*Complex Presentiment:* *Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt*, 1932. Kazimir Malevich

Issue 187, April 2025

Challenging Rationalities of the Ecumene

Articles

Conversation with Zygmunt Bauman: Terrorism and the legitimacy of power

Slawomir Czapnik and Tomasz Krawczyk. Translated by: Dominik Hüpner

In September 2010, two Polish scholars, Slawomir Czapnik and Tomasz Krawczyk, conducted an interview with Zygmunt Bauman while being hosted at his home in Leeds. The conversation in Polish was recorded, but the recording files were – it seemed irrevocably – accidentally deleted. It was not until 2023 that Slawomir Czapnik found the audio files and decided to publish the conversation, having translated it into English. It provides a better understanding of the views of arguably one of the most eminent – albeit hugely controversial – contemporary sociologists in the world, who died in 2017. On the one hand, the conversation is a document of its time, of the turn of the first and second decades of the 21st century and of the international realities of the so-called ‘war on terror’, but on the other hand it raises questions that are still relevant today about the legitimacy of political power in the modern world. It shows the shift from a concern with ‘security’ (the domain of social security, characteristic of the welfare state and solid modernity) to ‘safety’ (the domain of personal security, characteristic of the neoliberal, liquid phase of modernity). Bauman’s reflections are extremely valuable today, because now – after the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the rise of tensions in the Middle East and the rise of the populist right in the world – there are the issues of international problems, the weakening of the nation-state and inability to solve global issues (including such basic ones as security) locally. The response of an increasingly vulnerable state is to intensify surveillance, a mechanism for population control. Bauman also draws attention to the extremely momentous issue of the just society and the fight against injustice. For Bauman, the sociological imagination must delve into how power works and what are its consequences for freedom and moral responsibility.

On magical nominalism: An interview with Martin Jay

Howard Prosser

This interview with Martin Jay took place in January 2025. The conversation focuses on the conceptual elements of his book Magical Nominalism: The Historical Event, Aesthetic Reenchantment, and the Photograph (2025). Attention is given to the place of nominalism within philosophy and in connection to critical theory, history, and art. With a mind to his contribution to all these areas, as the Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus at University of California Berkeley, Jay also positions this work alongside his previous and possible contributions to intellectual history and social theory.

A Latin American critique of instrumental reason

Ricardo P Regatieri and Lucas Trindade

Taking part in the broad contemporary effort of proposing an anticolonial and non-Eurocentric critical theory, this article sets out the dialogue between Aníbal Quijano’s critique of coloniality, and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason. Firstly, we reconstruct the critique of instrumental reason, highlighting how it is enriched when associated with the binary objective reason and subjective reason as well as aspects of negative dialectics. Secondly, we revisit Quijano’s texts immediately preceding his decolonial phase. These texts allow us to see how the critique of instrumental reason is an integral part of and is enlarged by the concept of coloniality. Building on this double movement, we are able to map affinities, differences, and connections between the two critiques and their respective outlining of alternatives to instrumental reason, especially the mediations between, on the one hand, objective reason and non-identical, and, on the other, historical/alternative reason and heterogeneous totality.

Nexuses of performativity: Systemic generalities, infrastructures and practical ontologies

Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen

Proponents of the performative idiom in science and technology studies (STS) take performances to be constitutive of human-technology relations. They challenge realist and humanist positions by emphasizing practical ontologies that also recognize the agency of non-human actors. This paper advances the performative agenda by introducing a novel analytical distinction between ‘systemic generalities’ and ‘systemic particularities’ in practical assemblages. Systemic generalities denote consistent patterns or characteristics, while systemic particularities refer to unique or contingent aspects. Through an exploration of a case study on infrastructure systems, the paper highlights the significance of systemic generalities to performativist STS and how infrastructures can be seen as nexuses of performativity rather than as contingent conjunctions.

Human rights as a claim for recognition: Towards an ecumenical anthropology of dignity and personhood

Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati

The drive for recognition, I argue here, is a normative claim inherent in the many polysemic uses of human rights around the world. By critically re-reading Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition with the anthropological literature on human rights, I wish to observe how conceptions of universal dignity and personhood are present in culturally situated struggles for political participation. This is neither the vernacularisation of canonical liberal ideas nor their careless strategic deployment in local contexts. On the other hand, actors on the margins speak the idiom of human rights to produce a contingent sense of self that is nevertheless universal in its ambition. In line with Honneth, I divide the ethnographic cases I consider into the institutional spheres of love, legality and solidarity to imagine three qualitatively different praxes of recognition. It is time to move beyond the dated universalism-versus-relativism debate. By shifting the focus to recognition, I hope to design an alternative theoretical scaffolding of human rights that makes sense of why the disenfranchised still use it, wherever and whenever they do, despite its persistent failures.

What we have in common: David Graeber and the anthropological critique of philosophy

Bernardo Paci

The anthropological critique of philosophy has traditionally challenged conjectural histories and simplistic abstractions used by philosophers to define human nature. While this critique often leans toward cultural relativism, this paper argues that David Graeber’s work exemplifies a distinctive, anti-relativist version of the anthropological critique. Grounded in ethnographic, historical and archaeological material, Graeber’s approach contests Eurocentric assumptions not only about non-European societies but also about Western social institutions themselves. The paper situates Graeber’s position within contemporary anthropological debates, contrasting it with prevailing forms of anti-relativism such as cognitive, ecological and ontological perspectives. It then reconstructs Graeber’s anthropological critique through key examples from Debt and The Dawn of Everything, including his reinterpretation of freedom inspired by the Indigenous critique of European society. Ultimately, this paper proposes that Graeber’s work models a form of concrete universalism that respects cultural differences while offering a plural, historically informed critique of dominant social theories. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Italian are mine.

Taking consent for granted: A case for rethinking hegemony

Sonny Osman

This paper focuses on the position of consent in prevailing models of hegemony. It is argued that the commonly invoked consent assumption is a weakness in the hegemony construct that demands review. Consent is purportedly a crucial element of the hegemony dynamic, yet is often overlooked in favour of dominance and resistance. To illustrate this, the paper provides a genealogical account of the consent premise as it is formulated in notable models of political hegemony. This reveals a declining interest in the purportedly crucial consent element of the hegemony construct, accompanied by a reductive view of language and discourse. Next, the paper contrasts the collective consent premise with modern notions of individual sexual consent. This highlights the connection between the consent assumption and hegemonic masculinity. It is observed that if hegemony is based on modes of control and the lack of meaningful choice, it is not founded on consensus. Rather, it is postulated that such conditions might aptly be described as a form of tolerance. This concept is outlined here as a means of departure towards theorizing how hegemonic domination might be actualized discursively without the requirement of consent. In this respect, the paper responds to proponents of post-hegemony by arguing that it is not the concept of hegemony that is outmoded, but rather how it is secured.

A phenomenological approach to Ibn Khaldun’s concept of group feeling

Henrique Augusto Alexandre

Ibn Khaldun’s groundbreaking sociological investigations led to the development of the concept of group feeling (asabiyyah), responsible for describing not only the basis of all social cohesion, but also to explain the cyclical rise and fall of communities in a philosophical theory of history. We will analyze Malešević’s naturalistic anthropological interpretation of the nature of group feeling and complement it with a phenomenological interpretation of the subjective experience of asabiyyah. We will rely on Stein’s insights into the problem of empathy and Schütz’s phenomenological investigations into the structure of social relationships. We expose Ibn Khaldun’s concept of asabiyyah, followed by Malešević’s analysis of the concept. Afterwards, we analyze how Malešević uses group feeling to explain the formation of group solidarity in nationcentric States. After showing how phenomenology can answer the open-ended questions posed by Malešević in his article, we lean on Stein’s and Schütz’s investigations in order to describe asabiyyah phenomenologically.

‘For the good of the Gugu Badhun people’: Indigenous Nation building, economic development and sharing as sovereignty

Janine Gertz, Theresa Petray, Miriam Jorgensen, Alison Vivian and Coralie Achterberg

As part of an ongoing process of Indigenous Nation Building, Gugu Badhun Nation is engaged in developing an economy according to Gugu Badhun values. Rather than simply mimicking capitalism, the practice of visioning this economy begins with considering core cultural principles for the Nation. Sharing is central for Gugu Badhun, and we argue that sharing is considered an act of sovereignty stemming from Gugu Badhun law. Other factors emerge from the focus on sharing, such as the responsibility to look after one another, Country, plants and animals, and neighbouring Nations. This articulation of sharing as sovereignty illustrates Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty as a verb, rather than a noun. Storytelling is one way that Gugu Badhun enacts economic sovereignty through centring the Nation. Our research demonstrates the transformative potential of Indigenous Nation Building and Gugu Badhun people’s freedom to consider and express a preference for alternative economies.

Challenges to autonomy: The occupied social centres of Milan and platform capitalism

Raymond Grenfell and Fausto Butta

This article investigates the relationship between occupied social centres in Milan, Italy, and social media platforms. It reviews literature on the political and cultural significance of occupied social centres as spaces enabling of political autonomy since the 1960s. Then through participant observation and interviews conducted in late 2022, the research examines how platform capitalism – online media platforms and the connective ecosystem in which they exist – has impacted on three occupied social centres in the greater Milan area: ZAM, Boccaccio and Piano Terra. Their members interviewed for this study described three broad approaches to dealing with the social media of platform capitalism, starting with the most popular: to engage strategically with social media platforms for outreach while attempting to create a physical prefigurative political space; to ignore and disengage from social media platforms; and to create and use their own platforms. The article discusses the nuances and tensions in and around these approaches that can further understandings about how social media platforms impact capacity to create and sustain occupied social centres and, potentially, other forms of prefigurative space.

Towards an ecological understanding of revolution: The Paris Commune of 1871 and contemporary social movements

Mathijs van de Sande and Gaard Kets

In the wake of the assembly movements that emerged from 2011 onwards, a lively academic and activist debate developed around the question of organization. Various political theorists have proposed an ‘ecological’ approach to social movements, which allows us to perceive them as contingent combinations between various activist repertoires and organizational forms. Rather than prioritizing either a ‘horizontalist’ or ‘verticalist’ logic of organization, both are often at play within a social movement, where they compete with or complement each other. This article contributes to this ‘ecological turn’ in social movement studies by adding a historical perspective. We argue that a key revolutionary event – the Paris Commune of 1871 – could be read as a ‘distributed ecology’. This historical application allows us to better recognize the merits of an ecological approach for contemporary radical-democratic theory and practices and helps us to appreciate the significance and radical potential of recent social movements.

The political seduction of bourgeois spirit: Helmuth Plessner’s Calvinist reading of German history

Franz-Josef Deiters

his essay reconstructs the German philosopher and cultural sociologist Helmuth Plessner’s reading of Germany’s fall into the catastrophe of National Socialism. The conceptual foundations for his reading were developed in The Limits of Community (1924). There he argued that post-WWI political extremism was characterized by the anti-modernist concept of “community.” In The Belated Nation (1935/59), he went on to identify the Lutheran Reformation as the determining turning point in German history. The Lutheran type of consciousness stands at the origin of a self-destructive hermeneutics of suspicion that finally resulted in völkisch thinking. Second, unlike the formation of a democratic spirit in the Calvinist middle classes in Holland and England, in Prussia the Lutheran alliance of throne and altar led to the exclusion of the middle classes from politics, relegating them to the liberal professions of science and art. Finally, I argue that Plessner’s own theoretical model of a political anthropology was developed in opposition to the German intellectual classes’ failure to prevent or oppose Hitler’s rise to power, including his plea for Germany to align with Western European nations shaped by the Calvinist version of the Reformation.

Review essays

Retrospective Prophets: The Challenge of German History and German Exceptionalism Franz-Josef Deiters, Sprechen über Deutschland – vom Standpunkt der Religion. Vier Stimmen im Zeitalter der Weltkriege. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Studie (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2024)

David Roberts

I take my title from Franz-Josef Deiters’ introduction to Sprechen über Deutschland – vom Standpunkt der Religion. Vier Stimmen im Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Talking about Germany – from the point of view of religion. Four voices in the Age of World Wars), four readings of German history written between 1914 and 1945. Three of these four readings take the form of retrospective prophecy in the threefold sense that defines the particular interest of Deiters’ study. Deiters rightly argues that the religious dimension has been neglected in the endless debates on German history and identity since 1945. Deiters reminds us just how central religion was to Max Weber’s work and how central the issue of religion and secularization was to German social and cultural thought across the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. In sum, Deiters maintains that the time has come to revisit cultural readings of German history in the Age of World Wars.

The modern self in crisis

Edmund Mendelssohn

While the humanities face various impasses and while any of us may sense that our “time is out of joint,” seldom does a book emerge that traces the path of the vanquished leading to our present. Fuoco B. Fann’s This Self We Deserve: A Quest After Modernity offers an illuminating inquiry into modern knowledge, language, and the subject, drawing from French poststructuralism, continental and intercultural philosophies, and art theory. This review essay assesses the book’s main claims: (1) that Euro-American (i.e., Western) knowledge has, over the past two centuries, lost its sustainability; and (2) that the present instability of knowledge has been bequeathed to us by a continuous modern tradition that we ought to “unlearn and relearn.” Drawing from Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, and others, Fann’s Quest After Modernity weaves these thinkers’ ideas around a few central themes, including the modern speaking subject, modern phonetic language, ontology as white mythology, and various “post”-modern reversals.