Philosophical interest in state power has tended to focus on the state’s coercive powers rather than its expressive powers. I consider an underexplored aspect of the state’s expressive capacity: its capacity to use symbols (such as monuments, memorials, and street names) to promote political ends. In particular, I argue that the liberal state’s deployment of symbols to promote its members’ commitment to liberal ideals is in need of special justification. This is because the state’s exercise of its capacity to use (...) symbols may be in tension with respecting individual autonomy, particularly in cases in which the symbols exert influence without engaging citizens’ rational capacities. But despite the fact that the state’s deployment of symbols may circumvent citizens’ rational capacities, I argue that it may nonetheless be permissible when surrounded by certain liberal institutions and brought about via democratic procedures. (shrink)

ResumoNeste artigo, são analisados filme e roteiro de Bacurau (2019), dirigido por Kléber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles. Compreende-se a obra sob a perspectiva da ficção weird pela conjunção entre os elementos de futuridade da narrativa e os conflitos sociais do interior do Brasil, circunscritos a uma realidade histórica. Misturando gêneros cinematográficos em um filme que vai do cangaço ao gore, Bacurau nos coloca frente a uma distopia sobre a proliferação de tecnologias de vigilância e controle e, sobretudo, sobre a (...) proliferação de sistemas políticos de morte.Palavras-chave: Bacurau. Ficção weird. Aceleracionismo. Desterritorialidade. Necropolítica. Estudos decoloniais. AbstractIn this article I analyze the film and the script of Bacurau (2019), directed by Kléber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The work is understood from the perspective of weird fiction for the conjunction between the elements of futurity of the narrative and the social conflicts of Brazil’s countryside, anchored in a historical reality. Mixing cinematographic genres in a film that goes from Cangaço Cinema to Gore, Bacurau confronts us with a dystopia about the proliferation of surveillance and control technologies and, specially, about the proliferation of political systems of death.Keywords: Bacurau. Weird Fiction. Accelerationism. Deterritorialization. Necropolitics. Decolonial Studies. (shrink)

Cet article analyse l'impact de la colonisation sur le statut des femmes en l'abordant sous l'angle des droits politiques tels quils furent définis dans le cadre des institutions coloniales : droit de vote, problématique du suffrage, participation aux assemblées… Quels furent les facteurs qui déterminèrent l'accès plus ou moins tardif des femmes à la sphère politique? De quelle marge de manœuvre disposèrent les colonisées face à des politiques qui restèrent longtemps marquées par des mentalités paternalistes? La comparaison des approches française (...) et britannique met en évidence les ambivalences des colonisateurs qui considérèrent les femmes tour à tour comme d'éternelles mineures, des alliées potentielles, à l'instar des femmes chefs de Sierra Leone, ou comme une nouvelle « ressource » politique au moment des indépendances. (shrink)

Cet article analyse l'impact de la colonisation sur le statut des femmes en l'abordant sous l'angle des droits politiques tels quils furent définis dans le cadre des institutions coloniales : droit de vote, problématique du suffrage, participation aux assemblées… Quels furent les facteurs qui déterminèrent l'accès plus ou moins tardif des femmes à la sphère politique? De quelle marge de manœuvre disposèrent les colonisées face à des politiques qui restèrent longtemps marquées par des mentalités paternalistes? La comparaison des approches française (...) et britannique met en évidence les ambivalences des colonisateurs qui considérèrent les femmes tour à tour comme d'éternelles mineures, des alliées potentielles, à l'instar des femmes chefs de Sierra Leone, ou comme une nouvelle « ressource » politique au moment des indépendances. (shrink)

The subject I intend to discuss deals with a problem which is central in the debate of ancient greek philosophy: the quest for happiness as the final end, the highest good for a human being. Fixing in the achievement of a life worth living the strategic aim of actions, ancient philosophers tried to define as well what a man should desire for himself to fully develop all the capabilities which lie inside human nature. On the one side they proposed major (...) normative models of wisdom, on the other side they gave an important practical indication: the “care of the self”, as a self-control discipline that aims to build a virtuous form of subjectivity, that is able to design and deserve the eudaimonia. In this context, my analysis will focus on the issue of pleasure. The hedone surely represents the critical point of all happiness models of Socratic origin, centred in different ways on the practice of the “care of the self”. While this practical proposal appears to be a complex and demanding alternative in the search for a life worth living, the hedonistic way seems to be much easier and simpler, as far as pleasure is intended as an unequivocal sign of goodness and wellness, immediately recognisable in the experience of happiness. The hedonism of the many appears to the philosophers as a serious menace to society and to the individual, because it conveys unlimited desires and interior disharmony, though, on the other hand, it not possible to deny the value of pleasure without making philosophical happiness unattractive. In the field of the important contemporary re-evaluation of bios models of ancient philosophers (Hadot, Foucault, Nussbaum, Annas) to test their strength and operative capabilities in human subject’s condition in the present days, I would like to outline a comparison between Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on the dilemmas set by pleasure in the enterprise of self-construction: their positions appear, as usual, close and at the same time opposite in the well-known “gigantomachy”. (shrink)

This essay argues that secrets and lies are not forms of withholding information but forms by which information is valorized. Lies are constructed: what is to be lied about, what a lie is to consist of, how it is to be told, and whom it is to be told to, all reveal a social imaginary about who thinks what and what constitutes credibility. Secrets are negotiated: continual decisions about whom to tell, how much to tell, and whom not to tell (...) describe social worlds, and the shape and weight of interactions therein. All of this makes lies and secrets extraordinarily rich historical sources. We might not see the truth distorted by a lie or the truth hidden by a secret, but we see the ideas and imaginings by which people disclose what should not be made public, and how they should carry out concealing one narrative with another. Such insights involve a step back from the project of social history, in which an inclusive social narrative is based on experience and individuals' ability to report it with some reliability, and suggests that historians need to look at social imaginings as ways to understand the ideas and concerns about which people lie and with which people construct new narratives that are not true. The study of secrets, however, links the study of social imaginings with the project of social history, as the valorization of information that results in the continual negotiation and renegotiation of secrets shows individuals and publics imagining the experiences labeled as secret because of the imagined power of a specific version of events. (shrink)

This essay is broadly conceived as a study of how the emotional experience of shame can play an important role in the construction of personal identity. It considers, on the one hand, the way in which Greek culture conceives the social meaning of this emotion and, on the other, the double representation that Plato provides in the Symposium of two very different forms of pedagogy of shame. Using the Platonic text as a phenomenological source, the author discusses the general validity (...) and relevance to the Greek world of the anthropological scheme that opposes «shame cultures» to «guilt cultures», attributing evolutionary primacy to the latter in terms of the acquisition of individual moral autonomy. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende demostrar que, en la filosofía de Bruno, la vicisitud universal es la explicación metafísica del devenir cósmico y su constitutiva movilidad. La materia infinita del universo es una unidad vital al amparo de la ley de la mutación cíclica, cuya consecuencia ineludible es la armonía de los contrarios. El destino del hombre es hallar la verdad subyacente en el ritmo vícisitudinario de lo real, y para ello deberá alcanzar la sabiduría y transcenderla por el amor heroico.

What can international courts say when criminals ask, by what right do you try me? Some authors attempt to draw a connection between humanity's responsibility to call offenders to account and the harm humanity has suffered as a consequence of the offender's crimes. Others have argued that there need not be a special connection between those calling to account and the offenders, as the right to punish offenders is a general right each and every person has. Both lines of argument (...) are ultimately unconvincing. Instead, I argue for a modified version of the second position which proposes a democratically based theory of responsibility for punishment held by international criminal law institutions. (shrink)

Contribution for book symposium on Andrea Sangiovanni's Humanity without Dignity.

Sous l’impulsion de l’Institut Émilie du Chatelet, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power : Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002) vient d’être traduit en français et publié par La Découverte, premier ouvrage de cette auteure prolifique et novatrice à être ainsi offert aux lecteurs francophones. Comment recevoir cette belle traduction une décennie après son édition originale, alors même qu’Ann Stoler continue d‘avancer d’un bon pas, creusant le mê...

Professeure de sciences politiques à l'Université du Québec à Montréal, spécialiste de l'ancien Soudan français et auteure de plusieurs articles consacrés aux femmes, Chantal Rondeau se livre à une étude en profondeur dans le temps et dans l'espace des paysannes du Mali. Sur trois générations et dans trois milieux différents (dogon, senufo et minyanka) elle met en évidence ce qu'elle appelle les « espaces de liberté » des femmes en milieu rural. Dans cette perspective, elle a opté po...

Me rendant à l’université de Bâle, je fus étonnée de voir notés sur les marches du grand escalier du bâtiment administratif, le Kollegienhaus, les noms, en ordre chronologique, des premières étudiantes admises, tardivement, à partir de 1890. Ce lieu de mémoire particulier marque les esprits. Il renvoie au premier pan des recherches reflétées dans ce livre : documenter l’apparition et l’accroissement des étudiantes puis des enseignantes dans les institutions d’enseignement supérieur. Fruit d’u...

The edited volume New Economies for Sustainability: Limits and Potentials for Possible Futures brings together a range of alternative views on economy and organization to illustrate different perspectives on how to work towards more sustainable solutions to production, consumptions and economic organization more generally. The book brings chapters from the most renowned scholars in the field, who bring their perspectives on how alternative schools theorize politics, society, organization, nature and ethics in their attempts to develop theories with a strong focus (...) on sustainability. The book aims to contribute with a platform for gathering and collecting these theories in a pluralist economic framework, which can provide a strong alternative voice to mainstream economic theories in sustainability debates. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 2, Page 174-183, February 2022. This article is a commentary on Asger Sørensen's book Capitalism, Alienation and Critique, especially his definition and delimitation of neoliberalism. Overall, I sympathize with Sørensen's aim and critical project and also acknowledge the contribution of his particular approach to a critique of capitalism, political economy and more specifically neoliberalism. However, I shall discuss whether his definition of neoliberalism is the most appropriate from a critical perspective, i.e. as a (...) Critical Theory approach to the role of neoliberalism in contemporary capitalism. This commentary aims to provide a perspective to certain themes in Sørensen's text by discussing his approach in comparison with other ways of defining and understanding neoliberalism. (shrink)

We would be wrong to state that Plato’s approach to the Golden Age in the Statesman occurs through nostalgia, even if he stresses the immense distance between our world and that blessed time. After evoking the shepherd-god as a ruler, Plato shows that the completely abandoned disposition of the ruled is only justifiable in presence of an unbridgeable chasm between the two, such as that between gods and men, or men and beasts. The real question in the Statesman is how (...) to single out the peculiar form of knowledge possessed by the few men that are truly capable to rule. (shrink)

På en let tilgængelig og anvendelig måde forsøger bogen Viden, videnskab og virkelighed at forklare studerende på videregående uddannelser, hvad det er de skal vide om videnskaben. Hvad er videnskab? Hvad er de videnskabelige idealer og normer? Hvordan fungerer videnskaben i samfundet i netværk af læreanstalter, virksomheder og andre institutioner? Hvordan vil de studerende selv komme i berøring med videnskaben og hvordan skal de forstå det videnskabelige i det som de laver? -/- Viden, videnskab og virkelighed forsøger at indkredse det (...) særlige ved moderne videnskab og præsenterer derfor også forskellige opfattelser af viden, virkelighed og videnskab inden for filosofi, videnskabsteori og samfundsvidenskab. Men samtidig giver bogen altså konkrete bud på, hvordan man som studerende mestrer refleksion, omsætter viden til praksis og samarbejder på tværs af faggrænser. -/- Bogen henvender sig til alle studerende på videregående uddannelser og til undervisning i videnskabsteori. (shrink)

La scrittura letteraria è sempre in qualche modo riscrittura. E per apprezzarne l’originalità occorre immergersi nel labirinto di citazioni di cui un testo d’autore abitualmente si compone. Ciò è tanto più vero nel caso della letteratura socratica, in cui tutto ciò che sappiamo di Socrate, come oggetto reale della rappresentazione, è appassionata trascrizione di una indimenticabile esperienza collettiva, riscritta a molte mani e in sé irrappresentabile. Di qui la tentazione (ricorrente nella...