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"The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out"--

Facing the hitches of the neoliberal global turn, which first emerged with the 2008 financial crisis, social theory doesn't appear able to provide an overall critical interpretation of the current regulation pattern and to imagine a different institutional regime, addressing the problems on the ground. This is an unprecedented situation. As we contend, social theory has always glimpsed well in advance the social system crises, assessing at the same time an alternative paradigm, thanks to a sort of canone inverso played against the coeval institutional regime: when a horizontal form of social regulation prevails in a given period, sociology adopts a knowledge paradigm based on the primacy of the vertical social dimensions. And vice-versa. This attitude transcends any conceptual content and mainly concerns the "form" of the theoretical building. In general, social theory opposed both the self-regulating market regime of the nineteenth century, and the following state-centered regime of the twentieth century. Sociology has found its raison d'être in this kind of critical monitoring towards social regulation. What happens today is that the dialectic between social theory and social regulation appears jammed. Evoking the case of the generative social action approach, the article shows that, contrary to the past intellectual seasons, the form of social theory "mirrors" the form of social regulation, instead of overturning it.

La pensée de Georges Bataille est toujours d'actualité et nous aide à interroger notre présent. L'objectif de cet article consiste à proposer une compréhension des trente sans gloire du néo-libéralisme sous l'angle de la souveraineté, de la dépense et de l'excédent d'énergie dont les effets sur le sujet contemporain sont manifestes, en inaugurant en définitive une possible construction sociale de la conscience de soi.

The essay aims to demonstrate that the process of de-politicization does not only affect political institutions but also the inspiring narrative of grassroots and anti-systemic move-ments engaged against neoliberalism. This circumstance is one of the most important reasons why, despite the huge and persistent crisis of neoliberalism, we do not witness a real hegemonic shift, and politics continues to be a very marginal forge of social life, as the neoliberal recipe pre-scribes. De-politicization is the main effect of "horizontalism", i.e. the descriptive and normative belief that social order is and has to be the ex post result of the interaction dynamics between social actors. Thus, a social order is much more desirable insofar as it leaves out the subject "as is", promoting a process of self-revelation. Our thesis is that both neoliberalism and the largest part of anti-systemic movements who pretend to oppose to it share this basic frame. The narrative of "commons" represents a special case of what we call "conformist alternatives". It develops an ambivalent tension: on the one side the search for pre-symbolic spontaneity and, on the other, the unmentionable search for hyper-symbolism. Finally, we identify a structural and then a socio-cultural reason that currently prevent re-politicization.

The essay is focused on the start-up as a symbolic tool. Why does it take a central place in the public discourse? Which symbolic function does it play inside the institutional order of our societies? I propose to interpret the start-up as an elusive and ideological answer to the economic and anthropological saturation that has involved Western societies starting from the early eighties of the last century. The abundance state created by the alliance between Capital and political power during the thirty glorious years requires the creation of a new anthropological subject and a new social regulation system. Contrariwise, Western societies prefer to remain attached at the glorious symbolic order of modernity, based on the epic of the individual. The start-up myth re-legitimizes this narrative, hiding the hitches in the development of the social building it engenders.

È forse possibile aggiornare la teoria del conflitto alla luce dei risvolti emersi dalla protesta contro la riforma universitaria (L. 240/2010, cosiddetta Gelmini). È ormai assodato tra gli studiosi della materia che la disponibilità a intraprendere azioni di conflitto sociale, a promuovere istanze per la tutela dei propri interessi, non è appannaggio dei ceti più deprivati, di coloro che si trovano in condizioni di disagio profondo e conclamato. Né l'entità del vulnus subito da uno specifico gruppo è in sé sufficiente a determinarne la sollevazione. Scendono in piazza più volentieri, invece, soggetti baciati da un certo agio economico, soprattutto da un buon livello di consapevolezza civico-culturale, da una posizione sociale riconosciuta e coperta sul piano sindacale e politico. Vi scendono, all'occorrenza, anche in reazione a offese minime. Ebbene, la vicenda dei ricercatori universitari, in particolare, c'impone di rimettere in discussione alcuni di questi assunti. Il saggio ne ripercorre i momenti salienti e ne trae indicazioni generali per la teoria del conflitto.

The contribution focuses on the identity issue with reference to the European integration process. To this aim, the case of the Southern Adriatic area – covering the Italian South-East and South western Balkans (namely Apulia and Albania) – will be highlighted. This region shows many reasons of interest for the whole process of European integration, as it represents a kind of hinge between Western civilization and the East, Europe and the Mediterranean, North and South of the World. Our thesis is that, despite the different traditions, cultural heritage, histories, political dominion etc., the societies facing on the two sides of the lower Adriatic sea share common core attitudes. They were forged on the basis of a similar existential framework: the secular (or century-old?) condition of marginalisation in relation to the hubs of political power. So, the lower Adriatic inhabitants have acquired a particular skill to win the grace of the ruler in office, whoever he was, building, at the same time, a hidden orb in which to preserve their authenticity, their original cultural references. This framework has produced, in the long run, an anti-identitarian people's constitution, i.e. an "anthropology of the absence", consisting of two complementary dimensions: mimicry and the vernacular order. This ensures both the merger of dissimilarities and the preservation of an impregnable singularity. The anthropology of the absence still emerges strongly in relation to the new political focus with which this region relates nowadays: the European Union. The implemented policies aimed at cohesion and integration of the peripheral regions are here systematically diverted to reproduce life forms consolidated over the centuries, which escape the fundamental canons of the Western-European model of society. But, far from being included as a disease, the attitude developed in the lower Adriatic could represent a useful suggestion for Europe itself, always faced with the problem of its unresolved identity.