CFP: AN-ARKHÉ: The anarchic turn of contemporary thought (Special Issue at Enrahonar journal)

Call for Papers

Monographic issue at Enrahonar journal

Title: AN-ARKHÉ: The anarchic turn of contemporary thought

The postfoundational current of contemporary political thought undertakes the task of elaborating the consequences of the criticism of Western metaphysics developed by Martin Heidegger (with the important precedent of the 'school of suspicion': Marx, Nietzsche and Freud). One of the avenues opened by Heidegger's legacy, also explored by French philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s, was specifically developed by Reiner Schürmann in the 1980s. From it, we explore how in this contingency of the foundation, acting operates in the different spheres of the world without presupposing or pursuing an arkhé. In his book Postfoundational Political Thought (2009) Olivier Marchart emphasizes that this criticism does not derive from an antifoundationalist challenge to all foundations but from the affirmation that, in a postmetaphysical scenario, it is necessary to deal with its contingency. Thus, a path of inquiry and a terrain of fruitful controversies are opened.

The objective of the monographic issue is to show how within a post-metaphysical and post-foundational thought the postulate of a “principle of anarchy” can be launched as constitutive of a political ontology and, therefore, of the very articulation of institutionalized political action. It is, therefore, about accompanying and expanding what Chiara Bottici, Jacob Blumenfeld and Simon Critchley have described as the anarchist turn in contemporary thought (The Anarchist Turn, 2013). In addition to the elaboration by Reiner Schürmann mentioned above (Le principe d'anarchie: Heidegger et la question de l'agir, 1982), proposals such as those of David Graeber (Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004) can be placed in this direction; Miguel Abensour, (Critical political philosophy, 2007); Carlos Taibo (Rethinking Anarchy, 2013); Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott (“Anarchy as the end of metaphysics”, 2016); Simón Royo Hernández (The Anarchic Subject, 2019); Alberto Moreiras (Infrapolitics, 2020); Chiara Bottici (Anarchafeminism, 2022) or Catherine Malabou (Au Voleur! Philosophie et anarchisme, 2022); Andityas Matos (The Coming Anarchy, with Prologue by Roberto Esposito), among others. This issue proposes, therefore, an analysis, a historiographic study and a critical expansion of the different orientations belonging to what has been called the “anarchic turn” of contemporary thought.

The volume aims to focus, on the one hand, on a) historiographic and critical works that develop the link between political and philosophical anarchism during the 19th and 20th centuries; b) works of critical analysis that study the philosophical sources of the current anarchic turn: Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Shürmann, deconstruction and philosophies of difference; c) works that analyze the thought of contemporary authors that may be relevant to this aspect of thought (Agamben, Tiqqun, Chrichtley, Abensour, Malabou, Rancière, Esposito, etc.) and d) works that analyze the influence of this aspect of thought on contemporary feminisms, such as that of Sophie Lewis and other relevant authors.

The maximum deadline for submitting articles will be September 10, 2024. Submissions will be made through the Journal's website:

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar

In it you can also consult the publication rules to which the submitted articles must comply.