In the Margins of One Health: Interspecies Solidarity, Care, and Inequality

This article is an attempt to frontally pose a question queer theory gravitates around, yet never effectively spells out: what is a togetherness of those who have nothing in common but their desire to undo group ties? First, I consider the take-up of Lacan’s ethical experiment in Seminar VII, the Ethics of Psychoanalysis by queer theorists. I contend that queer theory has not given Lacan’s interpretation of Antigone its full import, which demands its placement in the philosophical tradition of the West brought to its highest fruition in Kant. I further contend, however, that to do so does not quite offer a solution to the queer problem, for, as contemporary debate on the political import of Antigone shows, the purity of her desire does not immediately translate into a sustainable politics. Lacan himself was faced with the problem of translating his ethics into a politics after his "excommunication" from the psychoanalytic establishment, and came to falter before it. Nevertheless, Lacan’s efforts allow us to pose the undoubtedly queer question of how to group together those whose only attribute is to undo group ties. Responding to the unanswerable demands of a theory and a practice that allows us to answer that question, I propose the figure of the smoker’s communism, as elaborated upon by Mladen Dolar, as a preliminary queer suggestion as to how we might go about mitigating the gap between Lacan’s ethical brilliance and his admitted political failure..

Introducing Regular Turnover Details, 1960–2015: A dataset on world leaders’ legal removal from office

The premier data on leader survival focus on the violent, dramatic means by which leaders ‘exit’ office. This information, vital for many research questions, constitutes a valuable public good for the community. Yet, it provides an incomplete picture of the political rise and fall of world leaders. The burgeoning study of leaders using survival analysis requires a fine-grained understanding of not just when, but why and how leaders lose power. We cannot, for example, conclude that a leader’s exit implies a successful application of international pressure if her removal stems from pre-set constitutional laws and the immediate successor has long been considered the heir apparent. The Regular Turnover Details dataset remedies this problem. Two principal variables report information about the manner of each leader’s exit and the relationship between outgoing and incoming leaders, allowing analysts to arbitrate between exits that suggest political failure and those that don’t, identify non-political leaders (such as interim and technocratic executives), and determine whether leaders constitute heirs to power or challengers thereto.

How to have conversations

Chapter 4 addresses the question of the social aspects of conversation. It studies how young Romans learnt the dynamics and workings of conversation and personal meetings during their tirocinium fori, and later by entering into a network of conversation. It discusses how this path could be different for young men from Italian towns and for the scions from the political aristocracy. The Roman practice of political conversation and meeting had customs and social expectations that had to be met and mastered; otherwise one would run the risk of social condemnation and political failure. Conversations, as we will see, were thus anchored in sociability: they could take place anywhere, but dinners constituted a habitual setting for them. This chapter will also study two other settings that could be related to political conversations: the senaculum and consilia.

The failed reform of the eurozone

This chapter is the story of a political failure. When Moscovici arrived in Brussels, he promised to reform eurozone governance, with a eurozone budget and a European finance minister. The Commission’s ambition was laid out in a Five-President Report that promised great institutional advances. Moscovici’s staff devoted considerable time and effort to push for federalist and Keynesian ideas against the ordoliberal consensus originating from Berlin and The Hague. Focusing on discussions and working meetings between political advisors and DG ECFIN officials, this chapter documents the battle of ideas waged—and lost—by the Moscos against the New Hanseatic League…until COVID-19 changed everything.

‘It is the antichrist. Can't you see?’ Perceptions of COVID-19 among Nigeria's Christians and the Religion—Health Debate

How does religion influence health? Responses to this question have shown that religious beliefs could have positive and negative effects on people's health. This paper focuses on religion's influence on how believers perceive and deal with diseases, and it aims to contribute to the debate by considering how COVID-19 was interpreted in Sub-Saharan Africa's Nigeria, which has been regarded as very religious, partly because the majority of her citizens identify as Christians or Muslims. It explores perceptions of COVID-19 in the country using data collected between March and May 2020, from (a) in-depth interviews with Christians in various states in the southern part of the country, (b) Facebook polls and (c) articles and readers' comments on the websites of Nigeria's Punch and Vanguard Newspapers. The findings corroborate the notion that (a) religion could have a negative influence on people's views about, and responses to, diseases, and that (b) religious organisations could serve as helpful partners in the fight against diseases. However, the data also demonstrate how the religious responses occurred within a context of political failure, which, in turn, is a major threat to public health in Nigeria. This suggests that to understand and successfully deal with the negative religious and cultural views about diseases in societies where such unhelpful relationships exist, it may be useful to consider how wider political and socio-economic realities help to shape those perceptions or the preference for religious sources of interpretation and healing.

Lacanian Ethics, the Psychoanalytic Group, and the Question of Queer Sociality

This article is an attempt to frontally pose a question queer theory gravitates around, yet never effectively spells out: what is a togetherness of those who have nothing in common but their desire to undo group ties? First, I consider the take-up of Lacan’s ethical experiment in Seminar VII, the Ethics of Psychoanalysis by queer theorists. I contend that queer theory has not given Lacan’s interpretation of Antigone its full import, which demands its placement in the philosophical tradition of the West brought to its highest fruition in Kant. I further contend, however, that to do so does not quite offer a solution to the queer problem, for, as contemporary debate on the political import of Antigone shows, the purity of her desire does not immediately translate into a sustainable politics. Lacan himself was faced with the problem of translating his ethics into a politics after his “excommunication” from the psychoanalytic establishment, and came to falter before it. Nevertheless, Lacan’s efforts allow us to pose the undoubtedly queer question of how to group together those whose only attribute is to undo group ties. Responding to the unanswerable demands of a theory and a practice that allows us to answer that question, I propose the figure of the smoker’s communism, as elaborated upon by Mladen Dolar, as a preliminary queer suggestion as to how we might go about mitigating the gap between Lacan’s ethical brilliance and his admitted political failure.