This article critically engages with debates on uneven and combined development and particularly the lack of attention given in this literature to accounts of spatial diversity in capitalism’s outward expansion as well as issues of Eurocentrism. Through interlocutions with Antonio Gramsci on his theorising of state formation and capitalist modernity and the notion of passive revolution, we draw out the internal relationship between the structuring condition of uneven and combined development and the class agency of passive revolution. Interlocuting with passive (...) revolution places Antonio Gramsci firmly within a stream of classic social theory shaping considerations of capitalist modernity. As a result, by building on cognate theorising elsewhere, passive revolution can then be established as a lateral field of causality that necessarily grasps spatio-temporal dynamics linked to both state and subaltern class practices of transformation in social property relations, situated within the structuring conditions of uneven and combined development. (shrink)

This article examines how the Iraq War was a space in the ongoing geographical extension of global capitalism linked tousforeign policy. Was it simply the decision by a unitary, hegemonic actor in the inter-state system overriding concerns from other states? Was it an imperialist move to secure the ‘global oil spigot’? Alternatively, did the use of military force reflect the interests and emergence of a transnational state apparatus? We argue that theusimperium needs to be conceptualised as a specific form of (...) state, within which and through which fractions of national and transnational capital operate. In so doing, the Iraq War is assessed as a moment in the extension of global capitalism in which the interests of a national fraction of capital within theusstate form was dominant, thereby placing processes of class struggle and their relation to wider spaces of imperialism at the centre of analysis. (shrink)

Abstract This essay provides a critical engagement with neo?Gramscian perspectives on European integration, dealing with their core theoretical assumptions as well as empirical analyses of individual aspects of European integration. It is argued that by drawing on Gramsci's rejection of economic determinism, his thinking on the agency?structure problem, as well as his work on how to conceptualise the role of ideas, neo?Gramscian perspectives as a critical theory are able to analyse the social purpose of European integration. The conclusion identifies several (...) shortcomings in the neo?Gramscian literature on European integration, namely (1) the neglect of national and European institutions and their structural impact on social forces as main collective actors; (2) the related oversight of possibilities for change within the existing institutional structure; (3) the neglect of studying resistance to neo?liberal restructuring in Europe; and (4) the missing analysis of trade unions and labour as potential actors within movements of resistance. (shrink)

Christliche Sexualitätsdiskurse sind sowohl auf der Ebene der theologischen Reflexion als auch in der Artikulation religiöser Akteur*innen mehrheitlich Regel- bzw. Regulationsdiskurse. Die Frage nach dem, was erlaubt und was verboten ist, lässt dabei nur wenig Raum für ein differenziertes Sprechen über sexuelles Begehren, Wünsche und Erfahrungen. Vielmehr lässt sich in der Geschichte des Christentums ein Sprechen identifizieren, das sich im Spannungsfeld von religiöser Dämonisierung und Überhöhung bewegt. Dabei wird ein binär strukturiertes Diskursfeld produziert, in dem durch verschiedene religiös legitimierte Normalisierungspraktiken (...) die Heterosexualität als exklusive Norm hervorgebracht wird. Auch wenn diese heteronormative Orientierung in liberalen Varianten des Christentums inzwischen abgelehnt wird, bleibt es eine Herausforderung, die Argumente kritisch zu analysieren. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden biblisch-hermeneutische Vermittlungsversuche sowie ethische Kriterienbildung reflektiert. Abschließend wird für die Entwicklung einer vertieften Ambiguitätstoleranz plädiert. (shrink)

The paper continues an unfinished conversation with Pamela Sue Anderson on affectivity as a major feature of fundamental vulnerability. While Anderson was concerned mainly with the ethical dimension in the reciprocity of being affected and affecting others, the following deliberations begin with a phenomenological exploration of affectivity followed by a theological exploration. Andrea Bieler begins with the apophatic quality of affectivity that manifests itself in the oscillation of Leib-Sein and Körper-Haben. In this oscillation I do not fully know myself nor (...) the other that I am encountering. It is in this apophatic twilight that a sense of being alive emerges as well as existential feelings that linger in the background and finally emotions that are driven by affective intentionality and certain tendencies towards action. While the poetics of the psalms hold the capacity to express existential feelings in relation to God and to the world, it is particularly the biblical understanding of divine affectivity that is important for a theological reflection. God’s mercy and steadfast justice resonate with God’s movability and capacity to be affected that are expressed in stories and images that reflect divine passions and love. Bieler suggests from a theological perspective that this understanding should inform the myths we live by. (shrink)

In order to understand the importance of the demonstrations of God‟s existencein the second quaestio of the Summa Theologiae, we need to follow theguidelines of interpretation that Aquinas himself provides in the chaptersprevious to the account of the five ways.1Otherwise we cannot understand thetext properly. Indeed, we naturally expect universal validity and necessity froman argument labeled as a proof. But things are not as simple as that in the SummaTheologiae. In this paper, I would like to argue that, in order (...) to evaluate thedemonstrations of God‟s existence in the Summa Theologiae, it is necessary tounderstand the idea of scientia, which Aquinas develops in his commentary onAristotle‟s Posterior Analytics. Helpful for my reasoning was John I. Jenkins,Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas.2In a further step, I would like to turnto the principle of any scientia, the intellect, and elaborate how Aquinas's wholemetaphysics of being can serve as a proof of God's existence. (shrink)