Italian municipalities and the politics of financial derivatives: Rethinking the Foucauldian perspective

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Competition and Change and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1024529415581969© The Author(s) 2015.This study examines the use of interest rate swaps by Italian municipalities during the 2000-2014 period. Through a constructive critique of Foucauldian political economy, it argues that local administrators did not enter the swaps market to perform and depoliticize the disciplinary power of financialized discourses. The evidence suggests many more layers of historical complexity underlie the municipalities' actions than a Foucauldian approach can grasp. Local governments used swaps to circumvent the budget constraints imposed by the European Stability and Growth Pact. In this sense, municipalities acted more for political-strategic than for performative and depoliticized purposes. Rethinking the dimensions of performativity and disciplinary power - through an approach that is more sensitive than Foucauldian analysis to historical agency and asymmetrical power relations - is crucial to address the differential and politically shaped contours of financialization across the globe

A radical freedom? Gianni Vattimo's ‘emancipatory nihilism’

What scope is there for emancipatory politics in light of the postmodern critique of philosophical foundations? This paper examines the response to this question by Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, who for over two decades has defended the emancipatory prospects of what he terms ‘nihilism’. Vattimo conceives the retreat of metaphysics as a progressive weakening of ontological claims and an opening towards new and diverse modes of being. In his view, far from an exclusively tragic experience of loss or meaninglessness, nihilism is a steadily expanding narrative that invites us to face up to our own radical freedom. The paper sets out Vattimo's central arguments and contrasts the ethical thrust of his ‘emancipatory nihilism’ with the distinctly political take on emancipation presented by Ernesto Laclau. While the two converge on the withdrawal of metaphysics as the premise for a radical and democratic freedom, Vattimo's vision remains insufficiently focused on the dynamics of contestation that a generalized nihilism implies

Acessibilidade e paralelismo na interpretação do pronome sujeito e o contraste pro/pronome em português Accessibility, parallel function and the pro/pronoun contrast in Portuguese

O contraste pro/pronome em orações coordenadas em português é aqui explorado de modo a distinguirem-se os procedimentos através dos quais formas pronominais sujeito são interpretadas em diferentes contextos sintáticos e discursivos — através de estratégias de seleção de um antecedente lingüístico ou da recuperação "automática" de uma representação mantida particularmente ativada na memória de trabalho. Dois experimentos são relatados. O primeiro testa a hipótese de que o vínculo sintático entre a oração que contém a forma pronominal e a que contém seus possíveis antecedentes define condições de processamento que favorecem o uso de um ou de outro procedimento de interpretação. O segundo testa a hipótese de que o grau de ativação de uma dada representação na memória de trabalho (definido em relação a um sistema que opera em três níveis) afeta o modo como o sujeito pronominal de orações independentes é interpretado no discurso. Verifica-se que o contraste pro/ pronome pode ser re-estabelecido fora do âmbito de sentenças complexas uma vez que haja alteração local do foco da referência. A natureza deste contraste é discutida levando-se em conta as condições de processamento nas quais este se manifesta.<br>The contrastive interpretation of pro and pronoun in co-ordinate sentences by Portuguese speakers is explored here, as a means of distinguishing the procedures whereby pronominal forms are interpreted in different syntactic/discourse contexts - by means of a search-identification strategy (such as the parallel function strategy) or by means of the "automatic" recovery of a representation which is maintained particularly activated in working memory. Two experiments are reported. The first one tests the hypothesis that the kind of syntactic relationship that holds between the clause containing the pronominal form and the one containing possible antecedents defines processing conditions that favour one or another interpretation procedure. The second one tests the hypothesis that the degree of activation of a representation in working memory (defined in relation to a three-level activity working memory system) accounts for the interpretation of the pronominal subject of independent sentences in discourse. Local alteration of focus is shown to re-establish the pro/pronoun contrast at discourse level. The nature of this contrast is discussed in connection with the processing conditions in which it is manifested