Antonio Cerella
Biographic Data
| ID | 3787298 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Antonio Cerella |
| GIVEN NAMES | Antonio |
| FAMILY NAME | Cerella |
| SIGNATURE | CERELLA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nottingham Trent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6417-091X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
On the medicalisation of global politics
This article explores the intertwining of politics and medicine by analysing how medicine has become politicized, and politics medicalized, as well as the effects of these dynamics on subjectivity, politics and the social. Rather than starting from a fixed research question or hypothesis, this work takes the form of a collaborative enquiry that “allows something to emerge” through social interaction. It unfolds through a series of encounters and …
Neoliberalism Against Society? Spontaneous Order and Governance of Desire in Digital Societies
Critical scholarship often argues that neoliberalism has caused the 'crisis' or 'destruction' of society. Drawing on Foucault's concept of power as 'productive' and focusing on digital societies, we argue that neoliberalism seeks not to dismantle society but to create societies that govern desires through market freedom. We explore Friedrich Hayek's idea that a free society is not based on social well-being or equality, but on spontaneous norms a…
Power’s Two Bodies
This article seeks to problematize Agamben’s interpretation of sovereignty in light of the “archaeological method” he uses in his Homo Sacer project. In contrast to Agamben’s exposition, which treats biopolitics as the original and ontological paradigm of Western politics, the essay discusses how, historically, sovereign power has been conceived as a “double body”—transcendent and immanent, sacred and sacrificial, absolute and perpetual—from whos…
Neoliberal citizenship
Journal Article Neoliberal citizenship: sacred markets, sacrificial lives Get access Neoliberal citizenship: sacred markets, sacrificial lives. By Luca Mavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022. 304pp. £81.00. Isbn978 0 19285 758 3. Available as e-book. Antonio Cerella Antonio Cerella Nottingham Trent University, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 2, March 2024…
Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious
Taking seriously Jacques Lacan’s claim that “the unconscious is politics”, this volume proposes a new understanding of political power, as it interrogates the assumption that contemporary capitalism functions by tapping into people’s forms of unconscious enjoyment, rather than providing transcendental conditions for the articulation of political meanings and desires. Whether we’re aware of it or not, political communication today targets the audi…
Introduction
This article proposes a semiotic theory of social imaginaries. Drawing on the work of Umberto Eco, Reinhart Koselleck and Martin Heidegger, it shows the logic that governs the relationship between temporality and semiosis, sign and its constant reinterpretation. In this sense, this work can be read as a sort of epistemological program that also represents the background on which the various contributors to this Special Issue have developed their …
Imaginarium politicum
Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they
The Debt of Time and the Secularization of Guilt
The Remains of Power
It has become commonplace to define sovereignty as an almost divine and transcendent power, a concept which has its roots in the ancient Roman world. Following Foucault’s lead, for example, Giorgio Agamben has argued that the political capture of life represents the original paradigm of the entire history of Western civilization. This ontological and Western-centric reading of sovereignty has had an enormous influence on the social and human scie…
Proteus’s Image
According to Homer, who describes him at length in the fourth book of the Odyssey, Proteus, the ancient god of the sea and water, had the power to constantly change his shape. He was not only a shape-shifter but also an oracle, capable of peering through the depths of the sea and predicting the future to whoever was able to capture him. It does not seem hazardous to establish an analogical relationship between the twofold power of Proteus and tha…
Genealogies of Political Modernity
What is political modernity? And how much of its concepts and structures has changed or remained the same with the advent of the so-called globalization? What does it mean, from a political perspective, that we live in a postmodern era? This book discusses these issues in light of the key authors and texts of the continental philosophical tradition: from Carl Schmitt to Giorgio Agamben, from Thomas Hobbes to Michel Foucault. Looking at the roots …
Political ontology and international political thought
Heidegger and the Global Age
Globalization is one of the most contested and (ab)used concepts of our time. Whether one interprets it as a ‘collective illusion’ or as the final stage of capitalism, as ‘uncontrollable multitude’ or as a radical opening of new spaces of freedom, the ‘global age’ represents the conceptual and existential background of our being-in-the-world. But what lies behind this process? What mode of human existence is brought about by the age of technology…
The obsession with perfect health
In the developed countries, the obsession with perfect health has become a major pathogenic factor. In a world imbued with the instrumental ideals of science, the medical system creates constantly
Art and Sovereignty in Global Politics
Encounters at the end of the world
This essay aims at throwing new light on a decades-long controversy over the intellectual relation between Weber and Schmitt. This debate over time has been characterized by polar positions, with the “Weberians” who exclude any continuity between the theorist of Wertfreiheit and the Kronjurist of the Third Reich; and those who not only emphasize similarities, but also a true intellectual filiation between them. Without denying legitimacy to these…
The future of political theology and the legacy of Carl Schmitt
"Every power is transcendent; the Transcendent is power; every attempt to escape power is a way to seize power; every movement, which is directed to the prevention or limitation of power, is a seizure of power. It makes no sense and is very dangerous to oppose a political myth" (Schmitt, 1991, p. 180). Behind these cryptic words, dated July 19, 1948, lies the ‘mystery’ of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. A complex problematic that has sealed th…
Machiavelli reloaded
Until the end of the world
Where do the origins of violence lie? And in what sense can our global age be defined as apocalyptic? In this article, I aim to compare Schmitt’s and Girard’s theoretical proposals about the origins, containment and diffusion of violence in order to explore the end of the Nomos and of its sacrality. My argument is that the ‘mimetical’ and the ‘political’ offer two complementary and radical visions of the origins of conflict and its containment. T…
An alternative vision of politics and violence
This article aims at introducing René Girard’s mimetic theory in the field of International Studies, identifying some of the areas of research that it might usefully open up. First, the article explores mimetic theory and some of its basic concepts—mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, the scapegoat mechanism, and the sacrificial crisis—in order to highlight the strong heuristic and analytical potential of Girard’s work. Second, the article considers …
Postsecular Encounters in World Politics
In a late interview, published after his death, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, looking to the future with an eye to the past, condensed in one sentence the historical and spiritual condition of his age: Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten [only a God can save us]. With this seemingly simple phrase, Heidegger cast a counter-image as intense as the one launched by Nietzsche’s philosophical cry a century earlier. For, the ‘deat…
Religion and political form
Jürgen Habermas's post-secular account is rapidly attracting attention in many fields as a theoretical framework through which to reconsider the role of religion in contemporary societies. This work seeks to go beyond Habermas's conceptualisation by placing the post-secular discourse within a broader genealogy of the relationships between space, religion, and politics. Drawing on the work of Carl Schmitt, the aim of this article is to contrast th…
An alternative vision of politics and violence
This article aims at introducing René Girard’s mimetic theory in the field of International Studies, identifying some of the areas of research that it might usefully open up. First, the article explores mimetic theory and some of its basic concepts—mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, the scapegoat mechanism, and the sacrificial crisis—in order to highlight the strong heuristic and analytical potential of Girard’s work. Second, the article considers …
Postsecular Encounters in World Politics
In a late interview, published after his death, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, looking to the future with an eye to the past, condensed in one sentence the historical and spiritual condition of his age: Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten [only a God can save us]. With this seemingly simple phrase, Heidegger cast a counter-image as intense as the one launched by Nietzsche’s philosophical cry a century earlier. For, the ‘deat…
Political ontology and international political thought
Until the end of the world
Where do the origins of violence lie? And in what sense can our global age be defined as apocalyptic? In this article, I aim to compare Schmitt’s and Girard’s theoretical proposals about the origins, containment and diffusion of violence in order to explore the end of the Nomos and of its sacrality. My argument is that the ‘mimetical’ and the ‘political’ offer two complementary and radical visions of the origins of conflict and its containment. T…
Religion and political form
Jürgen Habermas's post-secular account is rapidly attracting attention in many fields as a theoretical framework through which to reconsider the role of religion in contemporary societies. This work seeks to go beyond Habermas's conceptualisation by placing the post-secular discourse within a broader genealogy of the relationships between space, religion, and politics. Drawing on the work of Carl Schmitt, the aim of this article is to contrast th…
Religion and political form
Jürgen Habermas's post-secular account is rapidly attracting attention in many fields as a theoretical framework through which to reconsider the role of religion in contemporary societies. This work seeks to go beyond Habermas's conceptualisation by placing the post-secular discourse within a broader genealogy of the relationships between space, religion, and politics. Drawing on the work of Carl Schmitt, the aim of this article is to contrast th…
Postsecular Encounters in World Politics
In a late interview, published after his death, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, looking to the future with an eye to the past, condensed in one sentence the historical and spiritual condition of his age: Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten [only a God can save us]. With this seemingly simple phrase, Heidegger cast a counter-image as intense as the one launched by Nietzsche’s philosophical cry a century earlier. For, the ‘deat…
Until the end of the world
Where do the origins of violence lie? And in what sense can our global age be defined as apocalyptic? In this article, I aim to compare Schmitt’s and Girard’s theoretical proposals about the origins, containment and diffusion of violence in order to explore the end of the Nomos and of its sacrality. My argument is that the ‘mimetical’ and the ‘political’ offer two complementary and radical visions of the origins of conflict and its containment. T…
An alternative vision of politics and violence
This article aims at introducing René Girard’s mimetic theory in the field of International Studies, identifying some of the areas of research that it might usefully open up. First, the article explores mimetic theory and some of its basic concepts—mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, the scapegoat mechanism, and the sacrificial crisis—in order to highlight the strong heuristic and analytical potential of Girard’s work. Second, the article considers …
Art and Sovereignty in Global Politics
Encounters at the end of the world
This essay aims at throwing new light on a decades-long controversy over the intellectual relation between Weber and Schmitt. This debate over time has been characterized by polar positions, with the “Weberians” who exclude any continuity between the theorist of Wertfreiheit and the Kronjurist of the Third Reich; and those who not only emphasize similarities, but also a true intellectual filiation between them. Without denying legitimacy to these…
The future of political theology and the legacy of Carl Schmitt
"Every power is transcendent; the Transcendent is power; every attempt to escape power is a way to seize power; every movement, which is directed to the prevention or limitation of power, is a seizure of power. It makes no sense and is very dangerous to oppose a political myth" (Schmitt, 1991, p. 180). Behind these cryptic words, dated July 19, 1948, lies the ‘mystery’ of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. A complex problematic that has sealed th…
Machiavelli reloaded
Heidegger and the Global Age
Globalization is one of the most contested and (ab)used concepts of our time. Whether one interprets it as a ‘collective illusion’ or as the final stage of capitalism, as ‘uncontrollable multitude’ or as a radical opening of new spaces of freedom, the ‘global age’ represents the conceptual and existential background of our being-in-the-world. But what lies behind this process? What mode of human existence is brought about by the age of technology…
The obsession with perfect health
In the developed countries, the obsession with perfect health has become a major pathogenic factor. In a world imbued with the instrumental ideals of science, the medical system creates constantly
Political ontology and international political thought
Genealogies of Political Modernity
What is political modernity? And how much of its concepts and structures has changed or remained the same with the advent of the so-called globalization? What does it mean, from a political perspective, that we live in a postmodern era? This book discusses these issues in light of the key authors and texts of the continental philosophical tradition: from Carl Schmitt to Giorgio Agamben, from Thomas Hobbes to Michel Foucault. Looking at the roots …
Proteus’s Image
According to Homer, who describes him at length in the fourth book of the Odyssey, Proteus, the ancient god of the sea and water, had the power to constantly change his shape. He was not only a shape-shifter but also an oracle, capable of peering through the depths of the sea and predicting the future to whoever was able to capture him. It does not seem hazardous to establish an analogical relationship between the twofold power of Proteus and tha…
The Debt of Time and the Secularization of Guilt
The Remains of Power
It has become commonplace to define sovereignty as an almost divine and transcendent power, a concept which has its roots in the ancient Roman world. Following Foucault’s lead, for example, Giorgio Agamben has argued that the political capture of life represents the original paradigm of the entire history of Western civilization. This ontological and Western-centric reading of sovereignty has had an enormous influence on the social and human scie…
Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious
Taking seriously Jacques Lacan’s claim that “the unconscious is politics”, this volume proposes a new understanding of political power, as it interrogates the assumption that contemporary capitalism functions by tapping into people’s forms of unconscious enjoyment, rather than providing transcendental conditions for the articulation of political meanings and desires. Whether we’re aware of it or not, political communication today targets the audi…
Introduction
This article proposes a semiotic theory of social imaginaries. Drawing on the work of Umberto Eco, Reinhart Koselleck and Martin Heidegger, it shows the logic that governs the relationship between temporality and semiosis, sign and its constant reinterpretation. In this sense, this work can be read as a sort of epistemological program that also represents the background on which the various contributors to this Special Issue have developed their …
Imaginarium politicum
Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they
Power’s Two Bodies
This article seeks to problematize Agamben’s interpretation of sovereignty in light of the “archaeological method” he uses in his Homo Sacer project. In contrast to Agamben’s exposition, which treats biopolitics as the original and ontological paradigm of Western politics, the essay discusses how, historically, sovereign power has been conceived as a “double body”—transcendent and immanent, sacred and sacrificial, absolute and perpetual—from whos…
Neoliberal citizenship
Journal Article Neoliberal citizenship: sacred markets, sacrificial lives Get access Neoliberal citizenship: sacred markets, sacrificial lives. By Luca Mavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022. 304pp. £81.00. Isbn978 0 19285 758 3. Available as e-book. Antonio Cerella Antonio Cerella Nottingham Trent University, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 2, March 2024…
On the medicalisation of global politics
This article explores the intertwining of politics and medicine by analysing how medicine has become politicized, and politics medicalized, as well as the effects of these dynamics on subjectivity, politics and the social. Rather than starting from a fixed research question or hypothesis, this work takes the form of a collaborative enquiry that “allows something to emerge” through social interaction. It unfolds through a series of encounters and …
Neoliberalism Against Society? Spontaneous Order and Governance of Desire in Digital Societies
Critical scholarship often argues that neoliberalism has caused the 'crisis' or 'destruction' of society. Drawing on Foucault's concept of power as 'productive' and focusing on digital societies, we argue that neoliberalism seeks not to dismantle society but to create societies that govern desires through market freedom. We explore Friedrich Hayek's idea that a free society is not based on social well-being or equality, but on spontaneous norms a…
Epistemology (16 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political Theology and Sovereignty (9 works) · Law (8 works) · History (6 works)