Special Calls

 

Special Call Number 22 – December 2024

The editor is Salvo Vaccaro (University of Palermo)

The New Digital Era

Soft Power: Euro-American Journal of Historical and Theoretical Studies of Politics is an inter-disciplinary academic journal published since 2014. It is supported by the University of Salerno and the Universidad Católica de Colombia.

The aim of the journal is to be a forum of discussion for researches and scholars interested in the changes of contemporary political and legal orders. Through an approach that integrates philosophy, legal and political theory and history, it tries to investigate the diffused and fragmentary power dispositifs emerging forms social practices that bring to light new aspects of political and legal rationality. In particular, research interests focus on transformations of law and politics in contemporary neoliberalism.

The target of this issue is, on the one side, to focus the conceptual strategies that are supporting the practices of computing human agency, among them the algorithm, the profiling, the targeting, the machine learning, the digital subjectivation, the processes of surveillance and control, the artificial intelligence, the machinery, and so on. From the other side, to understand the effects of digital practices on society and on the dynamics of politics/policy/polity, opening to an automatic society whose configuration is nowadays instable and uncertain, meanwhile a critique is still looking for a good perspective.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, on any aspect related to social and political effects of The New Digital Era.

Proposals with Name, tentative Title, little Abstract (max 30 lines), Bibliography and Keywords should be submitted by April 30, 2024, but this does not commit any real publication. Acceptance of the proposals shall be communicated by May 15, 2024. Articles for issue number 22 should be fully submitted by July 20, 2024.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

For more information, for the author’s style guide, and for submission of articles, please write to: info@softpowerjournal.com

 

Special Call Number 21 – June 2024

The editors are Gianvito Brindisi (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli) and Antonio Tucci (Università degli Studi di Salerno)

Authoritarian Liberalisms

The notion of authoritarian liberalism was coined by Hermann Heller, arguing against a speech Carl Schmitt gave in 1932 in front of the German ruling class. For many years now this notion has been at the centre of the legal-political debate. With the expression authoritarian liberalism, and with the equivalent notions of neo-liberalism and national-liberalism, Heller stigmatised the idea of a strong State with respect to social claims and democratic pluralism, which renounced the exercise of its authority in the economic field. In condemning an interventionist State in the economy, Schmitt was actually condemning a society that intervened too much in the State.

In the same years, the ordoliberal thinkers (Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow) were adopting this diagnosis to explain the economic crisis and were adopting Schmittian thinking on the need for a strong State with an anti-pluralistic and anti-democratic character capable of depoliticising the economy and homogenising society by depriving it of political energy.

Michel Foucault has shown that, although neo-liberalism certainly legitimises itself on a ‘State phobia’, this does not mean less State at all, but rather a strong State intervening through a utilitarian use of law on society. In a complementary way, the notion of authoritarian liberalism reveals how the neo-liberal’s State phobia is not a phobia against the State as Such, but only towards the State intervention in the economy as the object of social claims and, therefore, a phobia against pluralism and democracy.

Although it sounds like a contradiction in terms, the notion of authoritarian liberalism has today taken on such a breadth that it has become a veritable paradigm, capable of rendering intelligible heterogeneous institutional and political realities, from post-Weimar Germany to liberal dictatorships such as that of Chile, from the neo-liberal offensive against democracy in the 1970s to the European political-economic constitution or today’s regressive nationalisms.

However, despite its popularity, leaving out few exceptions the debate missed one of the corollaries of authoritarian liberalism advocated by Schmitt, namely repressive power related to social and political oppositions and the technological control of the masses for the production of social normality. From the point of view of a strategic history of liberalism, this problem is undoubtedly worthy of investigation. In this regard, it isn’t true that – looking at the relationship between technologies of power and the production of subjectivity – neo-liberalism works as an anti-sedition system? Is it not aimed at preventing civil war – i.e., the politicisation of society – while at the same time conducting civil war by other means, according to a strategy that can be traced back far beyond the 20th century?

What is the strategic reality of this notion? What kind of power does it make intelligible today? Against whom is neoliberalism authoritarian? What social struggles does it delegitimise and fight?

Thinking, with Grégoire Chamayou in La société ingouvernable,  of authoritarian liberalism as a concept designed to indicate all situations in which, apart from cases of liberal dictatorship, the limitation of political space by economic imperatives is accompanied by the restriction of subaltern means of pressure, this issue intends to investigate, in addition to legal-political theories and institutional architectures, the relationship of authoritarian neo-liberalism with technologies of power and normalisation processes aimed at producing political apathy and favouring the acceptance of the real.

Topics: Genealogy of authoritarian liberalism; Strategic history of liberalism; Economic liberalism and political authoritarianism; Authoritarian neoliberalism and democracy; Authoritarian neoliberalism and pluralism; Authoritarian neoliberalism and processes of normalisation; Authoritarian neoliberalism and technologies of power; Liberalism, neoliberalism and the production of subjectivity; Liberalism and the governability of democracy; Liberalism and the crisis of governmentality; Authoritarian neoliberalism and enterprise; Enterprise and technologies of power; Market and conservatism; Authoritarian constitutionalism; Neo-nationalisms; Regressive Caesarisms; Social science and authoritarianism; Repressive capitalism.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by 15th March 2024 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by April 15th, 2024). 

 

Special Call Number 23 – June 2025

The editors are Virgilio D’Antonio and Giorgio Giannone Codiglione (Università degli Studi di Salerno)

Power(s) & sovereignty in (and/or via) digital information

The last decade of the new millennium has provided us the confirmation that the Internet is no longer a simple mass media, but is a connective tissue that permeates all aspects of our lives. This epochal passage of entry into the era of hyperhistory (Floridi) is characterized by the definitive osmosis between real and virtual: the human person, understood as a complex informational entity (Solove, Rodotà), carries out most of its activities within a space governed by a constant flow of data.  In this context, social sciences find themselves at a crossroads: stick with tradition, describing the disruptive effect of technologies and information in negative and positive terms (Ellul), or move beyond the dichotomy between apocalyptic and integrated (Eco), in the attempt to understand the essence of these phenomena without limiting themselves to a mere reclassification exercise or the adaptation of an analogical interpretation (Frosini).

Data today represents the most innovative form of social subject ever created by humans (Morton, Ferraris). From an eminently technical point of view, the so-called Web 2.0 puts the human being inside this flow of information in their new role as prosumers of data for the purpose of further circulation and use. This means that when contextualized into the taxonomy of human rights, the Internet not only represents the modern incarnation of the freedom of expression, “a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication“, as stated in 1997 by the American Supreme Court in Reno v. Aclu (Sunstein,Posner, Balkin).

One of the emerging phenomena in contemporary societies is the blurring of the boundaries between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ dimensions. The digital transformation is among the drivers of such a process, together with the evolution of economic and social relationships, in a context characterized by growing exchanges and cultural contaminations, as well as environmental and social emergencies.

For example, it’s now a fact that European Union law, together with the Member States, has finally opened up to a more realistic and effective approach to the enforcement of the right to personal data protection. The affirmation of the principle of free movement of personal data as the main scope of GDPR deeply changes the perspective of a solely personalistic logic of protection. Moreover, GDPR’s neutral approach read in conjunction with the adoption of a normative model based on accountability principle and risk-based approach (we could say, in terms of liability: from a dangerous to a risky activity), in no way clash with the nature of data protection as a higher level fundamental right, hierarchically superordinate to the exercise of other fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the freedom to conduct business – as for instance affirmed by the ECJ in the Google Spain case (2012).The enforcement of fundamental right to data protection, moreover, must not focus exclusively on the protection of the data subject as an human person whose data are processed, but must remain open to checking the impact that these legitimate economic activities have on the consumers well-being in the ICT’s society and, as a consequence, on the competitive structure of the related markets.

The privatisation of aspects traditionally attributed to government, along with the increasingly public characterisation of relationships previously regarded as pertaining to the private sphere, question many fields of knowledge, including the law. The once reassuring traditional legal categories are deeply affected. In particular, the always contested divide between public law and private law is nowadays more and more under stress and reveals its limited adequacy to read the legal implications of new social phenomena.

The following is a list of tentative questions for which the call-for-papers is open: – Data as Law or Law as Data? – Data as an essential facility? – The contractual relationship in the digital dimension and the protection of fundamental rights – Antitrust enforcement as a public regulatory tool for “data markets”? – The public dimension of digital platforms: towards a new feudalism? – Which role for the traditional States? Net vs Nets? Towards the overcoming of the Internet monopoly.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Juridical, philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by  February 1, 2025 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by February 16, 2025). 

 

 

 

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Special Call Number 19 – June 2023

The editors are Marco Bontempi (University of Florence), Dimitri D’Andrea (University of Florence), Andrea Ghelfi (University of Florence)

The New Climate Regime and Nature as Political Actor

 The new “climate regime” challenges the dichotomous thinking with which modernity has conceived the relationships between nature and society, subject and object, transcendence and immanence. Bruno Latour’s work has shown how these three dichotomies constitute the structuring factors of the political, scientific and social perspective of modernity, highlighting the need to rethink the forms of both political action and conflict and more generally the very conditions of action. Latour’s scientific production has gone through different stages and, in the most recent one, has focused on how the new climate regime affects the forms of political thought and mobilisation. The characteristic of Latour’s approach to the new climate regime lies in overcoming the ideas of historical progress, geocentric humanism, and the passivity of nature. Action is conceived aside from the classical conditions of its intentionality and will in the form of a hybrid network that is constantly implemented by the different constituting components. The implications of this mechanism for political and social theory concern simultaneously forms of critique and socio-ecological practices.

The contributions relative to this call can freely navigate within this range of questions, intersecting transversally in a broader or more focused way the following three thematic axes about and beyond Latour:

1 – In recent years, a number of contributions from science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, geography, political theory and philosophy of science have been calling us to take the subject matter of politics seriously. Such an approach emphasises the need to develop a thoroughly materialist conception of politics, that is, a conception that does not separate the forms of human association and separation that we are used to call politics from the socio-material basis of life and from the concrete practices through which modes and forms of life are created, reproduced, sustained. With his invitation to take seriously the role that more-than-human actors play within the fabric of social conduct, Latour holds a key role within this debate. In his latest ecological-political writings, Latour suggests that we should rethink politics starting from the issue of the planet’s conditions of habitability: how can this theoretical perspective be developed withand beyond Latour? To what extent do the ecological crises in which we are immersed force us to think beyond human exceptionalism? What grounds of convergence and divergence can be traced when we compare Latour’s thought with other theoretical perspectives that, in a variety of ways, conceptualise the political in the human-non-human continuum?

2 – What theoretical-practical conditions of the new climate regime can turn the ecological perspective into a political one, i.e., can overcome the limitations of its positioning as a movement among others? Which of the current transformations can enable political ecology to outline the horizon of political action, by assuming the role that was previously played by liberalism, socialism, neoliberalism, and, more recently, by illiberal parties? What effects do the neo-climatic conditions—with their disruption of the macro-distinctions of nature and society, human and non-human, immanent and transcendent—have on the categories of political action and political space?

3 – The Latourian ontology of the metamorphic zone allows to reframe a new type of realism against the pseudo-realism of the causalistic narrative: a realism of mediators where previously intermediaries dominated. This approach forces us to rethink the relationship between realism and criticism. How does this new type of realism reshape the forms and practices of ‘critique’? Who is the bearer of the critical instance when we overcome the human-nonhuman distinction? To what extent does the new type of realism challenge and overcome the distinction between facts and norms, being and having to be, ethics and the world? What does the normative dimension of the ‘natural world’ consist of?

Soft Power calls for submissions of papers between 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Theoretical, philosophical, historical, and interdisciplinary contributions are welcome. All papers will undergo a double-blind peer review. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. In order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services, abstracts and keywords must be written both in English and Spanish.

The contributions (with author’s Name, paper’s Title, Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by March 15th 2023 (acceptance of the papers will be communicated by April 1st, 2023).

Keywords: New climate regime; socio-ecological practices; forms of critique; politics of matter; human-non-human continuum; political ecology; new realism; critical zones; political ontology; Bruno Latour.

 

Special Call Number 17 – June 2022

The editors are Massimo De Carolis (University of Salerno) and Giso Amendola (University of Salerno).

Sovereignty, global economic governance and practices of self-determination

The debate on state sovereignty (and its crisis) has focused on the legal and political prerogatives of the state, first and foremost its acknowledged monopoly of political decision or, in Weber’s terms, of the legitimate use of force. Much rarer, however, has been the reference to another economic monopoly, which has always accompanied the modern state: the sole monopoly of issuing currency, accepted on its own territory for tax purposes as well as in exchanges between private individuals or in international transactions.

Since the second half of the 20th century, at least two factors have contributed to transform the picture, making a reflection on the link between political sovereignty and monetary sovereignty, and more broadly on the economic policy, inevitable. The first one has a specific date that coincides with the decision of the United States, in 1971, to definitively abandon the fixed convertibility of the dollar into gold, thus ending the global order established by the Bretton Woods agreements. The second factor is less circumscribed, concerning the growing centrality of economic instruments in the governance of society: an evolution we usually link to the “neo-liberalization” of society, but which has, in fact, a broad echo outside neo-liberalism in the strict sense (for example, in the policies of the “third way” or in the despotic regimes that have emerged in recent decades).

Needless to say, the relationship between political sovereignty and economic governance is a particularly sensitive issue for a kind of multilevel governance such as the European Union, which does not provide for a sovereign political authority despite the existence of a European currency, a European Central Bank and economic policy measures binding on all member states. Even outside the European context, however, an in-depth examination of this issue seems indispensable in order to re-propose a set of critical questions that have accompanied the evolution of modern nation states from the beginning: to what extent can we consider the sovereign state and the free market as two independent spheres and not rather as articulations of the same governmental device? Do public and private today correspond perfectly to the classic state/market distinction, or do the processes of transformation of the state – in particular the policies of privatization of the public sphere and of destructuring welfare – require a radical re-discussion of the relationship between state and public sphere? On the contrary, how to define those spaces of cooperation, which, even within the market, hint at practices of self-determination that reformulate the strictly private and proprietary definition of autonomy?

We ask to develop the reflection on sovereignty and government of the economy along three main thematic areas:

  1. State and currency. A reflection on political sovereignty and government of the economy starting from the question of currency, and from the relationship between monetary policy and transformations of the state, between monetary policy and fiscal policy, between debt and currency. Very useful will also be interventions on the transformations of the social function of money, and on the trasformations of the relationship between money commodity, money as medium of exchange and money as measure of value.
  2. Government of the economy and global order: transformation and/or decline of neoliberalism? A reflection on the government of the economy in the transformation of the role of the State (and in general of the Political) in the global order. Economic policy in multilevel governance, the redefinition of institutional relations between powers (and in particular the role of monetary policy and central banks in the new international order, with a specific yet not exclusive attention to Europe). The relationship between corporate governance, State and global governance in financial globalization. Global (prepandemic and pandemic) crisis and transformation of monetary and fiscal policies, transformation or crisis of neoliberalism and theoretical and political problems related to the theme of the (questionable) “return of the State”. Re-proposition of the economic planning issue.
  3. Evolution of the relationship between the “personal” and “political” dimensions beyond the traditional dichotomies of private/public and market/state. Emergence of the effects of privatization of the public sphere and of broad processes of socialization within the market sphere itself. The development of state-independent social autonomies for example, the popular and informal economy in Mediterranean and South American metropolises. Reproduction as a crisis point of the productive paradigm and affirmation of new practices of economic policies. The crisis of contemporary welfare as a complex overlap of processes of privatization of the public and production of social autonomy and new practices of self-determination.

Topics:

sovereignty and money/monetary policy and fiscal policy/currency and value/money and social relations/multilevel governance and government of the economy/democracy, legitimacy and politics of central banks/ corporate governance, global governance and lex mercatoria/financial crisis, pandemic crisis and transformations of neoliberalism/pandemic crisis, “return” of the state and economic planning/public sphere and market/social reproduction and government of the economy/debt and sovereignty/money, debt and social reproduction/private autonomy, social autonomy and legal pluralism/welfare crisis between public space and social autonomy.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by January 31th  2021 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by March 15th, 2022). 

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com

Special Call Number 16 –   December 2021

The editor is Valeria Giordano (University of Salerno)

Gender, Institutions, Law

Gender Studies have radically changed the culture and the way we think of and structure society by providing new theoretical tools, that support the decoding the contemporary world’s complexity, and by delivering new interpretative categories that move from the representation of the gender as seemingly a performative and cultural construction. In the current asset, we are urged to resemantize the political-juridical lexicon which can overcome gender stereotypes and the abstract universalism bearing the modern rationalism. This approach will guarantee an all-new “grammar of the difference” which is sensible to the pluralism of interests and ethics on play and able to reinforce gender mainstreaming in contemporary democracies.

The neutral and objectifying image of the political and juridical subjectivity is challenged by the prismatic character of the gender and by his reflexive normativity as a plural dispositive of power, which acts inside practices of constant redefinition and empowerment.

The following thematic lines will be mainly analyzed within a critical approach:

  • A reflection on today’s unprecedently intricate relationship between powers, bodies, symbolic order and differences. The aim of this reflection focuses on the dismissal of still existing gender asymmetries in our society, with a specific consideration on the availability of bodies as consumer goods and on the resulting multiplication of rights of world scale, as a sign of the bios
  • The development of a culture of rights based on gender knowledges and on a non-discriminatory law, able to untie the citizenship dilemma and the ambivalence of equality, between practices of freedom, claims of rights and creation of new and plural subjectivities, also in relation with the intersection of gender with other excluding categories, such as race, religion, sexuality.
  • An analysis of the existing relations between powers and racial colonial subjection dynamics, acting on a national and global level. A specific regard will be given to the exploitation practices of subaltern subjects, in order to provide new interpretative keys on the issue of global justice; an analysis of the persistence, on a global scale, of a structure of patriarchal dominance, with a particular eye on the issue of gender violence and femicide.

Topics:

Global gender gap, politics of empowerment and gender equality; equal democracy; multiple discriminations and intersectionality; production/reproduction, new mothers; strategies of diversity, Gender citizenship; feminization of work and migration; law, gender sexuality; judge made-law, judicial reasoning, anti-discrimination law; mediation and same-sex couples; gender-based violence and femicide.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by 6th May 2021 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by July 6th, 2021). 

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com

 

 

 

Special Call Number 15 – June 2021

The editor is Laura Bazzicalupo (University of Salerno)

New lines of geopolitical fracture and redefinition of the spaces of powers, exploitation and emancipation movements.

The next issue of SoftPower will be focused on the re-elaboration of a geopolitical lines cartography, in the light of the current transitions (changes), partly accentuated, accelerated and called into questions by the pandemic. The incessant change of global capitalism – both as metamorphic and flexible system of accumulation, and as form of life producing hierarchization-suited subjectifications – is a decisive factor of the fracture lines.

Once we recognize the different forms of modernity (Peter Taylor), it is not the re-proposition of Great Narrative, able to holds together opposite poles (development-underdevelopment; expansion-depression; hegemony-chaos; authoritarian-liberal democracies); the issue is rather the proposition of a thematic and from time to time circumstantial examination of the lines that – crossing them and breaking their continuity – compose and disjoint the macro-regions (intended as privileged units of analysis of material history).

The plurality of fracture lines – sometimes emphasized by propaganda, sometimes politically constructed to force the shaky institutional balances, sometimes evenementially emerging from ontological indeterminacy and complexity – shows the common concrete effect of a functional hierarchization of the world-system, beyond the partial views that only abstract thought can isolate. Is it possible – by recognizing a new complexity of subjectivities – to oppose to this common feature, the geo-historical recognition of the conflict between historically determined groups?

The issue deals with the need to examine the sequences of powers in their concreteness, in order to redefine the fronts of domination and the possible mobilization in the different policies for emancipation.

The following points are relevant to this aim:

  • Historical genealogy of contemporary geo-economic and geo-political hierarchies and genealogy of fracture lines
  • Relevance of the long time obscured approach of economy and politics (world-systems) and the concept of hegemonic transition? 
  • Ethno-demographic dynamism of populations and inequality.
  • Organization of powers in the space within and beyond the state: mobilizations of the political space.
  • Transnational and stateless powers: finance, terrorism, Ong, media power and digital control, transnational dimension of health and environmental challenges …
  • Redefinition of the South(s) of the world, beyond the classical theories of the dependencia, of the desarrollo etc… as lines of exploitation and hierarchization crossing the entire planet.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these themes:

 Geo-political/geo-economic maps, genealogy, hierarchization, emancipations

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by January 31st, 2021 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by  March 5th, 2021). 

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com

 

Special Call Number 14  – December 2020

The editors are Sandro Luce (University of Salerno) and Serena Marcenò (University of Palermo).

Postcolonialism and decoloniality. Resistance and Counter-Conducts in the Current Neoliberalism

The category of ‘Colonial’ shares with others classic concepts of West Modernity some euristic issues. Indeed, the assumed universality of these concepts is a contested component of their meaning.

Between the 19th and 20th century the 85% of the Earth’s surface was covered with the “colonial” map. This human, political and geographical space was asserted, by the vast and heterogeneous world of post-colonial studies, to suggest a universal and secular vision of “human”; and, additionally, a “humanism” concurrently proclaimed and denied by the relationship between metropolis and colony, colonizer and colonized (Said).

The critique of colonial discourse has presented evidence of the theoretical bias implied in colonialism’s themes and universals, revealing the conditions through which colonialism arose, in the framework of capitalist mode of production: marginalization, obliteration of (divergent) knowledge systems, classification and hierarchization both of spaces and human beings (Chakrabarty).
Today, in the context of a pervading neoliberal governmentality, this wide process is rendered with an all new set of tools and discourses; this governmentality is able to take advantage of the coexistence of extremely different strategies. In this regard, Quijano speaks about ‘coloniality’, as a system of thought which can legitimize the inequalities that exist in societies, subjects and knowledge systems, even if colonialism as a political order has reached its end. This trend leads us to question some ‘classic’ categories, such as development, city/periphery dichotomy, environmental exploitation or identity construction; in fact, nowadays, they seem unable to describe contemporary capitalism’ s ability to grow from the coexistence of different modes of production.

In this monographic issue, Soft Power earnestly focus on the subjugation devices implied in differentiated work regimes production and post-development models. Both of these are concurrently, instrumental for Global Capitalism and for its counterbalance, i.e. subjectivation practices: fastening and rearranging differences of class, race, gender and age; furtherly, they generate the practices of resistance and counter-conducts, which are required to open escape routes within the contemporary mechanism of global exploitation.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these themes:

Coloniality, Postcoloniality, Decoloniality, De-Development, Resistance, Counter-Conducts, Neoliberalism, Identity construction, New extractivism

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by June 1st, 2020 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by  July 31th 2020).

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call Number 13  – June 2020

The editor is Luca Basso (University of Padua).

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning: 

Subjectivity, Transindividuality, Singularity.

The rethinking of contemporary subjectivity is at stake in the background of the subject’s modern history. We aim at overcoming the dualism between the individual and the collective subject, assuming the dimension of the struggle as a privileged ground for the idea of emancipation. We want to interrogate the Marxian categories (particularly that of class subjectivity) and test their strength and usefulness in thinking through this question. In so doing, we will take the concept of singularity, developed by contemporary French philosophy, as a starting point. Singularity aims at reactivating the concept of subjectivation and avoiding the assumption of a steady-defined subject. More importantly, singularity refers to the realm of relations, which, in turn, can be connected to the idea of transindividuality. But even though transindividuality tries to overcome the opposition between individualism and holism, its connection with singularity is neither immediate, unequivocal, nor tension-free. We hope to make these tensions apparent via a materialist approach, and focusing on concrete social relations, in order to develop a variety of approaches suitable for the issue of subjectivity.

Philosophical, political, juridical, historical articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by January 15th, 2020 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by  February 15th 2020).

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call Number 12 – December 2019

The editor is Salvo Vaccaro (University of Palermo).

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning: 

Political Theory and Post-Truth

In November 2016, Oxford Dictionaries nominated Post-Truth word of the year, «relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective  facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals  to emotion and personal belief».

Is it ever thinkable a political theory embedded in the reality? What are the constituencies of truth in politics? Is a political theory still able to capture the signals of fracture between political will and free formation of political will via mass- and social media? What did changed in the relationship between truth and lying in politics, from Plato to Arendt via Nietzsche? Which kind of ethos shall survive in a post-truth era?

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these themes: Politics, Political Theory, Policies, Accountability, Information/Communication, Public Opinion, Vote, Free Mind, Truth/Power, Lying.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by June 1st, 2019 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by September 1, 2019).

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call 11° number – June 2019

The editor is Geminello Preterossi (University of Salerno)

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning:                                     

 Might this be the new class struggle?

There is no further time for class struggle. This was one of the many assumptions at the basis of the neoliberal official discourse which was dominant after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Is it so? A look back on the last decades, and specifically on political and financial establishment response to the crisis, suggests not just the persistence of the class struggle but even its efficient functioning from above. Its ideological denial underlies the succeeding of neoliberal offense that drives a devaluing of work and a systematic extraction of surplus value, with neither political restrictions nor redistribution of wealth. The symbolic field has been functional to remove or otherwise opacify the “class” interest field (how once it would be called), crediting the ideology of the end of the conflict, in attempt to neutralize the global market and competition as a universal and not partisan form of life. Analytically that implies the necessity to avoid the distinction between the symbolic level and the practical processes level because it might render to us a partial, thus unharmed, comprehension of the new political reality we are facing.

From an objective point of view, if we consider differences in interests and the social contradictions, there would certainly be reasons for class struggle as well as economic discrepancies concerning the ideologies of left and right. Rather, the actual background around the new social concern on the (economic) crisis and austerity measures is of an opposite stand: the language, applied by the left party, does not look exhaustive enough to seize and reproduce this reality and even less prepared to arrange it in a cohesive conflict.  Besides, out of some rare cases, the left party looks involved with the social inferiorization, the cheap jobs, and the unemployment, all of which are implied in globalization. While the economic right side has a clear vision of the goals and the power relationships, the left side is living in a credibility crisis. As a matter of fact,  the reformist left is subordinated to the economic right side which led it to shelter behind an unspecified rhetoric of hospitality that, unsupported by social policies, allow ghettos and wars among the poor; in addition to that, the subordination is the motivation behind the acknowledgement of civil rights as a way to compensate for the demolition of the welfare state. What is more, the “radical” left side cherishes dreams of a palingenesis of meta-policies, which are extremely unfeasible and ultimately with no cultural antibodies against a globalism whose dominance has been empowered by the neoliberalism.

The Laclau’s theory of populism in addition to the political use of it (including  European countries too) is perceived as a way to re-arrange the conflict and political subjectivity grounded on the mentioned eclipse of the “left” and on the rising of new unresponsiveness and of lines of social fracture (places against flows, downwards against upwards, identity against standardization).

The main question of this call for papers is whether or not nowadays the class struggle that is played from above is structurally forbidden and on what ideological assumptions could it be upheld.

A further investigation should consider redefining the shift from inside itself to for itself that is indeed the principal factor in the subjectification of conflict.  Might it be the case that the assessment of the conflict in the shape of post-essentialism is only realizable populistically? Might it be a trade of class struggle paradigm for a populistic one (that which is undoubtedly a source of political strength although ambivalent), or rather a more strategic trade?

Is the Laclau’s approach really a critical and polemical interpretation towards the hard core of the capitalistic domain and of devices it uses? Or is it just a rhetorical-linguistic instrument?

Ultimately how could it be answered efficiently but not abstractly regulatory to the shift from class struggle to identity struggle that is the result of a malfunctioning among the anomic effects of the globalization and the socially disempowering effects of neoliberalism?

Soft Power invites submissions of articles not exceeding 6,000 words, including footnotes.

All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by December 10th, 2018 (acceptance shall be communicated by January 15th, 2019 )

For author guidelines and for any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call 10 number – December 2018:  Pluralism and Enforcement of Rights.

The editor is Valeria Giordano (University of Salerno).

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these themes: pluralism, governance and social rights; cultural pluralism and identity conflicts; value pluralism and legal interpretation;  constitucionalism and international justice; enforcement and protection of rights.

Particularly requested  topics are: gender, race, religion, war, bioethics, environment y commons.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by: July 15 th, 2018 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by September 15 th, 2018).

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com

Special Call  9° number – June 2018

The editors are: Federico Chicchi, Antonio Tucci


Inclusions

The paradigm based on the conceptual couple inclusion/exclusion, which has marked the modern juridical and political mindset, seems to be very uncertain in the currently advanced stage of neoliberal governmentality. The new imposing logic rests on the “promise” of a progressive inclusion of everyone, but it actually works with continuous selections and marginalization – when not exclusions – often in a violent and definitive way. According to Aiwha Ong, these models of social inclusion might be qualified as graduated. This method of government, in full accordance with the empowerment devices and the release of new digital technologies of control, produces new and complex hierarchies, i.e. unprecedented instances of proletarianization, new forms of slavery, new methods of exploitation and boundary rearrangements. The new salience gained by identity issues – in the forms of borders, race, gender and so on and so forth – is to be analyzed against the background of a new logic of government, largely in need of further clarifications.

Therefore, how shall we reconsider and rethink the categories of political and legal philosophy, or of the social sciences as a whole, that interrogate those issues?

The main issues of this call for papers are: differential inclusion, selective inclusion, exploitation, identity, race, borders, gender, subjectivity and neoliberalism, marginality, governmentality, digital democracy.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning:

All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent toinfo@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES

Articles must be received by Genuary 10th, 2018 (acceptance will be communicated by  February 1oth, 2018, after double-blind peer-review).

Special Call  8° number – December 2017

The editor is: Ida Dominijanni


Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning:

The domestication of Feminism

Half a century after the explosion of the so-called “second wave”, the subversive radicality of feminism is threatened by governmental policies and discourses that focus on its domestication. Neoliberal apparatuses, which turn female freedom into entrepreneurial self-affirmation and neutralise sexual difference as one among other fragmented social identities, are added to the recurring trends, of a Marxist and liberal stamp respectively, which reduce the demand for female freedom to an issue  of social emancipation or equitable inclusion of women in the democratic citizenship. How do these apparatuses work at political, legal, economic, mass media, psychic and sexual levels? Can they be challenged and countered  throwing again the original bet of feminism?

The main topics are: feminism, work’s feminization, sexual difference, gender, neoliberalism, neutralisation

All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent toinfo@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES

For abstract (500 words max): March 30th, 2017 (acceptance shall be communicated by April 30th, 2017 )

Full Article must be received by June 1th, 2017 (acceptance shall be communicated by  September 1th, 2017, after double-blind peer-review).

For author guidelines visit here

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com

Special Call  7° number –June 2017: The return of the world: space, territory and materiality in the age of globalization and its crisis.

The editor is Ottavio Marzocca  (University of Bari)


Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these questions:

The environment – as geo-local, social, political-legal and ethical modus – is a central issue.

Have society, subjects and social powers become subjectively more attentive to the problems of territory, environment, space and material world? Or are these problems objectively urgent, without adequate social attention?

The main topics are:

Environment; Ethos; Territorial communities; Material world; Legal borders and Urban space.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent toinfo@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINE: November 30th, 2016.

Acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by January 10 th, 2016.

For author guidelines visit here

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call  6° number – December 2016: Justice, conflicts, mediations

The main topic of sixth issue is: Justice, conflicts, mediations.

The editor is Laura Bazzicalupo (University of Salerno)

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these topics:

Conflicts, war, political rinegotiation; political mediation strategies and International justice; reconciliation process and transitional justice; Arbitrations and forms of political and legal mediation.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent toinfo@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINE: June 30 th, 2016.

Acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by September 15, 2016.

For author guidelines visit here

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Special Call  4° number – December 2015: Metamorphosis of Power and Political-legal Subjectivations

The main topics of fourth issue is: Metamorphosis of Power and Political-legal Subjectivations. Its editor is  Antonio Tucci (University of Salerno)

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, on any aspect related to notions and practice of Governmentality and Soft Power.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINE: September 30, 2015.

Acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by October 30, 2015.

For author guidelines visit here

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com


Soft Power is an inter-disciplinary academic journal published in 2014 by the Grupo Planeta, one of the leading publishers in the Spanish-speaking world. It is supported by the University of Salerno and the Universidad Católica de Colombia. Its website is: http://www.softpowerjournal.com

The aim of the journal is to be a forum of discussion for researches and scholars interested in the changes of contemporary political and legal
 orders. Through an approach that integrates philosophy, legal and political theory and history, it tries to investigate the diffused and fragmentary power dispositifs emerging forms social practices that bring to light new aspects of political and legal rationality. In particular, research interests focus on transformations of law and politics in contemporary neoliberalism.

The main topics of third issue is: Governementality and Soft Power. Its editor is Salvo Vaccaro (University of Palermo)

On one side, the concept of governmentality in Foucault introduces the notion of “conduire les conduits”, that’s to say a practice of power which is not hierarchical, vertical, repressive; on the other side, this same concept is useful in order to investigate the new forms of post-democratic regimes which are typical in the era of neoliberalism.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,500 to 7,500 words, including footnotes, on any aspect related to notions and practice of Governmentality and Soft Power.

Proposals with Name, tentative Title, little Abstract (max 20 lines) and Keywords should be submitted by December 20, 2014. Acceptance of the proposals shall be communicated by January 10, 2015, but this does not commit any real publication. Articles for issue number 3 should be submitted by April 10, 2015.

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

For more information, for the author’s style guide, and for submission of 
articles, please write to: info@softpowerjournal.com