{"title":"埃莉特拉·斯蒂米利的“债务与罪责:一种政治哲学”研讨会导论","authors":"Arthur Bradley","doi":"10.1080/1462317X.2022.2143135","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of more than a decade of “austerity”, we are today more indebted than ever: US public debt is estimated to rise to a level unseen sinceWorldWar II and national public debts within the Eurozone to increase by some 15-30% of GDP. To be sure, Elettra Stimilli’s Debt and Guilt: A Political Philosophy (which was first published as Debito e culpa in 2015 and now appears in Stefania Porcelli’s English translation with Bloomsbury’s Political Theologies series) predates the COVID-19 pandemic by a number of years, but its central thesis has hardly become less timely in 2022: “debt,” she writes, “is the model of contemporary existence” (7). Straddling the boundaries between political philosophy, economic theory, theology and anthropology – and negotiating between classic political theological signatures like Weber, Benjamin and Schmitt as well as more recent ones like Agamben, Lazzarato and Esposito – Stimilli’s labyrinthine book is her latest exploration of what she calls the “debt of the living [il debito del vivente]”. In returning to the ancient nexus of debt and guilt [schuld], Stimilli’s work not only reveals how debt is now built into the philosophical, psychic and religious structures of modern subjectivity but, more ambitiously, holds out the fragile possibility of the future redemption of this state of generalized indebtedness: a human Jubilee. To understand what is at stake in the recent economic history of the west – from the financial crash, through sovereign debt crises in the Eurozone, to widespread austerity programs – Stimilli’s book begins by returning to the classic anthropological relationship between the gift and exchange. By means of a brilliant re-reading of Mauss, Polanyi and Simmel, she not only argues that the gift “is at the origin of the real economic transition” (29) – which is also to say that our social relations precede our economic exchanges – but that the gift is itself the product of a certain promissory or fiduciary structure: what gives value to money is not any intrinsic value or utility it may possess but rather “an act of trust, or credit” between the two parties to the exchange (35). In uncovering what we might call the “religious” origins of money itself, Stimilli’s project thus reveals itself to be a reconstruction of Walter Benjamin’s “Capitalism as religion” project, almost exactly 100 years after the German thinker’s classic fragment. However, what Debt and Guilt really seeks to establish are the religious origins of that peculiarly modern iteration of finance capital called neoliberalism. 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To be sure, Elettra Stimilli’s Debt and Guilt: A Political Philosophy (which was first published as Debito e culpa in 2015 and now appears in Stefania Porcelli’s English translation with Bloomsbury’s Political Theologies series) predates the COVID-19 pandemic by a number of years, but its central thesis has hardly become less timely in 2022: “debt,” she writes, “is the model of contemporary existence” (7). Straddling the boundaries between political philosophy, economic theory, theology and anthropology – and negotiating between classic political theological signatures like Weber, Benjamin and Schmitt as well as more recent ones like Agamben, Lazzarato and Esposito – Stimilli’s labyrinthine book is her latest exploration of what she calls the “debt of the living [il debito del vivente]”. In returning to the ancient nexus of debt and guilt [schuld], Stimilli’s work not only reveals how debt is now built into the philosophical, psychic and religious structures of modern subjectivity but, more ambitiously, holds out the fragile possibility of the future redemption of this state of generalized indebtedness: a human Jubilee. To understand what is at stake in the recent economic history of the west – from the financial crash, through sovereign debt crises in the Eurozone, to widespread austerity programs – Stimilli’s book begins by returning to the classic anthropological relationship between the gift and exchange. By means of a brilliant re-reading of Mauss, Polanyi and Simmel, she not only argues that the gift “is at the origin of the real economic transition” (29) – which is also to say that our social relations precede our economic exchanges – but that the gift is itself the product of a certain promissory or fiduciary structure: what gives value to money is not any intrinsic value or utility it may possess but rather “an act of trust, or credit” between the two parties to the exchange (35). In uncovering what we might call the “religious” origins of money itself, Stimilli’s project thus reveals itself to be a reconstruction of Walter Benjamin’s “Capitalism as religion” project, almost exactly 100 years after the German thinker’s classic fragment. However, what Debt and Guilt really seeks to establish are the religious origins of that peculiarly modern iteration of finance capital called neoliberalism. 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引用次数: 0
摘要
在经历了十多年的“紧缩”之后,我们今天的负债比以往任何时候都要高:据估计,美国的公共债务将升至二战以来前所未见的水平,欧元区国家的公共债务将增长约占GDP的15%至30%。诚然,埃莱特拉·斯蒂米利的《债务与罪责:一种政治哲学》(2015年首次以Debito e culpa的名字出版,现在出现在斯蒂法尼亚·波尔切利与布卢姆斯伯里政治神学系列的英文译本中)比COVID-19大流行早了好几年,但其中心论点在2022年几乎没有变得不及时:“债务,”她写道,“是当代存在的模式”(7)。跨越政治哲学、经济理论、神学和人类学之间的界限,在经典的政治神学签名之间进行沟通,如韦伯、本杰明和施密特,以及最近的像阿甘本、拉扎拉托和埃斯波西托——斯蒂米莉这本错综复杂的书是她对她所谓的“活着的债务”的最新探索。在回归到债务和内疚的古老联系中,Stimilli的作品不仅揭示了债务现在是如何被构建到现代主体性的哲学、精神和宗教结构中,而且更雄心勃勃地提出了未来救赎这种普遍债务状态的脆弱可能性:人类的禧年。为了理解西方近代经济史——从金融危机,到欧元区主权债务危机,再到广泛的紧缩计划——的利害关系,斯蒂米里的书首先回到了礼物与交换之间的经典人类学关系。通过一位才华横溢的重读,比如波拉尼齐美尔和,她不仅认为礼物”是在真正的经济转型”的起源(29)——这也是说我们的社会关系先于经济交流——但这礼物本身就是某种约定的或信托的产品结构:是什么让钱不是任何内在价值或效用价值可能拥有,而是“信任的行为,或信贷”双方交换(35)。在揭示我们可能称之为货币本身的“宗教”起源的过程中,施蒂米利的计划因此揭示了自己是对瓦尔特·本雅明(Walter Benjamin)的“资本主义作为宗教”计划的重建,在这位德国思想家的经典片段几乎整整100年后。然而,《债务与罪责》真正想要确立的,是被称为新自由主义的金融资本的特殊现代迭代的宗教起源。它是新自由主义,将市场范式扩展到劳动和生活的各个领域,并将债务金融化
Symposium on Elettra Stimilli’s Debt and Guilt: A Political Philosophy – Introduction
In the aftermath of more than a decade of “austerity”, we are today more indebted than ever: US public debt is estimated to rise to a level unseen sinceWorldWar II and national public debts within the Eurozone to increase by some 15-30% of GDP. To be sure, Elettra Stimilli’s Debt and Guilt: A Political Philosophy (which was first published as Debito e culpa in 2015 and now appears in Stefania Porcelli’s English translation with Bloomsbury’s Political Theologies series) predates the COVID-19 pandemic by a number of years, but its central thesis has hardly become less timely in 2022: “debt,” she writes, “is the model of contemporary existence” (7). Straddling the boundaries between political philosophy, economic theory, theology and anthropology – and negotiating between classic political theological signatures like Weber, Benjamin and Schmitt as well as more recent ones like Agamben, Lazzarato and Esposito – Stimilli’s labyrinthine book is her latest exploration of what she calls the “debt of the living [il debito del vivente]”. In returning to the ancient nexus of debt and guilt [schuld], Stimilli’s work not only reveals how debt is now built into the philosophical, psychic and religious structures of modern subjectivity but, more ambitiously, holds out the fragile possibility of the future redemption of this state of generalized indebtedness: a human Jubilee. To understand what is at stake in the recent economic history of the west – from the financial crash, through sovereign debt crises in the Eurozone, to widespread austerity programs – Stimilli’s book begins by returning to the classic anthropological relationship between the gift and exchange. By means of a brilliant re-reading of Mauss, Polanyi and Simmel, she not only argues that the gift “is at the origin of the real economic transition” (29) – which is also to say that our social relations precede our economic exchanges – but that the gift is itself the product of a certain promissory or fiduciary structure: what gives value to money is not any intrinsic value or utility it may possess but rather “an act of trust, or credit” between the two parties to the exchange (35). In uncovering what we might call the “religious” origins of money itself, Stimilli’s project thus reveals itself to be a reconstruction of Walter Benjamin’s “Capitalism as religion” project, almost exactly 100 years after the German thinker’s classic fragment. However, what Debt and Guilt really seeks to establish are the religious origins of that peculiarly modern iteration of finance capital called neoliberalism. It is neoliberalism, by extending the market paradigm to every domain of labor and life and financializing debt