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Žarko Paić: Neoliberalism, Oligarchy and Politics of the Event: At the Edge of Chaos. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. ISBN: 978-1-5275-4478-9.
UDC: 141.7
If the task of philosophy has traditionally been defined as the task of thinking the time in which it takes place, then attempting to rethink the essence and modernity of the epoch in which we live today is a very challenging task. The question of human essence as a necessary pre-condition of any philosophy concerns, in fact, how one relates to oneself. In this sense, one of the most prominent Croatian philosophers, Vanja Sutlić, in his book Essence and Contemporaneity (originally published half a century ago), lapidary concludes that the basic task of contemporary philosophy is the thought of reaching into the historical composition of being human and being itself. To reach the essence of the modern world philosophically-that is the task of true thinking. Precisely in the wake of such a predicament arises the new book by Žarko Paić Neoliberalism, Oligarchy and Politics of the Event, symbolically subtitled: At the Edge of Chaos. In the wake of the abovementioned uneasiness regarding the determination of the contemporary world, Paić gives a very precise and unambiguous formulation: the title itself indicates that in order to understand today's socio-political constellation, it is necessary primarily to understand the techno-scientific set of information and communication technologies, and to grasp that they largely determine the postulates of modern politics.
In the effort to respond to this aporia, Paić critically refers to numerous contemporary theories of sovereignty, the spiritual crisis of Europe, the metapolitics of identity, and the post-history biopolitics, leading a dialogue with fundamental thinkers in comprehensive, studious, brilliantly argued, and multifaceted chapters, as well as reflecting on the 21st century "philosophical classics"-from Kojeve to Carl Schmitt, from Ranciere to Badiou. As the author himself points out, this book deals with "an analysis of the effects of a global order that governs the environment through the logic of a selfgenerated network. The system is, however, formally based on a framework of liberal democracy. But in reality, ideas of freedom are transformed into their opposite. Instead of establishing the power of a sovereign people, the rule of the corporative constituted elites is at work." This is...