Three economies of transcendence

“Lack of political will and corruption of the ruling class are certainly enormous obstacles but do not (fully) explain the widespread inaction against our current multidimensional crisis (ecological catastrophe, failing democracies, permanent and more destructive wars, etc.).” So opens Andrea Righi’s Three Economies of Transcendence, which takes a deep philosophical dive into the fundamental dimensions of subjectivity, society, and time through the lens of transcendence. Here, Righi is joined in a wide-ranging conversation with Michael Lewis about finitude, infinitude, evolution, neoliberalism, and radical change.

Andrea Righi is a cultural theorist and professor of European studies and Italian at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Righi is author of Three Economies of Transcendence; The Other Side of the Digital: The Sacrificial Economy of New Media; and coeditor with Cesare Casarino of Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism.

Michael Lewis is senior lecturer in philosophy at University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and editor of the Journal of Italian Philosophy.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

René Girard

Adriana Cavarero

Emanuele Severino

Hannah Arendt

Paolo Virno

Jacques Lacan

Ministry for the Future / Kim Stanley Robinson

Fredric Jameson

Hardt and Negri

Three Economies of Transcendence by Andrea Righi is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Episode Transcript

Andrea Righi (00:06):
American society has become a more gerardian
society overall, probably fromthe last the Great Recession
because of the tension, becauseof the anger and the conflicts
that had not been carefullyaddressed.

Michael Lewis (00:20):
I tend to flinch when I see the word neoliberal
invoked in philosophy as if itwere an incontestable reading of
our current situation.

Andrea Righi (00:34):
Hello, everyone. My name is Andrea Rigi. I'm
professor of, European studiesand Italian at Monash University
in Australia, Melbourne,Australia. I work mostly on
critical theory, Italianthought, psychoanalysis and
feminism. I published withMinnesota a couple of works
already.
I co edited the volume withProfessor Cesare Casarino on

(00:58):
Italian feminism on diatima, theschool of thought diatima, and
then a monograph on what I callneoliberal digitality. And out
of that monograph, I started todevelop a series of talks,
online talks and interventionsthat brought me to this shorter
piece called Three Economies ofTranscendence.

Michael Lewis (01:18):
Thanks, Andrea. That was great. I'm Michael
Lewis. I'm a senior lecturer inphilosophy at the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne. It's in TheUnited Kingdom.
I often think that it's the,northern outpost of the Roman
empire because we're just nextto Hadrian's Wall. And, I live
just outside of that empire.But, I edit the Journal of
Italian Philosophy, and this ishow Andrea and I know each

(01:40):
other, because he's written twoessays, very important essays,
particularly on the Italianphilosopher, Emanuele Severino,
among others, in the Journal ofItalian Philosophy. I'm going to
recommend the listeners look atthose two essays as well, one
from 2023 and one from just thislast year, 2025, because they're
very intimately related to thebook that we're discussing. And

(02:00):
indeed, at least the first essayis explicitly referred to by
Andrea in the book.
But as for myself, I focus onphenomenology, Heidegger,
Italian thought, particularlyGiorgio Agamben, who's gonna
come up a lot, I think.

Andrea Righi (02:13):
Yeah. I think this is a great opportunity, this
kind of format that 4Runner has.And it was in conversation
actually with Lee Pennyworkabout, as I was developing these
ideas, you know, the first essayon Severino came out in the
Journal of Italian Studies. Andthis format allows you, I think,
to do something in career of awriter that you want to do, that

(02:35):
is to say, do not go for thefull monograph right away and
get bogged down into the massiveweight that that involves. Even
though you're a seasoned writer,you always hit the same kind of
work and kind of obstacles.
And instead think in a kind of along essay form, perhaps in a
little more simplistic version,because you don't have to go

(02:57):
into the grainy details of allthe elements that that you want
to that you have to discuss tocome up with a with a general
framework. And he said, presentthat framework. Present that
framework in a legible andconcise kind of way. It has
great merit. I mean, at leastfor me, it allowed me to to to
to write this piece in in a amuch easier way and with with

(03:25):
great pleasure as well.
And and that also produced, youknow, further areas of research
because I knew I couldn't gointo the detail. But, but but by
looking at that kind of idea,then, of course, I would go out
and then perhaps write a shorteressay more dedicated to to that

(03:46):
specific passage. And then andthen perhaps that will come back
as a part of the larger work.But but in general, so this is
this was a the framework is isvery simple. I was thinking
about what it is what it is thatwe are doing today with the with
the challenge of climate change.

(04:07):
What are the obstacles that arepreventing us from really,
embarking in a systemic,transformation of society? And,
of course, as you can see, thisquestion is already huge by
itself. And if I had to write afull monography, it would have
really been a multi yearprocess. But here is the idea

(04:29):
for me was to kind of give asimple version of three major
elements that I see at place.They call them economies.
Three economies, threediscursive symbolic dimensions,
of beliefs, psychological almostmechanisms that prevents us from

(04:49):
really stage this massivechange. And the first, I call it
an economy of rank, and we cango into the detail, but it's
mostly study of Rene Girard.That was one of the sources of
this project. I started to, fromthe previous book, was talking
about the sacrificial economy inour digital approach to the

(05:10):
digital world. You know, somepeople were noticing that I
didn't write a single line aboutthe hernias Girard, and so being
a good student as a goodprofessor is a good student.
So I went and did my myhomework, and I found
interesting interesting insight.So that's the economy of rank.
The second is an economy, what Icall an economy of infinite

(05:33):
valorization, as a system thatpushes us almost willingly to
participate in the expansion ofthe economy that is mostly
geared toward extractivistpractices. And then finally,
what I call a phallic economy oftime, this is really my
understanding of EmanueleSeverino's philosophy reframed

(05:57):
through the examples of someItalian and not only Italian
feminists, feminists that belongto the thought of sexual
difference or French Italianconnection as well in there. And
so, you know, three economiesand basically three three major
concepts.
One is a short theory of thesubject, because the economy of

(06:19):
rank is a theory of the subjectand desire. The theory of, we
can call it space too, becausethe economy of infinite
valorization is weighing, youknow, it's also a psycho
geographic space that weinhabit. And then time, of
course, as as as the other thirdelement, very classical approach

(06:39):
to philosophy of subject spaceand time. That's that those are
the fundamentals you want tohave in mind as you go about it.

Michael Lewis (06:47):
Brilliant. Thanks, Andrea. That's a great
introduction. So I should say, Iforgot to say before the reason
I was going on about being atthe northern limits of the,
Roman empire was because I Ithought you were in Italy,
Andrea. Is that is that whereyou are at the moment?

Andrea Righi (06:58):
That is right. At the time at this time, yes.

Michael Lewis (07:00):
You're not in Rome by any chance, are you?

Andrea Righi (07:02):
No. No. We're not too far from Rome. Like, we are
at the border, like, the, youknow, Umbria was unmaxed by the
the Romans, and they but theyretained their identities to
this day. So it's there's alwaysan empire at periphery, and we
are the Christian empire.

Michael Lewis (07:19):
That's almost as good. It would have been perfect
if you were in Rome, but that'salmost as good. I I genuinely I
wanted to say I genuinely don'task these questions from a
position of superiority. I don'tthink I've understood
everything. Particularly, thematerial on money and a lot of
the material on neoliberalism isis just something I genuinely
don't understand.
But I'm gonna start with somegeneral questions about
imminence and transcendence andthis whole terminology. Well, I

(07:40):
suppose the first thing Ithought when I was reading this,
was that you were going to pitinfinity against finitude. So in
other words, you're I thoughtyou were going to be mainly
putting infinity on the side ofwhat you call neoliberalism. And
what I thought was going tohappen was that you were going
to say, here you have, this ideaof infinite growth, an

(08:02):
infinitely long possibility forextracting and so on and so on.
And on the other side, I thoughtI was going to see something
like not infinite growth, butfinite growth or even limits to
growth or degrowth.
And I'm not entirely sure thatreally happens in the end
because what's so curious aboutand so interesting about what
you do is in some sense whatends up happening is you

(08:24):
translate this oppositionbetween neoliberalism and
whatever you want to positagainst it. You translate that
opposition in terms oftranscendence on the one hand
and imminence on the other. Andalthough there's lots of little
details we'll have to go throughand lots of little things I
don't don't understand aboutGirard and so on and and all
sorts of other people, Vernaultand eventually Severino and

(08:45):
Caballero and Arendt, I mean,maybe I'm jumping in too quickly
with a really big question, butwe have to focus on this notion
of imminence. I study Agamben,so maybe this is coloring my
initial attempt to understandthis opposition. But is there
some sense in which when youtalk about imminence, you're
talking about life?
And transcendence is every sortof sovereign power which would

(09:11):
exceed life and come to somehowcontrol or distort life. Mean,
is there any just as a sort ofstarting position, I mean, maybe
you can say why transcendenceand imminence is a particularly
good way, or or simply you cansay why transcendence and
imminence was the way you choseto translate the opposition that
you're positing, if it is anopposition. But also, yeah, I

(09:33):
mean, maybe is there anything inthat way of describing
transcendence versus imminenceas imminence is life with all
its potentiality, andtranscendence is sovereign power
and control that comes todiminish it in some way. Because
you did talk about in theintroduction about systems of
control that emanate fromtranscendence. But is that is

(09:54):
there anything in that way ofputting the problem?

Andrea Righi (09:57):
Mike, you absolutely nailed the point. It
it I I would completely agreethat my understanding of
imminence is geared towards thenotion of life, whereas
transcendence is this is a pointthat Severino makes is is a kind
of and others is a fear of ofdeath and a fear of harm that
produces institutions that wantsto protect life, but instead

(10:20):
they they end up undermining it,deport deportienciating it, and
hurting it as we see today in,you know, with the multi crisis
that we are living. So that isabsolutely correct. I would also
say the contrast betweenfinitude and infinity, it is

(10:41):
something that I I amelaborating a little bit more
now as well. The most directanswer would be falling onto the
the idea of that finitude limitis the right way to go.
And I'm not saying that in inwhen we when we are discussing
the the climate impact, therethere are some I know there
there's a big argument fordiminishing our consumption

(11:04):
rates, for stopping fossil fuel,extraction and and so forth. And
the paradigm of the growth iscertainly one that can, be
applied to that. However, from alarger kind of theoretical
point, understanding, reality,substance, whatever you want to
call it, as as a dimension thathas limits, and that is somehow

(11:28):
ordered, that is somehowharmonic, that historically,
historically pushes us back intothe trap of transcendence. We
have the division between goodand evil. We have the division
between man and and woman.
That's that's kind of, I thinkthat's kind of dangerous, and it
does reactivate the mechanismof, transcendence. So the

(11:52):
infinite dimension of life, Ithink, is the best way to we
have to understand our current,you know, life in general. It is
also a way to critique anunderstanding of neoliberalism
as infinite growth, infiniteextraction, infinite, you know,
infinite expansion. Because thisinfinity of life has no

(12:14):
direction, is not finalistic. Itis completely unexpected.
It is nonlinear. However, itdoes carry enormous potential,
even in the worst of time, thedarkest hour. When everything
seems to have been set andclosed, we need to remember that

(12:34):
there is an infinity in oursocial dimension, which comes
probably from the natural worldand the animals that we are as
well, from our psychologicalpsychoanalytic libidinal
dimension that always allows fora breakthrough for innovation is
good innovation. It's not theinnovation. The innovation we
see today, every singleinnovation we see today,

(12:56):
starting from our job, wherethey ask us to improve, whatever
measurement of, educational goalwe have, or the next report we
have or the next software wehave to use so that everything
is better coordinated, moreefficient.
That's not real innovation. Theinnovation is the unexpected
that breaks, that breaks theboundaries and reshapes life,

(13:19):
hopefully in a more democratic,collective and collective way.
So on the side of life, haveinfinity, you have a social
infinity that has always beenthere, and that is, you know, it
can engender a future. Again,this innovation does not produce
future. If you if you look atthe the big tech bros as they
call them today, and but theyare all very sad about the fact

(13:42):
that we are we don't have afuture anymore.
Like, is they keep asking thisquestion. What is the future
that we imagine in nineteenfifties and sixties, like the
flying cars, whatever theirdifferential future? They are at
the forefront of thetechnological innovation, and
they feel this lack of a future.Right? If they can't do it, that
means that really, the logicthat they're following is
broken, is not producing the thethe new that we need.

Michael Lewis (14:05):
That's great. I mean, again, I don't know if
this is tangential, but just totry to understand this notion of
transcendence a bit more. Whenyou talk about Paolo Verno, you
talk about transcendentinstitutions as if institutions,
which they certainly do,transcended life. Is the idea of
an institution one way ofunderstanding not just
transcendence, but the waytranscendence emerges from

(14:27):
immanence or from life? Becausethis is another part of, I
think, what you what you'resaying in some places, which is
that somehow all there is isimmanence, and transcendence is
always going to be somethingthat erupts from within it.
Are institutions of any interestto you? I mean, or is that just
a little aside?

Andrea Righi (14:46):
It is a big topic. And again, I agree that, you
know, all there is is immanence,and then transcendence bubbles
up. And and and then we live inthat kind of bubble for a while
until it pops again. You know, II come from a tradition that
that sort of emphasizes the ideaof self management and and

(15:08):
collective organization. I Icome from a not just a
philosophical background, buteven a social background.
I was born in in the nearRegimilia, which is a city in a
region that that has a longhistory of leftist communal
engagement from a educationalpoint of view too. The the the
most advanced experiments inearly childhood education

(15:30):
happened in the town ofRegimilla. And they started out
around this kind of reflectionof, you know, how can we
liberate life, governing,however, the mechanisms that
that we need to, not just tosurvive, but to prosper as a
community, right? So I haven'tdedicated much, you know, much

(15:53):
time on the issue of institutionas positive now as a new, I
think a new book on institution,which now that I'm in Italy, I
should probably buy and bring itback to Australia with me and
think it and think about it. Sofar, I've been interested in the
negative transcendentinstitution, mostly and how they
and how they perpetrate not justa system of control, but a

(16:16):
willing control ofself-servitude, which is kind of
remarkable, the way in which wekind of embrace it, and we
farther it.
This is where psychoanalysiscomes into play in the notion of
the other as a kind of symbolicentity that pushes us to always,
you know, participate, improve,that makes us feel guilty in
debt to whatever institutionthat we are facing, and makes

(16:40):
us, always pay more, work moreand so forth. That's that's and
that has ancient truth that I ama modernist, but I am studying,
you know, medieval philosophyrecently. I started to study
medieval philosophy tounderstand really how this
symbolic space is created andhow it functions.

Michael Lewis (17:02):
No. That's great. Think I'll come back to the
question of institutions justbecause when we start talking
about birth and this infinitemetanomic series of births,
which you use as a way tounderstand or to modify perhaps
Severino's understanding ofeternity. It just I mean, one of
the things I think I had in theback of my mind there was that
there is another way for life toendure beyond the individual

(17:26):
lifespan. And the institution isa way that that's been thought.
And this has some relation tothe notion of history as well, I
think the endurance of memoriesin some sort of objective form.
And I wonder if one could saymore in the end about the notion
of institution. It may be a morepositive sense of institutions
than the negative, more lifedenying ones that I think you

(17:48):
were focusing on. Shall we moveon to chapter one and talk about
this is the economy of rank, andwe're talking about subjectivity
and desire and Rene Girard inparticular. I want to hear more
about this notion ofneoliberalism.
I suppose as a philosopher, Ialways have some difficulty with
the idea that I mean, this seemsto be an empirical thesis or

(18:11):
it's sort of an empirical Idon't know. I I think I had the
same reaction to this notion ofclimate change as well. I mean,
I wonder what status all ofthese statements about climate
change and about neoliberalism,about our present moment, about
crisis and catastrophe. I wonderwhat status they have. I mean,
in some case, they're meant tobe, I suppose, in the case of

(18:33):
climate change, say, naturalscientific statements, which are
inherently revisable andrefutable.
At least they're subject torefutation. My concern is always
that I mean, philosophy tries todeal with the apodictic, the
absolutely certain, thenecessary, the universal. And I
I suppose I I'm alwaysinterested in and worried about

(18:54):
the possibility of incorporatingempirical data within philosophy
or empirical statements orstatements which are
contestable. I tend to flinchwhen I see the word neoliberal
invoked in philosophy as if itwere an incontestable reading of

(19:14):
our current situation. And Iwould say the same about crisis
catastrophe, about climatechange, and which could be taken
to mean any number of things,but it seems to me, there are
certain empirical naturalscientific elements to it, which
are always contestable.
I would find it difficult as aphilosopher to speak with such
certainty about either climatechange or neoliberalism, as if

(19:36):
they were just establishedcertainties.

Andrea Righi (19:38):
Yeah. Yeah. No. No. It's an excellent question.
I mean, the way I came tophilosophy theory in general,
and that the way I kind of feltfreer to think, I started to
read authors that legitimized apersonal engagement with the
problem that you are facing.That is to say, this is a lesson

(19:59):
from the school of sexualdifference, Giotima School, is
very important for feminists andfor women in general is to start
from your own condition, tostart from yourself. And so
neoliberalism, if I want totrace the moment which I I I
realized that I wanted to write,I wanted to teach and discuss

(20:21):
these things, it was at the turnof the last century when I was
involved in the climatestruggles in Europe, the no
global movement in Europe thatwas contesting the direction
that our economies were going.And it's remarkable how the
things as young kids weresaying, can be certainly
contested, but they're prettypretty close in terms of the

(20:43):
impact that our economies hadtoday. That became relevant to
me.
The idea that I can betterunderstand, not just
individually my condition, butthe things that I see around me,
the community I live in, thetransformation of work. You
know, we are from a generationthat saw the transformation of
work before our eyes because myfather and mother, they already

(21:07):
they still work in a kind ofFordist economy with a clear
division, mostly clear divisionbetween working time and non
working time. And I remembergrowing up, we were some of our
teachers were telling us likethis is not going to last,
you're gonna have to be able tobe flexible, you have to be able
to change and and be versatileand creative. And so so the new
economy that was coming up, theeconomy of that involved a

(21:30):
mixing of working time, noworking time, a full involvement
of the intellectual, sensitive,physical capabilities that you
had in the work that you do.This is, you know, this is true
for us as professors, but it'strue for our friends who are not

(21:50):
professors, and they, you know,they're involved in works that
long, that last very long, andthey drain them, because they're
using every single bit of their,of their body and their mind and
so forth.
So the paradigm of neoliberalismfor me, and you can discuss, is
it post Fordism, isneoliberalism, but there's some
concepts and some of them Ipoint out that are really

(22:11):
important for me to understand,you know, our life today, that
that make it relevant as aconcept, as not not so much as a
economic only, economic concept,or not so much as a natural
science concept, mostly as alived experience, I think. To go
back to your idea of life, thereason why we're doing this is

(22:33):
because it's our life. We areinvolved in it. And it's
consequential, at least at thecognitive level. I don't I'm not
saying you have to go out and doa revolution.
But at least from a cognitiveperspective, and the way which
we relate to the world byunderstanding this is this is
important. And that's why I basemost of my work on on that.

(22:54):
Yeah.

Michael Lewis (22:55):
Thank you. That's great. Well, so let's talk about
Rene Girard and how his workrelates to neoliberalism. So, I
mean, you draw an empiricalconnection between Peter Thiel
and you say Rene Girard is ateacher of of his. There is some
direct I mean, I always think itis quite interesting how there
really are philosophers.
I didn't know Rene Girard wasone of them, but I know there
are philosophers, people likeLeo Strauss and so on, and who

(23:17):
have, you know, had this verydirect impact on the way in
which at least Americanpolitics, but yes, a lot of this
politics we've described asneoliberal, actually unfolded.
And so there is alwaysphilosophy in the background, or
quite often there's philosophyin the background of actual
politics. But I don't think youwant to place that much weight
on that particular empiricalconnection. So then so let's

(23:39):
talk about Rene Girard's theory.I mean, you use it to illuminate
something about the nature ofneoliberalism, and I wonder if
you could clarify a bit morewhat that is.
And I have a nice a beautifulyou have a beautiful summary at
the end. I think it's quite nearthe end of the chapter. I'm
quoting you. In the economy ofrank, transcendence operates
both as an imperative todominate others via the
possession of the desiredobject. So this is the mimetic

(24:02):
theory of desire of jiroir.
And so transcendence operatesboth as an imperative to
dominate others via thepossession of the desired object
and as an injunction to preservethe group via the othering of a
sacrificial victim. This is thescapegoat in Girard's theory,
and this is, yeah, and this isfascinating. I suppose in terms
of the I mean, I'd love you tosay something about the the the

(24:24):
mimetic notion of desire and howthat illuminates the nature of
neoliberalism. But, also, Ican't remember where the
scapegoat comes in there intothe neoliberal mindset.

Andrea Righi (24:34):
Perfect. Thank you. It's it's yeah. So Renjira
is a fascinating author, verypowerful in a way to examine,
certain mechanisms that that areall about rivalry, though. And
this idea that my mises, heturns mimesis as a powerhouse
for rivalry.

(24:55):
So Stanford is the connection,because he was teaching at
Stanford, and then he brought upa series of intellectuals, some
of them who then went into otherareas such as, you know,
financial capital or or thedigital world. My means is, in
the way to explain it very easy,and that's how I use it to my
students is Gerard is a greatauthor to use to study

(25:19):
literature so that you, you getsomething spicy about literature
without getting, you know, allthe general theoretical and
historical background, and thenyou can introduce that. But
anyway, it's it's a great authorto study, mafia films, for
instance, and, all sorts ofepic, like, Ariosto like,
narrative, literature. Why?Because Girard begins by saying,

(25:42):
we live in sameness.
As human groups, we are allmixed up into this sameness,
which naturally we despise. Wedon't want to be the same as
others. So we select at acertain point, either nature
does it for us or we do, we doit. We select an object that is
going to work as a statussymbol, that is going to elevate

(26:05):
us, from the rest of the group.And the more this object, draws
some, attention and is collectedby the others, the more we feel
that we have made the rightdecision.
That produces the push toimitate each other. In this
imitation, we start to have aconflict because, obviously,
this object has to be singularobject. But, again, it it loses

(26:28):
the status of an object. It'ssimply a symbolic position
because, it is an element, anentity that is selected, and
then it becomes the same foreverybody. So it's not singular
in any case.
If everybody wants the samething, it's it's the same thing
for everybody. It's just thisposition of distinction. If we
occupy this position ofdistinction, we dominate the

(26:48):
rest of the group. Now, Girardalso says that in this process,
there is violence, there'sconflict, and the community
starts to break apart, and youstart to have this kind of
internal struggle and civil war.When that happens, you have
stress in the group, and youhave a feeling system.
Similarly, to the object ofdesire, now you select a

(27:10):
scapegoat, you select somebody,something that carries the
blame, everybody agrees again,so it's not singular, it's not
really, in fact, the scapegoatis not really, guilty of
anything. The important thing isthat the group decides that it's
guilty. And that becomessusceptible of the anger and
tension. And then you go throughsacrificial mechanisms that have

(27:33):
to be institutionalized, theyhave to be, kind of ritualized.
And and that purges the groupfrom the evil that the group
itself have brought onthemselves, right?
So some scholars, not only I'vesaid that Donald Trump
presidency is a particularGirardian presidency. But I

(27:56):
would argue that Americansociety has become a more
Girardian society overall,probably, you know, from the
last the great recession becauseof the tension, because of the
anger and the conflicts that arenot being carefully addressed.
You have this bad energyrevolving around, and and Trump
is very good at one thing. Hecatalyzed the energy and

(28:18):
directed towards a meaningfultarget, let's say. And in what
sense is it neoliberal?
Well, I think here, Peter Thielis is really, a good example
because when he like, PeterThiel is somebody who
understands the the sciencebehind climate change, and he's
is is concerned about that. Notgonna go, however, into a

(28:40):
systemic transformation ofsociety to address the causes.
The point he makes is that if wegroup think, he says, if we kind
of reuse this original sameness,then we are bound to make
mistakes more than if we startwe are we we produce an economy

(29:02):
of rank, where somebody, anindividual, a free spirit has an
intuition that is the silverbullet that will solve our
problems. The other issue isthat the rank economy because it
pushes us on to always raise thebar is really a neoliberal
economy where you want youyou're constantly trying to work

(29:22):
harder, you're constantly tryingto improve your portfolio,
cultural portfolio, whatever youwant to call your visibility,
your marketability. And so ifyou are in a struggle in a
competition with others, butmostly with yourself.

Michael Lewis (29:37):
Yeah. No. That's great. Because there's another
and there's another line Iwanted to quote where you you
talk about the neoliberal elite.So when you talk about the
economy of rank, we're talkingabout what you describe here as
the healthy competition of theso called free market.
So this is what the neoliberalwants. He wants there to be
unregulated. In the extremeforms of neoliberalism, the
market is not to be regulated.The market always tells the

(29:59):
truth, as Foucault put it whenhe was analyzing neoliberalism.
The market has to be free.
And so this is neoliberalism.You have a lovely line here. So
because it's all about samenessand difference. So in other
words, the neoliberal eliteequates the condition of
sameness to any form of socialintervention, so I suppose state
intervention maybe, while itmagnifies the true difference

(30:20):
produced by the healthycompetition of the so called
free market. So this rivalry andthe economy of rank is all about
competing on the free market.
And then sameness then isequated to the equalizing
effects of state intervention.

Andrea Righi (30:37):
Right. The redistribution. I mean, this
this is redistribution is is ais a scandal. You know, it's
it's like a taboo war. You can'tsay, like, it is in this cult,
in this religion, redistributionand sort of collective
organization is what must becondemned because it is liable

(30:58):
of a crime, basically, ofreligious, you know, vice or a
sin.
It's a sin. That's what it is.It's a sin, because that's what
we want to depart from. Javi isvery good at highlighting the
system from the beginning.Sameness is our original
condition.
We we struggle to move away fromit. We don't want to go back to
that sameness, which is bad.

Michael Lewis (31:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk let's say something
else about this sameness becausethis was interesting because
there is a footnote you have onJacques Lacan, the
psychoanalyst. And it's almostas if it's quite early on in
chapter one. And it's almost asif you you sort of say that
Girard's account of desire isgoing to be reductive.
I mean, it's always it's not asif it's entirely wrong, but what

(31:41):
you want to say is that it onlyapplies to certain arenas in
human life. Now there's there isa footnote pointed towards Lacan
who has, I mean, something incommon with Gerard. I mean, I
don't know I don't even know howwell what their relation was.
But in any case, I suppose Iwanted to say one thing that
really struck me was that youwere saying that if you have a
purely mimetic theory of desire,that my desire is the desire of

(32:04):
the other. So I only desiresomething because you desire
What you inferred from that isthat think this is how you mean
it, but you'll have to tell meif I've got this right.
Prior to this rivalry, ourdesire is something like some
sort of homogeneous mass. Itdoesn't have any individuality.

(32:26):
My thought when I was readingthis was if you were a Lacanian
rather than a Girardian, you'dprobably say something like
before the stage of desire,which is dialectical, in the
sense that it's all bound upwith my perception of what you
desire. Before that, you don'tjust have a kind of homogeneous
libido or a kind of, anythinghomogeneous. I mean, if you were

(32:49):
a Lacanian, you'd probably sayyou had need and you had demand.
Maybe drive would be in there aswell. In other words, you'd have
something differentiated. Idon't know at all where I'm
going with this, except to saythat I'd like to hear more about
what you meant when you weretalking about Girard's, notion
of desire as having a veryhomogenising effect. But also

(33:13):
whether what's the role of Lacanhere, if he has any? And does he
provide a better account of whatyou go on to call the human
invariance that we're going totalk about in a minute?

Andrea Righi (33:25):
Yeah. I think Lacan and the feminists of the
eighties, they already had posedsome of the reductive element of
Shirar. In simple terms, we wecan say that there is a way to
read Lakhan, particularlyseminar twentieth, the the
seminar entitled encore on asexuation. It's not standard,

(33:46):
you know, Lacanian approachesthat, you know, I belong to a
kind of current that looks atthat and says, yes, there is the
the desire of the other, whichis the father on a position of
exceptionality. The small objecta, not it's not fulfillable.
So you keep on desiring, youpick on them. At this level, I
think you have a slightly betterversion of of Girard, but not

(34:11):
something substantially better.And and I there is but then,
however, when he talks aboutfeminine sexuation, Lacan seems
to be saying that because of theparticular positionality of the
feminine, it doesn't have to bethis is not gender specific.

(34:34):
It's the position you inhabitwith respect to reality. Okay?
You can swing between amasculine and a feminine.
There's a feminine position orpositionality where you are not
completely under the spell ofthis other big other who's
always telling you what you needto desire. And you are then
allowed instead to meet theother as not capital O, but the

(34:59):
other as the individual entity,the individual person, the
individual animal, the thingthat stands before you as a
singularity. So you meet and youencounter that in that shocking
moment, as somebody who isdetached from yourself, who is
surprising you in because it'snot something that you have

(35:19):
desired beforehand, who couldelicit desire, could elicit
other feelings as well. Andthat's a much better
understanding of mimesis.
Because how did you know, herewe go into, you know, what
animal studies have now clearlykind of articulated. Did we

(35:41):
learn to be human? And what ishuman? Like, if human is not
animal, this is a little bit thepoint that the government makes.
If human is not animal, how didmen and women produce humanity?
Is they would, of course, thatthere was a genius one day,
Leonardo da Vinci of the timewho had the idea of language
over so, of course, you don'thave scientists who who who are

(36:05):
that simplistic. But if you havea gradualist option, I think,
you know, you're born to go downthat route of discovery or some
sort of discovery, sort ofmutation. Instead, you have
other people in the animalstudies, field who are who are
talking about amineses, whereanimals imitate each other. And

(36:28):
they produce a hybrid dimensionwhere they contaminate each
other. And then upon thathybridization, then of course,
you have evolution, and you haverandom chances, and you know,
you have consequences and otherfuture evolution that perhaps
produce what, whatever you wantto call humanity, today, right?

(36:49):
So there's a different mimesis,a different imitation at stake,
the imitation that Girard plays,and he applies it to the whole
of Western civilization goingprobably earlier than that as
well. So he actually wants topresent a theory of
harmonization, right, throughrivalry. That's only a partial

(37:12):
mechanism that works very wellfor mafia films. If you wanna
understand mafia films, you havetwo guys who want one girl, and
then they start shooting eachother in this rivalry. So, when
I was teaching Italian mafiafilms, good introduction of
Girard, and then the studentshad enough theory to enjoy the

(37:33):
film in a different way thansimply the shooting and the
blood and the, you know, thefrill of, of the the moment in
which something surprisinghappens.
So that's that's a little bitwhat I was trying to point in
the book. And, of course, youknow, it's going to need more
more time and work to articulatebetter.

Michael Lewis (37:52):
That's great. So I think that brings us on to the
next figure, Paolo Viano, in hisessay on negation, which comes
in here. So he referred to thenotion of mirror neurons as a
kind of primordial natural typeof mimesis that's involved in
the human relation to the other.The only thing I wanted to just
talk about I mean, Viano is, Ithink what you think is that
he's quite anthropocentric, orat least he he doesn't quite

(38:14):
recognize this process that youcall zoo mimesis. So in other
words, I don't know if you ifyou say this explicitly, but
when Vernaud talks about themirror neurons, does he just say
they're in only in humans?

Andrea Righi (38:24):
Yes. Yes. So and and I think Alessitu, in an
essay where he's talking toabout Gerard, and he's
acknowledging Gerard, butsaying, yes. You're right. But
mirror neurons also help us,being a collectivity, a
eccentric place.
You know, they have this blindspot. Leon has this blind spot.
Yes.

Michael Lewis (38:41):
Yeah. Yeah. And you say so he what he relies on,
Helmut Plessner. I mean, I'm I'mnot quite I don't quite remember
him coming up, but I knowexactly what you mean. The human
being is the only eccentricanimal.
And what you've shown is thateccentricity is common in the
animal kingdom as well as thehuman. The only question I had
is whether that has much effectin the end because there's still

(39:04):
a kind of, and I think rightful,human exceptionalism here
because we end up in thisposition where because of the
human I don't know you have totell me whether you think this
is a specifically humancapacity, which is the next so
the next stage in Vienna'sargument is to do with negation,
which is largely premised uponthe ability to speak. So again,

(39:30):
I'm not quite sure I rememberthis very well, but let's say
negation is a linguisticlinguistic capacity for Vienna.
You can only negate if you havelanguage and can append the
perfect you you can say not ornon. So there are two levels of
this negation.
You have this ability to say,yes, this is not a man, and then
you have the double negation orthe next stage, which is to say,

(39:52):
This is not not a man. But thething is that what struck me was
that you still end up sayingthat there is something special
about the human being and thatthe human being can be
particularly destructive thanksto this capacity to negate,
particularly brutal,particularly nasty, and this
perhaps has particularlydeleterious effects when it

(40:14):
comes to the environment. But Iwondered I mean, this a good
question or not? I mean, doesthis question about the
anthropocentric Plesnerianunderstanding of eccentricity,
does that have much force here?Does it have many effects here?
Because I think in a way agreewith Vernon so much. And and it

(40:35):
all does come down to a certainhuman exceptionalism.

Andrea Righi (40:40):
I agree. I think, you know, perhaps the only
slight academic philosophicaldistinction could be made that
is it's not a qualitativeessence, but it's a quantitative
mechanism. That is to say, thescale to which negation in
humanity can be deployed isgreater than other, probably any
other animal species. Up untilvery recently, up until I

(41:03):
started to, you know, inquire alittle bit more into the issue
of the animal, I was very muchin that camp, where I just
assumed that human language in away is different, qualitatively
different. But then I had a dogwho I could, sometimes I could
not trick him.
He would read my lie. And if youassume that animal language is

(41:26):
solely primarily iconic, it's adirect message and a response.
Lying and joking, they become aproblem. Right? It it is kind of
hard to explain it.
And also, go back to the issueof infinity. I think we still
know very little about the humankingdom. So there is a variety
of behaviors and abilities thatperhaps we don't know, we don't

(41:51):
keep in mind. Yes.

Michael Lewis (41:54):
Yeah. Thank you. That's great. Let's move on to
chapter two. I don't have thatmuch to say about this.
So this is where you end uptalking about Kim Stanley
Robinson's novel Ministry forthe Future. I mean, why this
recourse to science fiction? Imean, I am very interested in
the presence of science fictionand philosophy. I think this
begins with Leibniz. This is myhypothesis anyway.
In other words, the postulationof possible worlds. And, you

(42:16):
know, philosophers areinterested in these, notions of
possible worlds, and it's all todo with necessity and
contingency and so on. And theonly thing I had to say about
this one was because I have aslight doubt about digital
currency, or at least think thatthere are certain things one
could say that would becritical, and not just of
Bitcoin, which you're explicitlycritical of. But I think every
digital currency, it it doesworry me a bit, or at least I

(42:40):
think there there will be somequestions about the loss of
cash, the loss of physicalmoney, and so on. What role is
this particular fiction playing?
Because it's a very particularvision of the future, which you
do seem to endorse, I think. Imean, up to a point at least, or
at least you say I I think whatyou what you say is that it's it
it offers a counter narrative toone which is currently dominant,

(43:01):
and that's the value of it. ButI suppose in general, my
question is to what extent doyou think it offers the best
solution to the problem that thebook's addressing? And could you
say something about why youappeal to a science fiction or a
fictional example rather thansomething else?

Andrea Righi (43:17):
Yeah. Thank you, though. It's, look. I think
money is is is really the way,and I'm not an expert too. I had
to educate myself.
But but this is a philosophicalconcept as well. So I was very
interested in it because it's away to measure and to protect
the social infinity that we havebeen talking about, which is
weird because we we think aboutmoney as a private property as

(43:39):
something you accumulate. Youdon't wanna give away, but this
is not really what economistssay regarding, money. Right? And
it's science fiction.
Let me go back to the moment inwhich the turn of last century
when I decided to do what I'mdoing now. I was a master's
student at UCSD, University ofCalifornia, San Diego, And

(44:02):
Frederick Jameson came to visitbecause one of my professor
there, Massawa Miyoshi, both ofthem are not alive anymore, but
because they were friends and heinvited him over. And I was an
avid reader of science fiction.And and also at that time,

(44:23):
Michael Hart and and Tony Negribook Empire came out, which read
like a science fiction book. Iwas studying philosophy already,
but with a lot of it had quite alot of work.
Instead, I encountered aphilosophical book that was as
pleasurable and readable as a asa as a science fiction novel.

(44:44):
Right? So you have this thismoment in time where the empire
is on the rise. I I'm readingI'm meeting with Franklin
Jameson who who tell us abouthis great love of of Philip K
Dick. And King Stanley Robinson,was a student of Frankie Jameson
at UCSD.
He was a PhD student who wantedto do literature, and Frankie

(45:07):
Jameson told them write thesison Philip K Dick, which he
didn't even under knew. Andthen, not probably not like too
much, but he wrote thedissertation, and then he became
a science fiction writer. Okay.So there is this affinity, this
weird affinity. We I've neverwe've never met him.
But we we our lives somehow areconnected through that. And then

(45:29):
when this book came out, it didpresent a kind of a fun and
plausible positive narrativethat goes against the grain of
all the dystopic things we keepon seeing, like the, you know,
TV series. We love to watch thenext one, but but there's a
there's a lack of instead ofutopian of utopian, right, of

(45:51):
utopian narratives. And so init, I found some ways to clarify
what I was thinking aboutthrough plot twist and
characters. And this idea of thedigital currency, which was
created by Delton Chan, who's awho's a Australian environmental
engineer, which I I I personallymet then to talk about his his

(46:15):
proposal, which solves one ofthe big problem that we have
today.
Whenever you have to find moneyto make serious intervention
into the society, into theenvironment, you have a tax
problem. You have to raise taxesthat that prevents prevent it
from really achieving theescape, the the scale of the

(46:35):
thing that needs to be done.Instead, if central banks, it's
a big if, of course, but if butit's a science fiction book as
well. If central banks produce,a digital currency that is
backed by central banks, youwould have a line you would have
a quantitative easing of of thescale that would be a much
larger than what we had before.It would enable to produce a

(46:57):
cash flow that will help us toto move towards the new society
that we need to to have.
It's digital currency onlybecause of the blockchain
technology. It seems to be avery strong and useful
technology, piece of technologythat that solves a lot of
technical problems that youwould have to with currency
anyway, but it is disconnectedwith the crypto world that, you

(47:20):
know, it doesn't have to beconnected with that kind of work
or because you also have theanarcho capitalist, like Peter
Thiel and others who are who arewell invested in the crypto
world. So this would be acounter, you know, that's
dystopian, this is utopian, it'sa counter narrative that offers
something that we very muchneed, in in the near future that

(47:41):
I actually need today already.

Michael Lewis (47:43):
Brilliant. Thanks so much. So chapter three, I
mean, this is the one where Ihave the most unfortunately,
I've messed left the mostphilosophical and perhaps the
most difficult questions to theend. And this comes to bear on
the pieces that you've writtenfor my journal, The Journal of
Italian Philosophy, to do withImmanueli Severino, and this
idea of eternity. What'sbrilliant so the the basic move

(48:05):
that I think you make here andthat you made in the second,
yes, the second article youpublished on Severino and
feminist philosophy.
So the move is to takeSeverino's notion of eternity
and to explicate it by means offeminist philosophy,
particularly Adriana Cabrera,but also here Hannah Arendt. I

(48:26):
suppose I just wanted to ask youfirst about the general strategy
there. I mean, do you take itthat there is something missing
in Severino's account ofeternity and time that needs to
be supplemented by the feministnotion of birth, maternity, and
so on. Or so this notion of aninfinite chain of births, is
that a concretization of whatSeverino says? And there could

(48:49):
be other concretizations.
Or is it is this the best or theonly way to understand what
Severino is talking about here?

Andrea Righi (48:56):
Yeah. No. You you framed perfectly the, you know,
the the the issues that that youface when you when you read such
a interesting writer andphilosopher like Severino. And
it's a great philosophical work,very, very deep. But it leaves
you with a question that youcannot, I mean, myself, I cannot
reconcile myself with, like thisthis idea of eternity, which

(49:20):
somehow always slips intomortality.
Right? And and and, you you haveyou have interviews of Severino
talking about, you know, thewife who recently passed away
and not, you know, and sayingthat she's eternal. Right?
Right? So it's it's quitestriking.
And and then again, he says, youknow, the important thing is

(49:42):
that your notion of death is notdeath itself. How do you die? Do
you die with this notion ofeternity? You die and you're
thinking that you go intonothingness, right? Or that
you'd be resurrected and soforth, right?
So, but for me, as an atheistthinker, it's difficult. It's
really difficult to do. Sofeminism, for me was a way to
make it concrete andmaterialistic in a Marxian

(50:05):
sense, through the notion of theinfinite chain of birth, which,
again, it is infinite or iseternal in what sense? Not
eternal as all enduring, becauseof course, we know that our
species is not eternal, will notbe eternal, and and that it was
not here many, many years ago.So it's a way of making it more

(50:31):
concrete and viable for forusing an important element that
Cavarino discusses and exploresvery well, the idea of nihilism
that we live in a verynihilistic time because we
understand time as somethingdisposable, destructible, and

(50:53):
that we can possess.
So rescuing some sort ofinfinity, which is a social
infinity we can call eternity ifyou just think about thousands
and thousands of years agoalready for for a human being.
It is a form of eternity. Itwill be a lot better than the
short term thinking that we havetoday. Right? It doesn't go
beyond two weeks.

(51:15):
That's the deadline that we wewe pose for ourselves.

Michael Lewis (51:20):
One of my first responses to some of this was to
think what's happening here?What is being urged? So
sometimes you speak in quite anapocalyptic tone, you know, as
you speak about a massextinction that's being
threatened. There is somethingreally dreadful that's going to
happen. And my sense was thatand I don't know if that is past

(51:40):
the reason why.
I got the sense that on a firstreading, thought, what sort of
life is being promised to us bythis type of environmental
discourse? Is it just a life ofpure survival? So I thought that
my first sense was a lot of themI a of the way you speak here

(52:00):
seems to be in terms of we justneed to survive. There is a
catastrophe coming. All thatmatters is that we need to the
human race at least, or life,perhaps nonhuman life, needs to
endure.
And then I came to think, well,does the stress on feminist
philosophy and birth becauseobviously my response as as sort
of an Agambenian is to think,well, it's there's something

(52:20):
much more important thansurvival. There's something much
more important than bare life,bare survival. And it's it's
it's some sort of good life orit's some sort of form of life.
But then I thought, well,perhaps the point I'm missing
the point, which is the feministphilosophy point to do with
birth. And one of the reasonsone might want to stress
survival or mere life is partlybecause of this notion of birth.

(52:46):
Is there something to be saidfor that? Like, because what
what sort of a life are welooking at in the future, you
know, assuming we do take allthe measures necessary to
overcome or mitigate the theenvironmental problems?

Andrea Righi (52:59):
Yes. Yes. No. I I know. In the best case scenario,
we would have a much better lifebecause this transformation
would would would, you know,imply a radical change in all
sectors of of it's not justabout banning fossil fuel
industry at this point.
It it won't, you know, it won'tbe enough. It's it we need to

(53:19):
take this kind of verminapproach that you need to see
the materiality we are the ofthe condition that you have
before you understand where thetransformation, the seed of the
future are buried, you know,cultivate them, and that will
change the whole system as well.You know, Agavan says the same

(53:41):
thing too, he says a realrevolution, to go forward with
the real revolution, you have tonegate yourself as a subject to
you come out the other way, assomething different. So that's,
you know, that's the utopian,you know, the kind of utopian, a
flatness push that I that Ifollow it, like, I do not
develop it in the in the shortbook. And in a way, Kim Stanley

(54:03):
Robinson, at the end of thenovel, very long ending, he he,
you know, he traces the contoursof these new society, much more
equal society, more in tune withthe preservation of our life,
which is the life of the otherbeings as well and the life of

(54:25):
future beings too.
Because that's the key essenceof, you know, concept the of
that book is that the othersthat will come have equal rights
to us today. So we need to takethat into account. And the
others that will come are notjust the others, the future
birth, they are not just futuremen, women, it's also animals,

(54:46):
organic form of life, know, thepoint that inorganic kind of
confirmation. So that wouldwould be be the radical
revolution that we that we neednot mere not mere survival.
Instead, what they are offeringus today is survival.

(55:06):
So I think, you know, it's cool,perhaps to also to go to the
last point of this book is thatthen and the next step for how
to to to to write somethingexpanded is to think about how
these economies, they alsoproject a kind of end times

(55:28):
philosophy based either onsurvival of the few or a kind of
more liberal techno optimistversion that don't worry, don't
worry today, we'll come up witha technology in ten years,
fifteen years, don't worry. Oryou have the true apocalyptic
millenarist approach that says,we have to perish because we

(55:52):
will ascend to the next kingdom.And that's really the the the
full apocalyptic version, which,you there's there's part of
society minority that is not,you know, is not ashamed to to
proclaim it. In a way, it is apsychological response to that.
You have so much harm and stressthat you sometimes you just

(56:13):
think about just do away withthis.
Let's end this. It's the momentin which you will get liberated
from this endless pain that wesuffer.

Michael Lewis (56:23):
Maybe I could end with two questions. I think they
both revolve around the questionof why Severino might need to be
supplemented by feminism. It's afascinating vision he presents
about this notion of appearing.The problem I had was Severino's
vision struck me as verypresocratic in some ways. I
mean, obviously, he's, at somelevel an Eliatic philosopher, a

(56:47):
student of Parmenides.
It also struck me that hisphilosophy had some resemblance
to Empedocles as well, as if youhave a universe with a finite
number of elements, they enterinto configurations, they fall
apart, and everything eventuallyrepeats itself. And I don't know
if this was me. I think therewas someone who wrote an article
in the journal called, I thinkit was, Damiano Sacco, or was

(57:09):
that who writes about Severino.I think I stole this image from
him, but maybe it's a new one.Severino's vision of the
universe feels to me like akaleidoscope, where in other
words, you have just a set of, Idon't know what they are,
crystals or little elements inthere.
You turn the tube and theseelements form a different
configuration. And it's not asif anything new has come into
existence. It's just revealeditself. It's just appeared. And

(57:31):
it passes away, and maybe itwill come back one day, and
maybe you'll have the eternalreturn, and so on.
The question that that broughtto mind was, is anything like
novelty possible on Severino'spicture? I mean, anything like a
genuine historic event or justnovelty in the sense of creative
evolution or something. And Isuppose that's what got me

(57:52):
thinking, is that what feminismadds? I mean, if you have
because the problem is if youcan't have creatio ex nihilo, do
you lose novelty? And so maybethat's a question I'd have.
Is birth a creation of noveltyeven if it's not a creation from
nothing?

Andrea Righi (58:10):
You know, that's a wonderful way to put it. I mean,
I would say it would it wouldactually help correct or improve
Severino's notion of destiny,because that kaleidoscope is
destiny. Somehow, there's amechanism that moves the new,
the emergence of the new phases,and it's fixed. It's infinite,

(58:30):
but it's it cannot really gobeyond itself. But birth, it's
an imminent mechanism where thenew word will appear.
Then and that's what Anna Ahernsays about birth. It it is not
just the individual. It's thenew birth that will appear
through the birth and therelationship of the gazes

(58:52):
between the mother, the, youknow, the family we can add, we
could be a little moreinclusive. Whoever is the
mother, as the Italian familysay, whoever takes place of the
mother, and, and the newborn andthe newborns in general, right?
So that that would be a greatway to put it like a correction
of the kind of almost mechanicnotion of destiny through the to

(59:16):
the more lively, unexpected,eventful dimension of birth.
Yes.

Michael Lewis (59:22):
That's great. I wish I'd ended on that question
because that'd be a nice way toend. But I have to say my second
thing, which is, again, it'smore it worries about the whole
strategy now, not just Severino,but even feminism, because how
literally are we to take thisbirth? Is it literally the
mother giving birth to the childor can we expand it? Can we
generalize it?

(59:43):
Because if we are evolutionistsin some sense, and we don't have
to be, of course, but let'sassume that we are. Life did not
always exist. And again, maybethe question is, does Severino
think this or does he have anyevolutionist bent or any
evolutionist tendency at all?Because if you were just a

(01:00:03):
normal evolutionist, you wouldsay life has not always existed.
It emerged from the non living.
And that was also an event ofnovelty. Life is new, some might
say. But the trouble is if wejust think of the event of
novelty in terms of a mothergiving birth to a child, are we
vitalizing the whole of being?In other words, are we trying to

(01:00:24):
think the whole of what is interms of life? Because it seems
to me that if we take birthliterally, only living things
can give birth.
What about non living things?What about what came before
life? Do we want to talk aboutthat? Do we have to develop
another conceptual scheme inorder to think about that that

(01:00:45):
wouldn't be derived fromfeminism or even from Severino?
So maybe I'll just leave itthere.
But you see the problem I don'tknow how you'd want can we say
anything about the nonliving ifwe use birth as a paradigm here?

Andrea Righi (01:01:00):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there again, Cabrera, but
also, Anarit can help with thenotion of appearingness or
appearing. That is to say, thiswhat I call the imminent scene.
That is to say the need for ascene to emerge, and the scene
is is not controlled by the themain actor, which in this case
would be the newborn.

(01:01:21):
The scene is the spectators, theprops. It's a metaphor, of
course, but all the entities andelements that come together in a
form of relationship to that.There's also Cavallero makes the
good point that the danger is toassign life and childbearing and
and reproduction to the woman asa mission, as a destiny, another

(01:01:44):
kind of destiny. But she says,the power, the great power that
women have is to give birth ornot to give birth. Okay?
So so in that case, you know,you have another another another
scene that can can emerge, know,with with the birth no more
proposition. So, of course, itis a big topic and politically,

(01:02:09):
you know, it's very hard toelaborate an agenda behind it.
But the feminist I'm referringto through this notion of
practice and collective actionthrough the user psyche
analysis, they had developedover the years, ideas and

(01:02:30):
notions that are very, you know,interesting and instrumental, I
think that we and I keep goingback to them to find some
inspirations for next work.

Michael Lewis (01:02:44):
Well, thanks, Andrea. Yes, I have no more
questions. Well, I have manymore, but I'll I'll we've run
out of time, I think. Thank youso much for for being so patient
and and for answering sogenerously.

Andrea Righi (01:02:54):
Mike, thank you for for your question. I it was
very stimulating for me as wellthat this is a little bit what I
was trying to say the scene, itproduces novelty through the
encounter. Now, you know, inthis conversation, you already
pushed me into differentdirection, I believe that
perhaps will, you know, come upas a new article for the Journal

(01:03:15):
of Italian Studies or somethinglike that. But it's through the
encounter that the glory as theglory of the scene as Serena
Coors appears.

Narrator (01:03:25):
This has been a University of Minnesota press
production. The book ThreeEconomies of Transcendence by
Andrea Riege is available in theForerunners series from
University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.