Donatella Di Cesare – författare

We are inclined to see terrorist attacks as an aberration, a violent incursion into our lives that bears no intrinsic relation to the fundamental features of modern societies. But does this view misconstrue the relationship between terror and modernity?  

In this book, philosopher Donatella Di Cesare takes a historical approach and argues that terror is not a new phenomenon, but rather one that has always been a key part of modernity. At its most basic level, terrorism is about the struggle for power and sovereignty. The growing concentration of power in the hands of the state, which is a constitutive feature of modern societies, sows the seeds of terrorism, which is deployed as a weapon by those who are exposed to the violence of the state and feel that they have no other recourse.  

As Di Cesare illustrates her argument with examples ranging from the Red Brigades and 9/11 to jihadism and ISIS, her sophisticated analysis will appeal to anyone who wishes to understand contemporary terrorism more deeply, as well as to students and scholars of philosophy and political theory.

From the shores of Europe to the Mexican-US border, mass migration is one of the most pressing issues we face today. Yet at the same time, calls to defend national sovereignty are becoming ever more vitriolic, with those fleeing war, persecution, and famine vilified as a threat to our security as well as our social and economic order. In this book, written amidst the dark resurgence of appeals to defend ‘blood and soil’, Donatella Di Cesare challenges the idea of the exclusionary state, arguing that migration is a fundamental human right.  She develops an original philosophy of migration that places the migrants themselves, rather than states and their borders, at the centre.  Through an analysis of three historic cities, Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, Di Cesare shows how we should conceive of migrants not as an other but rather as resident foreigners. This means recognising that citizenship cannot be based on any supposed connection to the land or an exclusive claim to ownership that would deny the rights of those who arrive as migrants. Instead, citizenship must be disconnected from the possession of territory altogether and founded on the principle of cohabitation – and on the ultimate reality that we are all temporary guests and tenants of the earth. Di Cesare’s argument for a new ethics of hospitality will be of great interest to all those concerned with the challenges posed by migration and with the increasingly hostile attitudes towards migrants, as well as students and scholars of philosophy and political theory.

It is time for philosophy to return to the city. In today’s crisis-ridden world of globalised capitalism, increasingly closed in on itself, it may seem harder than ever to think of ways out. Philosophy runs the risk of becoming the handmaiden of science and of a hollowed-out democracy. Donatella Di Cesare calls on philosophy instead to return to the political fray and to the city, the global pólis, from which it was banished after the death of Socrates.

Suggesting a radical existentialism and a new anarchism, Di Cesare shows that Western philosophy has been characterised by a political vocation ever since its origins in ancient Greece, and argues that the separation of philosophy from its political roots robs it of its most valuable and enlightening potential. But critique and dissent are no longer enough. Mindful of a defeated exile and an inner emigration, philosophers should return to politics and forge an alliance with the poor and the downtrodden.

This passionate defence of the political relevance of philosophy and its radical potential in our globalised world will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and to a wide general readership.

Marranos were Spanish or Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity at the time of the Spanish Inquisition to avoid being massacred or forced to flee but who continued to practise Judaism in secret. They were persecuted by the first racist blood laws but the water of forced baptism was not enough to make them assimilate.   

Donatella Di Cesare sees the marranos as the quintessential figures of the modern condition: the marranos were not just those whom modernity cast out as the ‘other’, but were those ‘others’ who were forced to disavow their beliefs and conceal themselves.  They became ‘the other of the other’, doubly excluded, condemned to a life of existential duplicity with no way out, spurned by both Catholics and Jews and unable to belong fully to either community.  But this double life of the marranos turned out to be a secret source of strength.  Doubly estranged, with no possibility of redemption, the marranos became modernity’s first true radicals.  Dissidents out of necessity, they inaugurated modernity with their ambivalence and their split self. And their story is not over.    

By treating the history of the marranos as a prism through which to grasp the defining features of modernity, this highly original book will be of interest to a wide readership.

As capitalism triumphs on the ruins of utopias and faith in progress fades, revolts are breaking out everywhere. From London to Hong Kong and from Buenos Aires to Beirut, protests flare up, in some cases spreading like wildfire, in other cases petering out and reigniting elsewhere. Not even the pandemic has been able to stop them: as many were reflecting on the loss of public space, the fuse of a fresh explosion was lit in Minneapolis with the brutal murder of George Floyd. We are living in an age of revolt.

But what is revolt? It would be a mistake to think of it as simply an explosion of anger, a spontaneous and irrational outburst, as it is often portrayed in the media. Exploding anger is not a bolt from the blue but a symptom of a social order in which the sovereignty of the state has imposed itself as the sole condition of order. Revolt challenges the sovereignty of the state, whether it is democratic or despotic, exposing the violence that underpins it. Revolt upsets the agenda of power, interrupts time, throws history into disarray. The time of revolt, discontinuous and intermittent, is also a revolt of time, an anarchic transition to a space of time that disengages itself from the architecture of politics.

This brilliant reflection on the nature and significance of revolt will be of interest to students of politics and philosophy and to anyone concerned with the key questions of politics today.

Conspiracy theories are neither delusions nor lies, neither simplistic fallacies nor psychological quirks: rather, they are a political problem. They are not so much about truth as about power. Rather than seeking to debunk conspiracy theories as the work of fringe groups and cranks, Donatella Di Cesare develops an original account that portrays conspiracy as the spectre of a shattered community.

With the proliferation of conspiracy theories, the distrust of politics and politicians turns into a boundless and pervasive suspicion. Who is behind the scenes? Who is pulling the strings? The world, which seems increasingly confusing and impossible to read, must have a hidden side, a secret realm, that of the Deep State and the New World Order, where plans are hatched, information is gathered and thoughts are controlled. It is no longer a matter of a one-off plot or intrigue. Conspiracy is the very form in which citizens who feel condemned to a frustrating impotence, helpless before a techno-economic juggernaut, and manipulated by a faceless power relate to the world. This is why conspiracy, which exposes the emptiness of democracy, proves to be a fearsome weapon of mass depoliticisation.

Conspiracy theories are neither delusions nor lies, neither simplistic fallacies nor psychological quirks: rather, they are a political problem. They are not so much about truth as about power. Rather than seeking to debunk conspiracy theories as the work of fringe groups and cranks, Donatella Di Cesare develops an original account that portrays conspiracy as the spectre of a shattered community.

With the proliferation of conspiracy theories, the distrust of politics and politicians turns into a boundless and pervasive suspicion. Who is behind the scenes? Who is pulling the strings? The world, which seems increasingly confusing and impossible to read, must have a hidden side, a secret realm, that of the Deep State and the New World Order, where plans are hatched, information is gathered and thoughts are controlled. It is no longer a matter of a one-off plot or intrigue. Conspiracy is the very form in which citizens who feel condemned to a frustrating impotence, helpless before a techno-economic juggernaut, and manipulated by a faceless power relate to the world. This is why conspiracy, which exposes the emptiness of democracy, proves to be a fearsome weapon of mass depoliticisation.