Chiara Bottici

I must begin with a confession: I am a smoker. I know that smoking is dangerous for my health, but I keep doing it. I have tried to stop a couple of times, but always failed. What most puzzles me in this troubled relationship is that, when I first began smoking, I did not like it. Some people like their first cigarettes. I hated it. I guess, as a teenager, I did it only for the sociality of it. Yet, for some reason, I kept doing it, until I got addicted. Now, I …

As information about the attacks in Paris, which left at least 128 people dead, gradually unfolds, I feel overwhelmed and disturbed. I am overwhelmed by the quantity of affective response to which I add my own grief, but I am also deeply disturbed by the way in which this affective reaction is channeled …

Two years ago, I thought opera was dead and, being a great lover of it, I invited you to celebrate with me a nostalgic funeral eulogy for the beautiful daughter of the Italian Renaissance. Saturday night, for the first time since I wrote that piece, I had the impression it has been resurrected.

The Bonfire of the Vanities, with music by Stefania de Kenessey and libretto by Michael Bergmann, premiered on 9-10 October at El Teatro at El Museo …

I spent most of my summer on the Italian coast, in the little town where I was born, as I do almost every year. The difference, this time, was that I had not been back to my home country for a whole year. This gave me some sort of a distance from the customs and habits I have grown up with and perhaps also enabled me to see things I had never noticed before. In particular, as an insider-outsider, I was struck by the number of African immigrants …

Untimely thoughts on Europe, Migration, and the State

As I do every year, I have spent most of this summer on the Italian coast, in the region around the Gulf of Poets. This summer, as soon as I put my head underwater, I am struck by the beauty of the sea: the water is so blue that, at times, it turns violet; there are fish everywhere, sea urchins, sea stars, and seaweeds of such amazing sparkling colors as I have never seen in the region. People around me speak of a “tropicalization of the Mediterranean.” …

At the opening of the Night of Philosophy in New York City on April 24, 2015, while Monique Canto-Sperber delivered a much-contested opening talk on freedom of speech, Chiara Bottici gave the following alternative opening talk addressing issues of philosophy, writing, and exclusion.

Giving an opening talk on Machiavelli at the “Night of Philosophy” is a double provocation. First, because few authors have generated as much turmoil in the history of philosophy as has Machiavelli. Excommunicated as the incarnation of the devil by some, celebrated as a saint by others, condemned for his “Machiavellism” or celebrated for his republicanism, the meaning of Machiavelli’s works seems to be destined to escape us. …

As the holidays are coming to an end, I return to New York after a week spent in Puerto Rico with my family. The island is enchanting: it has opened itself to tourism, without selling its soul to it. What most impressed me upon our arrival in San Juan was the number (and strangeness) of Christmas decorations. Instead of the usual western iconography, here Christmas is most often symbolized by what appeared to me as a small detail of the nativity scene: the three Magi. Furthermore, funnily enough, instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the three exotic kings have musical instruments in their hands — as a reminder of the overwhelming importance of salsa, which one hears on almost every corner of the city. For the whole week we spent traveling around the island I kept asking myself “why such a choice?” …

It has become commonplace to speak about the “fatherless society.” This is not because fathers no longer exist (there are indeed still a lot of people around who claim to be so), but because they exhibit behaviours that were usually associated with the other side of the parental coin: in today’s advanced capitalist societies, fathers change diapers, feed their newborns, and they even have to invent ever new forms of entertainment to catch up with the exuberance of the infantile imagination. In sum, fathers try to provide the physical and emotional care that was once typically associated with women and nannies. Is it possible to look at this transformation in the context of a broader change within capitalism itself? …

Since Marx’ and Freud’s influential usage of the term, we became accustomed to talk about fetishism as a topic for psychology and social theory. It is rarely remembered that the topic was originally a topic in theology and ethnology. Why has fetishism assumed such a wide meaning? Why do theorists of fetishism, from Marx to Freud and passing by Comte, always begin with applying it to a specific topic but then ending up generalizing it? These are some of the questions that Alan Bass tackles in his talk delivered as part of the Philosophy Thursday Nights Series. This talk is part of Alan Bass’s ongoing project, which aims at examining the implications of Freud’s generalization of fetishism at the end of his life in relation to the history of discourse on the subject. …