Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2020) XXII/2

The article explores the political space from the perspective of contemporary cities and political subjectification within them. Today the Right to the City is mainly configured as a right to transform urban spaces, adapting them to plural and different life forms. A plurality of conscious and responsible political subjects occupies and crosses the urban space, often changing sign and direction of sedimented normative representations. We can say that these forms of political subjectification exceed the incl usion/exclusion dialectics, establishing themselves into a selective and differential logic of inclusion. A logic that works both through strategies of adaptation and resistance, of mediation and counter conduct. containing elements of conflict.

This paper sets out to explore a shift in educational subjectivity that is appropriate to the Anthropocene era, which is split between modernist conceptions of rational, autonomous subjectivity and contemporary conceptions of adaptable, precarious subjectivity. The rational autonomous subject of modern education remains the ideological blueprint for much educational policy and theory in the western world today. The ontopolitical shift towards precarious subjectivity in the Anthropocene prompts a new conception of educational subjectivity beyond the valorised attributes of self investment, self interest and market return. Responding to this situation, we need to understand the 'environment' as an arbiter of educational subjectivity beyond the 'market' ontologies of the Human Capital Subject. While this might seem to imply a rejection of human agency, the aim in this paper is to explore an expanded, fluid concept of educational agency that is appropriate to dominant modes of governance in the Anthropocene and yet does not give up entirely on autonomy. The paper develops a pedagogical framework for the Anthropocene through the twin concepts of ‘archipelagic thinking’ (Glissant) and 'world centred' education (Biesta). Linking postcolonial discourses on Archipelagic thinking to educational discourse, the first half of the paper maps out the coordinates of a 'world centered' education. The second half of the paper transposes these theoretical mappings onto the methodological ground of contemporary art education through a curricular overview . This section explores the development of an Archipelagic Art Education in the West Cork Archipelago (Ireland) as a concrete example of world centred education in the Anthropocene.

The paper aims to draw a kind of geophilosophical dialogue between Caribbean literature (Glissant, Benítez Rojo, Brathwaite), French contemporary philosophy (Deleuze, Guattari, Stiegler), political ecology (Moore) Amerindian cosmologies (Viveiros de Castro ) and decolonial thinking in order to face some key ecological and political issues of our time. The image of the archipelago is thus mobilized as a conceptual tool to rethink both the relation humanity environment (and so Culture and Nature) and social re lations within contemporary digital capitalism.

This essay reflects on the rhythmic and performatic dimension of the archipelago in order to use it as a heuristic tool to understand the “intelligence” of the Smart City. Recognising the “smart ideology” which has brought to the actual “algorithmic governmentality”, and to the image of the network as keyword for describing any kind of relation in the present, the aim is to propose the idea of the archipelago, through Caribbean authors Antonio Benítez Rojo and Edouard Glissant, as an alternative orientation which gives place to a new understanding of collective intelligence.

In the contemporary debate no topic is more prominent than that of responsibility. If only because global changes, technologic al development, wars, pandemics or ecological catastrophe show us the consequences of humanity acting irresponsibly. In deed, it is the same limitless power that huma nity has evoked that drives it to raise questions about that power. Responsibility relates to humanity's ability to respond to its actions. But to whom, to what, does one respond? Contemporary politics does not seem to be able to offer a convincing vision: on the one hand we are witnessing an individualization of responsibility, a blaming of the individual, citizen or political actor. On the other hand, there is a growing irresponsibility resulting from a freedom that wants to be ever more absolute. Is it possible, then, to imagine a responsibility focused on the collective, that maintains a rela tionship with history, that shifts the attention from the individual to rulers and organizational processes? Antonio Gramsci, in an era in many ways similar to ours seems to have been able to conceive of a concept of responsibility that proves itself very relevant to our current condition. In this essay I read Gramsci's reflection s from the novel perspective of responsibility and bring his conclusions up to date

This paper is a review of Cesarale’s book. The aim of this paper is to discuss the possibility of a political and theoretical radical space outside the framework of the capitalist mode of production. The work of the author depicts a useful political map of the positions of “radical thought”.

Philosophical discourse has one of its most significant turning points in the theme of responsi-bility: the Subject is at the center. Especially after the change imprinted by the Modern, the repetition of the question over time denotes not only the centrality, but also the continuous realignment of responsibility within the narrative of the human. After Holocaust, totalitarianisms, atomic bomb, responsibility becomes a keyword for philosophy: the crisis of the subject disempowers it, freeing it from its root, leaving it in the oscillation between the modesty of objectification and the fear of ineffectuality. Questioning responsibility means finding the way out of the crepuscolar image of the subject and the individual, reactivating hope by releasing it from an intimistic character. Finally, wondering what we are talking about when we talk about re-sponsibility needs respect for its original incompleteness without trying to say what we cannot talk about.

In the last thirty years, it has been identified a theory corresponding to the biological evolution one which concerns the behavioral traits of men and their social organization (institutions, customs, beliefs, social norms, values and technologies). By tracing back the guidelines of cultural evolution and showing how it differs from biological evolution, this paper focuses on the cultural evolution theory and its capability to explain the emergence and the change of rules and institutions at the bottom of social life. In the last part of the paper, recovering F. A. Hayek’s pioneering insights, I will analyze the evolutionary dynamics acting at the level of rules and institutions. I will show, on the one hand, how selection of the rules is driven by a complex process in which emerg-ing macro-systemic effects lend an evolutionary advantage to some human groups and allow us to explain how specific rules have successfully survived over time. On the other hand, I will argue that some behaviors have jointly transformed with the changing of societies by following the increasing degree of complexity in the relationships and human environments.

Mattias Fritsch’s Taking Turns with the Earth draws on phenomenology and deconstruction to develop two models of intergenerational justice. In this review paper, I consider the way in which, in making the argument for these models, Fritsch moves from ontological claims about the necessarily temporal and relational character of identities to normative claims about the way in which we find ourselves situated in webs of intergenerational obligations. The book thus shifts the starting point for theorizing intergenerational justice by rejecting the assumption that moral relations normally arise between contemporaries. It is, on the contrary, insofar as we are natal-mortal beings, vulnerable and dependent in virtue of our embodiment, that we are moral agents. This is a powerful framework for thinking of intergenerational ethics. I consider a skeptical challenge to Fritsch’s interpretation of the ethical implications of deconstruction in order to highlight what is original and compelling in his position.

The paper attempts to grasp the normative tools with which the Catholic Church, throughout history, has imagined to cope with the issue of pedophilia among its members. The institution institution’s responses to the violation of the sixth commandment made use of penal and corrective measures which, although proven since time immemorial, have been visibly ineffective, or incredibly effective if we consider the ability to stifle the clamor of the phenomenon for so long. The paper focuses on especially the measure of fraternal correction which appears in the Gospel and became a specific issue in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas until the post post-tridentine era. The analysis of certain texts of the curia from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day suggests that fraternal correction was the predominantly practiced expedient to avoid the trial against clerics accused of sexual abuse.

Giorgio Cesarale's book provides not only a history of contemporary radical thought, but even the outlines of its theoretical reconstruction. Reflecting on the nihilistic character of contemporary radical thought, Cesarale delineates the traits of a critical-negative, historical reason, in which the purely, transcendental, separation between form and matter is resolutely overcome. Even the political background of the book should be read in this light.

Corporate smart city initiatives are just one example of the contemporary culture of surveillance. They rely on extensive information gathering systems and Big Data analysis to predict citizen behaviour and optimise cit y services. In this paper we argue that many smart city and social media technologies result in a paradox whereby digital inclusion for the purposes of service provision also results in marginalisation and disempowerment of citizens. Drawing upon insights garnered from a digital inclusion workshop conducted in the Galapagos islands, we propose that critically and creatively unpacking the computational techniques embedded in data services is needed as a first step if we are to reimagine neganthropic , sustain able and empowering data services for inhabitants in diverse localities. We propose a therapeutic inspired by the concept of ‘common ground’ from communication theory. Common ground presupposes a symmetry of purpose, shared values and accessible participat ion processes. When common ground is deployed in the smart city context it prompts us to reimagine data services as an ongoing dialogue between peers, to rethink citizen participation in terms of capabilities and empowerment, and to focus on clear lines of accountability and equality of citizen outcomes

This note aims first to provide a general insight into the key theoretical questions on which are central to the Real Smart City project , and then to elaborate on the salient concepts or analysis of each paper of the collection “Guayaquil Archipelago: Epistemological steps towards a Real Smart City”. The most relevant issues, such as smartness, noesis, public space and control, compose the set of critical tools by which we attempt to deconstruct the technoideology of the very idea of “Smart Cities”. A second goal is to provide an alternative to the image of the network, through which one thinks social relations and the transmission of information and knowledge within digital societies. This is the image of the archipela go, mediated by archipelagic thinking. While the first part of the collection of papers focuses on the relation between the digital and the territory, the second part attempts to deepen the concept of archipelagic thinking and to raise some methodological points inspired by real archipelagos.

The paper is a response to H.Lindahl’s extensive reply to Ferrara’s critical remarks. This reply was published as part of a larger symposium (in Etica & Politica/Ethics & Politics XXI, 2019, 3) on Lindahl’s recently published Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion. In an effort to push the dialogue further, new reflections and counterarguments are here put forward in relation to four thematic areas: a) the notion of a-legality, revisited in light of a distinction between foreground and background assumptions of a practice; b) exemplarity, positive and negative, in law, c) the paradox of constituent power, and d) the relation of Lindahl’s notion of “collective self-restraint” to the later Rawls’s paradigm of “political liberalism”.

The famous codification controversy of 1814 between Carl von Savigny and Anton Thibaut has been a turning point in the history of European legal culture. Starting form this remarkable and very passionate debate it is my intention to examine Savigny’s 'Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung', stressing the importance of space and time in his thought. Even today it is a perspective that is very inspiring, being an excellent opportunity to think about the present. Moreover this brilliant pamphlet has raised the most important question of the relationship between the State, its constitution and its territory. In the following years, the issue of how political institutions are rooted in space has been crucial and still echoes in the debate about globalization.

Justice for future generations is a common topic in current political philosophy. But why do we owe anything to future, non non-yet living people? This paper aims to critically reconstruct the main arguments of Matthias Fritsch’s recent study Taking Turns with the Earth. For this, I try to illustrate Fritsch’s main point, namely that we need an alternative ontology of time and space. I then follow Fritsch in his examination of Levinas’ work and consider which precursors the ontology of temporality presented here may have in the philosophical and religious tradit ion. In addition, I reconstruct how Fritsch then then—primarily with recourse to the works of Derrida Derrida—develops his two models of intergenerational justice, namely the “asymmetrical reciprocity model” and the “turn -taking model”. My evaluation of the basic purpo se of the book is very positive. However, critical questions may arise with regard to how much time is actually left for such a rethinking on an ontological level. Further, we might also wonder to what extent the idea of taking turns could be further devel oped as a model for discursive exchange to generate concrete norms of action.

With the widespread of the Internet of things (IoT) algorithms are increasingly managing our everyday life. From navigating our way in cities to keeping track of our health, artificial intelligence has been beneficial to us in many ways however, its algorithms can also be detrimental as a consequence of biased human programming. The consequence is that while technological progress, delivers more and more human like artificial intelligence, humans become more and more dehumanised and therefore disempowered in their everyday interactions with artificial intelligence. The solution(s) is not single handed and calls for combined inte rventions at the macro and micro levels. Whilst reviewing recent top down developments on the front of AI ethics, this article delves into the question as to what extent ordinary citizens can exercise any kind of agency when it comes to artificial intellig ence. It does so through a multidimensional approach including analogies and intertextual motions between history, literature, and visual culture. Focussing in the case study of facial recognition software, the article explores the possibilities of imaginative agency as a form of local intelligence capable of dwelling in and contesting [human made] algorithmic bias.

The paper aims to be conceived as a kind of programmatic afterword for the present issue. It first describes the key concepts that orient the Real Smart Cities project, with a special focus on intelligence as a noetic process, and on the relation between territory, urban and non non-urban territorialisation and know ledge. Then, after an economic and socio socio-political analys analysis of the Anthropocene in the light of what the author defines as anthropy and neganthropy, the paper scribes the blueprint blueprints of a new interdisciplinary and international project based on the concepts enucleated above (de-proletarianisation, exosomatisation, noodiversity, among others).

The article aims, first, to address the relation between equality and inclusion and the contrast between dialectical and mystical negativity. In the final part, criticism is levelled against the idea of the left as the product of the encounter between the “bourgeois revolution” and anti-systemic movements from below.