An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought

Reviews / Votes

An essential guide to Italian thought blending historical insights with contemporary debates on biopolitics, posthumanism, and environmentalism. Perfect for anyone exploring Italian intellectual traditions and their impact on contemporary socio-political discourse. * Federica Pedriali, Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK * This introduction to contemporary Italian thought not only broadens its boundaries, but shifts the point of observation to the new global horizon in which we live. In this perspective, excellently articulated by the editors, alongside the paradigms of biopolitics and workerism, the great themes of the posthuman and postcolonial, of digitalization and environmentalism assume ever greater importance. The gaze towards the 'outside' that has characterized Italian Thought from the beginning is thus being filled with new contents and new languages. * Roberto Esposito, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy * In this remarkable study, Tim Christiaens, Joost de Bloois, and Stijn De Cauwer significantly increase our understanding of a body of contemporary thought that is as undoubtedly influential as it is difficult to pin down. While grounded in the foundational contributions of well-known figures like Agamben, Negri, and Esposito, this work shows how a wide range of thinkers within the Italian diaspora have intervened into contemporary debates on biopolitics, neofascism, and other urgent issues. * Adam Kotsko, North Central College, USA * An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought represents an original contribution and an important development in the debate on Italian thought. While drawing on its main categories and taking stock of the debate so far, this book updates and renews it, bringing Italian thought into confrontation with the current issues that most characterize the contemporary world. * Dario Gentili, Roma Tre University, Italy * Tim Christiaens, Joost de Bloois, and Stijn De Cauwer have offered us a gift: they have captured and celebrated an original intellectual tradition of critical theory, "Italian Thought," that no one before them was able to frame with the same clarity and insightfulness. Whereas most scholarship privileges abstract philosophical genealogies, with this book, Tim Christiaens, Joost de Bloois, and Stijn De Cauwer reveal ways of practicing theory nurtured by reality, an influential and eccentric mode of thinking that inspires debates across disciplines, well beyond Italy. What emerges from this engaging introduction to Italian Thought is a constellation of thinkers united by an "interventionist" desire to reimagine theory from within the contemporary forms of life, labor, communication, and political action. An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought weaves the threads of a heterogeneous philosophy without dogmas, guided exclusively by the attraction of the social, technological, and ecological forces it cannot contain. From biopolitics to geopower, from cyberfascism to migrations, the unruly dynamics of the present take center stage in this powerful book, page after page, and remake concepts. * Federico Luisetti, Professor of Italian Studies and Environmental Humanities, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland *