RICERCA ITALIANA     

Inequality: hierarchy, injustice, plurality. With edition of texts

Università degli Studi di Bologna

Abstract

This research aims at elaborating a theoretical framework of inequality in its different forms of hierarchical organization, practices of injustice, relationships with plurality and with difference. It will develop an analysis of the way this concept has been theorized in the history of political thought (ancient, modern, contemporary) both in its relation to other concepts, such as equality or justice, and as a sign of the contemporary difficulties of today’s political theory and practice.
The research will be developed following three closely interrelated strands:

a) The analysis and the genealogy of the concept of inequality and its dialectical relationship in the antichity with the idea of justice as harmony (whose model is best represented in Plato’s Republic) and in the modern age with the concept of equality, as defined by Rousseau and, more in general, by modern political rationalism (the model of “weak” inequality in the XVII and XIX centuries continental constitutions, the struggle against inequality in the XIX and XX century America) ;
b) The mapping of some specific moments of theoretical and political crisis of formal and juridical equality typical of the modern age and of the contemporary age (racist theories);
c) The analysis of the different forms of equality and inequality emerged in the modern age, and that are at the base of the control of life as explained by biopolitics and by the feminist theory of difference;
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Principal Investigator

Carlo Galli Università degli Studi di BOLOGNA

Research Objectives

Recently we have been witnessing the emergence of paradigms that openly support inequality, both in the field of penal law (the “penal law of the enemy” as an alternative to the “penal law of the citizen”), and in that of international politics (which is affecting notions as hegemony, regional institutions, “civilization”, unilateral global responsibility), as if the global age were openly affirming the necessity of inequality, the normalization, and the legalization of exception, for the constitution of political system.
Based on the results of previous research (some of which already financed with Prin founds), on the existing international debate, and on the organization that links the research units participating to this project (see 2.2), this research aims at studying the role of inequality in the new existing political scenario. It is based on two closely interrelated strands:

a) A critical analysis of the concept of inequality (both as hierarchy and as injustice) in the Antiquity and in the Modern age, with the intention of showing its forms of constitutionalization and its practices of conservation produced in the classical (regimes of harmonic justice) and in the modern age (equality through sovereignty).
b) Thanks to this mapping of the different theories and practices of inequality in the western political tradition, a theoretical-political analysis of the contemporary re-emergence of inequality will be studied. And this through the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

This research program is based both on the longtime work in common of the different groups involved in this project (see part A), and the state of the art on the subject of this research, both on the local and the international level (see part B)

A) This research is grounded on a ventennial work in common of the members and the units with multiple forms of organization ended in the Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sul Lessico Politico e Giuridico Europeo (CIRLPGE), whose director is Giuseppe Duso and vice-director is the national coordinator of this research project. This Centre has its administrative headquarter at the Istituto Universitario Suor Orsola Benincasa, within its Center of Excellence on European institutions (CRIE, coordinated by Francesco De Sanctis), which links, both on the research level and on education on a European level, those universities engaged in this research project and some of the members of other Centers (such as P. Costa, M. Fioravanti e P. Cappellini of the Centro di Ricerca per la Storia del Pensiero Giuridico Moderno at Florence). Its recent seminars, of several months and also one year, has dealt with the relationship between the ancient and the modern worlds (coordinator De Sanctis), biopolitics (coordinator Esposito), War and its transformations (coordinator Galli), history of political and juridical concepts in the European tradition (coordinators Duso and Chignola). This Centre has deep relations with several European >>>