Donatella di Cesare: Democracy and Anarchy. At the source of their repressed connection
16. Jan
Lecture by Donatella di Cesare
Tuesday, 16 Jan 2024 6:00 pm. Campus lecture hall 4
There are at least two ways of thinking about democracy today: a moderate-liberal one that considers it as a system of rules and procedures to be constantly improved, and a radical one that seeks to recover its conflictual potential. Grasped at its root, democracy reveals its connection to anarchy. Since its emergence, democracy has put into question both the arché, a power that claims to be original, and the télos, the goal (as Reiner Schürmann had already suspected). What is key is the concept of kratos, capacity, the power of the people, which is necessarily an-archic.
Donatella di Cesare is professor of theoretical philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. Recent publications include Conspiracy and Power (2023), The Time of Revolt (2021), The Political Vocation of Philosophy (2021) and Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration (2020). The lecture is based on her new book Democrazia e anarchia. Il potere nella polis, which will be published with Einaudi (Turin) in February 2024.
Lecture language: German
Contact: Nicolas Schneider (nicolas.schneider@leuphana.de)