Resistance is always resistance to hegemony or homogenization, to what Derrida called a "homohegemony." This concept always marks a resistance to figures of domination - particularly in the field of culture. It is against the hegemonic pretensions of Hegelian - and therefore universal - reason, understood as absolute identity to itself, that contemporary philosophy resists. Renouncing the phantasm of an original purity, contemporary philosophy endeavors, in effect, to think an identity that not merely welcomes an alterity but also allows itself to be altered by it. Be it with respect to jazz or language, interpretation (Adorno and Patrick Williams) or translation (Walter Benjamin), or even contemporary art and its relation to the Museum (Breton, Picasso, Malraux), it is always in resistance that is constructed true identity - which is a refusal of self-closure.
resistance; identity; alterity; language; culture; art