Contemporary critical space theories as well as singular architectural experiments acknowledge a quest for renewing the most significant ways in which space design is conceptually elaborated, factually realised and socially perceived. Searching to seize the possibility and the meaning of a creative intervention in space-related practices, the paper aims at revisiting the manner in which modern times determined the relationship between architectural production and politics. The main reason is that this sequence of the argument allows for a more accurate definition (...) of transformations that build up contemporary experience and especially the ways in which common creative practices totally abandon existential and political concerns. We argue that a specific comprehension of anarchitecture in ontological terms could shed a new light on creative architectural gestures. Anarchitecture, as we understand it, interrupts the logic of manifestos, which distinguishes it from oppositional architecture. In supporting the idea that experienced spaces are more that mere reified presences, involved as they are in shaping and determining meaning, our approach is not prescriptive but, quite on the contrary, attempts to empirically construct minimal orientations for thought and practice. (shrink)

This text is an examination of the democratic public sphere in relation to the presently dominating crisis discourse. More precisely, we endeavor to expose assumptions, aims and consequences entailed by the discourse of crisis, hereafter considered as a rhetorical apparatus asserting that crisis reveals an unambiguous and mandatory nature of things imposing self-evident and thus non deliberative decisions concerning both singular existence and communities. The crisis discourse serves to endorse indisputable certainty and therefore to blur or even suppress indeterminacy. Nevertheless, (...) and it is our guiding allegation formulated mainly in reference to Claude Lefort’s political thought, the possibility of democracy and of its public sphere depends constitutively on a unique indeterminacy. Our analysis proves that restoring certainty cannot but go along with a naturalist fallacy and an abuse of rhetoric power postponing deliberative-shaped democratic practices. This line of reasoning comes to define public sphere as a rhetorical counter-power strategy meant to reassert democratic indeterminacy. (shrink)

Cette contribution entend rendre compte de l’actualité de la pensée de Michel Foucault à travers une analyse du concept de bio-politique. L’étude vise l’émergence historique et celle discursive de la bio-politique, essayant d’insister sur le rapport étroit entre la mutation à travers laquelle la politique se donne comme objet la vie en tant que telle et l’émergence du capitalisme en tant que paradigme dominant de la modernité. Ce faisant, l’analyse s’inscrit dans un horizon herméneutique plus large des Temps modernes.

The five articles composing the thematic dossier Rhetorics of Justice in Emerging Democracies represent the initial results of the joint Romanian and South African research project – Rhetoric of Justice and Deliberative Perceptions of the Rule of Law in Post-Communist Romania and Post-Apartheid South Africa.

We propose hereafter an analysis of the way in which the post-communism has determined the significance of justice and, in doing so, pretended to reorganize the possibility for a legitimate political community. Given that the public perception points out to a gap between the rule of law and justice, one should understand for what reasons. Does the rule of law have the resources for doing justice? Are the legal procedures enough? Or should we take into consideration the possibility that the (...) rule of law is unable to do justice? Subsequently, we identify and discuss three radicalizations: the issue of normativity, the rogue state and the heterogeneity between law and justice. Ultimately, the possibility of justice depends on a different way of thinking democracy. (shrink)