Anthropologist José Gabriel Pereira Bastos explains money from an anthropological and psychoanalytical point of view, relating it to a symbolic kind of organisation centring on the power of the Father, as he is celebrated in rituals of communities in which magical thinking prevails. From there it is possible to turn not only to Freud but also to anthropology to understand money and its original, archetypical function, in the light of trans-historical laws, taboos and bans.

In this article, Swiss geographer Joëlle Salomon Cavin, professor at the University of Lausanne, takes up a topic that has been the privileged object of her research: hostility towards the city, in the Swiss context, inscribed in a history and a culture but which covid-19 has caused to emerge with greater force.

The dossier of this edition of Electra speaks of our age by speaking of food. Food is a global feature of our times, ever present as we strive for goals that always seem out of reach. Food seduces and bewitches, rallies and mobilises, fascinates and even sparks obsession. And, in some parts of the world, it is often in short supply. (...)

In the view of Italian philosopher Federico Leoni, the novel coronavirus cannot be regarded simply from the perspective of its very obvious effects of deceleration and shut-down, as, on the contrary, it has also been a factor of acceleration for certain ongoing movements that relate specifically to our times.

The protection of politicians’ private lives, by means of an insurmountable ‘wall’, has a long history, full of polemic and debate, especially in France, where the illusion of a ‘model’ was created, but later broken by the phenomenon of peopolisation, i.e. media coverage in the manner of people magazine. It is about this long history, passing through some important episodes, that the historian Christian Delporte writes.

Let us make our position clear from the start, as summarised in the two epigraphs. The first, more problematic, written in a Europe on the brink of World War I, implies that body-mind-action should tend towards a human ideal of integrity (the ‘upright gait’ also mentioned by Ernst Bloch); the other (derived from a classic of theoretical thought, written at the end of that war) proposes that art is not above (or below) an ethical conscience and that beauty should not excuse barbarity or forms of thought that legitimise it.

Paul Werner, an artist and cultural critic, has written a book entitled Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World. It is a critical reflection and account of his experience at the Guggenheim in New York. He writes about art institutions at a time of radical change and about art as paradoxical merchandise.

The aftermath of the first round of voting carried much apprehension and worry; for two weeks, there was a sense that never had a victory felt so much like a defeat – as if we had been blindsided once again and knocked down by reality. I had never really believed a win would be as straightforward as the opinion polls suggested. Nevertheless, I was shocked when the results from, say, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro started to come in; even after the four-year term of a disastrous administration that seemed to be self-evidently so, Bolsonarism proved to be much stronger than we thought. Many had laboured under the illusion that we were still living, essentially, in the same country that had elected four consecutive centre-left administrations, and everything would go back to the way it was – once this unpleasant interlude was over. That illusion was now shattered once and for all.

In this issue of Electra, the ‘Subject’ section focuses on the age-old and forever renewed question of the relationship between the life of authors (writers, artists, philosophers, etc.) and their work, a problem that also arises outside of the specifically ‘authorial’ realm, implicating public figures, especially those who hold political roles and responsibilities. Their private lives have increasingly become an object of media interest, often with the complicity or active collaboration of those implicated.

Ivan Nunes, who earned a PhD with his thesis ‘Nanni Moretti as a film-maker and character’, writes about Three Floors, the Italian director’s latest film. It is an article in which the writer not only shows his profound knowledge of the work, but also expresses his own point of view: ‘It might be the first film of old Moretti — and it may well be that, of all his avatars, old Moretti might just be my favourite’.