In il manifesto, Luciana Castellina spoke on the publication of a collection of Lucio Magri’s parliamentary interventions. Magri as a thinker was, as Perry Anderson observed, 'incapable of a theoretical reflection that was not rooted in the real actions, or inactions, of the exploited and oppressed'. His involvement in Italian party politics therefore raises questions of the relationship between popular politics and the radical left.
This extract from Matthew Beaumont's Nightwalking appeared in the Guardian.
In the dead of night, in spite of the electric lights, London seems an alien city, especially if you are walking through it alone.
A day after what would have been Daniel Bensaïd's 69th birthday, we publish this interview with Chilean director Carmen Castillo, whose film We Are Alive draws continuities from his writing and activism to contemporary struggle across two continents. Here she recounts her meetings with Bensaïd as a young activist and her experience making the film.
Daniel Bensaïd in 2008.
Carmen Castillo was born in Chile, and worked for the Allende government before entering the clandestine resistance together with her partner Miguel Enriquez after the Pinochet coup of 11 September 1973. Arrested and then expelled from her homeland (after an international campaign for her release), she recounted her tragic history in two books and then her 2007 film Calle Santa Fe.
The director continues to be haunted by a number of questions. How can we pass on the memory of the defeated without suffocating it with nostalgia or bitterness? What can we do today to keep loyal to the ideas of friends, loved ones and comrades who are no longer of this world – a world that they were so passionate about changing? How can we hope, now that we know that nothing is written in advance (as some of us used to believe)?
Castillo’s next film, We Are Alive, comes to French cinemas on 29 April. Making use of the thought of philosopher Daniel Bensaïd, Castillo portrays the daily struggles of all those across two continents who throw themselves into the ‘joyous passion’ of struggle – despite everything, and however ignored they are by the big media cartels.
In November 2014 philosopher Alberto Toscano was interviewed by Gisle Selnes, professor in Comparative Literature at University of Bergen. This interview is an edited version of their conversation, originally published in Eurozine and first printed in the Norwegian magazine Vagant. Here he provides a history of the concept of "Fanaticism" and reflects on developments since the publication of his work Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea.