In recent years, theorists and activists championing the ‘commons’ have propounded a socio-centric idea of democratic resistance and renewal with a global address. This conception holds that the making of new social relations and practices here and now should be the main pillar of activity aiming at wide-ranging social reconstruction. The present paper complicates and qualifies this thesis. Socio-economic and technological breakthroughs can effectively serve as a catalyst for democratic change if they are adequately politicised, that is, deliberately oriented and (...) embedded in a broader counter-hegemonic project. As a first step, the paper reviews socio-centrism and brings out its limits. But the main part is a critical inquiry into alternative cooperative enterprises set up in recent years in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece: a cooperative bookstore and publishing house (‘Akyvernites Politeies’), a self-organised factory (‘Vio.Me’), and a consumer cooperative (‘Bios Coop’). The three ventures are construed as ‘alter-political’ economic initiatives to highlight their distinctive political self-construction. The case study corroborates the theoretical argument by indicating that socio-economic enterprises aspiring to radical democratisation are deliberately political from the outset. Second, such social innovation needs to be integrated into, and bolstered by, expansive counter-hegemonic politics and movements, as their actors themselves point out. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that the contemporary international refugee regime is grounded in a paradigm of ‘homesickness’, which puts the refugee in an inferior position of the supplicant, whose subjectivity is framed by the regime of fixed belonging. In order to address this situation, we need to challenge the ontological primacy of homesickness and embrace ‘homelessness’, which offers the possibility of rethinking the positions of both refugees and non-refugees in ethical terms. While the responsibility of the non-refugees lies in cultivating an (...) ethos of hospitality, the refugee can take hold of her subjectivity through the practice of care of the self. This paper first examines Nietzsche’s thought on homelessness and compares it with Foucault’s reading of the role of anakhōrēsis in the Hellenistic practice of care of the self. It then suggests how, by building on the project of universal hospitality, we can interpret the figure of the refugee through the prism of an ethic of freedom, anchored in a posit... (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, two parallel developments took place in global governance: fragmentation in social/environmental legislations across countries, and an increasing uniformity (or 'globalisation') of economic/financial legislations. In the liberal democratic context of global governance, both of these developments are embodied in partnerships for sustainable development. Studying these partnerships in the context of private environmental governance and tracing the origin of the concept in business and law, can reveal the implications of 'privatisation of governance' on sovereignty, authority, (...) and global governance. Focusing on partnerships in the United Nations context, this paper examines the private environmental governance institutions in their historical economic context. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid’s psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This (...) allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to Homo sacer, to use Giorgi Agamben’s term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated. (shrink)

This article challenges the negative image that, since the late 19th century, has been associated with crowds, and it does so by focusing on a number of bodilyanatomic aspects of crowd behavior. I first demonstrate that the work of one of the leading crowd psychologists, Gustave Le Bon, instigated a racist body politics. As a contrast to Le Bon's political program, I examine Walt Whitman's poetry and argue that the crowd may embody a democratic vision that emphasizes the social and (...) political import of sexuality and body -to- body contact. Further, I dispute classical crowd theory's idea of an antagonistic relationship between crowds and individuality. Following Elias Canetti, I claim instead that the bodily compression of crowds in fact liberates individuals and creates a democratic transformation. The analysis results in a rehabilitation of crowds and briefly suggests how a reinterpretation of crowd behavior may inform current debates in social theory. (shrink)

Recent sociological theories of globalization represent a second encounter between sociology and global issues. Their underlying concept of "global society" was constructed from an idea of abstract linkage, given content by existing theories about metropolitan society emphasizing modernity, postmodernity, or system dynamics. Antinomies within the globalization theory, such as the global/local opposition and chaotic argument about power, arise from the metropole-centered logic itself, not from conflicts of evidence. The rhetoric and performativity of globalization theory construct a relation with metropolitan audiences, (...) and sociological theories constitute themselves in multiple ways as Northern theory. If we want a genuinely global analysis of globalization we must reconstruct sociological theory as a markedly more inclusive dialogue. (shrink)

Because of the overly market-oriented way in which technological development is carried out, there is a great amount of hubris in regard to how scientific and technological achievements are used in society. There is a tendency to exaggerate the potential commercial benefits and willfully neglect the social, cultural, and environmental consequences of most, if not all innovations, especially in new fields such as nanotechnology. At the same time, there are very few opportunities, or sites, for ensuring that nanotechnology is used (...) justly and fairly, or for that matter, contribute to alleviating any of the wide variety of injustices that exist in the world. Most of the public authorities responsible for the development and application of science and technology are uninterested and unwilling to “assess” the implications of nanotechnology, and there are few, if any spaces in the broader culture for assessment to take place. Within the various “social movements” that are, in one way or another, concerned with issues of global justice, there is as yet little interest in nanotechnology. By examining the relations between nanotechnology and the emerging movement for global justice this article attempts to understand the enormous gap between the potential for science and technology to do good and the actual ways in science and technology get developed, and what, if anything, might be done to help close the gap in relation to nanotechnology, so that it might better be able to contribute to global justice. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

Associative Democracy has been developed as a specific response to statist socialism and neoliberal capitalism, drawing on older traditions such as associationalism, democratic socialism, and cooperative socialism. As the ‘real third way’, it is distinct from neoliberal privatization and deregulation in the Blair–Schröder varieties of social democracy and in the conservative Reagan–Thatcher–Cameron varieties. This article summarizes what seemed to make AD an attractive realist utopia: its combination of economic, societal and political democracy; its focus on democratic institutional pluralism in all (...) these regards; its considered moral/political minimalism; and its practical experimentalism. It recapitalizes some of the important economic, societal and political changes during the last decennia that seem to make AD plainly utopian again. It focuses on an outline of basic principles and institutions of socio-economic alternatives to capitalism because, if neoliberalism rules supreme, no viable alternatives can emerge and grow. Even if there is not one institutional design that fits all countries and contexts, we can show what the basic tenets of such alternatives are and how such a colourful democratic socialism relates to and can integrate other approaches such as ‘circular economy’, ‘foundational economy’ and ‘radical social innovation’. The hope is that AD’s broad institutional pluralism and its emphasis on practical experimentalism show new ways of thinking which are urgently needed for sustainable and socially fair economic development and for renewing representative democracy. (shrink)

:In this essay I will look at four recent films that have organ transplantations “at their heart”: 21 Grams, L'Intrus, Dirty Pretty Things and Heart of Jenin. Each film in its own way shows how Nancy's concept of the intruder balances in a different dynamics between biopolitical and biophilosophical concerns and proposes in various ways a changed concept of sacrifice, transforming sacrifice from religious offering into political or ethical resistance and allowing a-religious strivings to persist.

This essay aims at clarifying the concept of «multitude» through a comparison between Negri’s work and some of the critiques addressed to his thought. In the first part of the paper, I will consider the relationship between multitude and the individual, in order to confute those who think that the category of «multitude» is a liberal one. Then, I will analyze the connection between the multitude and class-working class, so as to highlight that in Negri’s theory there is not an (...) opposition between those categories. Finally, the last paragraph will examine the forms of the «multitudinarian class struggle» and the hiatus existing between will and potentiality of the multitude related to the issue, still not resolved, of its organization. That is, the long-standing issue of the relationship between theory and «practice» of the multitude. (shrink)

In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine a question of listening posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable” (Nancy 2007:1)? Drawing on the work of Nancy, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, I consider a claim that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. In response to Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism, Nancy complicates the problem of listening (...) by distinguishing between l’écoute and l’entente. L’écoute is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and l’entente is an understanding directed inward toward a subject. Nancy could deconstruct an undervalued position of l’écoute, making listening essential to speech. I argue, Nancy rather asks what kind of listening philosophy is capable of. To examine this question, I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (il s’écoute) as other. Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence. For Nancy, listening is a self’s relationship to itself, but without immediate self-presence. Moving in resonance, Chaplin makes the subject as other as he refers back to himself as other. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, makes his listening listened to. Chaplin refused to make his character speak because he believed speech would change the way in which his work would be listened to. In this way, Chaplin makes people laugh by making himself understood (se fait entendre) as he makes himself listened to (se fait écouter). In answer to Nancy’s question, I conclude philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both l’entente and l’écoute when it listens as Chaplin listens. (shrink)

Review Essay: `No, We Have Not Finished Reflecting On Communism':1 Beyond Post-Socialism: Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis and Slavoj Zižek , Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth ; Cornelius Castoriadis, The Rising Tide of Insignificancy ; Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable ; Filip Kovacevic, Liberating Oedipus? Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory ; Claude Lefort, Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy.

Daniel Bensaïd was a Marxist philosopher and author of an extensive body of works about political strategy. His writings combine a diversity of singular influences, such as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara on the one hand, and Benjamin, Péguy and Blanqui on the other. In his work, religious heresies, Marranos, moles and emblematic figures of the resistance to oppression such as Joan of Arc meet with the classic figures of Marxism. The non-linear concept of time and messianic reason support (...) a strategic reading of history and an understanding of political commitment, following Goldmann’s interpretation of Pascal’s Wager as a wager of uncertain outcome. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children arose in the 1970s in the US as an educational programme. This programme, initiated by Matthew Lipman, was devoted to exploring the relationship between the notions ‘philosophy’ and ‘childhood’, with the implicit practical goal of establishing philosophy as a full-fledged ‘content area’ in public schools. Over 40 years, the programme has spread worldwide, and the theory and practice of doing philosophy for or with children and young people appears to be of growing interest in the field of (...) education and, by implication, in society as a whole. This article focuses on this growing interest by offering a survey of the main arguments and ideas that have given shape to the idea of philosophy for children in recent decades. This aim is twofold: first, to make more familiar an actual educational practice that is not at all well known in the field of academic philosophy itself; and second, to invite a re-thinking of the relationship between philosophy and the child ‘after Lipman’. (shrink)

"Every power is transcendent; the Transcendent is power; every attempt to escape power is a way to seize power; every movement, which is directed to the prevention or limitation of power, is a seizure of power. It makes no sense and is very dangerous to oppose a political myth" (Schmitt, 1991, p. 180). Behind these cryptic words, dated July 19, 1948, lies the ‘mystery’ of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. A complex problematic that has sealed the intellectual and political fate of (...) the German jurist, and around which he has laboured for more than half a century. (shrink)

This article explores the usefulness of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel's work for film-philosophy, as the field increasingly engages with a world of cinemas. The piece concludes with an analysis of two films with an ecological focus, Trolljegeren/Troll Hunter (2010) and The Hunter (2011). They are indicative of a much broader emerging trend in ecocinema that explores the interaction between humanity and the environment in relation to world history, and which does so by staging encounters between people and those ‘nonhuman’ (...) aspects of the Earth excluded by coloniality/modernity (e.g. animals, animal-spirits, mythological creatures, shaman, the very Earth itself). The interdisciplinary concerns of this work place it at the intersection of the latest research into a world of cinemas (in particular the various moves to understand films beyond the national paradigm now increasingly labelled the ‘transnational turn’; alongside growing concerns with how cinema helps us engage with ecology); and the need to broaden our philosophical grasp of the world. This latter point requires engagement with thinkers from beyond the Eurocentric canon of Western thought that currently dominates philosophy, and equally shapes film-philosophy. Dussel's philosophy is shown to provide a perspective capable of illuminating the intertwined nature of human and planetary history evident in these films, in a manner that is extremely pertinent to our global situation. Thus it is shown to be more useful than approaches to similar groupings of films which draw on, for example, speculative realism, when it comes to providing a cine-ethics appropriate to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This article examines recent ageing policies and the way they are framed. Here it identifies underlying but sometimes contradictory narratives of growth and decline. It concludes that the overall aim of such policies is to reconstitute elderly subjectivities, conduct and everyday experience in light of neoliberal ambitions for sustained economic growth and geopolitical anxieties about regional decline nurtured by an unprecedented demographic process of population ageing. As a consequence, the language of inclusion is judged to be of ambiguous value for (...) elderly people. Although the article is critical of the ways older people are perceived as a problem and of the solutions – such as pension reform, biopolitical-cum-economic behaviour modification and pronatalism – that are being pursued, in response it also finds some potential in current thinking for a more radical reappraisal of the elderly lifestyle and of the life cycle as a whole in relation to work regimes. It speculates that the generation of post-war baby boomers now approaching retirement just might rediscover resources in its counter-cultural memory to imagine a more emancipatory elder life congruent with a more sustainable environment. (shrink)

At stake for this essay is the distinction between politics and war and the extent to which politics can survive war. Gender analysis reveals how high these stakes are by revealing the complexity of militarism. It also reveals the impossibility of gender identity as foundation for a more robust politics with respect to war. Instead, a non-ideal normative differentiation among kinds of violence is affirmed as that which politically cannot not be wanted.

Two features characterize new and emerging technosciences. The first one is the production of peculiar ontologies. The human agent is confronted with a biophysical world the contingent, indeterminate character of which does not hamper but expands the scope of purposeful action. Uncertainty is increasingly regarded as a resource for an expanding will rather than a drawback for a disoriented agent. The second feature is that ethics is increasingly considered as the core regulatory means of this messy, ever-changing world. The ambivalences (...) of the ethical government of contingent assemblages are discussed by focusing on the governmentality perspective. The latter helps to make sense of the regulatory alliance between ethics and technoscience. A reflection on Foucault’s account of ethics shows that the emancipatory role of the latter is today hampered by its embroilment with the instrumental reason it aims to govern, nor can older models of ethical commitment find any straightforward application. Mapping the issue in terms of mutual constitution of power, potentiality and possibility gives salience to a particular question: what we are able not to do. (shrink)

In post-Fordist economies, the nature of laboring activities can no longer be subsumed under a Taylorized model of labor, and the service sector now constitutes a larger share of the market. For Maurizio Lazzarato, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and other theorists in the post-Marxist tradition, labor has changed from a commodity-producing activity to one that does not produce a material object. For these authors, this new type of labor is immaterial labor and entails communicative acts as well as added worker (...) agency. This paper reflects on this new paradigm of labor by examining the paid practices of care defined as the activities performed by individuals who have a mandate to help another adult accomplish the tasks of self-care. Because care workers take care of other bodies, care labor exemplifies an embodied practice. I make use of the corporeality of care to put forward the notion of thin and thick embodiment in order to examine critically the meaning of immaterial labor and to support my claim that immaterial labor, as conceptualized by Hardt and Negri, erases both the materiality and relationality of care labor. Furthermore, typifying care labor as immaterial only serves to maintain its marginalized status.Care Assistant. Required to work within a private residential center to assist nursing staff. Experience desirable, qualifications an advantage, but caring and understanding more important than either. Must have good English to understand instructions and be co-operative to work in a friendly team environment (Toynbee 2007, 220). (shrink)

In the context of the increasingly transnational organization of society, culture, and communication, this article develops a conceptualization of the global common as a basic condition of interrelation and shared experience, and describes contemporary political efforts to fully democratize this condition. The article demonstrates the implications for curriculum and teaching of this project, describing in particular the importance of fundamentally challenging the interpellation of students as subjects of the nation, and the necessity for new and radically collaborative forms of political (...) and pedagogical authority that can more powerfully realize the imaginative potential of educators and students alike as global democratic actors. In this effort, familiar progressive educational ideas (e.g. the importance of the continuity of the curriculum, and the meaning and purpose of experimentalism) are interrogated and rearticulated. The article concludes with a discussion of the unique ways in which education can contribute to constructing a democratic society in the global era, and how the central aspects of such a pedagogy in common can also suggest essential principles for the organization of social movements in this context. (shrink)

In this paper, the author maps three radically different visions of Marxism in educational philosophy. Each ‘register’ contains insights but also contradictions that cannot easily be resolved through internal modifications of the theory or through theoretical synthesis with other registers. The radical function of Marxist pedagogy is to create a constellation of Marxisms through which the outline of history can emerge. As such, the author ends with a new emphasis in Marxist education on the ‘exacting imagination’ of the teacher which (...) creates a constellational image of concepts and theories all of which hang in a precarious and historically specific configuration. (shrink)

Current critical pedagogical scholarship has theorized the epistemological and social intersection between globalization and educational technology according to two distinct positions. For some, this intersection offers new liberatory knowledges and opportunities that can subvert social homogenization and economic disparity. For others, this relationship is just another phase of neoimperialism that should be politically and ideologically resisted. In contrast, we argue that the intersection between globalization and educational technologies is rather a manifestation of larger economic and logical forces, and that resistance (...) to such circumstances can neither be purely ideological or social. Instead, we contend that such a theoretical and pedagogical foreclosure dialectically actualizes conditions for real change—particularly when it complicates educational research technologies and their impact on epistemological multiplicity. (shrink)

This article critically examines the transition from Marx to Spinoza within Antonio Negri’s postoperaist thought and explores a potential alternative rooted in Mario Tronti’s concept of the ‘autonomy of the political’. In Negri’s postoperaismo, the embrace of Spinoza reevaluates Marx’s critique of political economy through an optimistic lens, suggesting a tendency beyond capitalism. However, Negri’s embrace of a Spinozian plane of immanence entails a problematic affirmation of what exists. The article argues that Negri’s worldview, despite its beginnings, ends up resembling (...) deterministic historical materialism. While critical theory exposes flaws in Negri’s theory, it falls short in providing a practical alternative. Returning to Negri’s interpretation of Spinoza’s Political Treatise uncovers earlier arguments, rooted in paradoxes inherent to practical politics. However, reliance on the concept of the multitude highlights deeper issues in Negri’s approach. Rather than adhering to postoperaismo or critical theory, the article suggests an alternative in Tronti’s journey from operaismo, particularly in the concept of the ‘autonomy of the political’. Notwithstanding critiques, this attempted liberation from Marxist determinism allows for a clearer confrontation with politics. The article concludes that Hardt and Negri’s recent critical engagement with this concept advances their arguments but does not entirely overcome inherent limitations in their approach. (shrink)

The review assesses first and foremost the capability of Mezzadra and Neilson’s book to radically tackle some urgent issues concerning both capital’s regulation of migratory movements and the subjective autonomy these latter incessantly express. The main original contribution of the text is a conception of the border as an epistemic device through which to address and act upon a variety of social processes, from migration policies to labour transformations, from capital’s restructuring to governmental regulations. Subsequently, two crucial topics are critically (...) discussed: 1) the methodological link between epistemology and conflictual subjectivity ; 2) the compelling – but problematic from a practical perspective – way in which the issue of political organisation is situated against the current phase of capitalist development by means of concepts such as translation and the common. (shrink)

I argue that Giorgio Agamben employs two, contradictory theories of the state in his works. Earlier works, such as "The Coming Community" and "Means without End", suggest that the state today functions as an aspect of the society of the spectacle where spectacle is the logical extension of the commodity form under late capitalism. This part of Agamben's work attributes a determined character to the state and a determining power to the economic forces of capitalism that conditions particular forms of (...) the state. Later work, such as "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" and " State of Exception", are preoccupied with the logic of juridical sovereignty and the increased frequency of states of emergency. This part of Agamben's work attributes a determining strength to the state under current conditions. Although his earlier work provides a more coherent narrative of how it is possible to move from contemporary society to ideal community, it does not provide the theory of political action necessary to overcome the power of the state he describes when he theorizes the state in "Homo Sacer" and " State of Exception". None of the three possibilities of political action present in his later works provides passage beyond state sovereignty without violating his philosophical commitments. (shrink)

‘The art of living with ICTs ’ today not only means finding new ways to cope, interact and create new lifestyles on the basis of the new digital technologies individually, as ‘consumer-citizens’. It also means inventing new modes of living, producing and, not in the least place, struggling collectively, as workers and producers. As the so-called digital revolution unfolds in the context of a neoliberal cognitive and consumerist capitalism, its ‘innovations’ are predominantly employed to modulate and control both production processes (...) and consumer behavior in view of the overall goal of extracting surplus value. Today, the digital networks overwhelmingly destroy social autonomy, instead engendering increasing social heteronomy and proletarianization. Yet it is these very networks themselves, as technical pharmaka in the sense of French ‘technophilosopher’ Bernard Stiegler, that can be employed as no other to struggle against this tendency. This paper briefly explores this possibility by reflecting upon current diagnoses of our ‘technological situation’ by some exemplary post-operaist Marxists from a Stieglerian, pharmacological perspective. (shrink)

In order to properly understand the period which begins at the end of the '60s last century, this must not be described anymore using the traditional categories of culture and politics. Facing events like those in May '68 in France, the Italian revolution in 1979, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the attack against the Twin Towers from New York in September 2001, we are all tempted to say “impossible, yet real”. These events had immense consequences upon the (...) individual and collective life, provoking radical upturns of traditional values and of the way people relate to these values. Thus, a new form of historicity was born, having as characteristics the perception of some phenomena both as miracles and traumas, because they seem impossible to explain rationally. In this text both the axiological mutations that occurred in the history of the last decades and the meanings of these mutations are presented in a personal way. (shrink)

In Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus volumes, revolution, social transformation, and the possibility of a new future are all linked to desire: minimally, to the freeing of desire from the false refuges of Oedipalization and its constructs of molar sexuality. Everywhere, they seek to uncover the potential of desire, sexuality, and love, asking us to consider that what we take to be the most personal is impersonal, how the most intimate is the collective and social. Thus, it calls us to rethink (...) our material and affective relations and reconceptualize the sphere of intimacy itself. I develop the concepts of delirium and revolutionary love, suggesting that we interpret these as perpetual processes of transformation and conjugation, initiating relations of intimacy and advocate for more nuanced, complex forms of subjectivity and to become more sensitive to the varying relational complexes within a given space. Revolutionary love gains its newness from both the extension of Deleuzian desire and from its return to several heritages of feminisms which have themselves been marginalized in the forward sweep of new materialist and posthumanist discussions. The point is to sharpen our focus on the conditions that produce certain social bodies, certain kinds of consciousness, and certain molar identities—not to deny the realities of the socius or reject subjectivity, but to move from a majoritarian to a minoritarian politics that widens our purview of what forces and desires exist within these spaces so that we may transform and build less fascistic, more attuned relational complexes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article addresses the fundamental question of what is ethical leadership by rearticulating relations between leaders and followers in terms of “affective leadership.” The article develops a Spinozian conception of ethics which is underpinned by a deep suspicion of ethical systems that hold obedience as a primary virtue. We argue that the existing research into ethical leadership tends to underplay the ethical capacities of followers by presuming that they are in need of direction or care by morally superior leaders. In (...) contrast, affective leadership advocates a profoundly political version of ethics, which involves people in the pursuit of joyful encounters that augment our capacity to affect and be affected by others. Instead of being led by people in leadership positions, we are led by active affections that enhance our capacity for moral action. (shrink)

This paper draws upon research on a complementary currency to explore the ethical dimensions of that community economic development work. In doing so, the paper argues that the figure of the stranger is increasingly important to understand in theorizing community, especially given increased attention to the discourse of the stranger in theories of ethics and identity in a globalizing world. As such, the paper lays out three modes of the strange—economic, geographic and ethical—which emerge out of this complementary currency project. (...) In identifying these three modes of being strange, the paper validates ways of articulating strangers and strangeness without essentializing the strange, ignoring the power relations that produce strangers, or pushing aside the strange in favor of blas communion. (shrink)

While much has been written on Latour’s politics and use of militaristic language, by attending to some of Latour’s lesser known or read writings, his political location within the traditional Left-Right spectrum becomes more discernable, as does the reason for his frequent resort to the language of war. This article does not seek to defend Latour’s politics or rhetoric, but to provide a corrective by incorporating, rather than taking distance from, his use of militaristic language. Doing so reveals an understanding (...) of Latour’s project as having always been—if not traditionally Left—charting a different Leftist approach. (shrink)

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neighbors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values these stakeholders pursue and as such is the real recognition of one’s stakeholders as stakeholders and of oneself as a stakeholder of one’s stakeholders. This (...) moral concept of stakeholder love offers promising contributions to stakeholder theory, leadership theories, and ethical theories in general and business ethics theories in particular. (shrink)

This paper argues that historical research on late medieval and early modern craft guilds fails to escape teleological and anachronistic views, including when they are addressed as commons or ‘institutions for collective action’. These present-day conceptual lenses do not only create idealized views on guilds, but also of the contexts in which they operated, especially the state and the market. This is especially the case with neo-institutional views on the commons, which fall back on a transhistorical rational actor, who can (...) choose between three options for the allocation of resources and surpluses, namely the state, the market and the common. The paper shows that guilds were fundamentally entangled with both the state and the market and that their ethic implied a less utilitarian and instrumental attitude towards natural resources. The consequence of this is that the history of the guilds offers different lessons to present-day commoners than those implied by present-day research. With an eye at launching a reflection on that, I argue in favour of a cosmopolitical perspective, which invites to take fundamentally different worldviews seriously. This includes questioning our own conceptual and analytical abstractions like the state, the market and the individual, up to and including the very distinction between nature and society or nature and politics, which are at the very basis of modern science itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article proposes rhetorical hegemony as a new materialist intervention into the production of alternative political economic futures. It problematizes contemporary theories of hegemony that assert affect as beyond rhetorical engagement, suggesting that these accounts fail to produce viable political economic alternatives because they use, but do not reinvent, the prevailing affective relations. Turning to and extending Foucault's middle and late work to forge a different model, the article discusses rhetorical hegemony as the entangled relationships between materiality and power. (...) In conversation with other contemporary theories, it argues for a practice of rhetorical hegemony that materially recapacitates energetic potential and, consequently, the milieu. The article ends by outlining the rhetorical, political, and intellectual implications of this shift. (shrink)

New protest movements have recently occasioned debates about the party form on the left. Jodi Dean contributes to these debates through her theorisation of the party as an organisation for making the egalitarian impulses of the crowd durable. In this endeavour, Dean acknowledges anxiety about the party form on the left, yet she dilutes its complexity through recourse to generalities and abstractions. This article seeks to reclaim the complexity of anxiety about the party form on the left through the reflections (...) of three major thinkers in radical political theory: Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault and Alain Badiou. These thinkers suggest that anxiety about the party can spring from highly variegated sources and lend itself to equally variegated positions. These sources and positions capture the complexity of sources of anxiety about the party on the left. They also enable us to take stock of the forms of the betrayal of radical politics by the party. (shrink)

The word Anthropocene, referring to a new era of humanity’s uncontrolled exercise of power over the Earth as a geophysical unit, could be translated using a cognitive metaphor as “the Age of Loss”. We have gained such power that we are unable to adjust or even fully track its manifestations. The relation between loss and power is continuous in all the basic areas of materialization of socio-political concepts: in politics, in economics, in law and the judiciary, in legislation, environmental protection, (...) etc. The philosophy of loss and power is inseparable from economic concerns. The entirety of Western civilization is built on the economic calculus of profit and loss, whose results are directly transformed into decisions of power made by the administrative, political, ownership and power-broking elites. The environmental and climate crisis is therefore also a crisis of privilege of one group over others. The question for politics is which political means can one use to achieve a state of uncorrupted voluntary depriviligization. This level of prosperity will itself be the subject of environmental self-limitation, being presented as “loss”. It will be posed as a political problem with the intention of depoliticizing the subject and inequality of civilizations; precisely in accordance with the posed political problem of democracy, which has already uncovered the basic connection: liberalism won’t make a poor country rich. (shrink)

This paper analyses the contagious nature of the paradox as the functioning principle of Deleuze and Guattari’s writing machines, aiming to emphasize the semiotic and socio-political contributions of any linguistic enterprise structurally based in paradoxes. Beckett’s texts are discussed here, as they are in Deleuze and Guattari’s works, as component abstract machines apt to couple themselves to other abstract machines in order to generate increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching liberatory procedures. As the paper shows, paradox-based discourses of the highest degree of (...) sophistication can bypass traditional models of “understanding,” replacing traditional requirements of textual interpretation with always-fruitful and immediate affective models of contact and “work” with the text. Consequently, repeated exposure to paradox-based discourses is apt to generate sophisticated affects, delineating powerful procedures to obstruct repression mechanisms and articulating a model of empowerment based on contagion rather than hierarchical distribution. (shrink)

This article argues that new (and sometimes invisible) forms of civic protest are finding a voice in the age of the Internet. It poses the questions whether these voices of protest are (a) part of a long, militant and sometimes violent tradition of street politics based on class struggle or (b) new, peaceful and creative political (and anti-political) platforms (a metaphysical revolt) offering critical and innovative insights into the possibilities of democratic renewal - as part of a process of deepening (...) democracy into more ethical and participatory forms.En este artículo se argumenta que las nuevas (y a veces invisibles) formas de protesta cívica están encontrando voz en la era de internet. Se plantea la cuestión de si estas voces de protesta son (a) parte de una larga, militante y, en ocasiones, violenta tradición de política de la calle basada en la lucha de clases o bien (b) nuevas, pacíficas y creativas plataformas (una revuelta metafísica) políticas (y antipolítica), que ofrece una perspectiva innovadora y crítica respecto a las posibilidades de renovación democrática, como parte de un proceso de profundización de la democracia en formas más éticas y participativas. (shrink)

This paper considers the theoretical circumstances that urged Michel Foucault to analyse modern societies in terms of biopower. Georges Canguilhem’s account of the relations between science and the living forms an essential starting point for Foucault’s own later explorations, though the challenges posed by the molecular revolution in biology and François Jacob’s history of it allowed Foucault to extend and transform Canguilhem’s philosophy of error. Using archival research into his 1955–1956 course on “Science and Error,” I show that, for Canguilhem, (...) it is inauthentic to treat a living being as an error, even if living things are capable of making errors in the domain of knowledge. The emergent molecular biology in the 1960s posed a grave challenge, however, since it suggested that individuals could indeed be errors of genetic reproduction. The paper discusses how Canguilhem and Foucault each responded to this by examining, among other texts, their respective reviews of Jacob’s The Logic of the Living. For Canguilhem this was an opportunity to reaffirm the creativity of life in the living individual, which is not a thing to be evaluated, but the source of values. For Foucault, drawing on Jacob’s work, this was the opportunity to develop a transformed account of valuation by posing biopower as the DNA of society. Despite their disagreements, the paper examines these three authors as different iterations of a historical epistemology attuned to errancy, error, and experimentation. (shrink)

This paper suggests that lessons from the field of environmental ethics and sociological perspectives on knowledge are important tools for rethinking what type of ethical analysis is needed for building up further the field of development ethics and, more generally, for addressing some of the most fundamental ethical problems related to global poverty and development. The paper argues for a methodologically pragmatist approach to development ethics that focuses on the interplay between facts, values, concepts and practices. It views development ethics (...) as a hybrid between a public moral?political philosophy and a public conception of social science. Ethical analyses of poverty and development must lead to fundamental changes in the ways knowledge is produced and justified and must challenge the dominance of global institutions and orthodox economics as the single sources of expert knowledge for development. Two of the main tasks of ethical analysis is to provide tools for the formulation of alternative knowledge for development centred on the equal moral worth of all human beings, and to influence global policy making as well as multilateral institutions' goals and policies. The last section of the paper argues that Amartya Sen's version of the Capability Approach is already methodologically pragmatist and points to some convergence between Sen's work and John Dewey's. Further sociological and methodologically pragmatist analysis of the approach is needed to assess the ways in which it is influencing debates on human development and leading to policy changes, and the possible distortions it suffers when adopted by multilateral agencies and policy makers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the international conference on Ethics and Development at Michigan State University, East Landing (USA) 8?15 April 2005. The section on methodological pragmatism draws from an unpublished paper written with Andrew Light called ?A Pragmatist Methodology for Development Ethics,? presented at the American Philosophical Association (APA) meeting in New York, December 1999. I have updated, transformed and used some parts and insights developed with Light in a way he may not recognize. (shrink)