I proceeded to say–since it was related to the Other–”this is the Other such as it is and not as such”

Now, granted, “such as it is” is a very literal rendering, but he was forcing me there to distinguish and point to the French. Usually, the “en tant qu’” is translated as…”as”

This is adequate most of the time…for example, “en tant qu’un” is As One…

Now, on the other hand, sometimes when it is used to connect two more or less independent clauses, I have had to translate “en tant que” as “insofar as,” which isn’t the only French phrase that can be rendered that way.

Now, having said that, I would stress that the use may be technical and maybe even overdone, but insofar as Laruelle is consistent with his claims about syntax taking some sort of primacy in the non-philosophical process, it makes sense that he would grow some attachments to these prepositions and connectors, etc.

After looking back over the definitions, in the definition of auto-position, he talks about “Philosophizing” being “concentrated in the inasmuch and the as [l'en tant que et le comme]”

This is a very strange statement…because he takes these two syntactic connectors which are typical of philosophy and turns them into nominatives… now, the comme could be, of course, like–since he’s talking about the Same, so recognition/representation, etc.–and the en tant que could be translated a number of ways, that one definitely not the prettiest in context. But I’ve noticed Brassier using it in some of his translations of Laruelle (yes, I was trying to get some pointers…), and I think that use gathers more of the sense of the equivalence of the same than some of the other renderings..

Also, going back to “en tant que vs. comme tel”, perhaps the comme tel–the as such–is reminiscent of autoposition, and thus has to be foreclosed for a more suitable rendering… such as it is instead referring to uni-lateral duality…that may be a stretch!

Technical question – is Laruelle doing something technical with en tant que that should be noted when translating this phrase. It seems to come up more than usual in his writing (maybe I’m wrong about that).