The last volume of War and Peace was published in 1869, that is, 150 years ago. It is one of the great universal novels. A book for a varied reading public, this epic of Russian literature, a Matryoshka novel with many subplots within, was challenged from the outset. It has a full history, recounted here by Dan Ungurianu, a professor of Russian studies in New York. What he asks here is a persistent question: why is it so difficult to argue against War and Peace? In response, Ungurianu speaks of the book and its author, drawing a lively and precise portrait of Tolstoy.

This book, which she signs with a lower-case pseudonym, is the manifesto of a woman who was born in the United States in 1952. This woman, bell hooks, is also black. It is important to say ‘also’ because the whole issue of the book, as Marta Lança demonstrates, is the conjunction of a gender identity and a ‘racial’ identity.
 

The relationship between seeing and reasoning – the starting point for a commentary on a Becket character by Fernando Belo, a prolific author whose output ranges from teleological studies to the philosophy of language. Requested by Electra two months before the author’s death, the article is now also a tribute to the man and the philosopher, whose singular career joyfully cut across the borders of knowledge and academic disciplines.

Never before has there been such a lot of public discussion about animals, so much care and concern about how they are treated and what happens to them. Never before have animals, and not just pets, played such an important role in the human and social worlds. Today there is a very far-reaching, lively ‘animal question’ that is simultaneously galvanising philosophy, ethics, politics (or bio-politics), law and ecology. To such an extent that in this day and age there is an animal turn, like previous turns that have gained the right to a trademark in the humanities and social sciences, such as the linguistic turn.

Visual artist Mónica de Miranda, historian Sónia Vaz Borges and choreographer Vânia Gala form the collective representing Portugal at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale, whose general theme is ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. The three authors have contributed to this edition of Electra with texts and images that reveal the major themes and motivations of the ‘Greenhouse’ project showcased in the Portuguese pavilion located at Palazzo Franchetti. This project features a Creole garden which serves as a starting point for exploring the themes of colonialism, war, liberation struggles, and ecology.

A key figure in contemporary political philosophy, Wendy Brown has published a number of reference studies on neoliberalism, reconstituting not only the long historical trajectory that has culminated in the present moment, but also warning us that it is on a collision course with the very idea of democracy. In conversation with Electra, Wendy Brown explores and unpacks several of the faultlines underpinning the political present.

Sepideh Karami is an Iranian architect, writer, teacher and researcher whose work brings architecture into domains as diverse as performing arts, literature and geology. Professor of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, she tells us here about the city where she chose to live and work, with a unique gaze, both near (where it finds itself) and far (from where it came). On her verbal journey through Scotland's capital, Sepideh tells us what she sees, what she deciphers, what she interprets and what she guesses. From buildings to gardens, from the general to the particular, from gestures to objects, from the ground to the sky, the author describes a city made up of many spaces and many times, many speeds and many layers of meaning. At the beginning, it is stated: ‘Edinburgh is the city of getting wet and dry in quick succession.’ And it is as if this climatic antithesis runs through the entire text to teach us how to feel Edinburgh and what happens there.

At the end of his life, Barthes wrote a sentence that shows some scepticism towards modern literature, whose most radical experiments he had always adhered to or at least taken an interest in. Éric Marty, editor of the complete works of Roland Barthes, comments on this sentence and explains the context within which it was born.

The Italian philosopher Remo Bodei is currently a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of a vast oeuvre, which includes a book entitled Generazioni (2014). In it, he points out that our history has been marked by a generational fracture. He insists that, as a result, we must accept responsibility with regard to the younger generation, on various levels, at a time fraught with uncertainties about the future.

Autumn is said to make us think about those late, muted colours that some artists used in their works as if they belonged to them: Arcimboldo, Brueghel, Poussin, Boucher, Goya, Friedrich, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Klimt, Schiele, Mucha, Klee, Hockney. Contemplating, digressing, recalling, dreaming, meditating, brooding and thinking are verbs that are part of this wisdom that does not know the flip side of the coin of life, the side that flips entirely towards us.