Successfully Failed

The failure of humanity

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, September 1, 2026

For those questioning the fates of humanity today, it is useful to reflect on the legal concept of bankruptcy. The filing for bankruptcy by an entrepreneur facing serious financial difficulties and being unable to meet his debts is intended, first and foremost, to protect creditors, but, at the same time, to limit the debtor’s liability, excluding from bankruptcy his personal assets and rights and anything necessary for his and his family’s provision. An important figure is the receiver (or receivers), appointed by the judge to administer the bankruptcy estate and carry out the necessary operations to satisfy the creditors’ interests and protect the bankrupt debtor. For their part creditors constitute a committee which collaborates with the receiver in carrying out the necessary procedures.
One may assimilate the current condition of humanity to that of an entrepreneur compelled to declare his own bankruptcy. Since it is certain that humanity is no longer able to meet the debts progressively incurred with respect to the earth on which it lives (including the atmosphere, no less contaminated than the soil). The creditors’ committee would include, in addition to representatives of the earth and air in all its aspects, also those of extinct living species or which are threatened with extinction. As for the receivers, they could form a committee, which would include wise men appointed by each nation, with the aim of satisfying the creditors’ interests, while trying at the same time to ensure the survival of failed humanity. One might question whether this procedure would succeed in achieving its intended purposes, but it is certain that it represents the only concrete possibility of salvation for a humanity in a state of complete spiritual disorder (which, as always, translates into disorder in any spheres of life). To believe, as today one often pretends to believe, that individual states and international organisations can reconcile their economic and political interests with their own survival, without radically acknowledging their state of failure and insolvency with respect to the earth they inhabit, is an illusion, often grounded in bad faith.

(English translation by I, Robot)

Francis A. Willey, The Tempest, 2009. Courtesy of WikiArt.

You can do nothing about it, Edna. Sometimes one who takes an interest in lost causes, will appear to the public as noble and idealistic as Don Quixote

Artwork © Jose-Ramiro

Cloud 9

11th World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer (left) on cloud nine shares his joy with Miguel Quinteros (right) immediately after winning the thirtieth and final game of the “World Chess Championship Revenge Match of the Twentieth Century” against Boris Vasilievich Spassky in Belgrade, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on Thursday, November 5, 1992. Photo: Miguel Quinteros.

Once Upon a Yugoslavia

President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević welcoming 11th World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer in Belgrade, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on Tuesday, October 6, 1992. Video: Al Jazeera via Malina.

Upon Nothing

Give us this day our daily nothing

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, 27 agosto 2026

In a book published at Leipzig in October 1844 by the publisher Wigand, a not unknown at all kind of man makes his appearance, one who seemed intolerable and unprecedented to his contemporaries, but who has since become perfectly familiar to us: the man who, as we read on the first and last page, “founded his cause on nothing”, i.e. a being in whom the dissolution of all faith and values reached its extreme form. He is certainly the first and unsurpassed nihilist, provided one points out that the nihilism here in question has today become the normal condition of humanity. The book is titled The Ego and Its Own, author Max Stirner.
Eighteen years later, in the magazine Russian Messenger, Turgenev published the novel in which the type of nihilist (the word makes here its appearance), incarnated by the protagonist Bazarov, is defined as follows: “a nihilist is a man who bows before no authority, who accepts no principle without examination, no matter what credit the principle has”. In Demons, published in volume form in 1873, Dostoevsy decides to confront the epochal problem of nihilism, particularly through the figure of Kirillov. From the nihilistic denial of the existence of God, Kirillov draws a radical consequence which both absolutises and upsets his very ego. “If there is no God,” — he asserts — “I am God. [...] If there is God, then the will is all his, and I cannot get out of his will. If not, the will is all mine, and it is my duty to proclaim self-will... It is my duty to shoot myself because the fullest point of my self-will is — for me to kill myself... There is no higher idea to me than the idea that there is no God... Man has always invented God in order to make it possible for him not to kill himself: that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I alone on earth and in the history of the universe do not want to invent God”.
It is by meditating on these pages that Nietzsche thinks of the death of God as the fundamental event of modernity: “The greatest recent event — that ‘God has died’, that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable — is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. [...] But in the main one may say: the event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet”.
For both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, the death of God and the advent of nihilism meant something so terrible that mankind could never accept it without questioning its very existence. For once, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were not good prophets. Nihilism became the normal condition of humanity, but, unlike Kirillov, the ordinary man seems now to live with the death of God and nihilism without suffering or caring about it, literally as if nothing had happened. It is this dull and indifferent nihilism that we deal with; it is this normal daily nothing that we must account for. And if, as Nietzsche himself suggested, nihilism, accomplished and seized as such, is humanity’s great opportunity to escape its fatal destiny, i.e. if, as Benjamin thought, nihilism can become the method of a new politics, then the question we must ask ourselves is: “Why was this opportunity not taken? What prevented us from truly laying our cause on nothing and, instead of making it our normal condition, finding in it a way out of the fates of the West?”.

(English translation by I, Robot)

Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Student Nihilist, 1883. Courtesy of WikiArt.

The Unknown Photographer

Clarice Benini (right) v Vera Francevna Menchik (left), 6th Women’s World Chess Championship, Stockholm, August 6, 1937. Mission: impossible. Photo: L’Italia Scacchistica, Nos. 8-9, September 15, 1937, p. 141.

Freestyle rap

EXTENDOKIMMIE · Checkmate (HOU YIFAN FREESTYLE)-[prod by croco dead beat]

K through Twelve

Rhythm and Blues Goes to Central Park

A Velvet Voice

Summer Days

The Apple in the Garden

Phone Calls from Heaven

In an article of his for ChessBase.com, titled “Quo vadis, Fischer Random Chess? (1)”, Frederic Friedel recounts his phone conversations about Fischerandom chess with its inventor, 11th World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. The content is particularly interesting, as it confirms that, even shortly before his death, Fischer dreamed to play a Fischerandom chess match with Viswanathan Anand sponsored by ChessBase — but the German company was not willing to fulfil Fischer’s financial requests.
Friedel put forward various proposals to make Fischerandom chess more suitable to the average woodpusher’s understanding, including Garry Kimovich Kasparov’s suggestion to downsize the number of opening positions from 960 to 10. At first, Fischer was receptive, probably out of etiquette, but as soon as he knew who the idea came from, receptivity immediately turned into hostility: “No, there’s a trick. He has preparation for special positions or something”.
A must read!

Fischer featuring the worldwide launch of his trademark Fischerandom chess at Pasaje Dardo Rocha in the city of La Plata, Argentina, on July 11, 1996. Photo: Juan Sebastián Morgado.

In Belgrade Once Again

Shown above are three screenshots from a grainy, low-quality video footage of Bobby Fischer’s visit to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in October 1978, which was his almost first public appearance, after he had lived for six years obscurely in his basement at Pasadena, California, United States. On Friday, October 20, 1978, an AP wire story regarding a possible Fischer’s comeback broke worldwide as he flew to Yugoslavia to meet Grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić and discuss the possibility of a chess match with him, as well as to back Gligorić’s candidacy for President of FIDE. But alas for Caïssa’s hopes, neither one nor the other was the choice of the chess world. Photos via Baron Rich.

TL;DR

A woman uses the new IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine in a New York office in 1954. Photo: Underwood Archives, Inc/Alamy.

Once Upon A Monday

Professor Antonio Rosino † and four-time Women’s World Chess Champion 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) enjoying sunset at Venice, Italy, on Monday, February 3, 2014. Photo: Lorenzo/Associazione Culturale “Il Delta della Luna”.

The Bite in the Apple

Autumn Leaves

With regard to the main question of six-time Italian Chess Vice Champion Roberto Cosulich’s presence or absence in Castelvecchio Pascoli, Italy, in the first week of February 1974, Professor Mauro Berni (Genoa, Italy) offered a possible solution which seems most plausible, namely, that “The only explanation seems to me to be that the photo was taken on the 35th Italian Chess Championship at Il Ciocco, October 1–14, 1974. Concomitantly with the Championship, was held a classic eight-round Festival featuring a Master Tournament which was won by Eslon and Cekro. Thus one should explain the presence of Cosulich — who tied with Mariotti for 3rd and 4th prizes in the Championship — in front of the poster in question. See L’Italia Scacchistica, No. 11, November 1974, pp. 349-351”. Photo: Il Ciocco.

Romeo and Juliet

Heinz Schaufelberger – Roberto Cosulich
2nd International Festival; Verona, April 1976
Queen’s Indian Defence E14

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 b6 4. e3 Bb7 5. Bd3 Be7 6. 0-0 0-0 7. b3 d5 8. Bb2 dxc4 9. bxc4 c5 10. Nbd2 Nc6 11. Qe2 Qc7 12. Rfd1 Rfd8 13. Rac1 Rac8 14. Bb1 cxd4 15. exd4 Qf4 16. Ne4. International Master Dieter Keller, in his comments for Neue Zürcher Zeitung, No. 123, May 28, 1976, p. 77, suggested 16. Nf1 as better, preventing Black from playing ... Nc6xd4.
16. ... Nxe4. Critical is 16. ... Nxd4 17. Nxd4 Nxe4 18. g3 Qxf2+! (obviously, 18. ... Qe5?? 19. Nc6 loses on the spot) 19. Qxf2 Nxf2 20. Kxf2 Bg5! with unclear but balanced play.
17. Bxe4 Bf6 18. g3 Qg4 19. d5

19. ... Bxb2? This is the decisive mistake. Black should have played 19. ... exd5 20. cxd5 (20. Bxf6 Re8! 21. cxd5 Rxe4 is good for Black) 20. ... Ne5! which, apparently, holds everything together.
20. dxc6 Bxc6. If 20. ... Bxc1 then 21. cxb7 Rxd1+ 22. Qxd1 Rb8 23. Qd7 winning at once.
21. Rxd8+ Rxd8 22. Rd1 Rxd1+ 23. Qxd1. The back-rank mate threats give White easy ways to win the day.
23. ... Bd5! An ingenious trick that at least saves the piece, if not the game.

24. Qa4! Just so. 24. cxd5? Qxe4 25. dxe6 Bf6 26. Qd6 fxe6! 27. Qb8+ Kf7 28. Qxa7+ Kg6 would leave White empty handed.
24. .. b5 25. Qxb5 Ba3 26. Bxd5 exd5 27. Qxd5. Threatening Qd5xf7+. Whether or not Black exchanges Queens, White’s extra Pawn and initiative would win easily in the endgame.
27. ... Qc8 28. Ne5 Qf8 29. Kg2 g6 30. h3 Qe7 31. Nc6 Qb7 32. Qd8+ Kg7 33. Qd4+ Kg8 34. Qd5 Bf8 35. a4 Qb6 36. Ne5 Qc7 37. Nd7 Be7 38. c5 Qd8 39. c6 1–0.

BrandED

Vanishing Point

He is almost a double of six-time Italian Chess Vice Champion Roberto Cosulich, but the sign in the background that reads “Il Ciocco. Chess ’74. International Festival” raises a question about it, since Cosulich — as far as I know — did not take part in the inaugural International Festival at Il Ciocco International Tourist and Conference Centre in Castelvecchio Pascoli, Italy, on February 2–9, 1974. Can any reader provide more information about it? Photo: Il Ciocco.

The Movie Issue

Building the Future

Palmistry

To Each His Own

The following game was originally made public by Massimiliano Enzo Maria Orsi on his own website Italian Castling, which features a constantly updated archive of Italian chess history. The game is all the more interesting because it confirms, once again, that Roberto Cosulich was a bête noire to the American Stuart Wagman.

Roberto Cosulich – Stuart Wagman
4th International Open; Rovigo, September 7, 1976
Sicilian Defence B76

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. Bc4 0-0 8. f3 Nc6 9. Bb3 Bd7 10. Qe2!? Cosulich is already out of the ordinary. 10. Qd2 is mainstream theory.
10. ... a6 11. 0-0-0

11. ... Qc7? The bet worked. The move in the text allows White’s attack to spread its wings and hit hard. 11. ... Na5! 12. Qd3 b5 was satisfactory for Black in Sax – Velimirović, 1st “Tungsram” International Tournament, Budapest 1973.
12. g4 Nxd4 13. Bxd4 e5 14. Be3 Be6 15. h4 b5 16. h5 Bc4. Time did not bring any improvement: 16. ... b4 17. Nd5 Bxd5 18. Bxd5 Nxd5 19. Rxd5 Rfc8 20. Qh2 Bf8 21. Kb1 Rab8 22. f4 Rb7 23. f5 Qc4 24. Qg2 Rbc7 25. Rh2 Rb8 26. Qh1 Rbb7 27. b3 Qc6 28. fxg6 fxg6 29. hxg6 Qe8 30. Rh5 Rg7 31. gxh7+ Rxh7 32. Rd2 Rxh5 33. gxh5 Rh7 34. Rh2 Bg7 35. h6 Bf6 36. Qf1 Rf7 37. Rg2+ Kh7 38. Rf2 Qe6 39. Bg5 Kg6 40. Bxf6 1–0 Starostits – Eusebe, 1st International Open, Angers 2006.
17. Qh2 Rab8 18. Bg5 Rfc8 19. Qh4 Bxb3 20. Bxf6 Bxf6 21. Qxf6 b4 22. h6 Kf8 23. axb3 bxc3 24. Qxd6+ Qxd6 25. Rxd6 cxb2+ 26. Kxb2 1–0. Black’s Pawns fall like ripe pears.