This is an original, previously unpublished story, written for Electra. With published novels, short stories and non-fiction books, the author, Navtej Sarna, is a recognised Indian writer. His recent historical novel Crimson Spring has been acclaimed by critics. He is a regular columnist on literary and political matters. A prestigious diplomat, he has represented India in several countries, having been ambassador to the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.

The series of articles that compose the ‘Subject’ of this issue of Electra deal with the topic of excess. Since the criterion behind these thematic sections, treated according to a regime of essayistic discourse, is to highlight and navigate some territories that have gained prominence within the contemporary panorama, excess, in its ceaseless and wild manifestations in every domain of social, cultural and political life, is the quintessential contemporary topic, the rule under which we live.

André Tavares is an architect, author of books on architecture and coordinator of Dafne Editora. He was the general curator of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale on The Form of Form in 2016. He begins his article by stating that the old town centres of Lisbon and Porto are full of rubble and waste from demolition and restoration work. What should be a promise for the future actually shows that we are building poorly and for immediate profit on the basis of principles bereft of the old idea of heritage.

Almeida Faria’s literary oeuvre is made up of different genres and registers, sometimes in the same novel. This is the case of Paixão, the first book in his ‘Lusitanian Tetralogy’, which is almost a polyphonic novel in its complex development of different voices. This time, he has made an incursion into journalling at the invitation of the Electra. The journal that he wrote for this section of the magazine, called ‘Book of Hours’, begins on a triumphant day, 16th June, the Bloomsday that Joyce included in the calendar of modern European literature. Thus, this journal starts as a tribute to literary fiction, to its magnificent deeds (a tribute which continues in an evocation of an important name in European literature, a European writer par excellence, the German Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 118with whom Almeida Faria has a long-standing dialogue). Recording a few days’ stay in Munich, starting with the day of his departure from Lisbon and ending on his return, this journal is also a record of his distancing himself from national matters. In a way, this distancing, which consists of getting away (and by away we mean to a foreign country) and casting a critical, cosmopolitan, look inwards, isa mechanism common to the narrative work of Almeida Faria.

In this article, written shortly after the most recent elections in Italy, the Italian philosopher Dario Gentili, author, among other books, of Crisi come arte di governo, reflects on the election results, developing the argument that the crisis of democracy has a long history and that there is no necessary link between democracy and liberalism.

This interview with the philosopher Didier Eribon, focussing necessarily on his autobiographical book Retour à Reims [Returning to Reims], which had tremendous international resonance, shows the potentialities of a ‘critical thinking’ that crosses disciplines, disregarding their respective borders, and creates theoretical instruments for a political and sociological analysis and critique.

The Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, an eminent figure in post-colonial and ‘subaltern studies’, author of Provincializing Europe – a book that has had widespread international repercussions, and currently a professor at the University of Chicago, is interviewed by the historians José Neves and Marcos Cardão.

Money is at the same time the clearest thing and the most difficult to understand. This paradox is set out by Anselm Jappe, the author, among other works, of La société autophage (2017), which shows us where this problem comes from. As a commodity, money has become the supreme commodity, the only commodity, the ultimate fetish, and the cause of a completely irrational order, capable of producing unprecedented catastrophes, like that of 2008.

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) and Dora Maar (1901–1997), two women and two artists. In their time, the fact that they were women severely hindered their careers as artists. For that reason, today it is impossible to look at their work without considering what restricted, governed and limited them. The retrospectives presented in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay and Centre Pompidou showcase this work, which was interwoven with the artists’ lives, where the potential and risk they represented had to be conquered. This is what the historian, researcher and curator Helena de Freitas tells us, with critical and perceptive intelligence. Her words are infused with the proud and courageous melancholy with which these artists affirmed themselves in a world that denied them.

This portfolio presents the work of an artist whose oeuvre expands (in and of itself) when exhibited, as only then does it become fully visible and properly challenged. For Heimo Zobernig, the most international of Austrian artists, painting, sculpture, film, video, performance, architectural models and design are multiple and at times contradictory modes of questioning and discovery. As the curator, Karola Kraus, notes in her essay on the artist, ‘Heimo Zobernig’s works encompass processes of art production and material aesthetics as well as issues of display and architecture, and question the mechanisms whereby museums and galleries function.’ For the portfolio section of Electra, Zobernig ‘selected the images focusing on installation shots from important exhibitions’, creating a continuum that comprises both his artistic work and exhibition practice.