Poésie, Sciences Et Politique Une Génération D’Intellectuels Italiens (1290–1330)

Nothing is more false than the image of Dante as an isolated genius standing out against his epoch. On the contrary he belongs to a very caracteristic generation of italian intellectuals: laymen, often active in more than one domain, practicing abundantly poetic expression, engaged in political action, these scholar-citizens share equally a strong historical conscience. Their inventivity is manifested in philosophy, in medecine and in law, as well as in literary expression. Aside from these endogenous factors, a key to this phenomenon is linked to the active reception of the naturalistic knowledge elaborated in Paris, which is read in Italy outside of the control of theologians. The parallel journeys of a dozen uncommon personalities show the necessity of enlarging the habitual frames of medieval intellectual history.     

Three Paradoxes Concerning Causality and Time: Parmenides,Leibniz, Einstein/Schrödinger

Abstract

Parmenides’ Poem on Nature contains a proof that the world could not have come into being in time, because no explanation could be given for why it would do so at a given time. This same proof reappears in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, where it is directed against Newtonian absolute time. Newtonians, Leibniz explains, believe that time is homogeneous and absolute, but this makes it inexplicable how God could have chosen to create the world on a given day. Similarly, in his correspondence with Schrödinger in the 1930s, Einstein suggests that certain quantum mechanical occurrences, such as the spontaneous decay of a radioactive atom, are absurd, because they cannot be assigned a definite location in time. In Schrödinger’s version on Einstein’s argument, we must say that the cat dies twice: first, inside the box; yet, second, when we open the box. But both accounts cannot be true. Since each of the authors discussed was aware of the approach of his predecessors, they share a structure. In this article, I develop a unified account of all three.     

“Security,mobility, and the body – Syrian insurgent groups’ infrastructures and their geopolitical contestations through/by/in legal institutions”

Political geographers have repeatedly demonstrated how the ‘global war on/of terror’ has led to repressive and unjust international and domestic policies. Nevertheless, little has been said about the multifold intertwinements between such ‘Western’ perceptions and their shaping of anti-terrorism efforts within. To this end, this paper draws on recent feminist understandings of scale, global/local processes, and geopolitics, suggesting how these might be combined with current European participations in Syria, and its legal prosecution as ‘state-endangering actions.’ By visiting the sites where issues on security, mobility, and their interrelated body actions have been negotiated, I deploy an intersectional and multi-scalar analysis of how a layered system of gender-rendered and racialized patterns intersects with/in Germany's legal institutions combating terrorism wherever it may occur as well as the way multifold and different modes of support and logistics have been carried out through the European Schengen Area to Syria. Combining both feminist geopolitics and the vibrant work of (feminist) geolegalities, I offer another way of redressing Hyndman's call (2019) for expanding the tent of feminist geopolitics by not reversing the former, but through refocusing on embodied and material power-geometries and (legally) interconnected sites of an Islam-rendered, Western state-defined ‘war on/of terrorism’ simultaneously.     

Reporting oppression: mapping racial prejudice in Anti-Caste and Fraternity, 1888–1895

This paper presents a close reading of the reports of racial oppression that appeared in issues of two periodicals, Anti-Caste and its successor Fraternity, between 1888 and 1895. Edited in Street, Somerset, these periodicals created an extensive political geographical imagination by mapping international cases of racial prejudice. Although critical of the British empire, neither Anti-Caste nor Fraternity demanded the destruction of the British empire. In a tactic similar to that used by early Pan-Africanists, the papers’ narratives desired an end to the expansion of the British empire and an increase in the respect for and conditions of those who were ruled ‘under the British Flag’. However, Anti-Caste’s focus upon racial inequality across the United States as well as the British empire enabled it to create a distinctive critique of racial prejudice across the English-speaking world. Its criticism of the imperial project combined with support for human brotherhood allowed the paper to develop a framework for debates on racial prejudice that drew together criticisms of labour laws in India, the removal of people from their lands in Southern Africa, the racial segregation of public transport in the United States and the restriction of Chinese labour in Australia.     

Labor, zapped/growth, restored? Three moments of neoliberal restructuring in the American labor market

The paper revisits the works of Barry Bluestone and BennettHarrison in order to develop a critical commentary on the post-1970srestructuring path of the US economy. It is argued that Bluestoneand Harrison's three major books (The Deindustrialization ofAmerica, The Great U-Turn, and Growing Prosperity) not onlyprovide compelling, real-time analyses of three significantmoments of neoliberal labor-market restructuring – theadvent of deindustrialization, the emergence of systemic inequality,and the effective ‘normalization’ of unequal economicgrowth – but also, taken as an historically situated bodyof work, draw attention to a series of long-run trends and institutionalshifts in economic regulation which are of particular significancein the present conjuncture. Most pertinently, perhaps, theyraise the question of the political and theoretical significanceof neoliberalism as a mode of economic regulation and the natureof its relationship – substantially causal or merely coincidental?– with the celebrated American boom of the 1990s. Presentinga sympathetic critique of left-institutional analyses of spatial-economicrestructuring and associated reform proposals, the paper concludesby arguing that both the institutional durability and the politicaltenacity of neoliberalism may have been underestimated.     

CENTROPE Geographie und Geschichte einer Europaregion im Vierl?ndereck ?sterreich, Slowakei, Tschechien und Ungarn

Die Region CENTROPE besteht als eine der jüngsten grenzüberschreitenden Europaregionen zwischen „alten“ und „neuen“ Mitgliedstaaten der Europ?ischen Union seit dem Jahr 2003. Sie umfasst Regionen und St?dte Ost?sterreichs, der Westslowakei, Südtschechiens und Westungarns. Die Europaregion zeichnet sich durch eine spezifische geographische Situation aus: Sie beinhaltet Grenzregionen von vier Mitgliedstaaten, die mit dem Fall des „Eisernen Vorhangs“ im Jahr 1989, der EU-Osterweiterung im Mai 2004 und dem Wegfall der Grenzkontrollen im Dezember 2007 infolge des übereinkommens von Schengen ihre jahrzehntelange periphere Lage zugunsten einer Position in einem grenzüberschreitenden Zentralraum wandelten. Zudem befinden sich zwei Hauptst?dte in einer europaweit einzigartigen Distanz zueinander: Wien und Bratislava liegen nur knapp 50 Kilometer voneinander entfernt. In mehreren politischen Konferenzen, beginnend mit der Gründungskonferenz von September 2003 in Kittsee, legten die politischen Verantwortlichen der Bundesl?nder, Kreise und Komitate sowie der St?dte die zukünftigen Leitlinien und gemeinsamen Arbeitsfelder für die Entwicklung dieses mitteleurop?ischen Zentralraumes fest. Ziel der Europaregion ist eine institutionalisierte Zusammenarbeit der Regionen und St?dte in den Bereichen Wirtschaft, Infrastruktur, Bildung und Kultur sowie ein gemeinsames Lobbying.