Alessandro Volpi

The concept of sovereignty is often confined to power-centric, state-bound aspects of politics, leaving its normative dimension under-theorised. This article argues that sovereignty cannot be treated as a normatively inert notion, nor reduced to the nation-state. It offers a revised, historically grounded account of sovereignty as containing an abstract normative ideal of political authority oriented toward the common good and irreducible to empirical claims, national borders, or fixed institutional forms. The article conceptualises sovereignty’s normative dimension through the notion of the “normative loop,” which captures the interconnection among sovereign power, the public realm, and the common good. It then elaborates four desiderata that an account of the common good must satisfy to function within this framework. Finally, the article explores the framework’s implications for political legitimacy and autonomy. The upshot is that the value of external autonomy hinges on internal legitimacy, which in turn is grounded in a fiduciary duty to the common good. This provides an alternative to both sovereigntist nostalgia and realist, power-centric, state-bound accounts of sovereignty.

Il pensiero umanistico è stato influenzato nel profondo dal dibattito sull’Antropocene, nato all’interno del campo disciplinare della geologia nel tentativo di individuare un’epoca che faccia seguito all’Olocene, caratterizzata dalle tracce dell’attività umana sul pianeta. Dalla sua diffusione con Paul Crutzen e Eugene F. Stoermer, la questione dell’Antropocene ha valicato ampiamente i confini della geologia, riversandosi in altre discipline – dagli studi culturali alla filosofia – così come nei dibattiti pubblici e nell’attivismo ambientale. In questo volume il concetto di Antropocene viene esaminato criticamente nelle sue principali implicazioni, affrontando temi quali il rapporto con la crisi ecologica, il femminismo, la tecnologia, i rifiuti, la democrazia, la relazione tra umano e non-umano, la sua periodizzazione, l’ecomodernismo, e altri ancora.

Can political sovereignty still be theoretically and practically useful in tackling climate change in a socially fair way? The global nature of climate change unequivocally demands a high degree of international coordination. Traditionally viewed as an impediment to effective climate action, sovereignty has been criticised for fostering nationalistic and isolationist tendencies that obstruct global environmental cooperation. This paper challenges the prevailing “sovereignty-as-enemy” thesis and argues for a nuanced reappraisal of sovereignty as a potentially valuable asset in addressing the climate crisis. This paper posits that sovereignty can be a critical tool for promoting decisive and equitable climate policies by examining its historical and theoretical underpinnings and complex relationship with neoliberal globalisation. The argument is rooted in a multidisciplinary literature comprising critiques of the neoliberal economy and globalisation model, the erosion of states’ sovereign prerogatives, critiques of neoliberal environmentalism, the interaction between trade and climate regimes, and the intellectual history of sovereignty. The public-private dichotomy is identified as a significant feature of sovereignty in times of climate change. Keywords:sovereignty, climate politics, neoliberal globalisation, public-private divide

This article explores the Foucauldian analysis of the linkage between temporality and politics, addressing mainly two loci of Foucault’s production: the assessment of the post-WWII ordoliberal experience in The Birth of Biopoliticsand the Iran reportage for “Corriere Della Sera”. The article emphasizes the relevance of Foucault’s assessment of ordoliberal Germany for contemporary studies on neoliberalism and inscribes Foucault in a wider tradition of thought on the relevance of history and temporality for the comprehension of political dynamics. In TBoB, Foucault offered a prescient analysis of neoliberal temporality and its de-politicizing effects. In his view, ordoliberal theorists and politicians sought to ground political legitimacy in the economy itself, giving birth to a political-economic “double circuit” which did away with history and made political consensus “permanent” and automatic. The connection between neoliberalism, the re-structuring of state sovereignty, and temporality will be highlighted. Furthermore, by analyzingthe almost-coeval Iranian reportages and the eulogy for Clavel, the article further investigates Fou-cault’s reflection on the link between temporality, politics,and subjectivation processes. If the anal-ysis of ordoliberal temporality in TBoB describes a linkage between de-temporalization and de-politicization, the reportages will be highlighted as a possible “pars construens” –as a way to reinstate the possibility of political action through the appeal to different ways to experience tem-porality. The article concludes that Foucault’s sparse comments on temporality can be read as an attempt, albeit not fully developed, not only to envision the de-politicizing effects of marketization but also to envisage new, re-politicizing modes of experiencing temporality and history

This paper examines the relationship between climate movements and states in climate governance, suggesting that movements may improve their political output by adopting a sovereignty-based, democratic framing of their agenda. The ambivalent attitude of climate movements and Green Deal supporters concerning the desired role of states is reconstructed. Moreover, a multidisciplinary review of the literature supporting a “return of the state” in climate politics is offered. Drawing on the critical literature on neoliberal environmentalism and the role of states within globalization, as well as considering issues such as equality, accountability, and scale of the transition process, this paper advocates for a non-nationalistic, democratic understanding of sovereignty as crucial for an efficient and fair green transition. It particularly emphasizes the need to revive the distinction between public interest and private gain and provide a bridge between subaltern agendas and climate movements’ goals in order to successfully envision a post-neoliberal climate governance model.

In questo articolo viene affrontata la questione della sovranità politica in rapporto alla crisi climatica e ai dispositivi di governance sorti per la sua mitigazione e adattamento. Vengono esposti in estrema sintesi i risultati di un più ampio progetto di ricerca sul nesso tra cambiamento climatico, globalizzazione e ristrutturazione neoliberista della sovranità, fornendo risposte preliminari ad alcuni quesiti. In primo luogo, vengono esposte le ragioni per le quali è opportuno tornare sul concetto e sulle pratiche della sovranità, per come essa emerge dalla tradizione filosofico-politica moderna, in rapporto a problemi globali che concernono il pubblico interesse. È presentato un quadro sintetico delle trasformazioni subite dalla sovranità e dallo Stato a seguito dei processi di globalizzazione degli ultimi quattro decenni, e di come tali trasformazioni abbiano influenzato la risposta collettiva al cambiamento climatico. Vengono inoltre presentati alcuni casi studio per rafforzare la tesi che il modello «neoliberista» di globalizzazione, con le strutture di governance ambientale che ne fanno parte, presenta numerose criticità che impediscono un’efficace presa in carico della questione ambientale. In conclusione, viene tratteggiato un argomento normativo per un recupero di determinati elementi della tradizione concettuale della sovranità politica moderna come parziale rimedio alle esternalizzazioni socio-ambientali dell’attuale modello di globalizzazione. Parole chiave: sovranità, cambiamento climatico, globalizzazione, governance climatica.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between neoliberal presentist temporality and the climate-environmental crisis, arguing for the necessity of envisioning a new “eco-temporality”. The deconstruction of the modern concept of progress in postmodern thought and postcolonial studies is considered, making a case for the undesirability of its complete abandonment –since a progressive temporality retains a role in enabling political change and long-term vision. To capture the connection between politics and temporality we develop the concept of “political temporality”, which we define as the schema of interaction between the social representation of time and what is perceived as politically feasible in each community at a given time. Furthermore, we analyse the most prominent features of neoliberal temporality (structural presentism, the public/private distinction, individual subjects, and philosophy of history), sketching an account of how each of them impacts ecological and climate politics. Finally, to envision a new, Anthropocene-friendly “regime of historicity”, we lay down two basic conditions that an “eco-temporality” should satisfy. In the last two sections, we sketch a new (multi)temporal model that is meant to be apt for the Anthropocene, drawing on Ernst Bloch’s concepts of “multiversum” and “contemporaneity of non-contemporaneous elements”

This article aims to offer an outline of the relationship between Kojève’s philosophy and diplomatic career and the liberal tradition of thought and policy making. The internal development of the main philosophical concepts presented by Kojève in the Hegelian seminars of the 1930s («the end of history», «universal and homogeneous state») will be assessed and compared to his mutating political stances: from the original unorthodox socialist-Stalinist activism before World War II, to the appraisal of keynesian-fordist capitalism and, moreover, the proto-neoliberal project for a politically united Europe led by economic integration (the «Latin Empire» project, 1945). Furthermore, to assess the theoretical and political relationship between Kojève and neoliberalism, his role as a French diplomat in the creation of the international institutions that directly led to the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be taken into account, as well as his private correspondence with Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt

While the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the vulnerability of the neoliberal economic and political complex, the general dynamic of numerous crises in the last forty years reminds us that neoliberalism managed every time not only to avoid serious backlashes, but also to take advantage of emergency situations to strengthen itself, in particular with the implementation of de-democratizing policies. In this paper the impact of the pandemic on neoliberal rationality is assessed, on the one hand showing the novelty of the present situation in the history of neoliberal capitalism, while on the other hand pointing out the similarities with past crises and, through them, warning about the antidemocratical dynamics that COVID-19 could trigger.

This article aims at reflecting on the political significance of distinct conceptions of temporality and their symbolic representation in the work of Walter Benjamin. In particular, the “clock” and the “calendar” will be addressed as symbols of, respectively, a linear and homogeneous conception of time and of a cyclical, uneven – and potentially revolutionary – temporality. The conception of time symbolized by clocks is criticized by Benjamin as a bourgeois understanding of progress, which inhibits revolutionary tensions in society by shifting the political focus on future, on the inevitability of progress and growth; on the other hand, calendars’ and ancient cyclical festivals’ temporality constantly looks at the past, celebrating and re-actualizing the memory of previous revolutionary attempts. In the last section, the article will consider the role of symbols and allegories in Benjamin’s philosophical writing, casting new light on the previous discussion.