Roberto Esposito

from the body's point of view

Persons and things

Ping Li

Wenbin Guo 

Fengyu Zhang

Maorong Hu

Emotional Disturbance and Brain Imaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Slavoj Žižek

Jean

Walter Siti

Julia Kristeva

Werner Herzog

Jacques Rancière

Francesco Casetti

Marie

Richard Schechner

David Freedberg

Paul Schrader

Toni Servillo

Edgar Reitz

Paolo Jedlowski

Yervant Gianikian

Angela Ricci Lucchi

Julio Bressane

Roberto De Gaetano

Georges Didi

Huberman

Luc Nancy

Mario Martone

Francesco Ceraolo

Louis Comolli

Raoul Ruiz

Marco Bellocchio

José Mondzain

Shinya Tsukamoto

Amos Gitai

24 conversazioni apparse su Fata Morgana con grandi figure della contemporaneità, studiosi e artisti che parlano del cinema facendone un luogo del pensiero e una forma di vita. Un viaggio in cui il cinema e l’immagine, più di ogni altra forma d’arte, si riscoprono indissolubilmente legati alla complessità del nostro presente. Per la prima volta riunite e tradotte in inglese in un’unica pubblicazione, queste conversazioni offrono al lettore una costellazione unica di autori e temi per pensare il cinema a partire dal nostro presente e viceversa. 24 conversations originally published by Fata Morgana with important scholars and artists who have intended cinema as a place of thought and a form of life. A unique constellation of authors and themes in which cinema and the image, more than any other art form, are inextricably intertwined with the complexity of the contemporary. Edited and translated into English for the first time, these conversations offer to the reader a unique constellation of authors and themes, which leads one to reconsider cinema starting from our present and vice versa. Roberto De Gaetano is full professor of Filmology at the University of Calabria (Italy). He is the author of important books on the relationship between cinema and philosophy (Il cinema secondo Gilles Deleuze, Bulzoni, 1996; Il visibile cinematografico, Bulzoni, 2002; La potenza delle immagini, Ets, 2012), cinema and the contemporary (L’immagine contemporanea. Cinema e mondo presente, Marsilio, 2010), and authors and forms of Italian cinema (Il corpo e la maschera. Il grottesco nel cinema italiano, Bulzoni, 1999; Nanni Moretti. Lo smarrimento del presente, Pellegrini, 2015). He is the Editor of the three-volume edition Lessico del cinema italiano. Forme di rappresentazione e forme di vita (Mimesis, 2014-2016), and the Editor in Chief of Fata Morgana. Francesco Ceraolo (PhD, Qmul) teaches Film Analysis and Theater and Opera at the University of Calabria (Italy). His work mainly focuses on the relationship between philosophy, performing and visual arts. Among his recent publications are Verso un'estetica della totalità. Una lettura critico-filosofica del pensiero di Richard Wagner (Mimesis, 2013) and the chapter entitled ‘Opera’ in Lessico del cinema italiano. Forme di rappresentazione e forme di vita (Mimesis, 2015). He has edited and translated into Italian Alain Badiou’s writings on the theater (Rapsodia per il teatro. Arte, politica, evento, Pellegrini, 2015). In 2015 he was awarded the ‘Arthur Rubinstein – A Life In Music’ Prize by Teatro La Fenice for his musicological scholarship. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Fata Morgana.

CINEMA, THOUGHT, LIFE. Conversations with Fata Morgana

This title calls for the opening of political thought toward a re-signification of terms - such as 'community, ' 'immunity, ' 'biopolitics, ' and 'the impersonal' - in ways that affirm rather than negate life.

Community, Immunity, Biopolitics

Terms of the Political:Community, Immunity, Biopolitics

Filippo Cieri

Nicoletta Cera

Dante Mantini

Alessandra Griffa

Dynamic Functioning of Resting State Networks in Physiological and Pathological Conditions

For some while we have been witnessing a series of destructive phenomena which seem to indicate a full-fledged return to the negative on the world stage – from terrorism and armed conflict to the threat of environmental catastrophe. At the same time, politics seems increasingly impotent in the face of these threats. In this book, the leading Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito reconstructs the genealogy of the reciprocal intertwining of politics and negation. He retraces the intensification of negation in the thought of various thinkers, from Schmitt and Freud to Heidegger, and examines the negative slant of some of our fundamental political categories, such as sovereignty, property and freedom. Against the centrality of negation, Esposito proposes an affirmative philosophy that does not negate or repress negation but radically rethinks it in the positive cipher of difference, determination and opposition. The result is a rigorous and original pathway which, in the tension between affirmation and negation, recognizes the disturbing traumas of our time, as well as the harbingers of what awaits at its limits. This highly original and timely book will be of great value to students and scholars in philosophy, cultural theory and the humanities more generally, and to anyone interested in contemporary European thought.

For an Affirmative Philosophy

Politics and Negation

Amid a devastating economic crisis, two tragic events coming from the outside – the wave of immigration and Islamic terrorism – have radically changed the profile and significance of the space we call Europe. Given a paradigm leap of this sort, philosophical reflection is in a position to exert its creative power more than other types of knowledge. But this can only happen if it is able to go beyond its own lexical boundaries, by turning its gaze outside itself. Here the leading Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito looks at how various strands of German, French, and Italian thought have achieved this outward turn and successfully captured international attention by breaking with the language of early nineteenth-century crisis philosophies. When analyzed from this novel perspective, the great texts of Adorno, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, as well as works by the latest Italian thinkers, are cast in a new light. From the relationship and tension between them, reconstructed here with extraordinary theoretical sensitivity, a form of thought can arise that is equal to the challenges faced by Europe today. This erudite and wide-ranging analysis of European thought in the light of the crises facing the continent today will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, critical theory, and beyond.

From the Outside

A Philosophy for Europe

Knjiga velja za ključno delo v opusu italijanskega filozofa Roberta Esposita in prelomno delo na področju sodobnih raziskav koncepta biopolitike, ki ga je arheolog vednosti Michel Foucault uvedel sredi sedemdesetih let prejšnjega stoletja. Esposito izhaja iz konceptualne zagate, ki preči Foucautovo teorijo biopolitike. Ta namreč nenehno niha med dvema nekompatibilnima definicijama, in sicer med pozitivno definicijo, ki biopolitiko pojmuje kot politiko življenjske rasti in širitve, in negativno definicijo, po kateri je biopolitika praksa uničevanja življenja. To protislovje Esposito razreši z uvedbo novega koncepta, ki manjka znotraj Foucaultovega aparata: paradigme imunosti kot načela moderne politike. Ta razdelava mu omogoča novo interpretacijo totalitarizmov 20. stoletja, v prvi vrsti nacizma, kjer iz predhodno utemeljene teze o uničujočem presežku imunosti in njeni nujni sprevrnitvi v svoje etimološko nasprotje (skupnost) izpelje tezo o ontološki nujnosti propada nacizma. Izhajajoč iz te dekonstrukcije avtor predstavi svojo teorijo afirmativne biopolitike, ki temelji na zagovoru primata skupnega in skupnosti nad lastnim in imunim. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ This key work by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito is widely regarded as a turning point in contemporary discussions on biopolitics, a concept invented in the 1970s by the archaeologist of knowledge, Michel Foucault. Esposito’s book ('Biopolitics and Philosophy') addresses the deadlocks in Foucault’s theory, which oscillates between two incompatible definitions: a positive one, attributing to biopolitics the capability to stimulate the growth and spread of life, and a negative one, according to which biopolitics annihilates life. Esposito resolves this contradiction by introducing a new concept, missing from Foucault’s apparatus: the paradigm of immunity as the principle of modern politics. This addition enables him to reinterpret the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, especially Nazism. His thesis on the destructive surplus of immunity and its inevitable transformation to community – its etymological opposite – leads the author to argue for the ontological necessity of the downfall of Nazism. On the basis of this deconstruction, Esposito presents his affirmative theory of biopolitics, founded on the primacy of the community and the common over immunity and the private.

Biopolitika in filozofija

BIOS

This new book by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito addresses the profound crisis of contemporary politics and examines some of the philosophical approaches that have been used to try to understand and go beyond this crisis. Two approaches have been particularly influential – one indebted to the thought of Martin Heidegger, the other indebted to Gilles Deleuze. While opposed in their political thrust and orientation, both approaches remain trapped within the political ontology that has framed our conceptual language for some time. In order to move beyond this political ontology, Esposito turns to a third approach that he characterizes as ‘instituting thought’. Indebted to the work of the French political philosopher Claude Lefort, this third approach recognizes that the road to reconstructing a productive relation between ontology and politics, one that is both realistic and innovative, lies in instituting praxis. Building on this insight, Esposito conceptualizes social being as neither univocal nor plurivocal but as cross-cut by the dual semantics of political conflict. This new book by one of the most original European philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, social and political theory and the humanities generally.

Three Paradigms of Political Ontology

Instituting Thought

Roberto Esposito is one of leading figures in a new generation of Italian philosophers. This book criticizes the notion of the person and develops an original account of the concept of the impersonal - what he calls the third person

The Third Person

Roberto Esposito, a leading Italian philosopher, deconstructs the notion of community by examining its etymological roots in the Latin munus, or gift, and then reads against classical political interpretations of community.

The Origin and Destiny of Community

Communitas

The debate on “political theology” that ran throughout the twentieth century has reached its end, but the ultimate meaning of the notion continues to evade us. Despite all the attempts to resolve the issue, we still speak its language—we remain in its horizon. The reason for this, says Roberto Esposito, lies in the fact that political theology is neither a concept nor an event; rather, it is the pivot around which the machine of Western civilization has revolved for more than 2,000 years. At its heart stands the juncture between universalism and exclusion, unity and separation: the tendency of the Two to make itself into One by subordinating one part to the domination of the other. All the philosophical and political categories that we use, starting with the Roman and Christian notion of “the person,” continue to reproduce this exclusionary dispositif. To take our departure from political theology, then—the task of contemporary philosophy—we must radically revise our conceptual lexicon. Only when thought has been returned to its rightful “place”—connected to the human species as a whole rather than to individuals—will we be able to escape from the machine that has imprisoned our lives for far too long.

The Machine of Political Theology and the Place of Thought

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory. Bos-his first book to be translated into English-builds on two decades of highly regarded thought, including his thesis that the modern individual-with all of its civil and political rights as well as its moral powers-is an attempt to attain immunity from the contagion of the extraindividual, namely, the community. In Bos, Esposito applies such a paradigm of immunization to the analysis of the radical transformation of the political into biopolitics. Bos discusses the origins and meanings of biopolitical discourse, demonstrates why none of the categories of modern political thought is useful for completely grasping the essence of biopolitics, and reconstructs the negative biopolitical core of Nazism. Esposito suggests that the best contemporary response to the current deadly version of biopolitics is to understand what could make up the elements of a positive biopolitics-a politics of life rather than a politics of mastery and negation of life. In his introduction, Timothy Campbell situates Esposito’s arguments within American and European thinking on biopolitics. A comprehensive, illuminating, and highly original treatment of a critically important topic, Bos introduces an English-reading public to a philosophy that will critically impact such wide-ranging current debates as stem cell research, euthanasia, and the war on terrorism. Roberto Esposito teaches contemporary philosophy at the Italian Institute for the Human Sciences in Naples. His books include Categorie dell impolitico, Nove pensieri sulla politica, Communitas: orgine e destino della comunit;, and Immunitas: protezione e negazione della vita. Timothy Campbell is associate professor of Italian studies in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University and the author of Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi (Minnesota, 2006).

Biopolitics and Philosophy

Bíos

Jean-Luc Nancy

Georges Didi-Huberman

Jean-Louis Comolli

De Gaetano Roberto

Eleven conversations taken from as many issues of Fata Morgana. Eleven conversations which synthesize the project behind the journal which was born in spring 2006. At the time it was decided against having an editorial comment because of the conviction that if the journal was going to succeed it would speak for itself. However, the time has come to say a few words. A journal is first and foremost a collective gesture whose outline creates a field. The gesture made by Fata Morgana, which at the beginning was only an intuition and then it slowly developed, is the same one that makes cinema a place and an opportunity to think about contemporaneity. It is not simply about what happens around us; it is what emerges from within the events which gather around a concept: from the concept of Bíos (issue No. 0) to the concept of the Sacred (issue No. 10). In this perspective, cinema needs to be interpreted and understood as having its own un-specific specificity. It needs to be interpreted and understood in its principal form where it is capable of categorizing its un-specificity, in other words, its autonomous form where it can categorize its heteronomy. This means thinking about a concept starting from cinema, and thinking about cinema starting from the concept. Thus, cinema becomes a special place and an opportunity to think about the universality of the concept (as a marker of contemporaneity) and the concept becomes the perspective from which to conceive cinema. By avoiding the double edged sword of a sterile specificity or of a self serving un-specificity cinema becomes the quintessential way of thinking about modernity where autonomy of aesthetical form is affirmed in its heteronomy, and its individuation imposes itself as a dis-individuation.

Conversations on Cinema

The work of contemporary Italian thinkers, what Roberto Esposito refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting increasing attention around the world. This book explores the reasons for its growing popularity, its distinguishing traits, and why people are turning to these authors for answers to real-world issues and problems. The approach he takes, in line with the keen historical consciousness of Italian thinkers themselves, is a historical one. He offers insights into the great "unphilosophical" philosophers of life—poets, painters, politicians and revolutionaries, film-makers and literary critics—who have made Italian thought, from its beginnings, an "impure" thought. People like Machiavelli, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci were all compelled to fulfill important political roles in the societies of their times. No wonder they felt that the abstract vocabulary and concepts of pure philosophy were inadequate to express themselves. Similarly, artists such as Dante, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leopardi, or Pasolini all had to turn to other disciplines outside philosophy in order to discuss and grapple with the messy, constantly changing realities of their lives. For this very reason, says Esposito, because Italian thinkers have always been deeply engaged with the concrete reality of life (rather than closed up in the introspective pursuits of traditional continental philosophy) and because they have looked for the answers of today in the origins of their own historical roots, Italian theory is a "living thought." Hence the relevance or actuality that it holds for us today. Continuing in this tradition, the work of Roberto Esposito is distinguished by its interdisciplinary breadth. In this book, he passes effortlessly from literary criticism to art history, through political history and philosophy, in an expository style that welcomes non-philosophers to engage in the most pressing problems of our times. As in all his works, Esposito is inclusive rather than exclusive; in being so, he celebrates the affirmative potency of life.

The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy

Living Thought

Silvia Benso

Massimo Donà

Donatella Di Cesare

Emanuele Severino

Massimo Adinolfi

Gérard Bensussan

Gennaro Carillo

Giuseppe Cantillo

Massimo Cacciari

Jean-François Courtine

Giannino Di Tommaso

Biagio de Giovanni

Adriano Fabris

Félix Duque

Franco Ferrari

Ernesto Forcellino

Bruno Forte

Romano Gasparotti

Giulio Giorello

Giulio Goria

Enrica Lisciani-Petrini

Eugenio Mazzarella

Giuseppe Moro

Edoardo Mirri

Giacomo Petrarca

Gaetano Rametta

Enrico Redaelli

Valerio Rocco Lozano

Rocco Ronchi

Carlo Sini

Luigi Vero Tarca

Andrea Tagliapietra

Fulvio Tessitore

Francesco Tomatis

Aldo Trione

Francesco Valagussa

Carlo Invernizzi

Andrea Bellantone

Il centro di questo libro è fuori del libro, in altri libri: nell’opera di Vincenzo Vitiello, con la quale gli autori dei saggi qui raccolti si sono nel tempo confrontati. Per gli ottant’anni del filosofo, hanno accolto volentieri l’idea di proseguire per un altro tratto un colloquio, che riprende autori e domande fondamentali del pensiero occidentale – da Platone a Aristotele, da Kant a Hegel, da Nietzsche a Heidegger a molti altri –, in una pluralità di prospettive e di proposte che dimostra la fecondità del dialogo tenuto nel corso di questi anni da alcune delle maggiori voci della filosofia contemporanea. In filosofia non esistono tradizioni che non vengano sempre nuovamente rimesse in questione. La forma stessa del mettere in questione, del logon didonai, ha da essere interrogata circa il suo statuto e i suoi titoli di legittimità. Una scepsi radicale attraversa dunque il pensiero filosofico. «Chi vuole che la sua parola abbia senso, deve farsi forte di ciò che a tutti è comune e ha senso»: così si legge in un frammento di Eraclito: nei testi che qui si presentano, la filosofia e i filosofi che la praticano danno forza a ciò che è loro comune, ma insieme sperimentano anche l’infirmitas di questa forza, secondo la lezione più cara a Vincenzo Vitiello.

Per gli ottant’anni di Vincenzo Vitiello

Trovarsi accanto

This book by Roberto Esposito - a leading Italian political philosopher - is a highly original exploration of the relationship between human bodies and societies. The original function of law, even before it was codified, was to preserve peaceful cohabitation between people who were exposed to the risk of destructive conflict. Just as the human body's immune system protects the organism from deadly incursions by viruses and other threats, law also ensures the survival of the community in a life-threatening situation. It protects and prolongs life. But the function of law as a form of immunization points to a more disturbing consideration. Like the individual body, the collective body can be immunized from the perceived danger only by allowing a little of what threatens it to enter its protective boundaries. This means that in order to escape the clutches of death, life is forced to incorporate within itself the lethal principle. Starting from this reflection on the nature of immunization, Esposito offers a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary biopolitics. Never more than at present has the demand for immunization come to characterize all aspects of our existence. The more we feel at risk of being infiltrated and infected by foreign elements, the more the life of the individual and society closes off within its protective boundaries, forcing us to choose between a self-destructive outcome and a more radical alternative based on a new conception of community.

The Protection and Negation of Life

Immunitas

In this book Roberto Esposito explores the conceptual trajectories of two of the twentieth century’s most vital thinkers of the political: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. Taking Homer’s Iliad—that “great prism through which every gesture has the possibility of becoming public, precisely by being observed by others”— as the common origin and point of departure for our understanding of Western philosophical and political traditions, Esposito examines the foundational relation between war and the political. Drawing actively and extensively on Arendt’s and Weil’s voluminous writings, but also sparring with thinkers from Marx to Heidegger, The Origin of the Political traverses the relation between polemos and polis, between Greece, Rome, God, force, technicity, evil, and the extension of the Christian imperial tradition, while at the same time delineating the conceptual and hermeneutic ground for the development of Esposito’s notion and practice of “the impolitical.” In Esposito’s account Arendt and Weil emerge “in the inverse of the other’s thought, in the shadow of the other’s light,” to “think what the thought of the other excludes not as something that is foreign, but rather as something that appears unthinkable and, for that very reason, remains to be thought.” Moving slowly toward their conceptualizations of love and heroism, Esposito unravels the West’s illusory metaphysical dream of peace, obliging us to reevaluate ceaselessly what it means to be responsible in the wake of past and contemporary forms of war.

Hannah Arendt or Simone Weil?

The Origin of the Political

Roberto Esposito

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