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

Михаил Велижев - «Размышляя о себе, он пишет о каждом из нас»

17 июня в Болонье ушел из жизни великий историк Карло Гинзбург. Ему было 87 лет. О встречах со своим другом и учителем вспоминает Михаил Велижев, редактор и переводчик работ Гинзбурга на русском языке.

https://gorky.media/context/razmyshlyaya-o-sebe-on-pishet-o-kazhdom-iz-nas

Anton Jäger - Hyperpolitics

What happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change? From the abandoned dance floors of Thatcher’s London to the mass mobilizations of Black Lives Matter, Anton Jäger traces how pub­lic life has become infused with protest, spectacle, and moral urgency while the old infrastructure of parties, unions, and civic solidarity has been hollowed out. Hyperpolitics revisits the illusions of the “end of history” and dissects the strange energies that replaced them: viral outrage, endless culture wars, and the digital rush of causes that flare and vanish overnight. Jäger shows how the promises of post–Cold War liberalism gave way to a restless, unsteady public sphere where private pas­sions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring power. Ranging from Guy Debord and Wolfgang Tillmans to Houellebecq’s disenchanted fictions, Hyperpolitics makes sense of a world in which collective action remains fragmented and the social fabric thinner than ever. For anyone trying to grasp why our age feels so charged yet so incon­sequential, this book offers a vital map through the new contradictions of our hyperpolitical moment.

Hélène Landemore - Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule

Politicians have failed us. But democracy doesn’t have to.

Bought by special interests, detached from real life, obsessed with reelection. Politicians make big promises, deliver little to nothing, and keep the game rigged in their favor. But what can we do? In Politics Without Politicians, acclaimed political theorist Hélène Landemore asks and answers a radical question: What if we didn’t need politicians at all? What if everyday people under the right conditions could govern much better? With disarming clarity and a deep sense of urgency, Landemore argues that electoral politics is broken but democracy isn’t. We’ve just been doing it wrong. Drawing on ancient Athenian practices and contemporary citizens’ assemblies, Landemore champions an alternative approach that is alive, working, and growing around the world: civic lotteries that select everyday people to govern not as career politicians but as temporary stewards of the common good.

When regular citizens come together in this way, they make smarter, fairer, more forward-thinking decisions, often bringing out the best in one another. Witnessing this process firsthand, Landemore has learned that democracy should be like a good party where even the shyest guests feel welcome to speak, listen, and be heard. With sharp analysis and real-world examples, drawing from her experience with deliberative processes in France and elsewhere, Landemore shows us how to move beyond democracy as a spectator sport, embracing it as a shared practice not just in the voting booth but in shaping the laws and policies that govern our lives. This is not a book about what’s wrong it’s a manifesto for what’s possible. If you’ve ever felt powerless, Politics Without Politicians will show you how “We the People” take back democracy.

Henry Snow - Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World

What are the rules that govern our workday? Who made them? And how do these rules dominate the rest of our lives? Whether on Caribbean plantations in the seven­teenth century or in Amazon warehouses today, the powerful have constantly developed new techniques to control workers and new justifications for doing so. Ideas of control perfected on the factory floor have expanded to dictate our personal lives, polit­ical rights, national policy, and the global economy.

Seventeenth-century intellectuals such as William Petty and John Locke argued that human beings were selfish machines who had to be controlled for their own good. A century later, Jeremy and Samuel Bentham tried to do exactly that with their infamous Panopticon prison. When nineteenth-century Japa­nese elites imported European factory technologies, they came up with new theories of political control to justify this development. After the Second World War, the General Electric Corporation created an in­ternal propaganda department to fight unions, then pitched that propaganda to the country with the help of an actor, the future President Ronald Reagan. Ex­tending these practices, billionaires today dream of extending the algorithmic control of Amazon ware­houses into every corner of our lives.

Blending intellectual, economic, and labor history, Control Science is a thrilling and lucid work of his­tory. Henry Snow reveals how common sense about work, the economy, and human nature was fabricated and must now be challenged.