Ludovico Pratesi: L'arte contro la guerra. Intervista con Shirin Neshat @ Exibart, 16Feb2015

L’Intervista/Shirin Neshat

L'ARTE CONTRO LA GUERRA Read more @ Exibart

È possibile. L’artista iraniana ci spiega come

Donne velate che puntano pistole con sguardo altero, con le mani coperte da  frasi scritte in farsi, l’antico persiano. Nei primi anni Novanta le opere fotografiche dell’artista iraniana Shirin Neshat (Qazvin, 1957) hanno denunciato la situazione delle donne in un Paese piegato dalla rivoluzione di Khomeini. Sono le Women of Allah, immagini scattate nel 1993 e esposte di recente al Mathaf, il museo d’arte moderna di Doha (Qatar) in occasione della mostra antologica Afterwards, insieme a opere più recenti, come The Book of Kings (2012) e Our House is on Fire (2013), dedicata ai protagonisti della Primavera Araba. Le opere di Shirin Neshat sono perciò sempre impregnate anche della complessa e spesso difficile realtà politica del suo Paese e del mondo arabo: per questo le abbiamo chiesto un’opinione dopo i fatti di Charlie Hebdo e il clima di terrore che l’Isis tenta di instaurare. 

Oggi, come artista iraniana, qual è la sua posizione sul massacro di Parigi e, in generale, sulla libertà di espressione?

«Credo nella libertà di espressione e per questo vivo in esilio e non nel mio Paese, che priva il suo popolo dei diritti umani fondamentali come la libertà di espressione. Nonostante questo, non credo nella provocazione come valore per affermare questa libertà. Però mi considero una musulmana laica, e per principio sono contraria a ogni forma di estremismo religioso che possa causare violenza o sofferenza, introducendosi nella vita privata delle persone, da qualunque fonte provenga: cristiana, musulmana o ebrea».

La libertà di espressione è un tema rilevante nel suo lavoro?

«Dal momento che vivo fuori dalla mia patria non mi confronto con le autorità iraniane ogni giorno, anche se il mio lavoro continua a indirizzarsi verso tematiche socio politiche e religiose relative all'Iran. Ma rifiuto di utilizzare l'arte come uno strumento per creare controversie, o per inasprire, offendere o contrastare qualsiasi forma di credo religioso o ideologia politica. In generale penso che qualsiasi espressione artistica che sia fondata su un pregiudizio sia sempre manipolativa e sbagliata, dal momento che spinge verso lo sdegno o addirittura la violenza».

Ricorda quali furono le prime reazioni alle sue Women of Allah?

«All'inizio della mia carriera, molti occidentali pensavano che  le parole scritte sui corpi femminili nella serie fotografica Women of Allah fossero versetti coranici. In realtà ho sempre usato soltanto versi poetici, perché non potrei mai immaginare di rendere banale ciò che è sacro per milioni di musulmani».

Adesso che reazioni provocherebbero?

«Quello che è successo al giornale Charlie Hebdo a Parigi, mi sembra che riaffermi l'idea che la rabbia nutre la barbarie, e che una forma di rabbia conduce ad un'altra forma di rabbia, e come siamo spinti verso un circolo vizioso di astio, rivincita e brutalità. La risposta può essere la creazione di dialoghi su come possiamo prevenire l'ira immotivata che causa tanta sofferenza. Mi piace credere che ci sono persone che hanno valori ai quali non aderisco personalmente, ma che rispetterò e tollererò finché saranno pacifici».

Crede nella possibilità di un dialogo vero e profondo tra l’Islam e l’Occidente?

«In qualità di artista e non di esperta, ritengo che la cultura occidentale non riesca a comprendere che non tutte le culture aderiscono ai valori razionali dell’Occidente. Il problema è il pregiudizio legato all’idea di confine, necessario ai musulmani per proteggere alcuni valori, e così estraneo agli occidentali che cercano di eliminare i confini per consentire una società aperta e giusta».  

In che modo?

«Può sembrare troppo ottimista e ingenuo da parte mia, ma credo che la risoluzione di questa divisione storica tra le culture islamica e occidentale sia possibile solo se i popoli cominciano ad assumere un approccio diverso da quello dei governi. Penso che una soluzione sia possibile soltanto nell’evitare ogni ritorsione, con una diplomazia pacifica che conduca al rispetto reciproco, alla tolleranza e perfino alla celebrazione delle nostre differenze».

Crede che gli artisti possano avere un ruolo in questo dialogo?

«Sono fermamente convinta che gli artisti possano giocare un ruolo significativo nel costruire un dialogo tra culture in conflitto, perché il linguaggio dell’arte ha l’abilità di rimanere al di sopra e oltre le differenze religiose, culturali e nazionali, e arrivare nel profondo della psiche umana. Spesso però gli artisti si trovano nella posizione difficile di rispondere alle problematiche politiche del loro tempo, senza essere apertamente controversi, manipolativi, di parte o didattici. Dopotutto, è molto più facile fare un’arte che punta il dito su quello che è giusto o sbagliato, e più difficile fare arte che crea un momento di discussione, un forum che apre nuove prospettive e invita lo spettatore a formarsi una propria interpretazione. È attraverso quest’ultimo approccio che gli artisti possono giocare un ruolo significativo in questo momento storico».

Per concludere, l’arte contemporanea può assumere un valore politico?

«Sicuramente dovrebbe essere più consapevole dei problemi politici. Oggi percepisco una forte assenza di dialogo critico su temi politici, anche quelli relativi alla libertà di espressione, che è al centro di ogni pratica artistica».

Pic: Shirin Neshat :: Women of Allah

Rareș Iordache: An interview with Tony D. Sampson about Crowds vs publics, Ukraine vs Russia, the Gaza crisis, the contagion theory and netica – a dialogue with Tony D. Sampson @ #hibridmedia Magazine, 19Aug2014

Rareș Iordache: Crowds vs publics, Ukraine vs Russia, the Gaza crisis, the contagion theory and netica – a dialogue with Tony D. Sampson (19Aug2014)

@ #hibridmedia Magazine + Read more

Crowds vs publics, Ukraine vs Russia, the Gaza crisis, the contagions and the anomalous objects in cyberspace, netica/ (n)ethics or a kind of ethics of information and the viral phenomena. All these are provocative themes for discussion. #hibridmedia magazine gives you all these in one fantastic dialogue with Tony D. Sampson. 

Rareș Iordache: After EuroMaidan to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. This event increased his covering and it transformed into a genuine war. When I think at EuroMaidan I make a comparison with Indignados, the protests in Spain. There are several distinctions, but the contagions and their spreading caught my attention. Tell me, what do you think that were the contagious objects in this case? Another interesting thing is epidemiography, a term used by John Postill. This one is also in connection with viral phenomena and the contagious objects.

Tony D. Sampson: What is the difference between Spain and Ukraine? What tips the contagiousness of one protest into revolution and civil war while the other fizzles out? Although there have been analogous patterns emerging in recent years – beautifully portrayed in John Beieler’s big data application (despite its obvious weaknesses) – I’m not sure there’s one concrete object or set of viral objects determining what goes viral.

In Virality I asked what we might learn from Gabriel Tarde. In terms of revolution we need to look beneath the spreading of mere belief systems (ideologies) to how desires are given release or inhibited by invention. The object of desire is always belief; meaning that the biological and social mingle at the point where desires are appropriated by social inventions. We perhaps need to think through the interwoven relations established here between the desire for change and inventions of old hierarchies, revolutionary crowds, mobs, mass protests alongside mediated publics and electronic networks.

Tarde’s proto-media theory also provides us with a familiar distinction between publics and crowds. Crowds have been progressively usurped by mediated publics. On one hand, crowds have something of the animal about them. They are not easily led. If you want to win a revolution you probably need an animal on your side. On the other hand, the new publics are appear to be better informed by the new media, but are in fact more easily controlled; mainly as a result of the distances the increasingly mediated flows of information open up between connected subjects. There is, I suppose, less need to join a crowd as a source of information. This marks the beginning of press baron power and manufactured mass audiences.

Old crowd theories suggested that the violent irrationality of crowd power was just about enough to prevail over old aristocratic hierarchies. Prevailing revolutionary movements have historically relied on some level of violence – the muscle of the mob; usually spilling out of the poorer neighbourhoods and storming the palaces.

So what difference can a network make? Take Beieler’s protest map again. A tipping point may well correspond with the wide-scale uptake of the Internet. Indeed, there are echoes of crowd theory evident in some of the popular ideas about network contagions today. The BBC broadcast a documentary a couple of year’s back fundamentally claiming that Facebook caused the Arab Spring. Governments take these claims seriously too. They see social media as a threat.

But is a network like a crowd? Things are complex. There are networks in crowds and crowds in networks, but a network only seems to have revolutionary potential if it can tap into the violence of an actual crowd; a crowd prepared to put its life on the line for the cause. Indeed, I am growing a little sceptical about the threat posed by social media. The problem for protesters in most western European countries is that they are still countered by a docile public led by corporate media and bourgeois politicians. When the students got out of hand during the fees protests in the UK most of the public seemed to turn against them, welcoming their suppression. Others remained blissfully distracted by their diet of celebrity gossip, football transfers, and TV talent shows.

Social media provides an alternative; it acts as a vent for protest, of course. It has an influence on discursive formations and interacts with the actions of crowds. But it’s a distraction too. The extreme police violence played a role in the demise of the student movement, but they didn’t close down their accounts. The stuff that generally trends on these networks does not appropriate the desire for political change, but rather indulgences a craving for joyful encounters – entertainment, sex, love, scandal, and fun, or as Olga Goriunova argues, utter idiocy. Perhaps there’s revolutionary potential in this stuff, but how that works I’m not sure. For every FB posting encouraging action on the streets there seems to be thousands of stupid cat pictures.

It’s also important to note that contagions are not inherently radical. Contagions can be very conservative. As Barbara Ehrenreich points out, the only English ‘revolution’ was founded on the spreading of a Calvinist belief system that opposed the kind of festivities and carnivals that we might usually associate with the animality of radical protests. As Beieler’s map problematically illustrates the contagion could be an Occupy or Tea Party protest…

Perhaps networks are a hybrid crowd-public or ersatz crowds that lack the animality of actual crowds. We cannot storm the Bastille with tweets alone! The crowd needs to become the brutal muscle that intertwines with network sloganing.
So yes, any attempt to produce epidemiographs of protest movements studying the interaction between network and crowd is very welcome.

R.I.: I try to establish a triad between media – archaeology, cyber-intelligence and philosophy of information. We can start this discussion from the particular case of network archaeology. At this moment, beside the impact of flow information and of his transgression, I can talk about a kind of ethics of information. In fact, how we use the information in cyberspace. This issue will give his quality. We are able to set up a balance between the quantity and the quality of information via Luciano Floridi. I define this ethics as (n)ethics because all is about his functionality. In reality, Netica is a software program developed by Norsys Software Corporation. Its purpose is to make a network more intelligible to us. Everything relies on a set of algorithms. So, what are your first thoughts about this triad and his rethinking based on (n)ethics?

T.D.S.: Media archaeology is very appealing; not least because it helps us to think up ways by which we can rummage through the archives of media invention without placing the constraints of a discipline on the researcher. As Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka put it, media archaeology needs to go against the grain of almost everything. It’s a nomad. So I think any attempt to triangulate it needs to keep this in mind. If it’s to work well then the archaeology needs to perhaps loosen up the ethics. 

This is what Parikka’s mapping of noise and Genosko’s fairly recent book on communication theory do. Most technical histories of Shannon and Weaver regard them as having brought noise under control, but there is of course an archive of accidents captured in, for example, collections of computer viruses and glitch music. So perhaps one ethical stance would be, in this case, a treatment of noise not simply grasped as the enemy of information, but something that has communicative potential beyond fixed ethical positions.

Netica looks like a fascinating example for media archaeology. Thanks for pointing it out. It would be really interesting to know how Bayesian networks integrate noise in logical circuits of a belief diagrams. For my part I’d also be interested in the extent to which these predominantly cognitive decision-making diagrams cope with the emotions, feelings and affects involved in reasoning? Is there a line of flight between Netica type programs and the concerted effort to integrate emotions into machine learning? I assume there is.

R.I.: The conflicts between Israel and Gaza. Any discussion about this event is a viral phenomenon, it is clear, and it is a form of manipulation. An informational one. Where are the affections, where are the contagious or viral objects?

T.D.S.: What kind of viral phenomenon is this? There is a swelling of the protest movement resulting from emotional engagement with this horror. There is a crowd forming. The death of innocent people, many of who are children, will act as a powerful emotional contagion. We can barely dare to watch this cruelty unfold. But what influence are these protests having on governments? There were a million stop the war protesters before the invasion of Iraq. I can only think that the hitherto failure of the government here to halt arms sales or more strongly condemn Israel’s asymmetric slaughter of innocents exhibits a kind of political autism at the heart of the establishment here. To prioritize arms sales and support the blockade of Gaza in favour of this slaughter is obscene.

The most effective contagion will most likely be the spreading of revenge in the Middle East for the death of so many innocents. The actions of the IDF and their arms suppliers in the west are producing an epidemic of avengers. This will be a crowd that will be willing to put its life on the line. It will be networked too.

R.I.: You wrote Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, a book which transposes the virality in the social field. You rethink Tarde’s ideas mixing this spectrum with deleuzo-guattarian structures. It’s more than a Tardean recovering. Besides these influences, which is your theoretical support for your research?

T.D.S.: The project began with an interest in the potential of computer viruses – how these anomalous codes might provide an open alternative to the type of closed information spaces we find within proprietary software systems. In many ways that remained part of the focus, but it expanded outwards to look at virality in relation to social theory and the history of crowd theory in particular – moving through Tarde, Le Bon, Freud, Milgram, Deleuze and Guattari and ending up with network science, affective contagions and marketing. The open system of the viral electronic network was in some ways transposed to the openness of the contagious self-other relation of a more generalized social network. Instead of finding a new age of contagion, I found that contagion had always been there.

If I am to look back at it now and summarize I would say that the project’s main philosophical point was to collapse technological, social and biological distinctions. It tries desperately not to side with deterministic thinking. It focuses on the insensible degrees between conscious and nonconscious states, affective and representational states, volition and mechanical habit… I’m not sure how successful that effort was though?

R.I.: You are in connexion with Romanian project Bureau of Melodramatic Research? What do you think about Romanians researchers and projects? 

T.D.S.: My visit to Bucharest was a fantastic experience – one of the best invites since publishing Virality. The discussions I had there with various people provided me with lots of new ideas about my next project on neuroculture. I still follow BMR’s work and was luckily enough to meet up with Alina and Florin in London last year. Indeed, one of the most valued books in my collection is their little pamphlet called End Pit. It’s a great read. Knowing that the project coincided with the protests in Turkey at the time makes it all the more fascinating. Protest art as interference or accident; a mixture of performance, affective art and politics.

R.I.: The cyberspace is filled with anomalies, contagious objects, viruses and viral phenomena/ objects. So, in this context, are media ecologies the most important things for our cyberspace? At the same time, what do you think about an ecology based on semantic web?

T.D.S.: Well, yes, it’s these objects, processes and inventions, as Matt Fuller argues, that make up the world, synthesize it, block it, and make new worlds available. To discount the anomaly from this world is senseless, as we argued in The Spam Book. There might be many attempts to introduce intruder detections and immunological nets, to weed out the weeds, but the potential of the anomaly to spill out and infect is always there.

I’m not sure about the semantic model of the web. I wonder how much of the anomalous will figure in automated machines reading of data? What threat does it pose to anonymity too? I suppose going back to what I have said already, it is the anomaly that might help actualize the network into a crowd; its becoming animal. The tendency is, it seems, to always drift toward a conservative stability founded on the fear of the other (human and nonhuman). What we need is nomadic novelty to take hold and deterritorialize these territories of prejudice.

R.I.: Tell me a few words about your current and future interests, research or writings.

T.D.S.: I’m on sabbatical at the moment working on a few projects. I’m writing a book on neuroculture. This will explore the rise of the neurosciences and the impact it has on nomadic thought through various essays on the brain in relation to control, work and art.

I’m also collaborating with various people. Along with the performance artist, Dean Todd, I’m developing on what I’m calling dystopian media theory. I’m also working with Jairo Lugo from University of Sheffield on a project that revisits Tardean media theory. We are interested in the extent to which the contagions of social media affect editorial decisions and content.

Dr Tony D. Sampson is a Reader in Digital Culture and Communications within the School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI). Tony works with PhD, MA and UG students from across ADI on related projects, including the digital media design degrees, visual cultures and the fine arts doctorate programme. His teaching focuses on developing student research projects. Tony’s latest book on contagion theory uses the ideas of Gabriel Tarde, Gilles Deleuze and others to develop a contemporary alternative to the meme, encompassing digital, affective, financial, political and cultural contagions.

His current teaching and research interests explore aspects (and critiques) of human computer interaction (HCI) and subsequent trends toward a third paradigm (or post-Taylorist mode) of HCI, including user experience design, ubiquitous computing, and a focus on emotions, feelings and affect.

He is currently writing a new book (Neuroculture) in which he explores the “interferences” between brain function (as understood in the neurosciences), and philosophy, politics and culture. More

An Interview with Jussi Parikka: CONCEPTS: NETWORKS AND MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY @ Amodern2 : Network Archeology, September 2013

CIRCULATING CONCEPTS: NETWORKS AND MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

An Interview with Jussi Parikka

Braxton Soderman and Nicole Starosielski:

“What makes books happen?” Jussi Parikka asks in the acknowledgements of his recent book What is Media Archaeology? (2012). His answer: “A lot of great colleagues, whether in the same institution, or through other networks; several discussions on- and off-topic; things you consume through your eyes and brains, but also the gut.” What makes media archaeology happen? Our gut response: the creative energy, innovative thought, and prolific networking of Jussi Parikka. One need only recall a few of Parikka’s recent works (including the above) to grasp his dedication to the development, deployment and propagation of the media archaeological method:Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (2011, edited with Erkki Huhtamo). Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (2010), and Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (2007). In these influential books media and archaeology consistently return, simultaneously etching the contours of a burgeoning methodology while providing disruptive possibilities for new directions in research.

While Alan Liu – the other interviewee in this issue – stands as a paramount proper name that signifies the invaluable contribution of the digital humanist, the proper name Jussi Parikka leads us down the opaque, though necessarily noisy, entrails of the nonhuman. Parikka does not abandon the human but diagnoses “the urgent need for a cartography of potential forces of inhuman kinds that question evolutionary trees and exhibit alternative logics of thought, organization, and sensation.” The gut, no doubt, is not where most academics might think that books are made – this is what brains are for – but perhaps this is where media archaeology thrives, in digesting other disciplines to fuel the body of new forms of thought and new sensations for the consumer of our hyper-mediated culture. Whether discussing noise, viruses, swarms, the animal, the materiality of the machinic, micro-temporalities, software below the senses, Parikka’s corpus festers with insights concerning the forms of inhuman mediation beyond brains and eyes, insights which burrow into a contemporary digital landscape that often operates pre-cognitively and post-visually.

“Networks are processual and not just a stable diagram of nodes connected,” as Parikka notes in the interview that follows. Indeed, in Insect Media Parikka embraces “an affect view of networks” that seeks to trace their “temporal becomings.” In other words, networks are alive, spawning connections between human affect and inhuman processes, creating assemblages that link together diverse domains such as technology, politics, aesthetics, and economics. Like a network, Parikka’s writings are electric with the expressive poetics of a theory that leaps and gathers, packet switching amongst disciplines until the message is constructed and delivered. We hope that his interview provides an ample frame for what follows in this special issue, a border off which a reader’s thought might carom as he or she consumes the ideas that percolate within.

Interview:

How does the concept of the network inform your work?

Network(s) are present in a lot of my work in two overlapping ways: first as an object of study, second as methodological operations.

In terms of an object of study, my first book in English was on computer viruses and about understanding network culture through its anomalous sides and its accidents. I pitched the idea of a “general accident” of network culture that adopted the notion from Paul Virilio and “applied” it to network objects like viruses. In a way, it was thinking the primacy of the accident as an epistemological tool for our notions and practices of networking from 1960s to 1990s. The idea of “virality” and “contagion” were mapped as characteristic discursive notions as well as practical experiments for the emerging network culture: processes of semi-autonomous nature as defining how network entities interact and have agency; how networks of digital kind have a specific relation to ideas of the social as contagion, although I did not really go into social media. There is a new book out by Tony D. Sampson, Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks, that covers these aspects of social contagion much better. Mine was an archaeology of these later developments, although admittedly more focused on the production of “maliciousness” as a characteristic of software. I am constantly interested in how various people involved in the field are producing the idea of networks as a political ontology of our age.

In terms of methodological choices, networks are present in many ways: it is a figure of connection and disconnection and the various links that are established. Not the banal idea that “everything is connected” but the necessary specification of how things are connected and disconnected. Networks are processual and not just a stable diagram of nodes connected. It is more of an active process of how networks are made and unmade, and doing research is exactly about this. Of course, as one can guess there is a bit of Bruno Latour and John Law in my thinking.

For sure, there is a specific interest of knowledge that I have concerning technological networks, but instead of networks I often speak about other related features: media archaeology of swarms as a phenomenon that itself was transported from entomological research in early 20^th century to popular network talk; viruses and worms and their non-malicious roots in computer science; concepts of nature adopted as part of technological vocabulary; various critical and slightly historically tuned “archaeologies” that ask the question of what is the depth of the current moment, what are the various networks that sustain it – the hinterland, to use a notion from John Law. (...)

(... A suivre/Read full interview @ Amodern website)

Pic post: The Joshua Light Show and The Sliver Apples/Media Archaeology Festival/All images courtesy Aurora Picture Show

Adam Kotsko: Zizek and Theology @ An und für sich, 11.Oct.2013

Adam Kotsko - Žižek and Theology.

@ An und für  sich Read more

 1. In general, what are the fundamental formulations of Žižek on theology?

Žižek interprets Christianity along Hegelian lines, as an enactment of the death of God. His approach is similar to that of Thomas Altizer, whose declaration of the death of God caused significant controversy in the US in the 1960s. The basic claim is that when God became incarnate in Christ, that was a total and irreversible decision to empty himself into Christ—and so when Christ died on the cross, God truly and irreversibly died, emptying himself into the world.

2. What is the peculiarity of his approach?

Žižek’s approach goes against the mainstream of Christian theology, where the doctrine of the Trinity has allowed theologians to affirm that only one of the divine persons underwent the ordeal of the incarnation—hence isolating the impact of the incarnation on the divine life. From the orthodox perspective, it is correct to say that “God is dead” in view of Christ’s death, but in a more important sense, God “survived” even when Christ was buried in the tomb.

The Hegelian approach Žižek adopts also differs from traditional Christology, which holds that God raised Christ personally and individually from the dead. In the Hegelian interpretation, by contrast, Christ’s divine power is “resurrected” as the new form of community known as the “Holy Spirit.” Here, however, Žižek differs from Hegel insofar as he views the “Holy Spirit” not as an institutional form of life (like the Catholic Church) but as a fundamentally new form of human life together.

3. In what sense are the works of Žižek, especially the latest ones, relevant to the current theological debate?

I see many mainstream theologians as torn between two desires. On the one hand, they recognize that the Greek philosophical categories through which the early Church Fathers interpreted the gospel were not the best fit and in some ways wound up distorting the Christian message. On the other hand, though, they want to remain faithful to the orthodox doctrines that grew out of that conceptuality. Karl Barth is emblematic of this conflict—he claims to be providing a radical new basis for Christian doctrine, and yet he always comes up with essentially the same answers that orthodoxy had always provided.

In that context, I think Žižek’s approach represents a way out of this deadlock, insofar as the Hegelian interpretation of Christianity attends to the inherent logic of the incarnation without troubling itself about philosophical presuppositions such as the unchangeability of God. In a sense, Hegel, Altizer, and Žižek may represent a real attempt to follow up on Paul’s claim to know nothing but Christ crucified.

From the other direction, I believe that Žižek’s project provides support for other radical attempts to rethink the Christian tradition—particularly in the various liberation theologies. This is not to say that such theologians “need” Žižek, but rather that Žižek’s work could point more mainstream theologians toward the creative, radical work that is already going on.

4. In what sense is the argumentation of Žižek on this subject complex and unusual?

One challenge for theologians who want to read Žižek is the importance of Lacan for his project. While Žižek’s reading of Hegel is somewhat idiosyncratic, Hegel is at least familiar to most theologians—Lacan, on the other hand, is a less frequent point of reference and is in many ways more difficult to approach given that he uses a lot of his own jargon and symbols in developing his concepts. I try to provide some orientation in Lacanian thought in my book, so that people can at least know where to begin.

5. How can we understand the claim of Žižek that, to become a true dialectical materialist, one must go through the Christian experience? Is not this about a paradoxical stance from him?

Žižek understands the Christian experience in terms of the death of God. For him, Christianity is the most radical form of atheism insofar as even God himself becomes an unbeliever in Christ’s cry of dereliction on the cross. This differs from other forms of atheism or skepticism, because Žižek believes that most people who deny a particular God still believe in something else that fills the same role. A scientist, for instance, will generally believe in something like the laws of nature, or a Communist might believe in the laws of historical necessity. Only the Christian experience of a God who doesn’t believe in himself provides the guarantee that we won’t be able to sneak in a new idol to take the old God’s place.

The Christian experience is thus the experience of the undeniable and irrevocable emptying out of any transcendent meaning or purpose—of any “master signifier,” in Lacanian terms. From the traditional Christian perspective, this may seem contradictory or strange, but from Žižek’s own perspective, it doesn’t seem right to call it paradoxical.

6. How can we understand the fact that Žižek is interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology?

Žižek believes that the total emptying out of transcendent meaning is necessary to open up the possibility of real freedom. For him, death and resurrection represent the movement of completely withdrawing from the present order and setting to work building something new.

7. How does Žižek analyze the continental philosophy and the future of Christian theology from the legacy of Paul of Tarsus? What is the significance of Paul, in this perspective?

For Žižek, Paul’s Christian communities are a model of withdrawing from the present order—or as Žižek puts it in The Puppet and the Dwarf, “unplugging” from the force of law. Where many interpreters believe that Paul is an opponent of the Jewish law, Žižek claims that Paul is trying to give Gentiles access to the uniquely Jewish stance toward the law. In this perspective, Paul’s famous discussion of the law inciting its own transgression in Romans 7 is not talking about the Jewish law, but about distinctively pagan attitudes toward the law. Paul is trying to give his Gentile followers a way out of the vicious cycle he describes there.

This is relevant for today, insofar as Žižek views contemporary culture as embodying a kind of law that incites its own transgression—everything has to be “subversive” and “irreverent.” People don’t feel guilty about having sex, but about not having enough sex. In this context, rebellion against social norms becomes meaningless. A completely different stance that breaks the dichotomy of obedience and rebellion is needed, and that’s what Paul provides in Žižek’s view.

8. To what extent are Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Chesterton leading thinkers in the theological stance of the Slovenian philosopher?

This is an area where I believe Žižek has been misunderstood. Many readers view his use of these thinkers, particularly Chesterton, as an endorsement. In reality, though, his ultimate goal is to show that they don’t go far enough. He enjoys Chesterton’s Hegelian style, for example, but he views Chesterton’s Catholicism as a betrayal of the gospel that returns to the pagan approach to law and transgression. Similarly, though Pascal and Kierkegaard provide very real insights, he wants to go beyond them because they don’t take the next step and embrace the death of God.

9. What are the main points of the debate between Žižek and Milbank in “The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic”?

The encounter between Žižek and Milbank is the encounter between the Hegelian death of God approach and traditional orthodoxy. The debate was productive insofar as it allowed Žižek to develop his critique of traditional theology, particularly of the doctrine of the Trinity, and to reflect on the ethics implied in his position, but both authors’ essays were so long and full of so many digressions that it was almost impossible to discern any actual debate.

For me, the biggest benefit of this debate was that it allowed Žižek to draw a clear line in the sand. Milbank’s followers had sometimes viewed Žižek as a natural ally of their Radical Orthodoxy project, but Žižek declares that Milbank’s vision—which is centered on escaping from the problems of modernity by reasserting hierarchical authority and traditional family values—as “light fascism.” He also makes it clear that he views Milbank’s Anglo-Catholicism, like Chesterton’s Catholicism, as a reversion into the pagan stance toward law and transgression.

10. To what extent does the debate between these two thinkers deepen the dialogue between faith and reason?

In my view, the debate was a disappointment. Žižek and Milbank are simply too far apart for a truly productive struggle to emerge. Far more interesting, in my view, is the confrontation staged between Žižek and Terry Eagleton in Ola Sigurdson’s Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope. A confrontation with a less traditional theologian like Jurgen Moltmann or Catherine Keller would also have been more interesting. Between Žižek and Milbank, though, there was little more than a missed encounter. Žižek has not yet found a theological interlocutor who can challenge him in a productive way—and I hope that someone does step up to fill that role, because it is so rare for a contemporary philosopher to have any interest at all in contemporary theology. I don’t think I am the right person for the job, but I hope that in my book, I helped to clear the space for such an encounter to occur.

Pic Post: evangelista Giovanni by Antonio Calandriello

Giorgio Agamben: The Endless Crisis as an Instrument of Power. In conversation with Giorgio Agamben @ Verso website, 04 June 2013 (Original Interview by Dirk Schümer for FAZ)

A Latin empire against the German dominance? The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben explains his much-discussed thesis. Apparently, he had been misunderstood.

Professor Agamben, when you floated the idea in March of a ‘Latin imperium’ against Germanic domination in Europe, could you have imagined the powerful resonance this contention would have? In the meantime your essay has been translated into countless languages and passionately discussed across half the continent…
No, I didn’t expect this. But I believe in the power of words, when they are spoken at the right time.

Is the fracture in the European Union really between the economies and ways of life of the ‘Germanic’ north and the ‘Latin’ south?
I would like to make clear right away that my thesis has been exaggerated by journalists and therefore misrepresented. Its title, ‘The Latin empire should start a counter-attack’, was supplied by the editors of Libération and was taken up by the German media. It’s not something I ever said. How could I counterpose Latin culture to German, when any intelligent European knows that Italian culture of the Renaissance or the culture of classical Greece is today completely part of German culture, which reconceived it and appropriated it!

So, no dominant ‘Latin empire’? No uncultivated Germans?
In Europe, the identity of every culture always lies at the frontiers. A German such as Winckelmann or Hölderlin could be more Greek than the Greeks. And a Florentine like Dante could feel just as German as the Swabian emperor Frederick II. That is precisely what makes up Europe: a particularity that time and again oversteps national and cultural frontiers. The object of my criticism was not Germany, but rather the way in which the European Union has been constructed, that is, on an exclusively economic basis. So not only have our spiritual and cultural roots been ignored, but also our political and legal ones. If this was heard as a criticism of Germany, it is only because Germany, because of its dominant position and despite its exceptional philosophical tradition, appears unable at the present time to conceive of a Europe based on anything more than just the euro and economics.

In what way has the EU denied its political and legal roots?
When we speak of Europe today, we are faced with the gigantic repression of a painful and yet obvious truth: Europe’s so-called constitution is illegitimate. The text that was put through under this name was never voted by the peoples. Or when it was put to a vote, as in France and the Netherlands in 2005, it was frontally rejected. Legally speaking, therefore, what we have here is not a constitution, but on the contrary a treaty between governments: international law, not constitutional law. Just recently, the very respected German legal scholar Dieter Grimm recalled the fact that a European constitution lacks the fundamental, democratic element, since the European citizens were not allowed to decide on it. And now the whole project of ratification by the peoples has been silently put on ice.

That is indeed the famous ‘democratic deficit’ in the European system…
We shouldn’t lose sight of this. Journalists, particularly in Germany, have reproached me with understanding nothing of democracy, but they should consider first of all that the EU is a community based on treaties between states, and simply disguised with a democratic constitution. The idea of Europe as a constitution-giving power is a spectre that no one ventures to conjure up any more. But only with a valid constitution could European institutions regain their legitimacy.

Does this mean that you see the European Union as an illegal body?
Not illegal, but illegitimate. Legality is a question of the rules of exertion of power; legitimacy is the principle that underlies these rules. Legal treaties are certainly not just formalities, but they reflect a social reality. It is understandable therefore that an institution without a constitution cannot follow a genuine policy, but that each European state continues acting according to its egoistic interest – and today this evidently means above all economic interest. The lowest common denominator of unity is achieved when Europe appears as a vassal of the United States and takes part in wars that in no way lie in the common interest, to say nothing of the will of the people. A number of the founding states of the EU – such as Italy with its many American military bases – are more in the way of protectorates than sovereign states. In politics and militarily there is an Atlantic alliance, but certainly no Europe.

You’d therefore prefer a Latin imperium, whose way of life the ‘Germans’ would have to adapt to, to the EU…
No, it was perhaps rather provocatively that I took up Alexandre Kojève’s project of a ‘Latin imperium’. In the Middle Ages people at least knew that a unity of different political societies had to mean more than a purely political society. At that time, the uniting bond was sought in Christianity. Today I believe that this legitimation must be sought in Europe’s history and its cultural traditions. In contrast to Asians and Americans, for whom history means something completely different, Europeans always encounter their truth in a dialogue with their past. The past for us means not only a cultural inheritance and tradition, but a basic anthropological condition. If we were to ignore our own history, we could only penetrate into the past archeologically. The past for us would become a distinct life form. Europe has a special relationship to its cities, its artistic treasures, its landscapes. This is what Europe really consists of. And this is where the survival of Europe lies.

So Europe is first of all a life form, a historical life feeling?
Yes, that is why in my article I insisted that we have unconditionally to preserve our distinctive forms of life. When they bombed the German cities, the Allies also knew that they could destroy German identity. In the same way, speculators are destroying the Italian landscape today with concrete, motorways and expressways. This does not just mean robbing us of our property, but of our historical identity.

So should the EU emphasize differences rather than harmonization?
Perhaps there is nowhere else in the world, apart from Europe, where such a variety of cultures and life forms is perceptible – at least at valuable moments. Earlier on, as I see it, politics was expressed in the idea of the Roman empire, later the Roman-German empire. The whole however always left the particularities of the peoples intact. It is not easy to say what could emerge today in place of this. But quite certainly a political entity by the name of Europe can only proceed from this awareness of the past. It is precisely for this reason that the present crisis strikes me as so dangerous. We have to imagine unity first of all under an awareness of differences. But quite contrary to this, in the European states, schools and universities are being demolished and financially undermined, the very institutions that should perpetuate our culture and arouse living contact between past and present. This undermining goes together with a growing museumification of the past. We have the beginning of this in many cities that are transformed into historical zones, and in which the inhabitants are forced to feel themselves tourists in their own life world.

Is this creeping museumification the counterpart of a creeping impoverishment?
It is quite clear that we are not just faced with economic problems, but with the existence of Europe as a whole – starting with our relationship to the past. The only place in which the past can live is the present. And if the present no longer perceives its own past as something living, then universities and museums become problematic. It is quite evident that there are forces at work in Europe today that seek to manipulate our identity, by breaking the umbilical cord that still links us with our past. Differences are rather being levelled out. But Europe can only be our future if we make clear to ourselves that this means first of all our past. And this past is being increasingly liquidated.

Is the crisis that is present on all sides then the form of expression of a whole system of rule, directed at our everyday life?
The concept ‘crisis’ has indeed become a motto of modern politics, and for a long time it has been part of normality in any segment of social life. The very word expresses two semantic roots: the medical one, referring to the course of an illness, and the theological one of the Last Judgement. Both meanings, however, have undergone a transformation today, taking away their relation to time. ‘Crisis’ in ancient medicine meant a judgement, when the doctor noted at the decisive moment whether the sick person would survive or die. The present understanding of crisis, on the other hand, refers to an enduring state. So this uncertainty is extended into the future, indefinitely. It is exactly the same with the theological sense; the Last Judgement was inseparable from the end of time. Today, however, judgement is divorced from the idea of resolution and repeatedly postponed. So the prospect of a decision is ever less, and an endless process of decision never concludes.

Does this mean that the debt crisis, the crisis of state finance, of currency, of the EU, is never ending?
Today crisis has become an instrument of rule. It serves to legitimize political and economic decisions that in fact dispossess citizens and deprive them of any possibility of decision. In Italy this is very clear. Here a government was formed in the name of the crisis and Berlusconi brought back to power despite this being basically against the will of the electorate. This government is just as illegitimate as the so-called European constitution. The citizens of Europe must make clear to themselves that this unending crisis – just like a state of emergency – is incompatible with democracy.

What perspectives then remain for Europe?
We must start by restoring the original meaning of the word ‘crisis’, as a moment of judgement and choice. For Europe we cannot postpone this to the indefinite future. Many years ago a high official of the then embryonic Europe, the philosopher Alexandre Kojève, assumed that homo sapiens had come to the end of history and that there were now only two possibilities left. Either the ‘American way of life’, which Kojève saw as posthistoric vegetation. Or Japanese snobbery, simply going on celebrating the empty rituals of tradition now robbed of any historical meaning. I believe that Europe could however realize the alternative of a culture that remains at the same time human and vital, because it stands in dialogue with its own history and thereby acquires new life.

Europe, understood as culture and not only as economic space, could therefore provide an answer to the crisis?
For more than two hundred years, human energies have been focused on economics. Many things indicate that the moment has perhaps arrived for homo sapiens to organize human action afresh, beyond this single dimension. Old Europe can precisely make a decisive contribution to the future here.

Translated from German. Visit FAZ website, 24 May 2013, to read the original article.

Giorgio Agamben: La crisi perpetua come strumento di potere. Conversazione con Giorgio Agamben @ Il lavoro culturale website (Intervista originale a cura di Dirk Schümer per la FAZ)

La crisi perpetua come strumento di potere. Conversazione con Giorgio Agamben

Intervista uscita in tedesco a cura di Dirk Schümer il 24 maggio 2013 sul  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung e poi pubblicata in inglese dalla casa editrice Verso il 4 giugno 2013. La traduzione è di Nicola Perugini.  

Read more @ LC

Professor Agamben, quando lo scorso marzo ha proposto l’idea di un “impero latino” contro il dominio tedesco in Europa, s’immaginava che questa idea avrebbe avuto una tale risonanza? Nel frattempo il suo saggio è stato tradotto in molte lingue e discusso appassionatamente in mezzo continente…

Giorgio Agamben: No, non me lo aspettavo. Ma credo nella forza delle parole, quando sono pronunciate al momento giusto.

La frattura dentro l’Unione Europea è davvero una frattura tra economie e modi di vita “germanico” del nord e “latino” del sud?

G.A.: Vorrei chiarire il fatto che la mia tesi è stata esagerata dai giornalisti e quindi fraintesa. Il titolo del mio articolo, “L’impero latino al contrattacco!”[1], è stato scelto dalla redazione di Libération ed è stato ripreso dai media tedeschi. Non ho mai utilizzato quella frase. Come potrei contrapporre la cultura latina a quella tedesca, quando qualsiasi europeo dotato d’intelligenza sa che la cultura italiana del Rinascimento o della Grecia classica sono oggi parte integrante della cultura tedesca, la quale le ha riformulate e se n’è appropriata!

Dunque non è una questione di “impero latino” dominante o di tedeschi ignoranti?

G.A.: L’identità di ogni cultura europea è un’identità di frontiera. Un tedesco come Winckelmann o Hölderlin potrebbe essere più greco dei greci. E un fiorentino come Dante potrebbe sentirsi tedesco quanto l’imperatore Federico II di Svevia. Questo è ciò che caratterizza l’Europa: una particolarità che non smette di oltrepassare le frontiere nazionali e culturali. L’oggetto della mia critica non era la Germania, ma il modo in cui l’Unione Europea è stata costruita, vale a dire su base esclusivamente economica. Dunque, in questo processo di costruzione sono state ignorate sia le nostre radici culturali e spirituali, sia quelle politiche e giuridiche. Se ciò è stato interpretato come una critica alla Germania, è perché la Germania, a causa della sua posizione dominante e nonostante la sua eccezionale tradizione filosofica, oggi sembra incapace di concepire un’Europa fondata su qualcosa di diverso dall’euro e dall’economia.

In che senso l’Unione Europea ha negato le sue radici politiche e giuridiche?

G.A.: Quando parliamo di Europa oggi, ci troviamo di fronte all’enorme repressione di una verità tanto dolorosa quanto ovvia: la cosiddetta costituzione europea è illegittima. Il testo varato con questo nome non è mai stato votato dai popoli europei. Quando è stato messo ai voti, ad esempio in Francia e Olanda nel 2005, è stato rifiutato con forza. Quindi, dal punto di vista legale, ciò che abbiamo non è una costituzione, bensì un trattato concordato tra governi: diritto internazionale, non diritto costituzionale. Recentemente un esperto tedesco di diritto molto rispettato come Dieter Grimm ci ha ricordato che la costituzione europea manca di un elemento democratico fondamentale, poiché ai cittadini europei non è stata concessa possibilità di esprimersi in merito. E ora l’intero progetto di ratifica popolare è stato congelato.

È proprio questo il famoso “deficit democratico” del sistema europeo…

G.A.: Non dovremmo perdere di vista questo elemento. I giornalisti, soprattutto in Germania, mi hanno accusato di non capire nulla di democrazia, ma farebbero bene a prendere in considerazione il fatto che l’Unione Europea è innanzitutto una comunità fondata su trattati tra stati camuffati con una costituzione democratica. L’idea di Europa come potere costituente è uno spettro che nessuno si azzarda più a evocare. Tuttavia è solo con una costituzione valida che le istituzioni europee potrebbero riacquisire legittimità.

Questo significa che lei vede nell’Unione Europea un’entità illegale?

G.A.: Non illegale ma illegittima. La legalità è una questione di regole con cui si esercita il potere; la legittimità è il principio che sta alla base di queste regole. I trattati legali non sono mere formalità poiché riflettono una realtà sociale. Per cui è chiaro che un’istituzione senza una costituzione non può seguire politiche sincere, e che ogni stato europeo continua ad agire secondo interessi egoistici – e oggi ciò significa chiaramente interessi economici. Il minimo comun denominatore di questa comunità si manifesta in maniera chiara quando l’Europa agisce come un vassallo degli Stati Uniti e prende parte a guerre che non sono fondate su alcun interesse comune, né sulla volontà dei popoli. Alcuni stati fondatori dell’Unione Europea –come l’Italia, con le sue molte basi americane– assomigliano più a dei protettorati che a degli stati sovrani. Nelle questioni politiche e militari c’è un Alleanza Atlantica, ma certamente non un’Europa.

Dunque lei all’Unione Europea preferirebbe un imperium latino, al cui stile di vita i “germanici” dovrebbero adattarsi…

G.A.: No, forse ho ripreso il progetto di “imperium latino” di Alexandre Kojève in maniera provocatoria. Nel Medio Evo quanto meno le persone sapevano che l’unione di società politiche diverse doveva significare qualcosa di più che una società esclusivamente politica. A quel tempo, il legame andava cercato nella cristianità. Oggi credo che questa legittimazione vada cercata nella storia dell’Europa e nelle sue tradizioni culturali. A differenza degli asiatici e degli americani, per cui la storia significa qualcosa di completamente diverso da come noi la intendiamo, gli europei incontrano sempre la verità nel dialogo con il proprio passato. Per noi il passato non significa solo un’eredità o una tradizione culturale, ma una condizione antropologica di fondo. Se ignorassimo la nostra storia potremmo solo penetrare nel nostro passato in maniera archeologica. Il passato diventerebbe per noi una forma di vita distinta. L’Europa ha una relazione speciale con le sue città, i suoi tesori artistici, i suoi paesaggi. In questo consiste l’Europa. E in questo risiede la sua sopravvivenza.

Quindi l’Europa è innanzitutto una forma di vita, una sensazione storica di vita?

G.A.: Sì, ed è per questo che nel mio articolo ho insistito sul fatto che dobbiamo preservare le nostre peculiari forme di vita. Quando gli Alleati hanno bombardato le città tedesche, sapevano che avrebbero potuto distruggere l’identità tedesca. Allo stesso modo, gli speculatori stanno distruggendo il paesaggio italiano con il cemento, le autostrade e le superstrade. Questo non significa solo derubarci di ciò che possediamo, ma anche della nostra identità storica.

Allora l’Unione Europea dovrebbe valorizzare le differenze al posto dell’armonizzazione?

G.A.: Forse non esiste un altro posto al mondo in cui è percepibile una tale varietà di culture e di forme di vita come in Europa. A mio avviso, in passato la politica si esprimeva nell’idea di impero romano, poi di impero romano-germanico. L’insieme ha sempre lasciato intatte le particolarità dei popoli. Non è facile prevedere cosa possa emergere oggi al posto di questo modello. Ma sicuramente un’entità politica che prenda il nome di Europa non può che muovere i suoi passi dalla consapevolezza del passato. È per questa ragione che la crisi attuale mi sembra così pericolosa. Dobbiamo immaginare l’unità nella piena consapevolezza delle differenze. Invece negli stati europei le scuole e le università – quelle stesse istituzioni che dovrebbero tramandare la nostra cultura e stimolare il contatto tra passato e presente – vengono demolite ed economicamente indebolite. Questo indebolimento va di pari passo con una crescente museificazione del passato. Un processo che sta prendendo piede in molte città, trasformate in zone storiche in cui gli abitanti sono costretti a sentirsi turisti negli spazi in cui vivono.

Questa museificazione strisciante va di pari passo con un impoverimento strisciante?

G.A.: È ormai chiaro che dobbiamo far fronte a problemi la cui natura non è solamente economica. La questione è l’esistenza dell’Europa nel suo insieme –a partire dalla nostra relazione con il passato. L’unico posto in cui il passato può vivere è il presente. E se il presente non percepisce più il proprio passato come un qualcosa di vivo, le università e i musei diventano problematici. È evidente che in Europa vi sono forze che cercano di manipolare la nostra identità tagliando il cordone ombelicale che ci lega al nostro passato. In questo modo le differenze vengono cancellate. Ma l’Europa può essere il nostro futuro se chiariamo a noi stessi che questo futuro significa prima di tutto il nostro passato. Un passato che si cerca sempre più di liquidare.

Dunque questa crisi è la forma di espressione di un sistema di governo che si applica alle nostre vite quotidiane?

G.A.: Il concetto di “crisi” è ormai divenuto il motto della politica moderna, e da tempo fa parte di tutte le sfere della vita sociale. La parola stessa esprime due radici semantiche: una medica, che si riferisce al percorso di una malattia, e una teologica, che si riferisce al Giudizio Universale. Tuttavia oggi entrambi i significati si sono trasformati, annullando la loro relazione con il tempo. “Crisi” nell’antica medicina significava giudizio, il momento decisivo in cui il dottore si rendeva conto se il paziente sarebbe sopravvissuto o no. Invece l’attuale interpretazione della nozione di crisi si riferisce a uno stato permanente. Dunque questa incertezza si estende al futuro, indefinitamente. La stessa cosa vale per il senso teologico di crisi: il Giudizio Universale non era separabile dalla fine del tempo. Invece oggi il giudizio viene separato dall’idea di fine e posticipato ripetutamente. Così la prospettiva di una decisione è senza fine, un interminabile processo decisionale che non si conclude mai.

Questo significa che la crisi del debito, la crisi della finanza statale, della moneta, dell’Unione Europea, sono crisi senza fine?

G.A.: Oggi la crisi è divenuta uno strumento di governo. Essa serve a legittimare decisioni politiche ed economiche che di fatto privano i cittadini di qualsiasi possibilità di decisione. Questo è estremamente chiaro in Italia, dove si è formato un governo nel nome della crisi e Berlusconi è tornato al potere contro la volontà degli elettori. Questo governo è illegittimo tanto quanto la cosiddetta costituzione europea. I cittadini europei devono rendersi conto che questa crisi senza fine –come qualsiasi stato di emergenza– è incompatibile con la democrazia.

Quali prospettive restano all’Europa?

G.A.: Dobbiamo iniziare con la riscoperta del significato originario della parola “crisi”, intesa come momento di giudizio e scelta. L’Europa non può continuare a posticipare a un futuro indefinito. Molti anni fa il filosofo Alexandre Kojève, un alto rappresentante di ciò che poi sarebbe stata l’Europa nel suo stadio embrionale, ipotizzava che l’homo sapiens era giunto alla fine della sua storia e che erano rimaste solo due possibilità. O l’“American way of life”, che Kojève vedeva come una sorta di vegetazione post-storica. O lo snobismo giapponese, una forma di celebrazione di rituali vuoti di una tradizione privata di qualsiasi significato storico. Penso che l’Europa possa rendersi conto dell’esistenza di un’alternativa, di una cultura che rimanga sia umana sia vitale, poiché in dialogo con la sua propria storia e quindi in grado di acquisire una nuova vita.

L’Europa, intesa come cultura e non solo come spazio economico, potrebbe dunque offrire una risposta alla crisi?

G.A.: Per oltre duecento anni le energie umane europee si sono focalizzate sull’economia. Molti elementi indicano che per l’homo sapiens è giunto il momento di riorganizzare l’azione umana al di là di questa dimensione esclusivamente economica. È qui che l’Europa può offrire il suo contributo al futuro.