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

Tom Overton - John Berger: From Life
 
John Berger (1926–2017) served in Britain’s wartime army before attending art school. The young artist became a critic and broadcaster, cutting a swathe through the staid world of post-war Britain, demanding political engagement in all things. In 1972, he came to prominence with Ways of Seeing, a TV series and book that inspired generations to look more closely and think more deeply about art. Committed to the passionate exploration of life in all its forms, unbounded by convention, he applied himself to a panoply of genres, media, and subjects. His career defies definition. His work reimagined the relationship between art and society; human and animal; living and dead. He charted the disappearance of peasants from the world; documented migrant labour; explored the AIDS crisis; and was trenchantly opposed to the new world order that emerged in the 1990s, as he was to the War on Terror that followed. Berger was deeply and vocally committed to the Palestinian cause. Through working on Berger’s archive at the British Library and fifteen years of getting to know his family, friends, lovers, and collaborators, Tom Overton has produced a portrait of an artist and storyteller who defined and transcended his times.

Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl - Inventing the Global Competitiveness Race: The World Economic Forum, the IMD and the Neoliberal Benchmarking Tool They Created

This article offers a historical analysis of the World Competitiveness Index, which the World Economic Forum (WEF) developed after 1979 and continued to produce for four decades, partly in collaboration with the International Institute for Management Development. It examines the conceptualisation of this global performance indicator (GPI), the institutional and methodological choices that were made and the underlying neoliberal theoretical views on which it was based. A case study on the use of the competitiveness indicator in the context of the newly established European Union at the beginning of the 1990s helps to show how business groups (the European Round Table of Industrialists and the Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe) relied on this quantification of competitiveness to make policy recommendations that mirrored their economic interests. Competitiveness was used as a performative notion to support policies that came of the toolbox of neoliberalism, above all the deregulation of the labour market. Finally, the contestation of the WEF’s flagship indicator by leading economists is discussed. Overall, the article contributes to existing research on the increasing use of GPIs by allowing for a better understanding of the role played by business actors in producing and circulating neoliberal indicators and by calling attention to their implications regarding lacking democratic oversight making them vulnerable to attempts of corruption.

Political Activist Ethnography. Studies in the Social Relations of Struggle

As activists strategize, build resistance, and foster solidarity, they also call for better dialogue between researchers and movements and for research that can aid their causes. In this volume, contributors examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a unique social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so activists and social movements can fight them.

Featuring research from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Bangladesh, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and the United States on matters as diverse as anti-poverty organizing, prisoners’ re-entry, anti-fracking campaigns, left-inspired think-tank development, non-governmental partnerships, involuntary psychiatric admission, and perils of immigration medical examination, contributors to this volume adopt a “bottom-up” approach to inquiry to produce knowledge for activists, not about them. A must-read for humanities and social sciences scholars keen on assisting activists and advancing social change.

Matteo Polleri - From Adversity to Heresy: Towards a Disjunctive Conjunction of Foucault and Marx

Over the last decades, influential critical thinkers have creatively mobilized Foucault's ideas to renovate the Marxist lens. However, while recognizing key proximities between Marx's and Foucault's works, Étienne Balibar has argued that these attempts necessarily face fundamental obstacles. In his view, the "point of heresy" connecting Marx's and Foucault's thought must be understood as a fundamental "adversity." By critically discussing Balibar's argument, this article shows that a "conjunctive", rather than "adversative," interpretation of the "point of heresy" might be used to develop a cross-reading of Marx and Foucault. The article thus poses methodological reflections for a systematic reassessment of the Marx-Foucault relationship.

https://www.genealogy-critique.net/article/23083/galley/42321/download/