Rethinking Life: Italian Philosophy in Precarious Times

Description

This volume gathers fourteen contributions written by Italian philosophers within the context of the precariousness and vulnerability revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic compels us to rethink what is affected most by this global occurrence yet does not end with it—that is, life. Beyond the geographical, socio-political, and medical contexts in which the reflections originate, Rethinking Life is deeply utopian, presenting aspirations toward a different configuration of life and collective living centered on relational subjectivities, interconnectedness, interdependence, and, ultimately, solidarity. How does the pandemic—what it represents and exposes—call us to rethink our notion of life? How does an episode of morbidity affect a fuller understanding of life? Can such a hermeneutic shift be dared and sustained? The sobriety of the reflections yields elegant, incisive, and direct prose of profound effect and immediacy—and a captivating, lucid, and thought-provoking narrative. Contents Acknowledgments Epidemics, Precariousness, and Vulnerability: Introductory Remarks toward a Rethinking of Life Thinking within Precarity Italian Epidemiographies Precarity and Life This Volume: An Overview Conclusion Notes Part One: Confronting Disaster 1. Cassandra’s Details: Coronavirus and the Course of Globalization The Power of the Elementary: Technology and the Titans The Collapsed Towers of Mundialization The Invisible That Comes from Afar Terror in the Air Notes 2. Improvising Self-Expression in the Time of a Contingency that Has Eliminated Contingency Prologue: Music from the (Real and Virtual) Balconies Musical Expressiveness, Rhythm, and Time Coping with the (Extra)Ordinary: Improvisation as Human Practice Performing Unexpected Interactions with Contingency Notes 3. Out of the Choir: Bodies Inclined on the Playboy Agreeing with Michel Foucault Adriana Cavarero and the Privilege of Feeling Vulnerable Giorgio Agamben on the Pedestal Paul B. Preciado and the Horizontal Worker Bodies Inclined on the Playboy Appendix: The Rectum in Parliament Notes 4. Metaphor as Illness? Life, War, and a Linguistic Pharmakon “Our Little Army in White Outfits” Disease and Metaphor Origins and Structure of the Warlike Metaphor Changes in Paradigms Demythicizing War Metaphors? Biometaphorology and Biopolitics Notes Part Two: Vulnerability, Care, and Responsibility 5. “The Lungs that We All Are”: Rethinking Life in the Times of a Pandemic The Human as Vulnerable Life Is Not “Bare” but Precarious Vulnerability and the Virus The Martial Nostalgia Dematerialized Life Critical Theory and the Lungs The Public Space of the Balcony Notes 6. Necropolitics, Care, and the Common Theory, Reality, and Critique Biopolitics or Necropolitics? Biopolitics from Below, Care, and the Common Notes 7. Lacking Beings Life Does Not Exist Between Crystals and Smoke Action-Being Impurities, Conflicts, and Contradictions Eros The Activity of Lacking Supporting Contradiction The Privilege of Pain Something Missing Notes 8. Vulnerable Existences Life and Death The New Plague Bare Life Living Well Together Notes 9. Life and Useless Suffering: Responsibility for Others and the Impossible Theodicy Useless Suffering and Impossible Theodicy “A Heart That Could Beat Right across the World”: Responsibility for Others Notes Part Three: Rethinking Life 10. Greek Zèn: Living Starting from the Origin Primum Vivere The Names of Life Surging Life and Life That Is Borne Living Nature Notes 11. Life and the “Black Swan” Annus Horribilis Thinking Life—A Historical-Theoretical Excursus A Sagittal Look at the Past Three “Philosophers of Life”: Bergson, Simmel, and Jankélévitch The “Black Hole” around Which Life Wraps Itself The “Internal Contradiction” of Life The “Infinitely Precious” Fragility of Existing Notes 12. What Finitude Does Not Say: Rethinking Life beyond Nihilism Beyond Nihilism Life and Living Beings The Philosophical Memory of Birth The Ethics of Salvation in the Age of the Contagion Notes 13. Writing Life: Biography, Autobiography, and the Remainder Stage Clandestine Credits Psyche Anonymity A Sensing Multitude Echoes Notes 14. With the Finitude of Life beyond the Phenomenon: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and a Metaphysics of the Finite The Entanglement of the Finite On the Edge of the Finite Phenomenology and Hermeneutics For a Metaphysics of Modernity Notes Contributors Index