By Matt Applegate · Thursday, February 23, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
 The following is an exploration of the relationship shared between space, relationality, and virtuality as it comes to bear on a particular genre of revolutionary expression: the manifesto. My argument here is in opposition to thinkers like Naomi Klein who have asserted the virtual power of the internet and social media to be the end of the manifesto genre; something like, we have twitter, we have Facebook, therefore manifestos are obsolete.[1] Rather, my argument is in favor of a metamorphosis where the genre is concerned and where revolutionary expression is evolving. To put it another way, I am interested in thinking a politics of the manifesto genre that exceeds its own instrumentality. So the manifesto is being treated here as a provocation toward thinking the shape and character of a radical politics. By way of a brief and somewhat simplified characterization of the genre, I want to think in opposition to, or beyond, two primary problems where the genre is concerned. First, I want to think the function of the manifesto against an ought or revolutionary telos that would name its future and provide the political program to manifest it. Second, I want to problematize the Schmittian character of the genre, the bi-partisan, “friend” vs. “enemy” relation that is so often asserted where the manifesto names a revolutionary telos.
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By David Pan · Tuesday, February 21, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
While the current financial crisis in Europe will certainly be a turning point in the development of the European Union, this is not primarily because of the economic consequences of saving or losing the euro. These monetary and fiscal events will almost certainly be overshadowed by the political implications. For the vision of a unified Europe does not just concern economics or regional politics but is built upon larger cosmopolitan hopes that go back at least to Immanuel Kant’s imagination of perpetual peace. As Ulrich Beck argues, for instance, a cosmopolitan vision is being realized today, not so much through ideology but through global economic integration and the consequent decline of regional and national allegiances in favor of transnational identities that have made older political conflicts obsolete.[1] Built upon this vision, the continuing expansion of the European Union promises to gradually widen a zone of free trade and movement that would eventually also clear a space of political freedom characterized by the rule of law and the protection of individual rights. Theoretically, this space of peace and freedom could expand to encompass all of Eurasia and then turn the entire world into a fulfillment of Kant’s original dream.
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By Zoltán Balázs · Tuesday, February 14, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
I shall argue for a distinction made between two concepts of centrality. Both are rather metaphorical but whereas the first is best captured by a concrete symbol, the heart, the second is more abstract and geometrical, to be captured as the “line between.”
I further try to show how they may be interpreted as representations of two strands in the political or, more generally, in the collective thinking of the Western tradition. By referring to collective thinking, I wish to broaden the usually highly abstract perspective of academic political philosophy. For such thinking is scarcely done in scientific terms and concepts but more often in metaphors, images, symbols. Thomas Hobbes was very much aware that the concept of the sovereign needs a powerful image to understand, and he instructed Abraham Bosse how to design it. The resulting title page of the book, with Leviathan, the mortal god, is perhaps a better argument than half a dozen pages from the same book. In times of prevalent illiteracy, images, pictures, statues, coats of arms, costumes, and dynamic images like processions and marches have been an even more important source of inspiration and explanation in collective thinking.
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