Inactivity of the Economy and the Economy of Inactivity. An Interview

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-146

The article presents edited material from a meeting with Giorgio Agamben to publicize the release of the Russian translation of his book The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Agamben discusses the reasons and conditions for the formation of power in the West as oikonomia; the early Christian origins of the modern domination of the economy and government in all spheres of public life; the certainty of modern power; together with what makes politics possible and the connection of politics with inactivity, dispositives and processes of deactivation. The archaeological study of the phenomenon of power suggests that its modern forms are notconfined exclusively to government, but power is also characterized by the concept of “glory” whose ceremonial, liturgical and praiseworthy aspects we have customarily viewed as rudiments of the past even though they still retain their influence. Power in the guise of government shifts the focus to action that reveals its own baselessness and radically reconfigures ideas about the relationship between economics and politics. In turn, the groundlessness of praxis requires conceptualizing will, understood as dispositive, which raises the issue of adequate strategies for constructing relations between the subject and the government as a condition for the very possibility of the political. Deactivation, profanation and inactivity are a prism through which the potential of the political, the poetic, the economic and the human is revealed.

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5-7

During the past forty years the dominant preoccupation of scholars writing on Livy has been the relationship between the historian and the emperor Augustus, and its effects on the Ab Urbe Condita. Tacitus’ testimony that the two were on friendly terms, and Suetonius’ revelation that Livy found time to encourage the historical studies of the future emperor Claudius, appeared to have ominous overtones to scholars writing against the political backcloth of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Though the subject had not been wholly ignored previously, the success of the German cultural propaganda-machine stimulated a spate of approving or critical treatments. While some were hailing Livy as the historian whose work signalled and glorified the new order, others following a similar interpretation were markedly scathing.


2015 ◽  
pp. 243-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Gordon

Like all previously published volumes of his lectures, the content of The Government of the Living defies brief summary. It shows us Foucault in 1980 mapping out a major new phase in his work in terms that complicate our existing understanding of his unfinished project. My review looks in turn at the two parts of the course: an unusually lengthy discussion of method and heuristics, followed by a tightly focused study of early Christian regimes of truth. I suggest that the complex opening theoretical reflections in these lectures go well beyond mapping the course of the immediately following historical analysis. They need to be seen in coordination with other conceptual innovations introduced over the following years, putting a task that Foucault calls here a “history of the power of truth” on his agenda alongside, and in integral connection with the previously defined tasks of a history of governmentality and a history of the subject. A newly published discussion in Berkeley later in 1980 adds crucial context to these Paris lectures, spelling out the linkage of structures of subjectivation to governability and of penitential ascetics to pastoral power. Taken together, the later books and lectures can now be seen to establish a framework of what I suggest we can call “alethic” or “aletheological” analysis, analysing and mapping across the span of Western history the modes of engagement of life and truth, with a view to enabling a renewed analysis of the political present.


2009 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Regina Pörtner

If proverbial wisdom predicts longevity to the falsely proclaimed dead, then the paradigm of absolutism and its confessional variant must surely be considered a prime example. Having drawn intense fire from scholars of Western Europe over the past two decades, the concept of absolutism has recently been given a fresh lease of life by research, exploring and, to some extent, vindicating its applicability in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Central Europe. Given the evolutionary nature of the making of the early modern Austrian-Habsburg monarchy, the complexity of its constitutional, religious, and ethnic makeup, and the waywardness of some of its governing personnel, it seems doubtful if future research will ever be able to satisfactorily clarify the relationship between the political aspirations of individual Austrian rulers, among whom Ferdinand II arguably made the most serious bid for absolute rule, and the practice of negotiated power that characterized the normal state of relations between the Crown and the monarchy's estates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 6222
Author(s):  
Kacper Szewczyk ◽  
Aleksandra Chojnacka ◽  
Magdalena Górnicka

Tocopherols and tocotrienols are natural compounds of plant origin, available in the nature. They are supplied in various amounts in a diet, mainly from vegetable oils, some oilseeds, and nuts. The main forms in the diet are α- and γ-tocopherol, due to the highest content in food products. Nevertheless, α-tocopherol is the main form of vitamin E with the highest tissue concentration. The α- forms of both tocopherols and tocotrienols are considered as the most metabolically active. Currently, research results indicate also a greater antioxidant potential of tocotrienols than tocopherols. Moreover, the biological role of vitamin E metabolites have received increasing interest. The aim of this review is to update the knowledge of tocopherol and tocotrienol bioactivity, with a particular focus on their bioavailability, distribution, and metabolism determinants in humans. Almost one hundred years after the start of research on α-tocopherol, its biological properties are still under investigation. For several decades, researchers’ interest in the biological importance of other forms of vitamin E has also been growing. Some of the functions, for instance the antioxidant functions of α- and γ-tocopherols, have been confirmed in humans, while others, such as the relationship with metabolic disorders, are still under investigation. Some studies, which analyzed the biological role and mechanisms of tocopherols and tocotrienols over the past few years described new and even unexpected cellular and molecular properties that will be the subject of future research.


2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúúl Beníítez Manaut ◽  
Andrew Selee ◽  
Cynthia J. Arnson

Mexico's democratic transition has helped reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of renewed armed conflict in Chiapas. However, absent more active measures from the government and the Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) to seek a permanent peace agreement and come to terms with the legacies of the past, the conflict will linger on in an unstable déétente, which we term ““armed peace.”” While this situation is far better than the open hostilities of the past, it also belies the promise of a fully democratic society in which all citizens are equally included in the political process. La transicióón democráática en Mééxico ha contribuido a reducir, si no eliminar, la posibilidad de que el conflicto armado en Chiapas se reanude. Sin embargo, sin esfuerzos mas activos por parte del gobierno y del Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) para buscar un acuerdo de paz permanente y saldar cuentas con el pasado, el conflicto permaneceráá en un estado inestable que llamamos ““paz armada””. Aunque esta situacióón es mucho mejor que las tensiones y agresiones del pasado, no cumple los requisitos de una sociedad plenamente democráática en que todos los ciudadanos participan en condiciones de igualdad en el proceso políítico.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
Amanda Eubanks Winkler

AbstractThis article analyses the complicated and conflicted critical response to Andrew Lloyd Webber’sThe Phantom of the Operawithin the political, economic and cultural context of the Thatcher/Reagan era. British critics writing for Conservative-leaning broadsheets and tabloids took nationalist pride in Lloyd Webber’s commercial success, while others on both sides of the Atlantic claimed thatPhantomwas tasteless and crassly commercial, a musical manifestation of a new Gilded Age. Broader issues regarding the relationship between the government and ‘elite’ culture also affected the critical response. For some,Phantomforged a path for a new kind of populist opera that could survive and thrive without government subsidy, while less sympathetic critics heardPhantom’s ‘puerile’ operatics as sophomoric jibes against an art form they esteemed.


1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hudson

The past decade has seen the growth of a considerable literature on the link between government popularity, as reflected by the proportion of the public indicating their intention to vote for the government in opinion polls, and the state of the economy, as represented by certain key variables. The work began in the early 1970s with articles by Goodhart and Bhansali, Mueller, and Kramer. It continued through the decade; some of the more recent contributions can be found in a set of readings edited by Hibbs and Fassbender. However, despite the amount and quality of this work, problems remain. Principal amongst these, as Chrystal and Alt have pointed out, is the inability to estimate a relationship which exhibits any degree of stability either over time or between researchers. Nearly all the studies have been successful in finding a significant relationship for specific time periods, but when these are extended, or when the function is used to forecast outside the original estimation period, the relationship appears to break down.


1987 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Pugach ◽  
Mara Sapon-Shevin

The calls for educational reform that have dominated the professional and lay literature for the past few years have been decidedly silent in discussing the role of special education either as a contributor or a solution to the problems being raised. As an introduction to this “Special Focus” on the relationship between general educational reform and special education, this article summarizes some of the more prominent reports with regard to their treatment (and nontreatment) of special education. The impact of proposed reforms for the conceptualization and operation of special education is the subject of the five articles that follow.


1929 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-160
Author(s):  
J. G. Kyd ◽  
G. H. Maddex

Judged by the amount of space devoted to the subject in the Journal of the Institute, Unemployment Insurance has received but little attention from actuaries in the past Public interest in the problem of relieving distress due to unemployment became pronounced in the early years of the present century and led to the appointment in 1904 of a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and, eventually, to the passing in 1911 of the first Unemployment Insurance Act. These important events found a somewhat pallid reflection in our proceedings in the form of reprints of extracts from Sir H. Llewellyn Smith's address on Insurance against Unemployment to the British Association in 1910 (J.I.A., vol. xliv, p. 511) and of Mr. Ackland's report on Part II of the National Insurance Bill (J.I.A., vol. xlv, p. 456). At a later date, when the scope of the national scheme was very greatly widened, the Government Actuary's report on the relevant measure—the Unemployment Insurance Bill 1919—was reprinted in the Journal (J.I.A., vol. lii, page 72).


Author(s):  
Elena Nikolaevna Chernyavskaya

The object of this research is the methods used in design practices of post-Soviet time to give historical appearance to landscapes of former estates of Moscow region, which faded away, i.e. the methods of historicization. The landscapes under review are being protected by the government as the objects of Moscow cultural heritage, and designated as museums (reserve museums) and public parks. The subject of this research is disclosure of the essence of these methods and their assessment from the perspective of alignment with historical primary sources, implementation, proliferation, and attractiveness. The author conducts systematization of methods in accordance to the degree of conformance to the historical realities, and divides them into the following groups: 1) that provide accurate reproduction of historical forms, 2) that create similarities, 3) that create new forms. Each group is divided into subgroups. By frequency of application, the leading place belongs to the methods of first group, which are aimed at reproduction of the shapes of buildings and structures. The rest two methods focus on reviving the memory of the past. The application is attributed to new construction, which can be assessed as landscape evolution and a modern artistic phenomenon. The methods of second group lead to landscape development in spirit of historicism, while the methods of third group – to the development of territory based on modern vision of the past. The conducted analysis is valued for the general outlook upon the process of preservation of one of the most complex types of cultural heritage of Moscow.


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