On Contemporary French and Italian Political Philosophy: An Interview with Roberto Esposito (original) (raw)

You are currently completing a book on Italian philosophy. Generally, how do you judge the relation between French and Italian thought? In your opinion, under what conditions is it possible to refer to an "Italian philosophy" without giving in to the demon of the history of philosophy and the tyranny of liberal political philosophy? Esposito I consider it possible and useful to speak in national, philosophical terms only if one inscribes such a question within the dialectic introduced by Deleuze between territorialization and deterritorialization. Here, Italian philosophy can be considered territorial but not national, since the birth of the nation-state occurs much later than the complete unfolding of Italian philosophy. The difference with French philosophy lies precisely in the centrality of the category of "life," which Italian philosophy registered right from the start. Campbell and Luisetti Does there exist in your opinion a "thing" or a category that, unlike in French thought, Italian philosophy is able to think or to furnish the conditions for thinking? What explains the current success of Italian thought in constructing the terms of the debate that runs from biotechnology to human rights? Esposito While French philosophy beginning with Descartes privileged the dimension of consciousness or the interior dialogue, as in Pascal, Italian philosophy in its origins-with Machiavelli, Bruno, Campanella, and Vico, up to Croce and Gramsciconcentrated on the category of life in its complex relation with the dimensions of history and politics. Without imagining linear paths or improbable precursors, I believe that this originary element has influenced the current Italian elaboration of the categories of "bio-history" and "bio-politics," which were of course influenced by Nietzsche and then Foucault. Yet the fact remains that before the Italian interpretations, Foucault's extraordinary research into biopolitics remained effectively inactive for the better part of twenty years. Why, in order to become a theme of global importance, did biopolitics have to pass through Italy? It is beginning with this