Brazilian Horrors Past and Present: José Mojica Marins and Politics As Reproductive Futurism

Director José Mojica Marins is both the mastermind and actor behind Zé do Caixão, an icon within Brazilian popular culture and an international cult sensation. Marins encountered numerous conflicts with Brazil’s military dictatorship, and after producing the first two films of an intended trilogy, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967), the third film, Embodiment of Evil, was not made until 2008. Throughout this trilogy, Zé do Caixão kidnaps, tortures, and murders scores of victims, effectively mimicking the human rights abuses that occurred under the dictatorship. He advocates liberation from the oppression of traditional morality while reinscribing its rhetorical raison d’être: purpose through procreation. The popular appeal of these films, their political intentionality, and their production during and after the dictatorship allow for an analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by Marins in his attempt to both shock audiences and instill in them a counterhegemonic consciousness. Despite the radical agenda at work in Marins’s films, I will argue that this trilogy is conservative in its rhetorical framework, serving as an example of Lee Edelman’s reproductive futurism, wherein political legitimacy is contingent upon procreation.     

The Murders in Maupassant's “En Voyage”

The term futurism was used in aesthetic circles during the first decade of the twentieth century throughout Europe. The broad use of the term has sometimes led to critical attempts to link the various "futurisms" together into a coherent whole. In my article, I compare and contrast Alomar's Catalan futurism with the Italian futurism associated with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). Although the two futurisms share the name and, to some extent, similar philosophical backgrounds, their foundational documents or manifestos are more different than they are similar, and Alomar's futurism cannot and should not be critically subordinated to Marinetti's Italian one. My article addresses what is futurist in Alomar's thought as well as its unique regionalist underpinnings that find no analogue in other European futurisms.     

Anarchism,Modernism, and Nationalism: Futurism’s French Connections, 1876–1915

This article examines two of the most significant Italian political movements at the turn of the twentieth century—anarchism and Futurism. Although these movements shared a common vocabulary and rhetoric, they contrasted sharply in their aims and objectives. I address three interrelated questions: How were these movements and their ideologies related to, and perceived by, the ruling elites? What were their mutual influences and inspirational centre? Did both movements share a broader core ideology? To answer these questions, I explore the links, parallels and dissimilarities between anarchism and Futurism in the context of the nationalist mass mobilizations preceding World War I. In line with Emilio Gentile’s landmark analysis, I identify the core ideology of Futurism as a potent blend of nationalism and modernism. Futurism’s double matrix is thus contrasted with the theory and practice of anarchism, the two displaying sharply differing relationships with political power. I also consider the links between Italian Futurism and French ultra-nationalism as championed by prominent intellectuals, beyond Paris’ artistic epicentre, where art and politics intermixed. I conclude that the fusion of modernism and nationalism was central to twentieth-century ideological radicalization to which Futurism fully belonged, but from which anarchism eventually dissociated itself.     

Biopower,Life and Left Politics

Abstract: The terms biopower and biopolitics have been deployed in widely varying ways in recent critical political analyses. This essay seeks to rescue from the welter of its deployments a general understanding of biopower potentially useful to left political projects. First, recent iterations of the concept of biopower are surveyed. In the main body of the paper, a series of interventions in recent critical debates are used to trace out a critical re‐mapping of the concept of “life” that names the ends of biopower. Biopolitically relevant life is reconsidered in terms of its proper geographical scope, its gender, racial and ethnic specificities, its distinguishing vital qualities, and its relation to temporality (particularly the future). Through this exercise the notion of biopower is redefined so as to provide potential “docking points” for Marxist, feminist and green discourses, and conceptual resources for left struggles against global injustice.