably positive affirmation of human eros. Barth invents a new term ‘humanity’ in order to recognize the being of humans as “free, radically open, willing, spontaneous, joyful, cheerful and gregarious.” This paper will build upon the positive analysis by Augustine and Aquinas of generous human love as first in the order of learning and upon the positive evaluation of human ‘eros’ and ‘humanity’ as suggested by Barth by developing three main divisions: (1) The paper will draw upon C.S. Lewis’s distinction between need-love and gift-love and evaluate both Fletcher and Lewis himself as offering an inadequate conceptualization of human love as always tainted by need-love. (2) The paper will draw upon the moral philosophies of Aristotle and John Dewey who offer us a most positive evaluation of human love as transcending selfishness in their focus upon a person’s self-actualization in something greater than the self. (3) Finally, the paper will draw upon the reflections of the theologian Gregory Baum who was influenced by the French thinker Maurice Blondel. Blondel and Baum, then, offer a different grasp of humanity and God than the extrinsicist theology offered by Joseph Fletcher and C. S. Lewis in which God swoops in upon human nature to save humans from their sins with the Gift-love from above. Following the lead of Blondel, Baum develops an “intrincisist” grasp of human striving, not as: that of the intellect seeking deeper truth; it is, according to Blondel, the dynamics of the will seeking ever greater self-realization through continued action. It is there, in their willing, that God is present to human beings, and it is in their actions that they say Yes to the divine presence.

Атеология Жоржа Батая и негативная суверенность

The article presents a brief essay on the analysis of three key concepts in the philosophy of Georges Bataille – heterology as the logic of exclusion, (a-)theology as an atheistic understanding of the death of God and the concept of ‘negative’ or ‘sacrificial’ Sovereignty. It seems that the key to understanding the various and heterogeneous philosophical, literary-poetic, cultural-anthropological and socio-economic concepts of the French thinker is the prism of the heterological logic of exclusion, which opposes the internalization of the dominant ontological discourse. The heterology or ‘logic of exclusion’ used by Georges Bataille, is not so much a negative version of the traditional logic of ‘inclusion’, but is a logic of alternative extremes. It is precisely by striving to overcome the dominant metaphysical universalism of the general order of being (embodied, according to Bataille, in the concept of ‘being’ / ‘die Existenz’ in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger). In an effort to overcome the dominant metaphysical universalism of the general order of being, Bataille turns to various kinds of ‘denials’ and extremes – the left sacred or the sanctity of ‘foulness’, the metaphorical of the disgusting, erotic and violent forms of transgression, the cultivation of the experience of inner abandonment and ultimate despair, and, also, to his own concept of ‘sacrifice’, serving as a guide to the world of sovereign domination. Thus, developing his concept of metaphysical ‘sovereignty’, Bataille turns not only to the existential, but also to the political sphere, largely contrasting his ‘metaphysics of sacrifice’ with the concept of ‘metaphysical domination’ of the German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. The nihilistic energy drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche and the ‘metaphysical negation’ taken from Hegel’s dialectic through the interpretation of Alexander Kozhev is used by Bataille for the purposes of his own ‘heterological’ logic of exclusion, desubjectivization and dissolution. However, negation for Bataille is not a target for itself, but a methodological tool on the way to the ‘Other’ excluded from any ontosemantic order.

Understanding Existence. Heidegger Reader of Pascal

The aim of this article is to show the crucial role of Blaise Pascal’s work for the development of Martin Heidegger’s early philosophical project – which lasted until the Turn [Kehre] of the 1930s. The scattered but decisive presence of quotes from the French thinker clearly shows how fundamental he was, both methodologically and content-wise, for Heidegger’s initial elaboration of the question of Being [Seinsfrage] and the Existential Analytic of Dasein [Daseinanalytik].

Contributions to the Legal Semiotics of Facial Recognition Systems: Live Music, Digital Technologies, and the Display of Power

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed).

“Entre Deux Transatlantiques”: American Religion and the French Family at the Comédie-Française (1890)

Mormonism, seen in 1865 by French critic Hippolyte Taine as an American religious and social experiment conducted “for our benefit,” appears frequently in French thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whether Taine intended it or not in his use of the word “benefit,” this American religion was mobilized in French conversations about pressing sociopolitical issues such as gender identity, marriage, and the social norms surrounding those issues. Relying on a cultural studies approach, we illustrate in this article how French literary critic and playwright Philippe Gille uses Mormonism in Camille, a play in which he explores issues of gender in the context of the état civil during the Third Republic. First performed at the French national theater (Comédie-Française) in 1890, Gille’s play stages the transatlantic encounter of Franco-American cultures and values as a way to displace questions about the capacity of the French state to regulate marriage and family relationships.

A French Parnassus for the Danes


 
 Benefitting from a taste for everything French in the Danish-Norwegian absolute monarchy, La Beaumelle circulated in Copenhagen news and ideas from the French Enlightenment in a handwritten journal which content has never been studied before. The ideas and rhetorical strategies of his journalistic input are analysed and contextualised in the Danish political agenda and in the larger frame of the circulation of semi-private news and the intellectual history of the Enlightenment. Brilliant and irreverent, the author discussed moderate and subversive ideas along with much gossip from Paris. This article is the first study of what was written in the Gazette and connects intellectual networks and the history of the press, by focusing on the relationship between French thinkers and the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. 
 

A brief genealogy of the category of the subject from Althusser and Foucault to Badiou’s Theory of the Subject

This essay traces the genealogy and evolution of the category of the subject as it developed in the thought of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Alain Badiou. As will be seen, within the fruitful and complementary dialogue about the subject and subjectivity formation among these three French thinkers, there are major discrepancies in their approaches, from Althusser’s seemingly passive view of the subject as a victim of state oppression, to Foucault’s one, embedded in power but with the capacity of resistance, and, finally, to Badiou’s understanding, in his book Théorie du sujet (Theory of the Subject, 1982), of the subject as the one who courageously takes risks to put into practice the truth brought about by the event in order to radically transform the present situation.

Экзистенциальная личность и специфика философского стиля Жоржа Батая: проблема взаимовлияния

The article examines the features of the existential personality, the ideological origins of creativity and the spe-cifics of the philosophical style of the French thinker J. Bataille. The features of J. Bataille’s paradoxical thinking are shown, the value of which is in the ability to analyze various mental states of a person, in the destruction of standard philosophical structures and the creation of new forms of philosophical understanding of reality. The application of the phenomenological approach made it possible to identify the features of J. Bataille’s literary and philosophical style, the inconsistency and complexity of interpreting his texts addressed to existential expe-rience in the act of tragedy, delusions or the search for truth, inseparable from the transgressive state of a per-son. The authors determined that in J. Bataille’s work, the specifics of language, vocabulary, and the ability to express the hidden meaning remind of the author himself, of his constant desire to invade the realm of the im-possible. The study of the problem of the mutual influence of the existential personality and J. Bataille’s philo-sophical thinking was carried out using a hermeneutic approach. The authors also identified a number of XXth century thinkers, such as M. Foucault, N. Land, J. Derridа, whose works were significantly influenced by Ba-taille’s thinking. The novelty of this study is the disclosure of evaluative judgments of the literary style of the French philosopher by modern authors and specialists in the philosophical work of J. Bataille.

تێرۆریزم وەک شیکردنەوەی جیهان لە هزری سیاسیی ژان بۆدریار دا

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) is one of the most famous contemporary French social theorists and culturologist, and contemporary social thought is inseparable from the works of this French thinker, who had a significant impact on the emergence of postmodern thought. . After the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), the phenomenon of terrorism became one of the main philosophical-political theses of this thinker. And hence a kind of terrorism emerged, which became a phenomenon and laid the foundation for the political thought of Jean Baudrillard to read the political situation of the world. In this research, we emphasize that the attack on the two towers in Manhattan, New York, was to destroy the global political and economic power that supervised all global economic and political movements. Therefore, the understandings of Jean Baudrillard's views are based on a philosophical-political foundation, where political and ideological aspects are discussed in such a way that opens the door to understanding the political worldview of this French thinker on the phenomenon of terrorism and Western globalization. Today many ask why there should be terrorists activities? What do the terrorists want from the West? Baudrillard's studies of terrorism, which are part of his political thought, may be a good path to answering these questions. Because in Baudrillard's political thought, terrorism is a phenomenon that is analyzed and through it he analyzes the world. Another aspect of Baudrillard's political thought on terrorism suggests that globalization itself is largely responsible for injustices and terrorist attacks. Therefore, this research shows the importance given to the phenomenon of terrorism after the events of September 11 in Baudrillard's political thought as an analysis of the world that has two main objectives. The first objective is to work on Baudrillard's analysis of this type of terrorism. The second is that another type of terrorism is being discussed, which Western globalization discourse hides at its heart.

The Specter of Sartre in Brazilian Concrete Poetry: Paideuma, Affect, Politics, and the Question of World Literature

ABSTRACT: This essay returns to Brazilian concrete poetry's origins and conception of the paideuma. It does so in order to unearth the cardinal, yet underestimated legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre for the Noigandres group's conception of poetic form, literary engagement, and world literature. Drawing on their theoretical writings as well as those of Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Oswald de Andrade, Ernest Fenollosa and Pound, I illustrate how the French thinker configured a matrical part of what the poets deemed the cultural-morphological process. Third, against the grain of the numerous critiques that have shortchanged the concretes' participatory experiments, the essay endeavors to throw light over the intervening power of their political poetics, concluding with an assessment of Haroldo de Campos's "poemalivro," Servidão de passagem (1962). By way of a return to antropofagia, the ideogram, and the Poundian paideuma, I show how Campos's breakthrough shatters "the Sartrean dilemma" and alters the theory and practice of committed literature, configuring itself as a generative, constellatory, and mediational praxis for counterconstructing the present (H. Campos, "Respuesta" 43).

"The Authenticity of Friendship" by Simone de Beauvoir: A Phenomenological Analysis

Relevance. The authors of the article make an attempt to fill a gap in the study of Simone de Beauvoir's work, associated with a weak study and analysis of the feminist theory of the French thinker. The study of the concept of friendship and trust as an implicit part of it seems necessary to deepen the understanding of its theory. In the feminist theory of Simone de Beauvoir, friendship is seen as an authentic phenomenon that allows you to penetrate into your own essence, as well as to realize its vulnerability. The purpose of the article is a phenomenological analysis of the concept of “authenticity of friendship” by Simone de Beauvoir as an epistemological study of trust in others. Objectives include the following: to determine the content component of the concepts of “friendship”, “authenticity of friendship” in the feminist theory of Simone de Beauvoir; to study the criteria for the concept of “authenticity of friendship” by Simone de Beauvoir at a philosophical level; to reveal the connection between the “authenticity” of friendship and trust in another. Methodology. The process of considering the concept of “authenticity of friendship”, introduced by Simone de Beauvoir, involves the use of the following approaches: hermeneutic (J. Habermas and others) to reveal the communication system in the structure of friendship between two individuals; phenomenological (E. Husserl, O. Fink, J.-P. Sartre, J. Habermas and others) for the interpretation of the theoretical material of Simone de Beauvoir. Results. In the process of research, we tried to explain the concept of “authenticity of friendship” in the feminist theory of the French thinker, as well as the influence of freedom and the place of trust in the concept under consideration from a phenomenological position. The authenticity of friendship involves certain conditions that call for an ethic of freedom and, directly, trust in the chosen position of the other. Conclusions. The attempt to consider the influence of external factors on the authenticity of friendship emphasizes the vulnerability within relationships between individuals and at the same time notes the potential that allows us to comprehend the value and significance of events on the social and psychological background of the subjects of friendship.

Violence, Patronage Politics and Farm Ownership in Zimbabwean Land Reform

Abstract This article explores the “violence–politics of patronage” nexus of land redistribution and ownership after land reform in Zimbabwe. Foregrounding an analysis of the violence on farms, which has been explored by many scholars in other dimensions, the article presents hard evidence of what happened on these farms post the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Deploying Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this article interrogates the sociocultural and political linkages of violence, patronage and farm ownership to illuminate the dark realities of land distribution after “jambanja” (farm invasions). The violent behaviour around resettled lands is a manifestation of a well-entrenched patronage system in which those whose political views diverge from the “hegemonic power” lose their land through unscrupulous acts. The violence of the jambanja era, initially targeted at white farmers within the context of a “nativist land revolution”, continues to manifest itself in communities, albeit differently. It is, as the French thinker, Jacques Mallet du Pan, said of the French Revolution, “the revolution devouring its own children”.

Философия исторических альтернатив: «Ухрония» Шарля Ренувье

The article analyzes the philosophy of the history of French neo-Kantianism school founder, the creator of the idea of Uchronia, Charles Renouvier. Attention is focused on the theoretical attitudes inherent in various stages of the creative development of Renouvier, and on their connection with «utopia in history». In his philosophy of history, Renouvier opposed the concept of predestination, the need for all events taking place. He insisted on the presence of freedom in history, on the possibility of moving along other paths of social reality, not fixed by tradition. In the alternative version of history depicted by the French thinker, Christianity triumphed not in the West, but in the East. The Crusades took place but were geographically directed in the opposite course. Progress in understanding of religion later returned Christianity to the West in a form cleared of fanaticism. Renouvier connected the future of human civilization with the republican social structure. He predicted the end of all kinds of wars. In a cautious, veiled form he criticized the Second Empire regime in France. Renouvier’s concept contained both strengths and weaknesses. It is fruitful in its call to focus in political life on the idea of the effectiveness of human free will, the idea of maximizing the moral content of the concept of the state. It is vulnerable in its intention to attach decisive importance to the intellectual factor in history.

The Art of Not Being Sexed Quite So Much: A Feminist Reading of Roland Barthes

This article offers an underexplored resistance strategy to gender norms, based on a feminist and queer reading of the work of French thinker Roland Barthes. Building on Barthes’s peculiar conception of what he calls “the Neutral” and revisiting his work in light of feminist and queer scholarship on sexual (in)difference, my main goal is to reshape our understanding of what it means to be gender neutral. In opposition to classical conceptions of neutrality associated with passivity, indifference, and blandness, I show that Barthes’s Neutral can be conceived as an active gesture, which alters common systems of meanings and power, including the gender binary. But this conception of the Neutral, I argue, neither refers to a call for an androgynous, queer, or nonbinary gender experience. It does not target gender embodiments but gender regulations—that is, the social enforcement of gender categories (by way, for instance, of administrative forms, single-sex bathrooms, or normalizing attitudes toward others). A gender-neutral arrangement, therefore, refers to an ethical, administrative, social, or spatial relation in which subjects are not assigned based on gender categories. This practice of gender suspension, I show, has two main transformative effects. First, it opens a space of freedom and livability for gender-nonconforming subjects. Second, it contributes to lessening the significance of sexual difference in social life and therefore alleviating its symbolic and normative weight for everyone.