Etienne Balibar is a leading French neo-Marxist, professor emeritus at the prestigious University of Paris X and full professor at the University of California Irvine. Balibar was a student and follower of Louis Altiser, where he took a course on Marx’s Capital, and was one of the co-authors of How to Read Capital (1965, our translation 1975). In later works, Balibar speaks of the opposition of Marx’s historical materialism with the critical theory that he began to develop in Capital, especially when it comes to the category of “labor”, which took the form of ownership in capitalism. In recent years, the focus of his work has been Europe, European identity, borders, relations between nations and supranational creations, the relationship between human and civil rights, terror and radical forms of violence, etc.
