The world’s negligence globalisation, philosophy and the misadventures of space

Las descripciones de nuestra época como un tiempo de desespacialización, desterritorialización y desmaterialización tecnológica merecen ser discutidos con el fin de evidenciar la compleja genealogía de los cambios a los que se refieren. La filosofía contemporánea –especialmente a través de Bergson, Heidegger, Arendt, Schmitt, Foucault, Deleuze y Guattari– nos ayuda a hacerlo en por lo menos dos maneras: en primer lugar, exponiendo que el espacio y el mundo material representan una especie de obstáculo para las visiones que prevalecen en la modernidad, que le dan al ser humano una relación privilegiada con el tiempo y un derecho a separarse del mundo para dominarlo; en segundo lugar, mostrando las formas en que la espacialidad se presenta como una apuesta política irreducible tanto a las territorializaciones rígidas como a las desespacializaciones puras y sencillas. Desde este punto de vista, incluso las tecnologías telemáticas actuales son prueba de esta irreductibilidad re-espacializando al mundo con sus sistemas de rastreo, vigilancia, monitoreo, etc.The descriptions of our epoch as a time of technological despatialization, deterritorialization and dematerialization deserve to be discussed in order to bring out the complex genealogy of the changes to which they refer. Contemporary philosophy – especially the reading of Bergson, Heidegger, Arendt, Schmitt, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari – helps us to do so in at least two ways: first, by testifying that space and the material world represent a kind of obstacle to the visions prevailing in modernity, that give the human being a privileged relationship with time and a right to separate himself from the world in order to dominate it; second, showing us the ways in which spatiality is presented as a political stakes irreducible to both rigid territorializations and pure and simple despatializations. From this point of view, even the current telematic technologies are proof of this irreducibility re-spatializing the world with their systems for tracking, surveillance, monitoring, etc

The comings and goings of space and matter.

Many of the contributions to this issue of Soft Power address – directly or indirectly – tendencies that for some time have been defined with expressions such as material turn or spatial turn to proclaim the superseding of formalist and constructivist visions of the world and society, or to indicate the restructuring of the idea that ours is, above all, an era of dematerialization, despatialization, and deterritorialization

Foucault y la postdemocracracia neoliberal más allá de la “crítica inflacionaria del estado”

Foucault no admite la existencia de ninguna relación privilegiada entre liberalismo y democracia, aunque considere que esta esté vinculada en sus formas con el mismo liberalismo. Por lo tanto, se puede destacar la profunda diferencia que él, en su Curso de 1979, pone de relieve entre la racionalidad económica de las prácticas gubernamentales liberales y la racionalidad jurídica de los derechos del hombre. Además, de la misma forma se puede interpretar su claro rechazo de la ‘crítica inflacionaria del Estado’, propuesta por el neoliberalismo en el siglo XX. Reconociendo un peligro totalitario no demostrable en cada intervención política sobre el mercado, el neoliberalismo hace sospechar también a la democracia, de hecho la condiciona y la limita mucho. Tales implicaciones del estudio foucaultiano parecen conciliarse con las actuales investigaciones sobre el tema de la postdemocracia. Sin embargo, estas no enfocan la supremacía ético-política del hombre-empresa, destacada por Foucault, y a la cual hoy día responden exigencias de ‘subjetivación otra’ que aún no han sido adecuadamente analizadas.Foucault does not recognize any privileged relationship between liberalism and democracy, even if the latter is considered as being generally associated to liberalism itself. In this sense, after 1979 lectures, he started to underline a profound gap emerging between economic rationality of liberal governmental practices and judicial rationality of human rights. In other terms, a clear Foucault’s refusal of “inflationary critique of state”, promoted by neoliberalism in the 20th century, can be grasped. Through recognizing an unprovable totalitarian danger with intervening in the market politically, neoliberalism throws a permanent suspect over democracy too, by deeply influencing and limiting it. These implications of Foucauldian research seem to partially agree with current researches on post-democracy theme. Nevertheless, the last ones do not focus on the ethical and political supremacy of “enterprise man”, highlighted by Foucault instead, which today corresponds to requests for ‘other subjectivation’ that still lacks of proper thought

The world?s negligence globalisation philosophy and the misadventures of space

Las descripciones de nuestra epoca como un tiempo de desespacializacion, desterritorializacion y desmaterializacion tecnologica merecen ser discutidos con el fin de evidenciar la compleja genealogia de los cambios a los que se refieren. La filosofía contemporanea ?especialmente a traves de Bergson, Heidegger, Arendt, Schmitt, Foucault, Deleuze y Guattari? nos ayuda a hacerlo en por lo menos dos maneras: en primer lugar, exponiendo que el espacio y el mundo material representan una especie de obstaculo para las visiones que prevalecen en la modernidad, que le dan al ser humano una relacion privilegiada con el tiempo y un derecho a separarse del mundo para dominarlo; en segundo lugar, mostrando las formas en que la espacialidad se presenta como una apuesta politica irreducible tanto a las territorializaciones rigidas como a las desespacializaciones puras y sencillas. Desde este punto de vista, incluso las tecnologías telematicas actuales son prueba de esta irreductibilidad re-espacializando al mundo con sus sistemas de rastreo, vigilancia, monitoreo, etc

Pandemia, protezione della vita, ecologia: Smarrimenti del biopotere

Through Foucault, I highlight the fundamental importance that the attention to the collective body of society and the biopower of the state have had in the history of biopolitics. Referring to Nikolas Rose, moreover, I consider the reasons that seem to have caused a radical downsizing of this importance with neoliberalism. In reality, during the pandemic, both the collective dimension of health and the biopolitical role of the state seem to have reaffirmed. However, two elements make this scenario debatable: the ability of the molecular biology and biocapitalism to establish themselves as essential references of the anti-pandemic biopolitics; the inability of international biopolitical organizations to overcome the oscillation between state and market by promoting an ecosystemic approach to the danger of a pandemic. From this point of view, both the prevalence of the emergency approach and the use of vaccines as the "only solution" confirm this inability and the general impasse of contemporary biopolitics

Sorveglianza globale e metropoli pandemica. Attualità e genealogia di un disastro

The SARS-COV2 pandemic has shown that entrusting global communications systems with public health protection can produce disastrous results. In fact, the strategies of planetary surveillance, promoted by the World Health Organization for the prevention of EIDs that have long been the greatest danger of pandemic infections, are oriented in this sense. These strategies are based, on the one hand, on the problematic willingness of nation-states to promptly communicate information on the risks of epidemics and, on the other hand, on the algorithmic processing of large masses of disparate data derived from web users behaviours. The growth of urban concentrations – the subject of anti-epidemic biopolitics since the beginnings of modernity and today recognized as a determining factor of the ecosystem alterations that cause pandemic dangers – in this scenario risks becoming a tendency to resign oneself to, waiting for the next contagion. The territorialist approach can offer alternative perspectives to this both by promoting and applying the idea of urban bioregion and by taking into account that there are already those who plan to transfer most of the ‘dangerous liaisons’ that take place in the postmodern metropolis online

Philosophical Parrêsia and Transpolitical Freedom

This article highlights that ancient philosophy regenerated the practice of parrêsia following the crisis into which it had fallen in the polis. Through this, it established a strong relationship between freedom, truth, and politics, constantly eluding the risk of using “true speech” as a tool of rationalizing the exercise of power. The primary outset for the argument will be the course held by Foucault in 1982-1983 (Le gouvernement de soi et des autres). The paper holds that philosophical parrêsia asserted itself as a practice that could not be anything but “transpolitical,” while remaining similar to the ideal of freedom as active participation in public life – at least in the case of Socrates and the Cynics. According to Foucault, after a long period of disuse due to the predominance of theology and pastoral power, philosophical parrêsia was able to flourish in modernity. This occurred above all with Kant through the critical ontology of the present. On my part, I try to show how philosophical parrêsia in liberal society runs the risk of being neutralized by the predominance of economic “true speech” and by the prevalence of the idea of freedom as the pursuit of private interests. This is done by re-reading certain indications provided by Foucault himself in his course of 1978-1979 (Naissance de la biopolitique). Moreover, in the last sections of this paper I suggest lines of research that could grasp the difficulties that philosophical parrêsia encounters in the age of neoliberal hegemony and global media coverage

Philosophical Parrêsia and Transpolitical Freedom

This article highlights that ancient philosophy regenerated the practice of parrêsia following the crisis into which it had fallen in the polis. Through this, it established a strong relationship between freedom, truth, and politics, constantly eluding the risk of using “true speech” as a tool of rationalizing the exercise of power. The primary outset for the argument will be the course held by Foucault in 1982-1983 (Le gouvernement de soi et des autres). The paper holds that philosophical parrêsia asserted itself as a practice that could not be anything but “transpolitical,” while remaining similar to the ideal of freedom as active participation in public life – at least in the case of Socrates and the Cynics. According to Foucault, after a long period of disuse due to the predominance of theology and pastoral power, philosophical parrêsia was able to flourish in modernity. This occurred above all with Kant through the critical ontology of the present. On my part, I try to show how philosophical parrêsia in liberal society runs the risk of being neutralized by the predominance of economic “true speech” and by the prevalence of the idea of freedom as the pursuit of private interests. This is done by re-reading certain indications provided by Foucault himself in his course of 1978-1979 (Naissance de la biopolitique). Moreover, in the last sections of this paper I suggest lines of research that could grasp the difficulties that philosophical parrêsia encounters in the age of neoliberal hegemony and global media coverage

Vida desnuda, multitud, carne del mundo: la biopolítica como destino

Algunas de las reflexiones más importantes sobre biopolítica han surgido en el ámbito de la cultura filosófica italiana. En particular, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri y Roberto Esposito han sido centro de la atención internacional, desarrollando de manera original las potencialidades de las investigaciones de Michel Foucault, sin que por ello se excluyeran de elaborar consideraciones decididamente críticas. Agamben ha contribuido desde la reflexión sobre la soberanía y la “vida desnuda”; Negri, distinguiendo biopoder de biopolítica, y Esposito a través de la consideración sobre la inversión de la biopolítica en tanatopolítica y la búsqueda de una biopolítica afirmativa. Los análisis de estos autores han ejercido una gran influencia en la misma recepción general del tema de la biopolítica, motivo suficiente para discutir sus tesis principales y ponerlas en comparación con las de Foucault y su versión de la ética