Techno-sovereignism: the political rationality of contemporary Italian populism

This article provides an original exploration of the self-identified populist coalition leading the Italian government between 2018 and 2019. The analysis, informed by a governmentality approach, starts by scrutinising the economic, social, and cultural issues framed as political “problems” by the coalition, also highlighting the tensions underlying such constructions. The second step charts how this political subject sought to address those problems by deploying an array of political technologies. From examining these two dimensions, the article then can discern the composite rationality—techno-sovereignism—that drove precariously the coalition’s art of government. Finally, the article sketches out some forms of contestation against the techno-sovereignist operations, whose significance may stretch beyond the Italian borders. Overall, although the Italian populist coalition turned out to be ephemeral, the dynamics that characterized its emergence and functioning could still be used heuristically to understand the interactions and reciprocal adjustments possibly used by right-wing and technocratic populist groups to exert political power conjointly

Book review: Karman: A Brief Treatise on Action, Guilt, and Gesture

No abstract available

Film review: The House That Jack Built

Abstract not available

Communities at Large: An Archaeological Analysis of the ‘Community’ Within Restorative Justice Policy and Laws

Within the scholarly literature on restorative justice, the ‘community’, as a distinctive crime stakeholder, has been the target of extensive research. This work provides an original interpretation of the underlying images of the community within policy documents and legal statutes on RJ produced in England and Wales since 1985. The paper begins with an outline of the most recurrent representations of the community in relevant laws and policy, unearthing their theoretical underpinnings. The next step aims to infer from the general representations a range of more specific features, and to sketch out an ‘ideal’ model of community in restorative justice, whose cultural background is also outlined. As a final step, some critical reflections on the implications of the ‘ideal community’ are offered. By identifying what is taken for granted in laws and policies on restorative justice and its cultural context, this study aims to foster a critical ‘‘reality check’’ on this specific development of western penal policy, relevant for the restorative justice movement, at the international level

Judith Butler: The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind: Verso, London and New York, 2020, 224 pp, ISBN: 9781788732765 (HB), ISBN: 9781788732772 (PB), ISBN: 9781788732796 (eBook)

Abstract not available

The restorative justice apparatus: a critical analysis of the historical emergence of restorative justice

Drawing on Michel Foucault's theoretical reservoir, this paper conceptualises restorative justice as an 'apparatus', that is, a dynamic ensemble of elements whose emergence is related to the development of a distinctive political rationality (ethopolitics). This approach enables a multidimensional comprehension of restorative justice, since it targets both discursive and non-discursive elements, their power/knowledge relations and subjugating effects. Furthermore, the paper explores possibilities for an emancipatory restorative justice, against the subjective entrapment that the apparatus produces. Overall, this work aims to offer a theoretically engaged and critical scrutiny of restorative justice by using an underexploited analytical device – the apparatus – apt to make visible unexpected dimensions of this " new " frontier of western penality. This could enhance our understanding of the emergence and possible trajectories of restorative justice, by identifying risks and opportunities as well as tools for disentanglement from its most problematic institutional developments

Imaging victims, offenders and communities. An investigation into the representations of the crime stakeholders within restorative justice and their cultural context

This work is a critical analysis of how the main crime stakeholders (victim, offender and community) are represented within policy and legal statutes on restorative justice. The paper starts by sketching out the legal and policy archive of restorative justice, focussing on the most recurrent normative representations of the victim, offender and community, and unearthing their theoretical underpinnings. The goal is to identify a range of typified features and to assemble them together by profiling the ‘ideal stakeholders’ of restorative justice. The research includes a comparison between the ‘ideal’ victim, offender and community, pinpointing any overlaps and differences. Finally, it interrogates the cultural context within which these representations have emerged historically, influencing policy and laws. By way of reconstructing and discussing what is taken for granted in restorative justice and its background, the aim of the work is to foster critical reflection on the normative dimension of a popular development of western penal policies

Restorative justice and the State. Untimely objections against the institutionalisation of restorative justice

The incorporation of restorative justice (RJ) into penal policy is not a neutral process; it actually reshapes both the rationales and the functioning of RJ, possibly erasing its potential to be something 'other' and 'better' than criminal justice. Through a comparative analysis of policy on RJ in England and Wales, Norway and France, this paper claims that RJ's promise to provide a cooperative-transformative approach to social conflicts and harms, predicated on de-professionalisation, direct stakeholders' centrality and critique of punishment, is neutralised by the process of translating RJ into penal policy. The second part of the paper sketches out RJ as a critique of violence, outside any legal framework. Along these lines, it is possible to generate original insights into the current situation and future developments of RJ and, more broadly, into the corrosive dynamics of legal violence

Restorative Justice Policy in Context: A Legal-Archaeological Analysis

This paper provides an original, in-depth analysis of English and Welsh criminal and penal policy on restorative justice. By using a historically-discursive approach—legal archaeology—this study firstly outlines the overarching representations of restorative justice within policy, unpacking their internal organisation. Then, it interprets such patterns of knowledge in light of specific cultural, political and professional transformations involving the Anglo-Welsh criminal justice field over the last 30 years. Along these lines, it generates a historically documented policy map whilst problematising the taken-for-granted images of restorative justice which populate regulations, codes and laws. This has implications for the study of the relationships between restorative justice policy and practice and for future research on the institutionalisation of this ‘new’ frontier of penality. More generally, the exploration of (unexpected) links between policy, politics and culture, provides material for a critical assessment of how state agencies appropriate community-based and practice-led forms of justice