Vladimir Safatle

Among the majors topics of the debate on radical politics, we find today a social diagnosis that insists that our liberal democracies are in the process of emptying popular sovereignty. According such diagnosis, we would increasingly be moving towards a democracy without demos, in the sense of a political experience that preserves the institutional appearance of a democracy while limiting the scope of choices and decisions endorsed by popular sovereignty. It should be noted that we are not just talking about a gradual shift of real decisions out of the forums controlled by democratic representation. Forums that would be silenced by the action of economic agents hegemonic within the processes of material reproduction of neoliberal capitalism. We are also talking about a colonization of political representatives by the limits imposed by economic power and their form of naturalizing specific social organizations. In this context, insisting that we move towards a democracy without demos would be a claim for a shift in the process of deliberation to instances and dynamics capable of being better controlled by popular sovereignty. Economic power hangs over the heads of the population and the task of critical thinking would be to insist on the necessary return of democratic power to its true source. Hence the concept of "people," "popular sovereignty," and "democratic deliberation" should shift to the center of our current concerns. However, I would like to stress, even if this may sounds initially paradoxical, that the recovery of the demos will not be exactly the responsible for strengthening our democracies. For until today, the very concept of demos has been bound by metaphysical presuppositions that are little discussed. Presuppositions that are linked to a modality of the exercise of power and force that should be the true object of criticism. The basic assumption I would like to make is: there is no point in discussing the ways and the need to shift the true center of deliberations on modes of social governance if the very concept of "deliberation" is not criticized. There is a transformation in the concept of deliberation with its correlates (consent, voluntary action, internal cause) that must be the true condition for a social transformation with its emergence of new political subjects. This transformation could better explain us Aristotle understood the deliberation (bouleusis) concerned with what depends on our will to be realized. We don't deliberate, for example, on the solstices or on the sunrise. We deliberate on what can be done in various ways, on what is undetermined. For this reason, deliberation will be defined as the rational search for the means to an end. Because it is a rational search for the means, deliberation is the most typical exercise of the representative capacity of consciousness. For better to deliberate I should submit all features of the experience to the representation. It is only through this strategy that the decision can be formed, with its non-violent consent. In a way, this scheme has remained as the foundation of the understanding of emancipated political action. That is, political emancipation would be linked to the ability of the subjects to deliberate in view of the decision, taking distance from all that is involuntary, non-consented, non-represented and moved by an external causality. However, I would like to affirm that perhaps true social transformation is not only linked to the empowerment of previously vulnerable and invisible subjects, that is, to the displacement of the capacity for deliberation and decision by the hands of

What must be thought here, then, is this inconceivable and unknowable thing, a freedom that would no longer be the power of a subject, a freedom without autonomy, a heteronomy without servitude, in short, something like a passive decision. We would thus have to rethink the philosophemes of the decision, of that foundational couple activity and passivity, as well as potentiality and actuality2. I would like to accept the challenge proposed by Jacques Derrida in Rogue: two essays on reason for thinking what appears to us as inconceivable and unknowable, namely, a freedom without autonomy, a heteronomy without servitude. It seems to me necessary to discuss the reason for proposing such a change in our hegemonic conception of freedom, exposing its political and moral impact. In particular, we must explore the practical potential that opens up when we reconfigure one of the normative foundations of our way of life. Let us note how such a challenge is imposed on Derrida. At the beginning of his book, which is a political reflection about the democracy and its contemporary impasses, Derrida starts from a precise strategy: if we want to understand what is at stake in the possibilities inherent to democracy, we must try to understand what kind of krátos, of force, of domain, it implies. There is an exercise of force that is proper to democracy. But which kind of force is this one, and especially what this force is able to produce, which is its own grammar? These questions are not just related to the field of political philosophy, as it might seem. We are not just talking about forms of government when we ask about the kind of force that is presupposed by the "force of people" proper to democracy. In fact, we are talking about ways of constitute agents socially recognized as subjects. Every subject is endowed with an agency, this agency presupposes, in turn, some form of force, a specific dynamics of decision and exercise whose configuration must be the object of analysis. Democracy implies, in its normative horizon, a certain form of agent and agency, but what kind of agent we are here dealing with? What is the subject of democracy and, above all, which are its naturalized metaphysical presuppositions? These issues gain importance in a historical context, such as ours, in which skepticism about democracy grows up. I would say that, in his own way, Derrida's text, written more than ten years ago, is a possible elaboration on such skepticism. For we should ask ourselves if all forms of skepticism about democracy are the same. Are all forms of such skepticism regressions tied to fear, frustration, and resentment toward social transformations and economic impasses inherent in the development of what we often call democratic societies? Or some forms of skepticism about democracy are self-criticisms that aim to liberate democracy from metaphysical presuppositions that would be the true source of its present limits, presuppositions mainly perpetuated in its liberal tradition? Should we say that fight for democracy today is possible only on the condition that we are able to criticize its metaphysical

This article aims to discuss the gestural character of Chopin's pianistic writing. We will focus on the set of Etudes pour piano. We expect to show how the notion of musical expression in Romanticism is dependent of a notion of expressive body always in the limit of decomposition. This could show us how musical expression is a privileged space for a better understanding of the dialectical relationship between form and formless.

Trata-se de discutir a maneira com que as representações do corpo no cinema de David Cronenberg indicam uma dissociação importante entre gozo e prazer. Tal dissociação deve ser avaliada em sua dimensão propriamente política, abrindo com isso outra dimensão para aquilo que normalmente entendemos por "crítica do fetichismo".

When Beethoven presented one of his most prominent compositions , the 5th Symphony, E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote: Beethoven's music stirs the mists of fear, of horror, of terror, of grief, and awakens that endless longing, which is the very essence of romanticism. He is consequently a purely romantic composer, and is it not possible that for this very reason he is less successful in vocal music which does not surrender itself to the characterization of indefinite emotions but portrays effects specified by the words rather than those indefinite emotions experienced in the realm of the infinite?1

The aim of this article is to discuss a possible exhaustion of the necropolitics paradigm in favor of the emergence of new forms of management of violence and disappearance by sovereign power within authoritarian neoliberalism. Such form of management finds its roots in the concept of "suicidal state" mobilized in the seventies to deal with certain fundamental aspects of the fascist regime of violence. This will force us to address the paradigmatic character of anti-pandemic "anti-policies" developed in global laboratories of authoritarian neoliberalism, such as Brazil.

Resumo: Trata-se de discutir as implicações políticas do conceito de autonomia estética através do problema das interpretações a respeito da abstração no modernismo visual. Ao fim, esse problema será articulado às discussões sobre abstração e processo revolucionário no interior da filosofia política. Palavras-chave: Autonomia; Revolução; Modernismo; Abstração; Força. Abstract: The aim of this article is to discuss the political implication of the concept of aesthetic autonomy through the problems concerning abstraction in visual modernism. At the end, this problem will be connected with discussions on abstraction and revolutionary processes in political philosophy.

Resumo: Este artigo visa a discutir as mudanças no conceito de expressão a partir do romantismo musical, em especial, a partir de Chopin. Ele defende que o conceito romântico de expressão ainda guia eixos importantes da estética contemporânea. Abstract: This article aims to discuss the changes in the concept of expression upon the musical romanticism, specially upon Chopin. The article sustain the idea that the romantic concept of expression still guide some important discussion in contemporary aesthetics.

Normally, we believe that a theory of a ects doesn't contribute for clarifying the nature of the impasses of sociopolitical ties. We accept that the dimension of a ects concerns the individual's life, while understanding the problems connected with social bonds would require a di erent perspective, capable of describing the structural functioning of society and its values. A ects would refer to individual systems of fantasies and beliefs, which would preclude the understanding of social life as a system of rules and norms. Such a distinction would be not only a reality but a necessity , for when a ections enter the political scene they could only imply the impossibility of guiding the behavior upon rational judgments, universalist judgments based on the search for the best argument. However, one of the richest points of Sigmund Freud's intellectual experience was to insist on the possibility of overcoming such a dichotomy. Freud does not fail to show us how fundamental is a refl ection on a ects, a systematic consideration of the way in which social life and political experience produce and mobilize a ects that will serve as the basis of general support for social cohesion. It is a way of remembering the need to develop a social refl ection that departs from the perspective of individuals,

It is clear now that we live in a historical moment when there is a strengthening skepticism about democracy. However, it must be asked whether all such forms of skepticism are merely expressions of social regression in the face of widespread economic insecurity and increased fear, expressing a fundamental longing for social cohesion. Are all these forms of skepticism driven by the search for authoritarian figures powerful enough to be the vehicle of expression for the resentment generated by the experience of social dispossession and insecurity? Or are there yet other forms of skepticism about democracy that might express something else, namely, a discontent that emerges within the mode of existence that liberal democracy seeks to naturalize as the ultimate form of freedom and emancipation? If this latter is the case, then we are encountering a malaise linked to a kind of immanent paradox of democracy. This is a paradox proper to a liberal-democratic discourse that promises to carry out social freedom at the same time that prevents its expression. It should be noted that it is not only a question of affirming that liberal democracy, as we know it, serves the preservation of [the interests of] the hegemonic sectors of the economy for whom its promises of equality could never be realized. It is not as if a greater regulation of economic agents and an effective policy of redistribution could finally guarantee the conditions of social freedom and development of singularities. That is, it will not do to act as if critique should focus only on the extent of economic intervention in the political field. That would not suffice. Actually, we need to assert that something more fundamental is at stake, namely, the limited way in which democracy has so far been able to think the emergence of its kratos, the emergence of the kind of force, domination, power that constitutes it: so far, the kind of force posited as the defining attribute of the people in their very exercise of politics, effectively prevents the actualization of some fundamental aspect of freedom. In other words, the very metaphysics presupposed by the concept of " force " attributed to democracy, at least in its liberal version, requires a revision. Perhaps it is true that we are witnessing the end of the force of democracy, if understood in this way. However, it is likely that this coming to an end is also confused with its purpose. Democracy comes to an end not because it has been dealt

Resumo: Este artigo visa discutir os modelos de síntese pressupostos pela dialética negativa de Adorno através de aproximações de temáticas maiores da filosofia de Karl Marx. Isto nos permitirá qualificar melhor a natureza materialista da dialética negativa adorniana, abordando inclusive o impacto político de certas elaborações conceituais. Abstract: This article aims to discuss the models of synthesis presupposed by adornian negative dialectic. For it, we should evaluate the meaning of the close relations between Adorno and some themes from Karl Marx's philosophy. With this strategy in mind we can better qualify the materialistic nature of adornian negative dialectic, exposing through it the political impact of some conceptual productions.

histeria não pode ser abandonado pelo saber médico, pois ele expõe, de maneira precisa, conflitos fundamentais no processo de constituição singular de identidades de gênero. ABSTRACT: Staying hysteric: sexuality and contingence upon the Dora's case. This article aims to recuperate the Freudian concept of hysteria through a reinterpretation of Dora´s case, his most famous clinical case of hysteria. I would like to show why medical knowledge must accept the Freudian concept of hysteria, mainly because Freud shows the nature of major conflicts in every singular constitution of gender identity.

Resumo: Trata-se de discutir como a noção de crítica em Adorno pode ser compreendida a partir da tendência em transformar a crítica da razão em análise de patologias do social. Para tanto, faz-se necessário recuperar a cen-tralidade do seu recurso a Freud e, principalmente, a uma certa antropologia presente na teoria freudiana da sexualidade.