tragicoptimist

Io di fumetti ne so ben poco. La mia esperienza in materia è limitata ad un’ormai polverosa collezione di svariati numeri di X-Men degli anni Ottanta che avevo accumulato tra l’età di sei e sedici anni. All’epoca passavo ore infinite a sfogliare quei numeri, seguendo i protagonisti nelle loro vicende eroiche e personali. Sapevo tutto del passato tormentato di Wolverine e della sua vendetta personale contro il potere arrogante dello Stato. Ma poi sono cresciuto: ho lasciato quel mondo di fantasia giovanile per occuparmi di cose serie come la filosofia e la politica. Ora, leggendo il Dossier TAV, una questione democratica di Claudio Calia, mi rendo conto che, appunto, di fumetti ne so pochissimo. Dunque, da profano che si occupa di cose serie, vorrei qui condividere qualche riflessione riguardo la fantasia giovanile di questo libro. » Read more «

0. The crisis deepens, accelerates, clutters the horizon and, at the same time, continually changes any frame of reference. It is now clear to all that, despite desperate attempts to reassure us by various actors of governance, exit strategies are nowhere to be found. The new element of the modern crisis is that it has lost its cyclical form and become permanent: in this transformation – as we have said many times before against the illusions of a political left unable to rethink its own reformist function – there are no linear Keynesian solutions. Permanent crisis certainly does not mean that the “fall” of capitalism is near: these are hypotheses better left to theologians of history. However, this doesn’t take away the fact that the crisis demonstrates capital’s clear incapacity to make the common, a common produced by the labor of the multitude, function. » Read more «

by Antonio Negri*

With this book, the journey Agamben began with Homo Sacer seems to have come to an end. It was a long road, from the early ‘90s until today, nearly twenty years. An archeology of ontology conducted (with a rigor that not even the bizarre and misleading game of little numbers put in order over different stages of his research could render opaque) – up to the reopening of the problem of Sein. A dig that not even Heidegger (in the words of the author who claims to be a young student of the German philosopher) was able to complete – because here ontology is freed from any remaining “operativity” of every illusion that can be tied to will and control. What is left? “The philosophical question that appears is that of conceiving of an ontology beyond operativity and command, and an ethics and a politics totally freed from the concepts of duty and will”. » Read more «

1. The fracture of European space. Everyone is looking for an exit strategy. The rhythm of transformations is accelerating and, at the same time, is breaking any linearity: financial governance looks more and more like a system of fragmented tools, attempts at stabilization that duly end up reaffirming the crisis’s constitutive turbulence. In this framework, the temptation to accept a simple cartographic role of the crisis, ignoring the complexities of the present, is quite strong. “Fragmentation” and “complexness” are indisputable facts of our present: the risk, however, is that these terms are transformed into a charmer’s mantra, both for theoretical practices and social struggles. The shrewdness of those who know how to navigate these dark waters must be combined – and not without a certain audaciousness – with an attempt to look further into the future, to identify the rupture lines where struggles live, to experiment with possible re-compositional tools, and to elaborate programmatic proposals.

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La prima volta che incontrai il Rotolo era arrivato a Parigi da poco. Avevo appena organizzato una gita collettiva con altri poveri poeti parigini per vedere la prima mondiale del film Sulla Strada di Walter Salles e una visita gratuita al Museo di lettere e manoscritti era compresa nel prezzo del biglietto, come parte della massiva campagna mediatica per l’uscita del film. Poiché avevo pensato che non avrei mai avuto l’occasione di vedere il Rotolo originale (appartiene ad un privato e può essere visto dal pubblico soltanto in una manciata di mostre sparse attraverso il globo a intervalli irregolari), ho corso verso la fermata della metropolitana più vicina con il mio ingresso libero e mi sono precipitato sulla rive gauche. » Read more «