Capitalist modernity leads to death in the form of the contraction of vital possibilities of most human beings. This has historically translated into what Giorgio Agamben calls bare life, i.e., life that is rendered killable because of its absolute exposure to sovereign power. Bare life stems from the will to master, which has historically led to hierarchy. Although not all empirical hierarchies lead to death, the potential to kill is inherent to the principle of hierarchy because it is based on domination. Since the root of bare life is found in the will to master, bare life is not exclusive to capitalist modernity, although it has been amplified in it due to the politicization of biological life. Thus, although opposing capitalist modernity is crucial to foster life, the fight for freedom and dignity needs to go beyond this goal and end the principle of hierarchy itself.
This essay argues that gender-based sexual violence (GBSV) underpins and is reproduced through gendered relations of power. Characterized by structural and institutional disadvantaging of femininity and women (trans and cis) and privileging of masculinity and men, gendered power relations are oppressive. In the first part of the essay, I show that because women’s oppression is sexual and violent, GBSV and the sexual humiliation it produces are particularly effective at enforcing women’s oppression. The second part of the essay argues that given the character of women’s oppression, practices which directly oppose their reduction to sexually humiliated bodies are key components of effective feminist resistance. I refer to these embodied, oppositional practices as guerilla tactics. This essay was presented as the 2023 Hypatia Lecture of SW*IP-NL, the Society for Women* in Philosophy for Flanders and the Netherlands.
Review of Braga, Emanuele. 2023. Moleculocracy: Ecologie, conflitti, turbolenze. Rome: NERO Editions.
Review of Greg Bird and Giovanbattista Tusa (eds). 2023. Dispositif: A Cartography. MIT Press. This is a review of Dispositif: A Cartography. It presents an effort to use the book as was perhaps intended, to navigate a particular set of dispositives—dispositives that are operative within "positive religion."
Bruno Latour polemicized against critique’s supposed congruence with conspiracy thinking. Both treat reality as a mere front for the real forces behind it. Latour argues that ‘critique’ must break with these reductionist and foundationalist thinking practices. I argue with Arendt that Latour misses his mark: not ‘critique’, but the modern way of understanding reality as such is guilty of this reductionism. I claim that this calls for a shift of perspective to the problem of the atrophying of political judgement. Instead of being able to move within a historical space of ideas, we have all become alienated masters of suspicion.
