Massimiliano Tomba – författare

Scholars commonly take the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, written during the French Revolution, as the starting point for the modern conception of human rights. According to the Declaration, the rights of man are held to be universal, at all times and all places. But as recent crises around migrants and refugees have made obvious, this idea, sacred as it might be among human rights advocates, is exhausted. It's long past time to reconsider the principles on which Western economic and political norms rest. This book advocates for a tradition of political universality as an alternative to the juridical universalism of the Declaration. Insurgent universality isn't based on the idea that we all share some common humanity but, rather, on the democratic excess by which people disrupt and reject an existing political and economic order. Going beyond the constitutional armor of the representative state, it brings into play a plurality of powers to which citizens have access, not through the funnel of national citizenship but in daily political practice. We can look to recent history to see various experiments in cooperative and insurgent democracy: the Indignados in Spain, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and, going further back, the Paris Commune, the 1917 peasant revolts during the Russian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution. This book argues that these movements belong to the common legacy of insurgent universality, which is characterized by alternative trajectories of modernity that have been repressed, hindered, and forgotten. Massimiliano Tomba examines these events to show what they could have been and what they can still be. As such he explores how their common legacy can be reactivated. Insurgent Universality analyzes the manifestos and declarations that came out of these experiments considering them as collective works of an alternative canon of political theory that challenges the great names of the Western pantheon of political thought and builds bridges between European and non-European political and social experiments.

Scholars commonly take the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, written during the French Revolution, as the starting point for the modern conception of human rights. According to the Declaration, the rights of man are held to be universal, at all times and all places. But as recent crises around migrants and refugees have made obvious, this idea, sacred as it might be among human rights advocates, is exhausted. It's long past time to reconsider the principles on which Western economic and political norms rest. This book advocates for a tradition of political universality as an alternative to the juridical universalism of the Declaration. Insurgent universality isn't based on the idea that we all share some common humanity but, rather, on the democratic excess by which people disrupt and reject an existing political and economic order. Going beyond the constitutional armor of the representative state, it brings into play a plurality of powers to which citizens have access, not through the funnel of national citizenship but in daily political practice. We can look to recent history to see various experiments in cooperative and insurgent democracy: the Indignados in Spain, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and, going further back, the Paris Commune, the 1917 peasant revolts during the Russian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution. This book argues that these movements belong to the common legacy of insurgent universality, which is characterized by alternative trajectories of modernity that have been repressed, hindered, and forgotten. Massimiliano Tomba examines these events to show what they could have been and what they can still be. As such he explores how their common legacy can be reactivated. Insurgent Universality analyzes the manifestos and declarations that came out of these experiments considering them as collective works of an alternative canon of political theory that challenges the great names of the Western pantheon of political thought and builds bridges between European and non-European political and social experiments.

Marking the 500th anniversary of the end of the German Peasants’ War, topics in this special issue include the war’s intellectual and political legacy; Thomas MÜntzer as a historical, political, and theological figure; liberation theory; radical political movements in national and transnational context; and debates about utopia in critical theory and Marxism.Contributors. Ernst Bloch, Loren Goldman, Andrea Messner, Anne Norton, O. L. Silverman, Massimilano Tomba, Éric Vuillard, Alejandro Zorzin

At a time when terms like restoration, religion, authority, obligations, and natural law—once the rallying cries of the most emancipatory movements - are increasingly coopted by conservative forces, Revolution and Restoration offers a thought-provoking account of how "outdated" concepts can ignite radical energy and collective action. Through both historical and contemporary examples, the book elaborates the concrete possibilities for reimagining politics and society that emerge out of the clash between incompatible legal and economic structures.At its core, Tomba’s book confronts the very foundations of the modern state and its three pillars: property, democracy, and citizenship. These pillars, long celebrated in the Western canon, are nevertheless mechanisms of exclusion: property is the denial of communal access, representative democracy the marginalization of the demos from decision-making, and citizenship the exclusion of the foreigner. Revolution and Restoration critiques these pillars to show how new concepts and political possibilities that emerge from political and social conflicts hold the potential to transcend and remake democracies in crisis.Revolution and Restoration: The Politics of Anachronism is available from the Knowledge Unlatched on an open-access basis.

At a time when terms like restoration, religion, authority, obligations, and natural law - once the rallying cries of the most emancipatory movements - are increasingly coopted by conservative forces, Revolution and Restoration offers a thought-provoking account of how "outdated" concepts can ignite radical energy and collective action. Through both historical and contemporary examples, the book elaborates the concrete possibilities for reimagining politics and society that emerge out of the clash between incompatible legal and economic structures.At its core, Tomba’s book confronts the very foundations of the modern state and its three pillars: property, democracy, and citizenship. These pillars, long celebrated in the Western canon, are nevertheless mechanisms of exclusion: property is the denial of communal access, representative democracy the marginalization of the demos from decision-making, and citizenship the exclusion of the foreigner. Revolution and Restoration critiques these pillars to show how new concepts and political possibilities that emerge from political and social conflicts hold the potential to transcend and remake democracies in crisis.Revolution and Restoration: The Politics of Anachronism is available from the Knowledge Unlatched on an open-access basis.

Rethinking the central categories of Marx's work, this study provides a critical analysis of his political and theoretical development. By integrating the paradigm of the spatialisation of time with that of the temporalisation of space, Tomba shows that an adequate historiographical paradigm for capitalism must consider the plurality of temporal layers that come into conflict in modernity.

The book rethinks the central categories of Marx's work beyond any philosophy of history, providing a critical analysis of his political and theoretical development from his early writings, to the elaboration of the critique of political economy and his final anthropological studies on pre-individualistic and communist forms. The study aims to integrate the paradigm of the spatialisation of time with that of the temporalisation of space, showing how capital places diverse temporalities into hierarchies that incessantly produce and reproduce new forms of class struggle. An adequate historiographical paradigm for globalised capitalism has to consider the plurality of temporal layers that are combined and come into conflict in the violently unifying historical dimension of modernity.