Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

Susan Buck-Morss on Hegel, World Spirit, Universal History and the Haitian Revolution

Susan Buck-Morss joins us at Hegel 13/13 to make a presentation entitled: “Spirit has broken with the World…,” describing the historical moment of Hegel’s writing of the​ Phenomenology of Spirit, and comparing it to our own historical moment, when the phrase, again, seems to apply, and yet, with an “inversion,” where sense certainty trumps the concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqz-99M0YPA

Gonzalo Ricci Cernadas - The Multitude in Spinoza: From Physics to Politics

With the rise of populist governments and corresponding popular protests, this book turns renewed focus on Baruch Spinoza's idea of the political multitude. Acting at once as a body with a single mind and a state with its own political-institutional structure, the multitude mirrors some of the central actors in democratic movements across early 20th-century Europe – from Occupy Wall Street to Indignados and Nuit Debout. Gonzalo Cernadas draws from two of Spinoza's key works on this subject in his Political Treatise and Theological-Political Treatise, setting out the progress of his ideas: how Spinoza conceives of the body, how that body can become part of the multitude, and how that multitude can form a political society. In recovering Spinoza's relevance to contemporary political phenomena, Cernadas explains why this early modern thinker has found renewed importance three hundred and fifty years after his death, and ultimately how he could even prompt us to reassess democracy as the best form of government.

Hossein Kermani - Twitter Activism in Iran: Social Media and Democracy in Authoritarian Regimes

This book investigates Twitter activism in authoritarian regimes, with particular attention to Iran. Twitter provides citizens around the globe with a free and quick way to engage in politics and public discourses. The role of Twitter, alongside other social media, is even more critical in authoritarian regimes where official media is systematically monitored and censured. Thus, social media is vital in restrictive (non-democratic) societies for people to seek their liberty, raise their voice, and create counter-narratives and discourses. There is substantial research into Twitter and democracy, both in democratic and non-democratic regimes. However, Iran, as a country with a high population of tech-savvy users who actively participate in political discussions online, remains understudied to a great extent. Twitter in Iran has been blocked since the 2009 presidential election and its subsequent protests, the Green Movement. Nevertheless, Iranians have been continually using it to date.Recently, another significant hashtag movement unfolded in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini. But it is only an instance of how Iranians employ Twitter to fight a dictatorship. Given the unique context of Iran as a non-democratic society with a high number of Twitter users, this book tries to explore how Iranian users participate in politics, challenge the regime, mobilize their protests, and shape anti-regime discourses. It also examines the strategies that the Iranian regime takes to dismantle Twitter activism. Therefore, this work will fill some gaps in the existing literature on Twitter and democracy, which is relatively Western-centered.

Bernard Harcourt - Susan Buck-Morss on Hegel, Phenomenology, and Haiti: An Introduction

Susan Buck-Morss’s project in the two essays, “Hegel and Haiti” and “Universal History,” is to recuperate an ideal of universality and of universal history from the critique of Eurocentrism that has, rightly, undermined those ideas. And the reason, as I understand it, is to highlight and thus inspire political acts of solidarity and emancipation. To bring forth the political acts, the revolutionary acts of those peoples who fought against their subjugation and oppression.

These are the political acts that Buck-Morss valorizes and think here of valorizing genealogies, which also may not be historical in the very last paragraph of “Hegel and Haiti”: the revolutionary acts of Toussaint-Louverture, the words and poetry of Wordsworth, the acts of the Abbé Grégoire, and, as Buck-Morss writes, even Dessalines; as well as the acts of the “French soldiers sent by Napoleon to the colony who, upon hearing these former slaves singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ wondered aloud if they were not fighting on the wrong side; the Polish regiment under Leclerc’s command who disobeyed orders and refused to drown six hundred captured Saint-Domiguans.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV54naJsQrw