Studies in Social and Political Thought Page 3 Rethinking the Dialectic: Hegel with Derrida, Lacan with Foucault, and the Question of Dialectical Ethics Tom Eyers Introductory Remarks

How might we begin a genealogy of ‘negativity ’ as a concept in metaphysical philosophy? What, furthermore, might the aim of such a project be? It is worth, as a preliminary gesture, to define what is not meant by negativity in this context, to remove any ambiguity for the potential of the ‘negative ’ to be construed as a value-laden category. Negativity, in this sense, exists to explain a form of ontological constitution: it is a way of thinking that privileges the radical role of the Other, or that which is alterior, to explain the formation of that which is already known, but which will inevitably change with the expression of a new negation. Second, it is worth laying out the questions that we will ask of these divergent philosophers and their engagement with dialectical thinking; what, precisely, is the ethical content of the ‘negative ’ in their philosophy, presuming we exclude a commonsensical definition of the negative as simply opposed to the positive, and, furthermore, can we trace a coming together, a potentially traumatic but nonetheless foundational space of symbiosis, between the ontological and ethical forms that a notion of philosophical negativity may take? To what end might a reinvigoration of dialectical reasoning, an investment of instability in the linear, smooth logic of the dialectical process, be implicated in a renewal of progressive politics as embodied in the rethinking of the logic of political philosophy of Ernest