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Los países ubicados en el hemisferio occidental tienen algo en común —y no es solo la posición geográfica—. América Latina cuenta con una impresionante cadena de golpes de Estado en comparación con la democracia estable de su vecino estadounidense. Los acontecimientos recientes en Brasil después de que Lula jurase su cargo para un tercer mandato como presidente contra el titular Bolsonaro nos recordaron el asalto al Capitolio de EE.UU. el 6 de enero de 2021, que interrumpió una sesión conjunta del Congreso en el proceso de afirmar los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales que expulsaron a Donald Trump de la Casa Blanca. Las protestas electorales en Brasil comenzaron poco después de la conclusión de la segunda vuelta de las elecciones generales el 30 de octubre de 2022, en la que Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva fue elegido presidente y escogió el 8 de enero de 2023, cuando miles de partidarios de la derecha del expresidente Jair Bolsonaro irrumpieron en las tres ramas del gobierno de Brasil en la capital pidiendo la intervención militar. Hay similitudes y diferencias entre el ataque de Brasil en comparación con el ataque del 6 de enero en los Estados Unidos. Tanto Bolsonaro como Trump han impugnado sus derrotas electorales, amplificando teorías de conspiración de fraude electoral sin apoyo. Además, la crisis presidencial venezolana que duró desde 2019 hasta 2023 fue pavimentada por elecciones fraudulentas., Original title in English 'Latin America: The Pitfalls of Presidential System in Banana Republics', Newsletter of the Academy of Yuste, 28 (June), 1-33, https://www.fundacionyuste.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/03_Alumni_MM_B28-eng.pdf. The author gratefully acknowledges the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) for supporting his work through the Young Researchers-Seal of Excellence (SOE) grant funded by Next Generation EU (NGEU) under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

This paper discusses the binomial hybris and revolution. In particular, the question of whether the excessive dominants’ arrogance, who have too much both in material and symbolic terms, is sufficient to explain the deflagration of an insurgency and the interruption of a legal order. The question will be addressed by interweaving the reflections of authors who have discussed this topic with a material collected by the author through a legal-political ethnography conducted in Chile during the revolt that broke out in October 2019 and led to a new constituent phase. Categories and definitions used in this text are partly borrowed from the course devoted to political change and revolution taught by Norberto Bobbio in the 1978/79 academic year and from Michelangelo Bovero’s lectures that took place in that course. But they are placed in dialogue with revolutionary visions and practices rooted in the Latin American continent, in particular with Paulo Freire’s thought and with the so called Mapuche «cosmovision». From this comparison, the author comes to hypothesize: a. the relevance of the intimate (epistemic and emotional) dimension of revolutions; b. the priority in the etiology of insurgencies of the subjective cause, understood as the opening of the «possibles» due to the cracking of the epistemic violence exerted by the structure of domination in charge; c. the desire for radical change as an effect rather than a cause of insurgencies; d. the non-opposition between the «accelerated time» typical of revolutionary phenomena and the slow and hardly perceptible preparatory phase of latency.

Hybrid warfare is among the most trending topics. Hybrid threats arise in digital, cybernetic, and virtual environments and materialize in the real world. Although vague, hybrid activities include cyberwarfare, information warfare, and the emerging and evolving concept of cognitive warfare which appears from their intersection. These wordings gained popular attention in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and now are among the hot topics. While there is a lot of attention, there is also a lot of confusion about what exactly these locutions mean and what the implications are in branding them as “warfare”. Indeed, all such concepts are fluid, nebulous, and lack an undisputed legal definition. This work aims to clarify the legal meaning and to shed light on the characteristics – differences, similarities and overlaps – of these terms in the context of hybrid warfare and show the faulty reasoning upon which misunderstandings are based. The paper ends-up with a glimpse into the future, closing with a reflection on multi-domain operations facilitated by advancing virtual and augmented reality and a fully integrated human-computer interaction in the metaverse., Paper presented at the International Scientific Conference "'Communication. Disinformation. Propaganda. Information Warfare Ecosystem" (KDP 2023) organised by the Faculty of Administration and National Security of the Jakub of Paradies University in Gorzow Wielkopolski (Poland), the Baltic Defense College in Tartu (Estonia), the University of Tartu (Estonian Republic), the Estonian Military Academy in Tartu (Estonia), Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) (Estonia) and the Institute of Public Administration and Social Policy at the Faculty of Public Policy of the Silesian University in Opava (Czechia) and Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Ukraine), held on 25-26 May 2023 (Panel VII, 26 May). Full paper to be published in Applied Cybersecurity & Internet Governance (ACIG), vol. 2, no. 1, June 2023, https://acigjournal.com/resources/html/articlesList?issueId=14943

The thesis is dedicated to a comparative reading of the thought of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. By putting these authors in to dialogue, the thesis questions the allegded divergence and the consequent alternative choice between the two theoretical frameworks that are usually associated with their thought: the divergence between the Marxian «critique of political economy» and the Foucauldian «analytics of powers». Beginning with a critical reconstruction of some contemporary attempts to articulate Marx’s and Foucault’s thoughts, the thesis defends the idea that, without a clarification of the relationship between their concepts, any articulation is necessarily aporetic. The research thus aims to make such a clarification by overcoming supposed antinomies dividing certain Foucauldian and Marxian concepts. Starting from the similarities between Foucault’s and Marx’s practices of «inquiry», we move beyond false alternatives between the concepts of «power» and «exploitation», «norms» and «ideology», «subjectification» and «alienation». To surpass theses antinomies, we deploy the notion of «points of heresy», that has been introduced by Étienen Balibar to describe the Marx-Foucault relationship. Unlike Balibar, however, we propose to use this notion not to sever but to concatenate Marxian and Foucauldian concepts. We thus argue that reading Marx’s and Foucault’s texts in light of each other allows for the identification of several «heretical» insights within their respective theories, useful within contemporary debates in political philosophy and critical theory.

About 45 years after the 1979 revolution which overthrew the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Islamic Republic of Iran became a regional power, thanks to four decades of social, economic, diplomatic, and military advancements. But not all of these successes are clear-cut. Many of Iran’s achievements created new challenges or even led to political and diplomatic failures. Some episodes isolated Iran and made dialogue with the West difficult: the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, the military and financial support to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon (Hezbollah), the adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia, the anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic posture, and the controversial nuclear program, have alienated the sympathy of Western powers. The Islamic Republic has survived, despite sustained acute enmity from the US and Israel, a decade-long war against Iraq (1980-1988), and four decades of various forms of economic sanctions but, so far, was not able to come up with a governing model that reconciles the vision of a religious state with democracy. One of the last contemporary theocracies, along with Saudi Arabia and the Vatican, Iran should strive to introduce reforms, which are strongly demanded by the people: ease censorship, progress with human rights and respect for gender equality, restrict state intervention in the economy and pass electoral reforms. The harsh crack-down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on anti-government protests which have broken out since 2017 demanding reforms or the end to the Islamic Republic have raised public outrage. After the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, and the civil unrest against the government associated with the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the Guidance Patrol, Iran's image has further deteriorated. After 20 years, Iran is still perceived as President George W. Bush characterized it, jointly with North Korea and Iraq, in his State of the Union address of January 29, 2002: ‘an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world’. Economic sanctions, such as the embargo against crude oil, have injured the Iranian economy which suffers from double-digit unemployment and high inflation. Iran country would enormously benefit from their removal and the openness to the global market, in compliance with Art. 12 of the Constitution which sets the regime's goals: ‘A fair economy based on Islamic criteria to create welfare and eliminate poverty and deprivation in the areas of nutrition, housing, employment, health and insurance’. Is the Tehran leadership able to get the country out of this long-term situation and bring it into a new era of prosperity? This work aims to analyze the current situation in Iran and the opportunities for the country to find the right place within the international society., presented at the I. International Congress of Iranian Studies (Iranian Congress), June 15-18, 2023 https://iraniancongress.org/index.php/kongre/article/view/8. Abstract published in the Abstract Book https://iraniancongress.org/index.php/kongre/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/6

Over the last two decades, the concepts of defence and security have overlapped to the point where the former is merged with the latter. Since jihadist terrorism broke out at the dawn of the millennium, governments have been forced to review the classic paradigm according to which the military is employed in overseas operations—or the defence of the homeland from external enemies—and police and law enforcement agencies are tasked with internal security. In such a context, the military has taken on an increasing role in national security matters, although security itself is an umbrella concept under development that currently includes such cross-cutting topics as terrorism, cyber threats, health, food, energy, the economy, poverty, climate change, information technology, social security, job security, just to mention a few. The inclination to replace the idea of defence with security has contributed to the expansion of the idea of security itself. This way, defence activities abroad, such as military assistance to Ukraine in the context of the ongoing conflict with Russia, are presented to the public as "security" operations. Well-established and reputable dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, Britannica, Collins, Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, and Macmillan provide similar definitions of the term "security": safety; safety from attack, harm, or damage; freedom from danger or threat; freedom from fear or anxiety; being safe and free from worry; being protected or safe from harm. Security is the protection from, or resilience against, the potential harm caused by others by restricting one's freedom to act. In addition to these definitions, some of which are more focused on the person and his concerns and fears, there is a more comprehensive idea that incorporates the term “defence”. The definitions given by several dictionaries in this respect are pertinent. Therefore, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, security is the "protection of a person, building, organization, or country against threats such as crime or attacks by foreign countries". A similar definition is provided by the Oxford Dictionary: "the safety of a state or organization against criminal activity such as terrorism, theft, or espionage". On the same line, Longman says: "things that are done to keep a person, building, or country safe from danger or crime". These definitions show how the nature of the concept of security is changing, incorporating that of defence into much broader domains than the military realm. The term "defence", is given as a synonym of "security" by the majority of these dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Oxford, Collins), even though Britannica and Macmillan continue to be anchored to the dichotomy of defence/external and security/internal, respectively, by providing the words "national security" and "internal security", is evidence of this trend. The evolving concept of security must be scrutinised, with special attention paid to the notion of human security, boosted by UN General Assembly resolution 66/290 and the NATO Strategic Concept 2022, and currently under investigation by the Exploratory Team of the NATO Science and Technology Organization., Poster presented at the XII Portuguese Congress of Sociology, organised by the Portuguese Sociological Association (APS), the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC), and the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES-UC), held at FEUC, Portugal, 4-6 April 2023. More info in https://xii-congresso-aps.eventqualia.net/en/2023/home/ and https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/evt4-media/documents/programa_de_comunicações_APS_21Mar.pdf. Abstract published at p. 277 in the Book of Abstracts available at https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/evt4-media/documents/book-of-abstracts_5_2.pdf

In the context of the restructuring of Turkish academia, the concept of internationalisation has been affected by amendments to the Higher Education Law. Interviews with 12 academics who are currently working in Turkish academia demonstrate in particular the loss of internationalisation. This article has found that the authoritarian government aims to build up and create a new academia and new academics. Amendments following the post-2016 coup d’état and the recent Covid-19 pandemic demonstrate that President Erdoğan’s ‘New Turkey’ tries to deconstruct academia and therefore restructure a ‘new academia’ similar to his political system, based on the order and command chain, and homogeneity. Building upon Marcuse’s theory, the article shows that Turkish academia can be labelled as one-dimensional. The article seeks to unravel how Turkish neoliberal authoritarianism takes advantage of Covid-19 in order to re-establish a new academia. The author elaborates on some of the current changes in Turkish higher education as a result of the recent amendments made by the Higher Education Law in 2020, as well as how the effects of the new law were further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The text aims to trace a genealogical itinerary of the concepts of populism and hegemony in the first part of Ernesto Laclau's work, corresponding to the phase in which his thought is still situared within a Marxist perimeter, however heterodox. Following the method of Quentin Skinner, the birth and evolution of the notions at stake are retraced, as well as the relationship with other key concepts of his theoretical scheme, such as hegemony, articulation and “the political”. At the same time, the theoretical and political stimuli that lead the Argentine thinker to formulate and revise the scope of the two notions are framed. The text also takes into consideration the years of Laclau's political-militant formation within the Peronist left and his very first writings on political economy in which the concept of populism does not appear. These first political and intellectual experiences constitute a decisive substrate for understanding Laclau's subsequent theoretical movements. Finally, taking a leap forward, an examination of the similarities and differences between the theory of populism developed in Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory of 1977 and that offered in On Populist Reason of 2005 is advanced. Ernesto Laclau; Populism; Hegemony; Post-marxism., ——— Materialismo Storico ——— Rivista di filosofia, storia e scienze umane, V. 13 N. 2 (2022): L’egemonia dopo Gramsci #3: pedagogia, teoria politica e storia (Urbino 2021)

In this chapter, the author looks for a form of belief without any dogmaticism.

The essay is part of a book that aims to rediscover and enhance Pierre Bourdieu's contribution to the legal philosophy. Clelia Bartoli's paper takes up the French sociologist's theory of the State outlined during courses held at the College de France in 1989/1990 and 1990/1992. Bourdieu eschewed an intellectual fashion of his time that pushed historians, political scientists, lawyers and sociologists to examine the causes and reasons, evolutions and epilogues of revolutions, at the expense, however, of what is happening on the background: the dull, muffled and repetitive order of things. Bourdieu believed that permanence more than change, what is obvious more than what is eccentric, the ordinary more than the extraordinary should astonish and deserve explanation. However, in the course of the lectures mentioned above, he suggests that in order to attempt the arduous task of thinking and understanding the State, it is necessary to look at the moment of its genesis or its phases of crisis, such as during revolutions. In fact, during those phases the symbolic power – of which the State is monopolist – is not stable and lends itself to being observed as the result of a process rather than in its pretended naturality and inevitability. The categories and the socio-epistemic approach à la Bourdieu are adopted by Bartoli to read the case of the Chilean uprising of 2019 and the onset of the constituent process.

Friedrich Nietzsche and the desire to obey This chapter provides a new interpretation of the relationship between subjectivity and power in Nietzsche’s philosophy. I argue that the nexus Nietzsche poses between the birth of the subject and the “will to life” represents one of the seminal loci in which philosophy approaches the question of voluntary servitude. I locate the passages in Nietzsche’s thought in which the critique of democracy, passivity, and conformism cannot be read as the “simple” resurgence of reactionary ideas, but testify to the extremely ambivalent role played by the “will to life”. I then focus on the continuity between Christianity and the modern world to emphasize the complexity with which Nietzsche describes the process of subjectification that made the human animal docile and obedient, producing one of the most powerful investigations into the link between subjectivity and “pastoral power”.

The essay looks for the new forms of surveillance in our digital societies, under the perspective of the foucauldian category of Governementality.

There is something in common between the countries located in the Western Hemisphere—and is not just the geographic position. Latin America boasts an impressive string of coups, compared to the stable democracy of its American neighbor. Recent events in Brazil after Lula was sworn in for a third term as president against incumbent Bolsonaro, reminded us of the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that disrupted a joint session of the Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election results which kicked Donald Trump out of the White House. The election protests in Brazil began shortly after the conclusion of the general election’s second round on October 30, 2022, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president, and picked on January 8, 2023, when thousands of far-right supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed all three branches of Brazil’s government in the capital calling for military intervention. There are similarities and differences between the Brazil attack compared to January 6 attack in the United States. Both Bolsonaro and Trump have contested their electoral defeats, amplifying unsupported conspiracy theories of voter fraud. Also, the Venezuelan presidential crisis which lasted from 2019 to 2023 was paved by fraudulent elections., Published also in Spanish 'América Latina: los escollos del sistema presidencial estadounidense reflejado en las Repúblicas Bananeras' Trans. by Verónica Guillén Melo), in Boletín de la Academia de Yuste, 28 (June), 1-31. The author gratefully acknowledges the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) for supporting his work through the Young Researchers-Seal of Excellence (SOE) grant funded by Next Generation EU (NGEU) under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

This essay aims at inspecting the question of evil within Gilles Deleuze’s thought, focusing especially on his historical-philosophical works. I will attempt to show how, for Deleuze, the question of evil represented the most difficult issue to overcome in the construction of his vitalistic materialism, the latter established on the complete overlapping of ontology and ethics. By reconstructing the gradual composition of such «pure ontology» through Deleuze’s interpretations of Hume, Bergson, Spinoza, and Nietzsche, I will eventually define his vitalistic materialism as a biodicy that makes the question of evil ethically irrelevant for the sake of individuals’ freedom to express their vitality. The main consequence of such a biodicy is the definition of a dichotomous relationship between suffering and freedom that risks justifying natural inequalities subsisting among living beings.

This book provides a critical and innovative reassessment of contemporary debate on the human-animal relationship. Starting with a critique of the “official philosophical narration” of animal studies, and then a reassessment of Descartes' animal-machine paradigm, Simone Ghelli tracks down the conceptual coordinates of what he calls “the paradigm of the suffering animal.” The suffering animal is a materialist thesis on the condition of the living, which, while contesting the metaphysical and anthropocentric structure of western axiology, eventually redefines and re-establishes ethics on the experience of suffering, that is on the mutual compassion sentient beings feel before the unjust sight of their finitude. The suffering animal paradigm shows how, within our philosophical tradition, the animal question has been always intertwined with the questions of atheism and of materialism. The ultimate aim of this research is to define the “ethical equilibrium” between aspects of the living, such as weakness and power, joy and suffering, life and death, which our philosophical tradition largely tends to consider as mutually excluding. To overcome such oppositions means avoiding opposing, in our ethical and political discourse, the defense of the vulnerability of the weak and the freedom of the powerful.