What comes after sovereignty?

This paper addresses the question of sovereignty from a perspective that connects the origins of public international law, with a series of onto-theological assumptions about the nature of place that were decisive in the emergence of modern colonialism. It will argue that insofar as sovereignty depends on some form of transcendence, external or internal, it is and has been ‘’impotent’’ from the very outset. However, contrary to the idea expressed in the well-known tale about the emperor’s new clothes, it is not the case that acknowledgement of this impotence would entail the end of sovereignty. Faced with the truth of its ultimate impotence, the sovereign supplements its role as decider with that of the intrigant. This new figure of sovereignty is embodied in the expert politician who announces the coming catastrophe in order to avert it, or contain it, through the use of ‘’limited’’ but ultimately borderless violence

Fanon and the intelligent machine; concerning violence, Part 2. Reflections from a conversation with Gayatri Spivak

Taking the form of a series of reflections emerging from a conversation between the author and critic Gayatri Spivak, this article turns the exploration of the question concerning violence to the significance of Frantz Fanon as healer, image, exemplar and, following the term coined by cinema philosopher and filmmaker Jean Epstein, photo-electric psychoanalyst. It advances on the exploration of the significance of the cinematographer and the camera as a tool for acceleration that by focusing on discontinuity allows a singular attention to voices that utter and images or gazes that confront us with contradiction thereby permitting to verify the universality of forms of justice and subjectivities in search for justice and liberation

Theatre Philosophicum: Thinking Literature and Politics with Walter Benjamin

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera’s essay “Theatrum Philosophicum: Thinking Literature and Politics with Walter Benjamin” begins with Benjamin’s encounter with the work of Baudelaire, but rather than seeing this encounter as an opportunity to rethink the relationship between the work of Benjamin and Adorno, his essay offers a reading that shows how Benjamin rethinks utopia and the metaphorical transformation of politics and law in terms of uchrony: a present in which something happens to disrupt the standard routine of time passing. Guardiola-Rivera’s essay employs Baudelaire as a way to think against the standardisation of capitalism's law and empire and thereby decolonise and renew the critical impulse present in the Frankfurt School thinkers in a new idiom

Human rights and Latin American southern voices

What does it mean to say that Western law tends towards Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism? A tendency is an inclination towards a particular type of behaviour; a proclivity or predisposition. Building upon Twining’s insight I am going to argue in this paper that what predisposes the canon and heritage of Western jurisprudence and socio-political theory towards the particular (i.e. ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism) is not its claim towards universality. Rather, it is the specific form of unity and uniqueness assumed by Western law that predisposes it towards a particular ethnocentric behaviour. Western law is seen not as one element among others in the set of humanity’s normative ways, but as the one that defines and measures what counts as part of the set, as the very standard of humanity: an understanding which it projects upon the other peoples it encounters around the world. The intersection opened up by the convergence between law and anthropology is a good place to search for instances of such an inclination, to criticize them, and in the process to try to recover the standpoint of a more universal view of nature and the human

APRENDER A VIVIR SIN MAESTROS. SLAVOJ ZIZEK EN DIÁLOGO CON ÓSCAR GUARDIOLA RIVERA

Parte de un extenso diálogo y debate aún en progreso, este fragmento se concentra en tres temas: el equilibrio catastrófico entre democracia y crisis, la relación entre la filosofía y la situación presente, y el futuro de la política radical en el mundo actual. Estos temas son analizados desde los puntos de vista diversos pero relacionados de ambos pensadores, en conexión con los logros y retos de la transformación política en América Latina, y con una ambición común: recuperar el papel del pensamiento y la verdad del anti-intelectualismo que caracteriza la vida política y académica actual, y explorar las posibles consecuencias de dicha recuperación o distinción a la luz de la actividad de quienes continúan luchando en forma disciplinada y responsable por un futuro Nuevo, no ligado a las posibilidades disponibles en la situación de hoy

Astros caen del Cielo, o de cómo un Puente o puede cruzarse una sola vez

‘Todo el mundo lo sabe. Esto está a punto de estallar’. Así comienza uno de los textos más controvertidos de la época reciente. Su título es L’insurrection qui vient (literalmente, La Insurrección que Viene, con todo lo que ello implica de invocación de la la hecatombe, y al tiempo, sugerencia de una forma específica del tiempo futuro). Fue publicado por una pequeña editorial radical Francesa a finales del 2007. Sus autores, a los que nadie aún conoce, se autodenominan ‘El Comité Invisible’. En Noviembre 11 del 2008 fueron arrestados nueve individuos, la mayoría en la villa de Tarnac en la campiña Francesa, y acusados de ‘asociación criminal para propósitos de actividad terrorista’. La acusación tenía que ver con su supuesta participación en actos de sabotaje a las redes eléctricas de las líneas de tren Francesas.‘Todo el mundo lo sabe. Esto está a punto de estallar’. Así comienza uno de los textos más controvertidos de la época reciente. Su título es L’insurrection qui vient (literalmente, La Insurrección que Viene, con todo lo que ello implica de invocación de la la hecatombe, y al tiempo, sugerencia de una forma específica del tiempo futuro). Fue publicado por una pequeña editorial radical Francesa a finales del 2007. Sus autores, a los que nadie aún conoce, se autodenominan ‘El Comité Invisible’. En Noviembre 11 del 2008 fueron arrestados nueve individuos, la mayoría en la villa de Tarnac en la campiña Francesa, y acusados de ‘asociación criminal para propósitos de actividad terrorista’. La acusación tenía que ver con su supuesta participación en actos de sabotaje a las redes eléctricas de las líneas de tren Francesas.‘Todo el mundo lo sabe. Esto está a punto de estallar’. Así comienza uno de los textos más controvertidos de la época reciente. Su título es L’insurrection qui vient (literalmente, La Insurrección que Viene, con todo lo que ello implica de invocación de la la hecatombe, y al tiempo, sugerencia de una forma específica del tiempo futuro). Fue publicado por una pequeña editorial radical Francesa a finales del 2007. Sus autores, a los que nadie aún conoce, se autodenominan ‘El Comité Invisible’. En Noviembre 11 del 2008 fueron arrestados nueve individuos, la mayoría en la villa de Tarnac en la campiña Francesa, y acusados de ‘asociación criminal para propósitos de actividad terrorista’. La acusación tenía que ver con su supuesta participación en actos de sabotaje a las redes eléctricas de las líneas de tren Francesas

Interlocution not conclusion: farewell letter to a dead philosopher on Cornell's negotiations

This is a farewell letter to Drucilla Cornell, the political and legal philosopher with whom I collaborated and form whom I learned for over a decade and a half. It is also an attempt to bring together some of the different strands of her critical approach to political philosophy and jurisprudence as well as our trans-disciplinary explorations. The result is a transpositional twist in contemporary political and legal philosophy that we called "fantastic critique"

Guidelines for direct action during the Twenty-First Century years of plague

This essay is an invitation to consider the question of direct action in the acts of protest that have dominated the public scene during the twenty-first century years of plague. It explores the role of aesthetic ideas that can guide realization-comparisons and the performance of acts in real-time. As such, it works from within an undercurrent of political philosophy originating between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Namely, utopianism. From Thomas More’s Utopia to Julio Cortázar Una utopía realizable. From Marx’s “new struggle in the press” to the combative acts of enslaved Africans in the Americas. From the (post-Kantian) ideals of the imagination to the prefigurative politics of Tricontinentalism, and the New Left that is being reinvented nowadays by art practices intersecting ethical and legal discourses as gallery space spills over into street space and now-time explodes the not-yet in real-time social struggle. This essay is structured into six sections containing six simple guidelines for direct action during the twenty-first century years of plague

Globalización, universidad y conocimientos subalternos: desafíos para la supervivencia cultural

This article questions the possibility of creating spaces in the university for a cultural critique of the processes of global transformation of late capitalism. This is manifested by the overflow of spatial restrictions to financial capital, which is introduced into cyberspace-understood as the confluence of artifacts, practices and power relations of information technologies in relation to market forces. Specifically, it addresses the question of the place of subaltern knowledge in the new world order and the need for a new critical agenda of the university and the "Global South" academy, in the face of the threats of a corporatized university model that has been imposing itself

Poetic traditions of revolt. On Rene Menil's Theory of the Public

How to reciprocate a precious gift? In this case the gift was given to us twice. First, in the shape of Paget Henry’s pioneering reinvention of René Ménil’s “Aesthetic Marxism”. Through it, second, we’re led to rediscover the fantastic world of Ménil’s hitherto ignored but crucial contribution to contemporary philosophy: his systematisation of the poetics of revolt. Our debt with Ménil and Henry is unpayable. Our humble response in this essay is to offer readers a map to the treasure that is Ménil’s thought. We aim to offer a path across and beyond the sedimentation and pacifying effects of given frames of judgment and the imagination in today’s post-classical public sphere. We call it “fantastic critique”, largely inspired by our wider reading of Ménil’s work and specifically his original concept of the “velocity of the spirit”. It renews the Hegelo-Marxian revolutionary formula. Here. Keep it with you. It’s a precious gift