Rule is commonly conceptualized with reference to the compliance it invokes. In this article, we propose a conception of rule via the practice of resistance instead. In contrast to liberal approaches, we stress the possibility of illegitimate rule, and, as opposed to critical approaches, the possibility of legitimate authority. In the international realm, forms of rule and the changes they undergo can thus be reconstructed in terms of the resistance they provoke. To this end, we distinguish between two types of (...) resistance—opposition and dissidence—in order to demonstrate how resistance and rule imply each other. We draw on two case studies of resistance in and to international institutions to illustrate the relationship between rule and resistance and close with a discussion of the normative implications of such a conceptualization. (shrink)

Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler, became one of the highest grossing films of all time. It also received a lot of critical attention for its direct engagement with black experience and black politics. It speaks to the legacy of slavery and the exploitation of African-Americans and the ongoing post-colonial struggle represented most starkly by the Black Lives Matter Movement. However, the film was also criticised for supposedly leaving that radical black politics behind, even demonising it in its lead antagonist, (...) Killmonger, and instead proposing a liberal, reformist agenda very much in keeping with current forms of sovereign power, bolstered under the current neoliberal regime by the charity of billionaires. To some extent this is understandable, but it is also a very limited reading of what happens in the film and does a disservice to the radical dissent that the character of Killmonger represents. To address this, the paper uses the concept of sovereignty and asks how superheroes can help us unpack this concept. It argues that rather than seeing superheroes as vigilantes, thinking of them as sovereigns helps us unpack the complex knot of law, authority and violence that is key to understanding it. In particular it draws on Agamben’s discussion of sovereignty and the politics of the exception, and how this might be relevant to Fanon’s work on counter-colonial violence to show how the film remains true to radical protest throughout. On the way it also addresses the important cultural politics of the original comic. (shrink)

Opposition to utopianism on ontological and political grounds has seemingly relegated it to a potentially dangerous form of antiquated idealism. This conclusion is based on a restrictive view of utopia as excessively ordered panoptic discursive constructions. This overlooks the fact that, from its inception, movement has been central to the utopian tradition. The power of utopianism indeed resides in its ability to instantiate the tension between movement and place that has marked social transformations in the modern era. This tension continues (...) in contemporary discussions of movement-based social processes, particularly international migration and related identity formations, such as open borders transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Understood as such, utopia remains an ongoing and powerful, albeit problematic instrument of social and political imagination. (shrink)

Dans la lecture des soulèvements populaires en Amérique latine, deux interprétations sont comparées point par point : celle d’une part de Multitude de Hardt & Negri ainsi que de GlobAL : Luttes et biopouvoir à l’heure de la mondialisation. Le cas exemplaire de l’Amérique latine de Negri & Cocco et celle d’autre part de L’interpellation plébéienne en Amérique latine du GRIPAL (Groupe de recherche sur les imaginaires politiques en Amérique latine). Ces deux interprétations sont irréductibles, mais non incompatibles.

This article outlines a theory of subjectivity and social consciousness that complements prevalent debates in cultural studies about marginality and subjectivity. The article suggests that we can interpret the constitution of subjectivity sociologically as between the nation-state and global market integration. More broadly, we can think about social processes in global market capitalism through returning to class formation. The article draws upon research conducted in Morocco from 1995-97 and again in 2000-02 to illustrate social transformation in market reform.

In this paper I explore the relationship between the production and the value of Big Data. In particular I examine the concept of social media ‘prosumption’—which has predominantly been theorized from a Marxist, political economic perspective—to consider what other forms of value Big Data have, imbricated with their often speculative economic value. I take the example of social media firms in their early stages of operation to suggest that, since these firms do not necessarily generate revenue, data collected through user (...) contributions do not always realize economic value, at least in a Marxist sense, and that, in addition to their speculative value, these data have value beyond an economic valence. Instead I argue that in addition to their function as systems for accumulation, social media and their associated data have an affective value, related closely to their economic value, and demonstrate the efficacy of social media as systems designed for the appropriation and circulation of user attention. (shrink)

Effective content moderation by social platforms is both important and difficult; numerous issues arise from the volume of information, the culturally sensitive and contextual nature of that information, and the nuances of human communication. Attempting to scale moderation, social platforms are increasingly adopting automated approaches to suppressing communications that they deem undesirable. However, this brings its own concerns. This paper examines the structural effects of algorithmic censorship by social platforms to assist in developing a fuller understanding of the risks of (...) such approaches to content moderation. This analysis shows that algorithmic censorship is distinctive for two reasons: in potentially bringing all communications carried out on social platforms within reach and in potentially allowing those platforms to take a more active, interventionist approach to moderating those communications. Consequently, algorithmic censorship could allow social platforms to exercise an unprecedented degree of control over both public and private communications. Moreover, commercial priorities would be inserted further into the everyday communications of billions of people. Due to the dominance of the web by a few social platforms, this may be difficult or impractical to escape for many people, although opportunities for resistance do exist. (shrink)

The response of academic intellectuals and political elites to populism is very often characterized by a mixture between outright disgust and helpless perplexity. This cannot come as a surprise, since the one thing that left and right populism have in common is that they consider the elites their enemy. The essay argues that the choice the elites have is either to openly voice their contempt for the uneducated masses, or to help educate them. However, as the contributions of Ernesto Laclau (...) and Jacques Rancière on the topic show, this is more easily said than done. Moreover, to simply discard right-wing populism on the basis of its racist tendencies often simply serves to deflect the focus away from the legitimate grievances of those who follow – or ‘fall for’ – populist parties. (shrink)

In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. Not all neoliberalized subjects, however, are encouraged to maximize their utility through mere calculation. This article argues that Foucault’s description of neoliberal subjectivity obscures a non-calculative, more audacious side to neoliberal subjectivity. Precarious workers in the creative industries, for example, are encouraged not merely to rationally manage their (...) human capital, but also to take a leap of faith to acquire unpredictable successes. It is this latter risk-loving, extra-calculative side to neoliberal subjectivity that economists usually designate as ‘entrepreneurial’. By confronting Foucault with the theories of entrepreneurship of the Austrian School of Economics, Frank Knight, and Joseph Schumpeter, the Foucauldian analytical framework is enriched. Neoliberal subjectivation is not the monolithic promotion of utility-maximizing agents, but the generation of a multiplicity of modes for entrepreneurs to relate to oneself and the market. (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

The paper traces the continuities between empires and successor nation-states and examines how imperial prerogatives continue to operate in the global system. The author also looks at the failure of postcolonial states to deliver on their promises after achieving national sovereignty. In all this, the focus is on conceptualizing the category of ‘the people’, which is supposedly the source of legitimate power in the contemporary world. In particular the paper zooms in on the historical continuity that characterized traditional empires and (...) is just as present in the context of contemporary world powers – the right to invoke imperial prerogatives to declare colonial exceptions. (shrink)

Modern International Relations theory has consistently underestimated the depth of the problem of anarchy in world politics. Contemporary theories of globalisation bring this into bold relief. From this perspective, the complexity of transboundary networks and hierarchies, economic sectors, ethnic and religious ties, civil and cross-border wars, and internally disaggregated and transnationally connected state actors, leads to a complex and multidimensional restructuring of the global, the local and the uneven connections in between. We ought to abandon the idea of ‘high’ and (...) ‘low’ politics, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ once and for all. This does not remove the problem of anarchy but rather deepens it, involving multidimensional tensions and contradictions variously described as ‘functional differentiation’, ‘multiscalarity’, ‘fragmegration’, disparate ‘landscapes’, the ‘new security dilemma’ and ‘neomedievalism’. Approaching anarchy from the perspective of plural competing claims to authority and power forces... (shrink)

The paper presents my first findings and reflections on how ordinary people may opportunistically and unpredictably respond to Internet censorship and tracking. I try to capture this process with the concept of ‘hacking multitude'. Working on a case study of the Turkish government's block of the social media platform Twitter, I argue that during systemic data choke-points, a multitude of users might acquire a certain degree of reflexivity over ubiquitous software of advanced techno-capitalism. Resisting naïve parallels between urban streets and (...) virtual global streets, the article draws on Fuller's ‘media ecologies' to make sense of complex and dynamic interactions between processes and materialities, strategies of communication and mundane practices. Such a dense space is mostly invisible to network and traffic analysis, although it comes alive under the magnifying lens of digital ethnography. As the Turkish government tried to stop protesters on both the urban and the Twitter spheres, alternative material configurations and new hybrid formations and practices emerged. I try to bring this process alive following the traces – that is, a combination of digital data and materialities – of a social space between the protest for Twitter access, the ‘digital coup' and the interactions that this situation determined. In the final section, I briefly explore two research trajectories which can further develop my initial formulation of a ‘hacking multitude'. I argue that a generalisation of hacking/multitude is problematic for the political, cultural or economic processes more directly associated with Big Data. (shrink)

My paper argues that Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology makes an important contribution to two central concerns of critical theory: the empirical analysis of the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist societies and the reflexive clarification of the epistemological and normative grounds of critique. I show how Boltanski’s assessment of the limitations of Bourdieu’s critical sociology significantly influenced his pragmatic sociology of critique and explication of the political philosophies present in actors’ practices of dispute and justification. Although pragmatism has revealed how social (...) life involves considerable uncertainty, Boltanski contends that critique needs to take into account how institutions generate semantic security, as well as symbolic violence. Boltanski’s endeavour to reformulate critique is compared with influential alternative conceptions, notably those of Habermas, Castoriadis, and Honneth. Despite its potential deficiencies and weaknesses, Boltanski’s reformulation of critique is found to be of considerable theoretical significance. In particular, Boltanski’s analysis of the role critique has played in the reorganization of capitalism can be extended, and his work is suggestive of how some of the intentions of critical theory can be pursued in new ways. (shrink)

This article proffers a critical reading of multiliteracy pedagogy and a materialism of the multimodal and machinic. A critical stance is taken against the mesmerising modes of representation that run rampant across our ocular territories. The article assesses the dangers of fetishizing technologies. To this end, Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) is read through a Guattarian theoretical prism to emphasise four chief points: (1) the role of the unconscious, (2) the role of affect (affectus in the Spinozian sense; contrary to feeling (...) which immobilises, affect moves us), (3) the apparent becoming cyborg of the human race and (4) the desire to desire repression. The author contends that while qualitative multiplicities play a central role for MLT, it is neither inconsistent nor contradictory to consider the role of the machinic in greater detail. It is argued that more research must be directed into the cartographic, ethological and noological mechanisms at work in plastic universes of reference (new technologies and the arts) which transform the virtual and transfigure the dynamic of affect. (shrink)

This article compares notes on different and new concepts of ‘the Human’, developed both within disciplinary and interdisciplinary academic scientific research and in broader social practices. The main focus is on the shifting relationship between the ‘two cultures’ of the humanities and science in the light of contemporary developments, such as the sophisticated forms of interdisciplinary research that have emerged in the fields of biotechnologies, neural sciences, environmental and climate change research and Information and Communication technologies. These rapid changes affect (...) the very definitions of the human and of human evolution. The question is how and to what extent they have an impact on both the practice of the humanities and on their self-representation. Is humanism challenged or strengthened by these developments? To what extent is anthropocentrism called to task by what is becoming known as posthuman theory? (shrink)

Drawing on an array of sources, from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy through to non-philosophy, this paper concerns itself with the manifestation of the concepts of hope and despair in utopian thought and continental philosophy and the experience of hopelessness, despair and exhaustion in the contemporary moment. I aim to demonstrate such pressing concerns through a comparison of Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani and Japanese fiction writer Ryū Murakami with the American science fiction-thriller film directed by Michael Bay, The Island. What is (...) explored in these works is the dialectic of exhaustion and possibility. The focus of the paper is on the fecund moment inhering in the incapacity of thought to think the possibility of utopia. In terms of the philosophy of education, this hones in on the perceived lack of vision of such a possibility among youth and the failure of the university qua institution to proffer an alternative world to its cohort. To demon... (shrink)

Just over a decade-and-a-half ago, a roundtable discussion published in the pages of October worried that the periodic renewal of critical discourses had slowed to a standstill and that art criticism was faced with obsolescence. Such an obsolescence should be understood in a broadly Hegelian manner: the danger is not that art criticism would disappear from the cultural field, but that it will continue—although drained of its previous necessity. Such fears perhaps run the risk of exaggeration, yet this article shall (...) suggest that there seems a sense in which the field of art criticism has contracted in recent years. Self-reflexivity in art and the popularization of “para-curatorial” approaches, for instance, often underpin the artwork discursively before the arrival of art criticism upon the scene. To be sure, such circumstances are viewable positively as interdisciplinary dialogical opportunities, but the negative flipside here is that art criticism’s potential contribution becomes increasingly minimized. From another angle, critics such as Isabelle Graw have contended that the economic-cultural regime of post-Fordism, with its attention on intellectual labor and knowledge production, might actually hold possibilities for the contemporary art critic—but even here, I argue, art criticism becomes contracted, albeit in the other meaning of the word. (shrink)

This article focuses upon monstrously generous teaching styles, enacted in neocolonial educational contexts, where the interactions between students and teachers are sometimes tense and mistrustful. The tensions between students and teachers are explained by discussing the ways in which schools—in the theoretical perspective of Roberto Esposito—operate to immunize the society against youth deemed improper. Utilizing the theories of Antonio Negri, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. Du Bois, the characterization of students as monstrous is discussed and an inversion is suggested, whereby students (...) deemed to be monstrous are considered the source of reinvigorating visions of society. The pedagogical approaches of teachers who seek to welcome and nurture monstrous students are described, relying upon the accounts of great teachers offered by educators and sociologists. In practice, monstrously generous teachers make supererogatory gestures in their interactions with students, as a way of signaling to heavily-armored youth that they are willing to enter reciprocal relationships with them. Once youth drop their armor and begin to share their perspectives, monstrously generous teachers develop multiple means of helping youth develop their worldviews, without surveillance or censor. (shrink)

This is the first book to use complexity theory to open up the 'geophilosophy' developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus and What is Philosophy?.

Republicanism is an approach within political theory that seeks to secure the values of political liberty and non-domination. Yet, in historical practice, early modern republics developed empires and secured their liberty through policies that dominated others. This contradiction presents challenges for how neo-Roman theorists understand ideals of liberty and political freedom. This article argues that the historical practices of slavery and empire developed concurrently with the normative ideals of republican liberty. Republican liberty does not arise in the absence of power (...) but is inherently connected to the exercise of power. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasizes an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to (...) be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognize, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organized around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice. (shrink)

This memorandum offers some incomplete thoughts on the process through which Paul Cardan became Cornelius Castoriadis. This involves some examination of the connection, alignments and dissonances between the Johnson-Forest Tendency in Detroit, and Socialisme ou Barbarie in Paris. Special emphasis is placed on the pioneering work of Stephen Hastings-King and the notion that these intellectual movements centred their energies around the search for the proletariat. Cardan spent more time with Marx; Castoriadis, professionally, spent more time with Freud, and after. The (...) spectre of Freud is as central to these inquiries as is the ghost of Marx. If the spectre of the Worker needs to be dispelled, after Socialisme ou Barbarie, then the dynamics of suffering and creativity also need yet to be maintained in tension. (shrink)

This article argues the benefits of including a theological interpretation of natural law morality within the normative discourses of international politics. It challenges the assumption of a Grotian secular natural law arguing that practical reason, in a Thomist interpretation, is better suited to the demands of international political theory. It engages with themes of agency, practical reason, and community in order to enhance the content of the post-territorial community evidenced in ethical cosmopolitan debates. Likewise, it envisions simultaneously enhancing a rapprochement (...) among cosmopolitan and communitarian discourses of international politics facilitated through an institutional design guided by the morality of natural law. (shrink)

This paper outlines a theoretical context for research into ‘the subject of ethics’ in terms of how students come to see themselves as self-reflective actors. I maintain that the ‘subject of ethics’, or ethical subjectivity, has been overlooked as a necessary aspect of creating politically transformative spaces in education. At the heart of egalitarian politics lies a fundamental tension between the equality of voices and the notion that one way of being or one voice may be deemed more legitimate than (...) another; which in turn puts the equality of beings into question. Building from Michel Foucault’s work regarding ethics and subjectivity, I suggest that a ‘subject of ethics’ can be viewed, in part, as a series of relations of self that form the horizon upon which a subject comes to work on themselves relative to moral codes and power relations. Ethical relations of self can be a useful concept for those interested in educational research that furthers social and ecological justice. In the conclusion of this paper I also discuss the limitations of locating ethics entirely within a constituted human subject. (shrink)

Research that explores ethics can help educational communities engage twenty-first century crises and work toward ecologically and socially just forms of life. Integral to this research is an engagement with social theory, which helps educators imagine our shared worlds differently. In this paper I present two theoretical-methodological directions for educational research that centres ethics: Ethics and subjectivity; and Ethics-in-assemblage. While both approaches might be seen as commensurable, they can also be seen as quite divergent. Using Michel Foucault’s later work on (...) subjectivity and ethics, as well as recent work in Anthropology, I present a methodological direction for research into ethical subjectivity, how students come to see themselves as self-reflective ethical actors. Relevant here is the tension between ethics and politics, individual and collective modes of being, as both are crucial to both struggles for justice on a damaged planet. The second direction involves a sociomaterialist approach that employs Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘assemblage’ as well as Karen Barad’s notion ‘entangled responsibility’ to show that ethics can also be seen to co-emerge with/in phenomena that exceed human relations. In short, exploring ethics through educational research means simultaneously examining ethics as subjectivity and ethics as co-emergent larger assemblages/phenomena. (shrink)

Many scholars have historicized biopolitics with reference to the emergence of sovereign nations and their colonial extensions over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. This article begins to conceptualize and trace the history of biopolitics beyond the nation, arguing that the history of world health - the great 20th-century reach of 19th-century health and hygiene - should be understood as a vital politics of population on a newly large field of play. This substantive history of world health and world population (...) is analysed as sites for thinking about global bio-politics; and the article looks seriously at the interwar period as a point at which ‘the world’ (or Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’) was already challenging the idea of ‘inter/national’. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to elaborate two concerns: those of maternal ethics, and notions of making things public. I attempt to bring these two concerns together and think them alongside one another, in hopefully productive ways. I want, in other words, to think about the ethics of what mothers ‘make public’, whether this is understood in its most rudimentary form, of enabling a child to express something, to make public an affective state, for instance, even if it is only (...) the mother who is there to witness or receive it, through to more overt and material forms of ‘publication’ glimpsed when mothers parent in spaces we call ‘public’. This paper focuses on what happens to us all when we encounter ‘mothering’ – not in the enclosed, private, secluded spaces where we imagine mothering to take place, but in what Marc Augé has termed the ‘non-places of supermodernity’, where much of the day-to-day material practices of mothering in Western late-modern urban contexts actually occurs. As is often the case, it is when experience is dislodged from the contexts in which we expect to find it that its contours are shown up in relief, and we are called on to re-configure our understandings of experiences in ways that also shift our understandings of the contexts in which they occur. In this sense, mothering, that I am claiming ‘makes things public’, as well as occurring frequently and importantly ‘in public’, not only shows up something we may overlook about the maternal, but also deforms and reforms our understandings of ‘the public’ itself. (shrink)

In recent years, feelings such as melancholia, paranoia, despair and political depression have been deemed distinctive political moods, also within critical theories. This, the author argues, is the affective landscape for understanding and situating new materialist endeavours. As much as new materialist approaches have been praised and even celebrated lately, they have also provoked highly controversial reactions and evoked questions, such as: Why a new materialism, why at this historical moment? And what is so attractive about this material turn? In (...) this article, the author argues that new materialist approaches seek to oppose the contemporary affective condition of political depression, despair and hopelessness by desiring and mobilizing to achieve a different political future, one that ultimately relates to care and commonality as well as to modes and modalities of political agency. However, while new materialist approaches doubtlessly provide engaged and powerful inventions and interventions within contemporary struggles for agency, the author also demonstrates the risk of depoliticization inherent in this longing for something different, which can ultimately even compromise opening up possibilities for agency. This article, thus, aims to discuss new materialist concerns within the context of contemporary political and theoretical landscapes in order to better decipher the new materialist signals of our times, but also to critically push further the possibilities for political agency within feminist theory, at times even against all odds. (shrink)

Forms of collective leadership, such as Distributed Leadership, have become increasingly important. The need for measurement of the variables involved in the delegation processes, represents a new challenge for organizations that want to ensure high-level working. The present research aimed to validate the Italian version of the Distributed Leadership Agency (DLA) and verify its applicability in different contexts. The study involved all the employees of an Italian public Hospital, which were selected to complete a survey on organizational perceptions. The sample (...) comprised 704 employees (doctors, nurses, clerks, staff workers, healthcare assistants, consultants, management). Multiple Confirmatory Factor Analyses (Maximum Likelihood) have been computed to explore the factorial structure of the DLA, along with associations with other work outcomes. Results clarified that the Italian DLA respects the tri-factorial structure of the construct, suggested by Yukl (2002), with good fit indexes and reliability; moreover, in line with the literature, DLA was strongly related to satisfaction, commitment, and trust. Results contribute to underline the robustness of the construct of distributed leadership agency in different cultural sectors, and provide a useful tool to be adopted in the Italian context. (shrink)

This article is based on interviews with former Australian immigration detainees conducted by the author. The interviews explored the experience and understanding of resistance while in detention. The article calls into question Agamben’s twin conclusions that nothing short of a complete re-founding of ontology is required to liberate humanity from biopower and that this refoundation will spring from bare life. Contrary to Agamben’s depiction, the camp proves to be a place of determined and often successful defence of a relation of (...) politics and life based not on the camp and biopower, but on solidarity and freedom. Detainees in Australian immigration detention, like prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps, refused to abandon their politics. Rather than seeking to transform bare life, they rejected it and made their own decision on life and politics. (shrink)

In the introduction to the volume, the editors explain the overarching aim of the volume and contextualize the main themes of its chapters. Even if the notions of biopolitics and biopower have played a crucial role in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences over the last decades, they have been used in various and at times diverging senses, which has also produced different narratives about the history of biopolitics. The main aim of the volume is to clarify whether and (...) to what extent the concept of biopolitics is applicable to antiquity. To answer such questions, the chapters collected in the volume address three main topics, namely the possible presence of biopolitical discourse in ancient thought, the extent to which the application of a biopolitical approach to ancient thought requires qualifications, and some influential contemporary interpretations of the relation between biopolitics and antiquity. (shrink)

As reaction to the failures of the globalization process, which is based on a commodification of the whole life new resistance mobilizations occurred. The Occupy Wall Street Movement has underlined that the social consequences of the neoliberal empire call for new resistances, new visions of solidarity, and new ways of representation. It has become clear, that capitalism’s influence on democracy has made that concept insufficient. The sovereign biopower is regulating life and survival via granting access or exclusion from resources. It (...) not only disciplines and normalizes sexualities, bodies and gender but regulates health, security, etc. of everybody. Therefore responsible theology needs to expand Feminist, Gender and Queer critique and my approach is to offer a reaction by developing a critical Bio-Theology using Foucault’s critique of biopower and Castoriadis’ concept of the radical social imaginary. This paper uses inter- and transdisciplinary methodology bringing together ‘beyond liberation theology’ approaches with queer, postcolonial, epistemological intersectionality critique and post-secular debates. (shrink)

Straipsnyje bandoma atsakyti į klausimą, kaip Gilles’o Deleuze’o ir Felixo Guattari geismo samprata atsispindi jų politinėje filosofijoje. Tyrinėjama geismo mašinų ir jų gamybos koncepcija, jų santykis su sociumo struktūra ir kapitalo logika. Savo veikaluose šie du autoriai teigia, kad geismo mašinos kuria materialią revoliucinę energiją, kuri nuolat konfrontuoja tiek su sociumo normomis, tiek su kapitalistine priespauda. Tačiau, pasak jų, tokią energiją sociumas mėgina represuoti, paversti revoliucinį geismą fašistiniu „tvirtos rankos“ geismu, o kapitalas fetišizuoja, suprekina ir pritaiko savo tikslams. Šiame tekste, (...) remiantis tiek Deleuze’o ir Guattari, tiek jų sekėjų tekstais, daroma prielaida, kad geismo mašinos sociumo represijoms ir kapitalistiniam suprekinimui gali priešintis pasirinkdamos atstumtųjų terpėje gimstančias kūrybingas ir radikalias mažosios politikos strategijas. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: geismas, geismo mašinos, sociumas, reakcija, kapitalas, suprekinimas, revoliucija, mažoji politika. Desire and Liberation in Political Philosophy of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari Kasparas Pocius Summary The article analyzes Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire and desiring-machines, their origins and workings in the organized structure of socius and in the capitalist regime as well as the revolutionary strategies and milieus that these desiring-machines engender. Contemporary social critique often distorts the notion of desire while linking it exclusively with capital that forces people to consume identities and commodities. Meanwhile, in the conception of Deleuze and Guattari desire is a material revolutionary energy which constantly aims to confront the norms of both socius and capitalist repressions. Unfortunately, this energy is continually under the threat of being appropriated and inactivated by socius, and it also undergoes the risk of being fetishized and commodified by capital, which makes desire serve its aims of seeking profit and extracting surplus value. Desiring-machines attempt to break through to the other side of socius and capital, the former of which is decoded and deterritorialized, whereas the latter is too limited to deal with desire as an absolute limit of socius. Capital is unable to commodify potential revolutionary energy or to absorb it in another way. However, in the structure of socius active and creative desire may be reversed into reactionary fascist desire of hierarchy, exploitation, humiliation, slavery and death. The molar order of socius is distinguished by a clear structure and hierarchy where individuals have fixed identities. However, capital tries to demolish those structures and deterritorialize socius by following the desiring-machines. The discipline, laws and norms are substituted by the flexible axiomatic of capitalism, which can adjust itself to the demands of desire or regenerate to the former repressive forms of command. Such milieu gives rise to a single monolithic molar class. Therefore, today the conflict lies not between the capitalist class and the working class but between the class and those who are outside the class – minor people, creating minor politics in molecular milieu. There is a paradox in the conception of minor politics by Deleuze and Guattari. Although this kind of politics originates in the space that is oppressed by socius and capital, however such space can become highly active, creative and radical. Desire as a material basis for creativity becomes a powerful revolutionary potential. Minor politics is based not on identification or representation of somebody’s interests, but on permanent creativity. This politics emerges within the milieu of mutual communication and intellect as well as uncommodified affectivity and sexuality and it embodies revolutionary desire in everyday practices of self-valorization. Keywords: desire, desiring-machines, socius, reaction, capital, commodification, revolution, minor politics. (shrink)

This essay responds to Frederic Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology by arguing that this book is centrally concerned with the masses. By developing Jameson’s own model of allegorical reading the pressure of the masses on the text is explored. This is demonstrated through a reading of Albert Camus’s The Plague, Jameson’s central example of ‘bad’ allegory. While this novel is ‘bad’ for implying a one-to-one allegory between the plague infection and the occupation of France during World War Two or to the (...) human condition, a reading of the text as biopolitical allegory reveals the complex presence of the masses. Finally, this response considers the ‘immortality’ of the masses as the utopian moment traced within Allegory and Ideology. (shrink)

My hypoltheses concerning the United States led War on Terrorism are derived from the German novelist, critic and social theorist Ernst J¸nger’s outstanding 1930 essay on ‘Total Mobilization’. Accordingly, this article explores J¸nger’s ‘Total Mobilization’ and what I label the ‘totally mobilized body’ as the philosophical underpinning of the War on Terrorism from the perspective of my own conceptions of ‘ hypermodern total mobilization’, ‘globalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoconservative body’. From this post-J¸ngerian or hypermodern viewpoint, the examination of the War (...) on Terrorism as offered by social theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Kellner and Paul Virilio is analytically evaluated and developed. For their research on the ‘spirit of terrorism’ and the new ‘planetary frontier-land’, control societies, the momentous events of September 11, 2001, and ‘globalitarianism’ can help us to understand the complexities and multiplicities of the neoconservative body. The article concludes by probing the distinction between Jünger’s idea of modern total mobilization and my own hypermodern notions of ‘egalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoegalitarian body’. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

The study aims to expose vulnerabilities of the subject-object paradigm in modern philosophy. The article concentrates upon ontological limitations of the concept of a subject and changing the status of an object in subject-object relations in the context of changing characteristics of the object existence. Scientific novelty of the work lies in identifying points of ontological stability and limitations of the subject concept, which could be used in its further theoretical development. As a result of the research, the aspects necessary, (...) from the author’s viewpoint, for building a theoretical model of the modern subject, which would be based on ontological symbiosis of subjective and objective characteristics, are determined. (shrink)

In this review essay, I consider a number of possible versions of a contemporary socialist balance-sheet, by way of the three very different recent accounts provided by Alain Badiou, Peter Beilharz, and Goran Therborn. Exploring these broad, colliding understandings of the socialist past, present, and future, I seek to evaluate the responses to some of those large and pressing socialist questions: Who owned the 20th century? What was 1968? What is the meaning of the period since? What remains of Marxism (...) and of socialism? What are the situation and tasks of social theory today? (shrink)