Françoise Gollain, reader of André Gorz

Abstract

This review undertakes a summary and a critical assessment of the work André Gorz: une philosophie de l’émancipation, authored by the French sociologist Françoise Gollain. It is an intellectual biography of Gorz (1923-2007) that presents chronologically and with great detail the trajectory of his thought throughout six decades of engagement with critical philosophy. Analyzing all of Gorz’s publications, as well as unpublished manuscripts and his correspondence, Gollain gives an account of the multiple inflections of gorzian theory. Thus, a decisive contribution is made to overcome the monolithic academic reception of André Gorz: the secondary literature tends to focus (almost) exclusively in the late writings that followed the publication of Farewell to the working class (1980). One of the most important aspects of Gollain’s (re)interpretation is the thesis that the sartrean existentialist philosophy constitutes the foundation that cuts across Gorz’s bibliographical output in its entirety. In Gorz, the struggle of the subject against alienation in the name of freedom is omnipresent. Despite a couple of minor flaws, André Gorz: une philosophie de l’émancipation represents one of the best intellectual biographies of this thinker.