About the Book
Bringing together over forty original short essays, some academic, others more creative in nature, this collection responds to the political, historical, social, and economic situation in which we find ourselves today.
The editors argue that we are living in a repetition that must be stopped – if our goal is that the signifier "humanity" remains in the following centuries, the time has come to work in the present. The objective is not to deliver precise or quick answers, but to gather varied voices from different continents, bringing together different languages, ideas, practices, theories, thoughts, and desires. In the words of Yanis Varoufakis, "urging us to become agents of a future that ends unnecessary mass suffering and inspire humanity to realise its potential for authentic freedom." To leave the concept of a manifesto open, the contradictory aspects of the chapters are a subject of the manifesto itself. This is a manifesto of contradictions that reflects our reality as well as our struggles and our aspirations.
This unique anthology will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences interested in critical theory and social change.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Why Global Manifestos for the 21st Century? 2. Foreword: Urgently Needed: A New Manifesto for Fun and Freedom PART ONE Towards a Historical View Without Retrospective Romanticism or Future Idealization 3. Sublation and Dislocation: A False Choice 4. Emancipation Through a New Global Perspective 5. Manifesto: Commonism Now! 6. A Left of the Passage 7. Universality in the Middle: A Buddhist Post-Global Perspective 8. Manifesto in Favor of Freedom of Thought and Tolerance to Dissent 9. The Lessons of Cultural Humility: From a Struggle of Universalities to the Sublation of Existing Systems PART TWO Philosophical Footprints of the Present to Build a Here-and- Now 10. United by Touch and Breath: For a Co-ontological Revolution 11. Volcanic Lakes and Hallucinatory Vegetation: A Disaster to Think About the Future 12. Epidemic Refraction: A Critical Outlook Echoing Universal Explications Through Microcosmic Mayhem 13. reading | love | writing | art 14. Beyond the Permanent Crisis 15. Manifesto for a New Grammar of Liberation 16. The Road to the Scaffold: The Struggle of Nicolas de Condorcet and Olympe de Gouges for Gender Equality 17. The Political Challenges of Our Century in Education PART THREE Struggle of Universalities, Towards a Global Movement 18. Crisis-Impasse, Centrality of Periphery and the Necessity of International Organization 19. Europe’s Malignant Supplements, I Know. But Nevertheless… 20. Is Latin America a Reflection of the Europe Avant-garde Model? 21. “Brexit for All”!: Why the Left Should (Urgently) Rediscover the Concept of Sovereignty 22. Decolonial Feminism: A Political Proposal from the Global South 23. Universalities: The Power of Lack 24. Austerity, Brexit, Covid: Short Circuits and a New Identity for Wales 25. No More Manifestos!… Žižek Said “Europe”? 26. From Balkanized Universal(s) to Archipelagic Multiverse 27. War in the State and the State in War 28. Can Europe Be a Manifesto? The Role of Europe in Korean American Literature 29. Lapulapu’s Kris and Panglima Awang’s First Circumnavigation of the World PART FOUR Distinction or Difference: Letting Go of Confrontation and Starting Co-Construction 30. Where the Individual Was, the Self Must Come! 31. The Patipolitical Body 32. “This is a Shitty Government, But it is My Government”: Love, Power, War in Times of “Collapsed Horizons” and History’s Limitation 33. The Cosmopolitan Left Against Neoliberalism, Liberfascism and Cyberalism in the Twenty-First Century: A Latin American Approach to the Current Global Political Situation Since Post-Communism 34. Reflections from the Theory of the Encryption of Power: Energeia and the Manifestation of the Non-Being 35. The Formation of a Necro-State: Biopolitical Effects of Neoliberal Capitalism in Contemporary Ecuador 36. Real Subsumption, a Problem Rendered 37. Interiority and Exteriority in the Space of Capital 38. Epilogue: Contradictions Between Irreconcilable Manifestos
About the Author :
Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo is the author of columns, essays, and academic articles, including Žižek: Cómo Pensar con Claridad en un Mundo al Réves? (2023) and Psychoanalysis Between Philosophy and Politics, co-edited with Slavoj Žižek (2023).
Brian Willems is associate professor of literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Croatia. He is most recently the author of Sham Ruins: A User’s Guide (Routledge, 2022).
Slavoj Žižek is director of the International Humanities Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London, and senior research fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. He is a lecturer at numerous universities in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, and South Korea.
Review :
"We share the desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and can recognize that it’s untenable to claim them for ourselves but deny them to others. Together with darker motives like greed and vengeance, we have capacities for empathy, self-control, cognitive faculties that can solve problems, and language, which can share the solutions. These existential challenges, and our species’ best response to them, are addressed in the book Global Manifestos for the Twenty-First Century: Rethinking Culture, Common Struggles, and Future Change."
Steven Pinker, Harvard University
"The 21st century now has several Manifestos. Manifestos that announce an anti-neoliberal world, a multipolar world, a world of all and for all. A world where all worlds fit."
Emir Sader, Brazilian political scientist, philosopher, academic, and activist
"The interpellation of these "Manifestos" lies basically in not resigning in the face of the common condition of the struggles. We must cross the particularity of the different struggles and articulate them in a new international project that goes beyond sectorial and identity-based demands."
Jorge Alemán, Argentine psychoanalyst, militant, and poet
