Descrizione del progetto
Il modo in cui l’emergenza diventa più importante della necessità in politica
Dai tempi della Rivoluzione francese, la storia della politica europea è segnata da un aumento asimmetrico dei compromessi tra l’emergenza e la necessità. Questo complesso rapporto continua a plasmare la politica nazionale e globale, come la crisi europea dei migranti, l’emergenza climatica e la pandemia di COVID-19. Il progetto NOT, finanziato dall’UE, si basa sull’idea che le questioni politiche riguardanti lo stato d’emergenza trascurino solitamente le situazioni sottostanti, croniche e apparentemente meno urgenti, di tipo sociale, economico ed ecologico. Il progetto analizzerà il modo in cui la grammatica della politica moderna riproduce la prospettiva miope, drammatica, soggettiva e antropocentrica che va a beneficio dell’emergenza rispetto alla necessità mediante l’impiego di un archivio di testi letterari e teorici risalenti al periodo che va dal XVIII secolo sino ad oggi.
Obiettivo
NOT is a critical study of the emergency-discourse of modern European politics. My thesis is that the political preoccupation with states of emergency tends to overlook – with dire consequences – underlying chronic and ostensibly less urgent socio-economic and ecological conditions, or what I call states of need. This structural relation is captured in the ambivalence of the German word 'Not,' which means at once emergency and need. Since the French Revolution, the history of European politics has been defined by an always asymmetrical negotiation of the tension between emergency and need. This asymmetric articulation of political life is perpetuated by habits of speaking about politics, which are in turn rehearsed in literary and historiographical genres for representing the political theater. For this reason, NOT is an exercise in political philology. I analyze the way in which the grammar of modern politics reproduces the myopic, dramatic, subject- and anthropocentric perspective that privileges emergency over need by addressing a diverse archive of literary and theoretical texts from the 18th century to the present. My research historicizes this political grammar with attention to biopolitics, revolutionary rhetoric, political economy and development economics, human rights discourse, and ecological and Anthropocene debates. In doing so my aim is to excavate alternative forms of expression that do justice to the nexus of need/emergency and thereby recover ways to better articulate the political challenges we face today. In the spirit of Horizon 2020, appreciating the place of Europe in the contemporary world involves understanding the complex legacy of emergency/need that continues to inform national and global politics – as the European migrant crisis, the climate emergency and now the corona crisis have made clear. NOT is a second-book project supplemented by satellite conferences, edited publications, a public lecture series and teaching at the LMU.
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Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
80539 MUNCHEN
Germania