Artwork © EvelIine
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Saturday, December 10, 2022
Things Not Seen
谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) – Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina
FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2022–23 Pool B; Semifinal game 4; Khiva, December 10, 2022
Queen’s Gambit Declined D52
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6 5. Bg5 Nbd7 6. e3 Qa5. The Cambridge Springs Variation, occasionally adopted by Goryachkina and, of course, perfectly playable.
7. cxd5 Nxd5 8. Rc1 h6 9. Bh4 Nxc3 10. bxc3 Ba3 11. Rc2 b6 12. Nd2. 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) has no curiosity to know what was waiting for her on the beaten track: 12. Be2 Ba6 13. 0-0 Bxe2 14. Rxe2 Qxc3? (very incautious) 15. Rc2 Qa5 16. Rxc6 0-0 17. e4? (17. Rc7 gave White a dominant position) 17. ... Rac8 18. Qc2 Qa6 19. h3 Nb8 20. Rxc8 Rxc8 21. Qb3 Nd7 22. d5 Nc5 23. Qe3 Qd3 24. dxe6 fxe6 25. Re1 Bb4 26. Qxd3? (⌓ 26. Rc1) Nxd3 27. Re2 Rc1+ 28. Kh2 e5 29. Bg3 Bc3 30. Nh4 b5 31. Nf5 b4 32. Ne7+ Kf7 33. Nc6 Ke6 34. h4 Ra1 35. f4? exf4 36. Bf2 Nc1 37. Rc2 Rxa2 38. Rxc1 Rxf2 39. Nxa7 f3 40. Kg3 Ra2 41. Nb5 fxg2 42. Nxc3 Rc2 0 : 1 P. Cramling – Goryachkina, FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2019–21, 2nd stage, Monte Carlo 2019.
12. ... Ba6 13. c4 0-0 14. Bd3 c5 15. 0-0 cxd4 16. exd4 Rfe8 17. Qe2 Rac8? Very careless. Black ought first play 17. ... Bf8! and only then follow up with ... Ra8-c8.
7. cxd5 Nxd5 8. Rc1 h6 9. Bh4 Nxc3 10. bxc3 Ba3 11. Rc2 b6 12. Nd2. 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) has no curiosity to know what was waiting for her on the beaten track: 12. Be2 Ba6 13. 0-0 Bxe2 14. Rxe2 Qxc3? (very incautious) 15. Rc2 Qa5 16. Rxc6 0-0 17. e4? (17. Rc7 gave White a dominant position) 17. ... Rac8 18. Qc2 Qa6 19. h3 Nb8 20. Rxc8 Rxc8 21. Qb3 Nd7 22. d5 Nc5 23. Qe3 Qd3 24. dxe6 fxe6 25. Re1 Bb4 26. Qxd3? (⌓ 26. Rc1) Nxd3 27. Re2 Rc1+ 28. Kh2 e5 29. Bg3 Bc3 30. Nh4 b5 31. Nf5 b4 32. Ne7+ Kf7 33. Nc6 Ke6 34. h4 Ra1 35. f4? exf4 36. Bf2 Nc1 37. Rc2 Rxa2 38. Rxc1 Rxf2 39. Nxa7 f3 40. Kg3 Ra2 41. Nb5 fxg2 42. Nxc3 Rc2 0 : 1 P. Cramling – Goryachkina, FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2019–21, 2nd stage, Monte Carlo 2019.
12. ... Ba6 13. c4 0-0 14. Bd3 c5 15. 0-0 cxd4 16. exd4 Rfe8 17. Qe2 Rac8? Very careless. Black ought first play 17. ... Bf8! and only then follow up with ... Ra8-c8.
18. c5! Qa4?! 18. ... Bxd3 19. Qxd3 Bb4 20. Nc4 Qa6 21. a3 Ba5 22. Qb3 bxc5!? 23. Qa4 was probably the best way to go for what will occur in the game, with Black sacrificing her Bishop for two Pawns.
19. Bxa6 Qxc2 20. Bxc8 Rxc8 21. Qa6 Rc7
19. Bxa6 Qxc2 20. Bxc8 Rxc8 21. Qa6 Rc7
22. Bg3?! Much simpler and stronger is 22. Bd8! Nb8 23. Qxa3 Rc8 24. Qxa7 Rxd8 25. Qxb6 with a material and positional preponderance.
22. ... e5 23. Nf3 Bxc5!? No doubt Black’s best practical chance, as she sacrifices her Bishop for two Pawns giving her opponent the most technical difficulties.
24. dxc5 Nxc5 25. Qa3 f6 26. Rc1 Qg6 28. Nh4. “Yet, 28. Nh4 was not my most accurate move”, 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) said afterwards. And, indeed, it was better for White to consolidate her advantage with 28. Ne1 followed by f2-f3 and Bg3-f2.
28. ... Qf7 28. Rd1 Rd7 29. Rxd7 Qxd7 30. h3 e4!? 31. Bb8 g5! 32. Qxa7
22. ... e5 23. Nf3 Bxc5!? No doubt Black’s best practical chance, as she sacrifices her Bishop for two Pawns giving her opponent the most technical difficulties.
24. dxc5 Nxc5 25. Qa3 f6 26. Rc1 Qg6 28. Nh4. “Yet, 28. Nh4 was not my most accurate move”, 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) said afterwards. And, indeed, it was better for White to consolidate her advantage with 28. Ne1 followed by f2-f3 and Bg3-f2.
28. ... Qf7 28. Rd1 Rd7 29. Rxd7 Qxd7 30. h3 e4!? 31. Bb8 g5! 32. Qxa7
32. ... gxh4? Goryachkina has not enough time for calculating the effects of unobvious moves. After the better 32. ... Qe6! 33. Nf5 (33. Ng6!? Nd7! 34. Nf4 gxf4 35. Bxf4⩲) 33. ... Qxf5 34. Qxb6 the ending is as hard to win for White as it is hard to draw for Black.
33. Qxb6 Ne6. 33. ... e3!? 34. fxe3 Ne4 35. Kh2! is also hopeless for Black.
34. a4 Kf7 35. a5 Nd4 36. Qc7 Ke8 37. Qc4 Qb7 38. Qg8+ Kd7 39. Qf7+ Kc6 40. Qc4+ 1 : 0.
33. Qxb6 Ne6. 33. ... e3!? 34. fxe3 Ne4 35. Kh2! is also hopeless for Black.
34. a4 Kf7 35. a5 Nd4 36. Qc7 Ke8 37. Qc4 Qb7 38. Qg8+ Kd7 39. Qf7+ Kc6 40. Qc4+ 1 : 0.
谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) masterly took advantage of Goryachkina’s lack of inspiration, probably due in large measure to the burdens and responsibilities, both psychological and real, that others impose her to bear. Photo: Timur Sattarov/FIDE. |
Friday, December 9, 2022
Spot the Difference
Liberty and insecurity
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 8, 2022
John Barclay, in his prophetic novel Argenis (1621), has defined in these terms the security paradigm that later European governments would progressively adopt: “Either therefore restore them to their liberty, or settle their domestic peace, for which they have left their liberty”. Liberty and security are, i.e., two antithetical paradigms of government, between which the State has to make his choice every time. If it wants to promise its subjects security, the sovereign will have to sacrifice their liberty and, vice versa, if it wants liberty will have to sacrifice their security. Michel Foucault, however, has shown how security should be understood (la sureté publique), which the physiocratic governments, starting with Quesnay, are the first to explicitly assume among their tasks in France of eighteenth-century. It was not a matter — then as now — of preventing catastrophes, which in Europe of those years were essentially famines, but to let them being produced in order to then be able to intervene immediately to govern them in the most useful direction. Governing here regains its etymological meaning, i.e. “cybernetic”: a good pilot (kybernes) cannot avoid storms, but, when they do happen, he must anyway be able to steer his ship according to his interests. In this perspective, it was essential to spread a feeling of security among the citizens, through the belief that the government was watching over their tranquility and their future.
What we are witnessing today is an extreme development of this paradigm and, at the same time, its punctual overthrow. The primary task of governments seems to have become the widespread diffusion among citizens of a feeling of insecurity and even panic, which coincides with an extreme compression of their liberties, that finds its justification just in that insecurity. The antithetical paradigms are now no longer liberty and security; rather, in Barclay’s terms, now one should say: “give people insecurity and they will give up liberty”. Therefore, it is no longer necessary for governments to show themselves capable of governing problems and catastrophes: insecurity and emergency, which now constitute the sole foundation of their legitimacy, can in no way be eliminated, but — as we are seeing today with the substitution of the war between Russia and Ukraine for the one against the virus — only articulated according to convergent modalities, though each time different. A government of this type is basically anarchic, in the sense that it has no principle to abide by, other than the emergency that it itself produces and maintains.
It is probable, however, that the cybernetic dialectic between anarchy and emergency will reach a threshold, beyond which no pilot will be able to steer the ship, and thus mankind, in the now inevitable shipwreck, will have to go back to wondering about the liberty which they have so recklessly sacrificed.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 8, 2022
John Barclay, in his prophetic novel Argenis (1621), has defined in these terms the security paradigm that later European governments would progressively adopt: “Either therefore restore them to their liberty, or settle their domestic peace, for which they have left their liberty”. Liberty and security are, i.e., two antithetical paradigms of government, between which the State has to make his choice every time. If it wants to promise its subjects security, the sovereign will have to sacrifice their liberty and, vice versa, if it wants liberty will have to sacrifice their security. Michel Foucault, however, has shown how security should be understood (la sureté publique), which the physiocratic governments, starting with Quesnay, are the first to explicitly assume among their tasks in France of eighteenth-century. It was not a matter — then as now — of preventing catastrophes, which in Europe of those years were essentially famines, but to let them being produced in order to then be able to intervene immediately to govern them in the most useful direction. Governing here regains its etymological meaning, i.e. “cybernetic”: a good pilot (kybernes) cannot avoid storms, but, when they do happen, he must anyway be able to steer his ship according to his interests. In this perspective, it was essential to spread a feeling of security among the citizens, through the belief that the government was watching over their tranquility and their future.
What we are witnessing today is an extreme development of this paradigm and, at the same time, its punctual overthrow. The primary task of governments seems to have become the widespread diffusion among citizens of a feeling of insecurity and even panic, which coincides with an extreme compression of their liberties, that finds its justification just in that insecurity. The antithetical paradigms are now no longer liberty and security; rather, in Barclay’s terms, now one should say: “give people insecurity and they will give up liberty”. Therefore, it is no longer necessary for governments to show themselves capable of governing problems and catastrophes: insecurity and emergency, which now constitute the sole foundation of their legitimacy, can in no way be eliminated, but — as we are seeing today with the substitution of the war between Russia and Ukraine for the one against the virus — only articulated according to convergent modalities, though each time different. A government of this type is basically anarchic, in the sense that it has no principle to abide by, other than the emergency that it itself produces and maintains.
It is probable, however, that the cybernetic dialectic between anarchy and emergency will reach a threshold, beyond which no pilot will be able to steer the ship, and thus mankind, in the now inevitable shipwreck, will have to go back to wondering about the liberty which they have so recklessly sacrificed.
(English translation by I, Robot)
José Manuel Capuletti, La Belle Epoque. Courtesy of Artnet.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Extra Learning
5th President of the People’s Republic of China 江泽民 (Jiāng Zémín), recently deceased, at his best as he gives a hilarious lesson in journalism to Chinese reporters guilty, according to him, of being too simplistic and naïve. |
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Double Fantasy
It was December 26, 2021 when four-time Women’s World Chess Champion 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) and 16th Women’s World Chess Champion 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) publicly expressed their solidarity with the city of 西安 (Xī’ān), 陕西省 (Shǎnxī province), China, which was then under strict lockdown due to the country’s draconian “zero-COVID” policy. “Winter is coming, but spring is not far away. We believe in 西安 (Xī’ān), we support 西安 (Xī’ān), we bless 西安 (Xī’ān): may 长安 (Cháng’ān) be eternal”. |
Nobody’s Perfect
Singularly enough, we find in the last issue of the Nuova Rivista degli Scacchi (No. 67 for July and August, 1886), a paper written by Signor S. Dubois, under the caption, “How many errors makes in a game the greatest player?” in which the writer, after examining very ably and at lenght the matter of this question, comes to the conclusion, in accord with the opinion expressed by the great French master, Labourdonnais, that, generally speaking, a player, be he ever so strong, will not make in a game fewer than two or three mistakes, slight or great. We are much of the same opinion. Brooklyn Chess Chromicle, No. 1, October 15, 1886, pp. 1-2 |
A Man in the World
Serafino Dubois played chess according to both the Italian and the international modes, and was a renowned theoretician as well as a cosmopolitan writer, but apparently he never indulged — at least as far as it is known — in the art of chess composition. Or maybe... yes, because the distinguished problemist Fabio Magini claims that a posthumous “protostudy” by Dubois can be found on La Tribuna Illustrata, No. 21, 1901, where the following diagram is shown as “Finale No. 38 by S. Dubois (Rome)”:
8/1p2r1p1/p4pk1/2NP4/5K2/P4P1P/1P6/8 w - - 0 1
White is to play and win: 1. d6 Re1 (or 1. ... Re8 2. d7 Rd8 3. Ne6! Rxd7 4. Nf8++−) 2. d7 Rd1 3. Ne6! Rxd7 4. Nf8++− and finis. This seems a bit too easy for such a “finale” to rise to the dignity of “study”, and most likely it is a matter of specimen from Dubois’ actual play.
Monday, December 5, 2022
Poltergeists
The truth and the name of God
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 5, 2022
It’s been almost a century that philosophers have been spaking about the death of God and, as often happens, this truth seems today tacitly and almost unconsciously accepted by the common man, without, however, its consequences being assessed and understood. One of these — and certainly not the least relevant — is that God — or, rather, his name — was the first and last guarantee of the link between the language and the world, between the words and the things. Hence the decisive importance in our culture of the ontological argument, which tightened God and the language insolubly together, and of the oath sworn on the name of God, which obliged to be liable for the transgression of the bond between our words and the things.
If the death of God can’t but imply the breaking of this bond, this then means that in our society the language has become constitutively a lie. Without the guarantee of the name of God, every speech, like the oath which ensured his truth, is nothing more than vanity and perjury. That’s what we have seen appearing in full light in these last years, when every word pronounced by institutions and media was nothing but vacuity and imposture.
An almost bimillennial era of Western culture, which founded its truth and its knowledges upon the nesso between God and logos, between the sacrosanct name of God and the simple names of the things, is now coming to its final end. And it is certainly no chance that only algorithms rather than the word still seem to keep some connection with the world, even though only in the form of probability and statistics, because numbers, too, cannot but ultimately refer to a talking man, still somehow implying some names.
If we have lost our faith in the name of God, if we can no longer believe in the God of the oath and ontological argument, it is not, however, excluded that another figure of truth is possible, which is not only the theologically mandatory correspondence between the word and the thing. A truth that does not end with guaranteeing the effectiveness of the logos, but saves in it the childhood of man and preserves what is still mute in him as the most intimate and true content of his words. We can still believe in an infant God, like that child Jesus whom, as we’ve been taught, the mighty wanted and want to kill at all costs.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 5, 2022
It’s been almost a century that philosophers have been spaking about the death of God and, as often happens, this truth seems today tacitly and almost unconsciously accepted by the common man, without, however, its consequences being assessed and understood. One of these — and certainly not the least relevant — is that God — or, rather, his name — was the first and last guarantee of the link between the language and the world, between the words and the things. Hence the decisive importance in our culture of the ontological argument, which tightened God and the language insolubly together, and of the oath sworn on the name of God, which obliged to be liable for the transgression of the bond between our words and the things.
If the death of God can’t but imply the breaking of this bond, this then means that in our society the language has become constitutively a lie. Without the guarantee of the name of God, every speech, like the oath which ensured his truth, is nothing more than vanity and perjury. That’s what we have seen appearing in full light in these last years, when every word pronounced by institutions and media was nothing but vacuity and imposture.
An almost bimillennial era of Western culture, which founded its truth and its knowledges upon the nesso between God and logos, between the sacrosanct name of God and the simple names of the things, is now coming to its final end. And it is certainly no chance that only algorithms rather than the word still seem to keep some connection with the world, even though only in the form of probability and statistics, because numbers, too, cannot but ultimately refer to a talking man, still somehow implying some names.
If we have lost our faith in the name of God, if we can no longer believe in the God of the oath and ontological argument, it is not, however, excluded that another figure of truth is possible, which is not only the theologically mandatory correspondence between the word and the thing. A truth that does not end with guaranteeing the effectiveness of the logos, but saves in it the childhood of man and preserves what is still mute in him as the most intimate and true content of his words. We can still believe in an infant God, like that child Jesus whom, as we’ve been taught, the mighty wanted and want to kill at all costs.
(English translation by I, Robot)
José Manuel Capuletti, Romeo Y Julietta con una Testigo (Romeo and Juliet with a Witness), 1936. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Garfield Worldwide
On Sunday, December 4, 2022 Mado Flynn displayed and donated her art to the charity fundraiser for the A.M.A. (Friends of Animal World) Cat Pound of Bagno a Ripoli, Metropolitan City of Florence, Italy. |
Back to the Future
Sunday at noon. Just the right time to go on a devotional visit to Teatro Lumière (Lumière Theatre) in Florence, Italy. |
Sideways
谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) – Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Lagno
FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2022–23 Pool B; Quarterfinal tie-break game 1; time control: 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Khiva, December 4, 2022
Queen’s Gambit Accepted D24
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc4 5. Qa4+ Nc6 6. a3 Bd7 7. Qxc4 Bd6 (7. ... Na5 8. Qa2 Bc6 9. e3⩲ Dreev – Kulaots, 8th Gausdal Classics, Gausdal 2007)
8. Bg5 h6 9. Bh4 0-0 10. e4 e5 11. d5 Na5 12. Qd3 Nb3 13. Rd1 a5 14. Be2 Qe7 15. 0-0 a4 16. h3 Ra5 17. Nd2 Nd4 18. Nc4 Rc5 19. f4 Nxe2+ 20. Qxe2 exf4
8. Bg5 h6 9. Bh4 0-0 10. e4 e5 11. d5 Na5 12. Qd3 Nb3 13. Rd1 a5 14. Be2 Qe7 15. 0-0 a4 16. h3 Ra5 17. Nd2 Nd4 18. Nc4 Rc5 19. f4 Nxe2+ 20. Qxe2 exf4
21. Bxf6
gxf6? The beginning and the end of all Lagno’s hopes. After the correct 21. ... Qxf6! 22. e5 Qf5! 23. exd6 Re8 Black regains her material with approximate equality.
22. Nxd6 Qxd6 23. Qh5 Qe5?! A little better is 23. ... Kh7 to which there would follow 24. Rd2 aiming at doubling her Rooks on the f-file.
24. Qh4 (24. Qxh6 Qg5)
24. ... Qg5 25. Qxf4 Kg7 26. Qf2 Rc4 27. Rd3 Qe5 28. Kh1
22. Nxd6 Qxd6 23. Qh5 Qe5?! A little better is 23. ... Kh7 to which there would follow 24. Rd2 aiming at doubling her Rooks on the f-file.
24. Qh4 (24. Qxh6 Qg5)
24. ... Qg5 25. Qxf4 Kg7 26. Qf2 Rc4 27. Rd3 Qe5 28. Kh1
28. ... f5?! Faced with threats of breakthrough and invasion with d5-d6 eventually followed by Rd3-d5, Black decides to fish in murky waters by sacrificing material.
29. exf5 Qf6 30. d6 Bc6 31. dxc7 Kh7 32. Rfd1 Rg8? This loses a precious tempo. Necessary was 32. ... Rc8 33. Rg3 Rxc7 34. Kh2 Rc8 35. Nd5 Bxd5 36. Rxd5 Rg8 37. Rxg8 Kxg8 38. Qe2 Qh4 39. Qf3± leaving White with a Pawn ahead, but not yet a mathematical certainty of a win.
33. Rg3 Rc8 34. Qe2 Rh4?! Tantamount to capitulation, but also after 34. ... Rxc7 35. Kh2! Black’s position could not much longer be held.
35. Nd5 Bxd5 36. Rxd5 Rxc7
29. exf5 Qf6 30. d6 Bc6 31. dxc7 Kh7 32. Rfd1 Rg8? This loses a precious tempo. Necessary was 32. ... Rc8 33. Rg3 Rxc7 34. Kh2 Rc8 35. Nd5 Bxd5 36. Rxd5 Rg8 37. Rxg8 Kxg8 38. Qe2 Qh4 39. Qf3± leaving White with a Pawn ahead, but not yet a mathematical certainty of a win.
33. Rg3 Rc8 34. Qe2 Rh4?! Tantamount to capitulation, but also after 34. ... Rxc7 35. Kh2! Black’s position could not much longer be held.
35. Nd5 Bxd5 36. Rxd5 Rxc7
37. Qe8 h5 38. Rd8 Rc1+ 39. Kh2 1 : 0.
In the day of truth 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) displayed iron will, cool nerve, and an excellent time management. Photo: Timur Sattarov/FIDE. |
Saturday, December 3, 2022
The accomplices of greed
The accomplice and the sovereign
Giorgio Agamben, Intervention at the “Doubt and Precaution Commission” of November 28, 2022
I would like to share with you some reflections on the extreme political situation we have lived through and from which it would be naïve to believe that we have escaped or even that we can escape. I believe that not all of us have realised that what we are dealing with is more and other than a flagrant abuse in the exercise of power or a perversion — however grave — of the principles of law and public institutions. I believe that we are rather faced with a shadow line which, unlike that of Conrad’s novel, no generation can think to climb over with impunity. And if one day historians shall investigate on what happened under the cover of the pandemic, it will result — I believe — that our society has, perhaps, never reached such an extreme degree of cruelty, irresponsibility and, at the same time, decay. I used with reason these three terms, now tied in a Borromean knot, that is, a knot in which each element can’t be untied from the other two. And if, as some, not without reason, claim, the seriousness of a situation is measured by the number of killings, I believe that this index too will result much higher than we believed or pretended to believe. Borrowing from Lévi-Strauss an expression that he used for Europe in the Second World War, one could say that our society “vomited itself up”. That’s why I think that for this society there is no way out of the situation in which, more or less consciously, it confined itself, unless something or someone puts it into question from the beginning to the end.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about; rather, I would like to question myself with you about what we have done so far and what we can continue to do in such a situation. Indeed, I fully share the considerations contained in a document which was circulated by Luca Marini regarding the impossibility of a reconciliation. There can be no reconciliation with those who have said and done what has been said and done in these two years.
We do not simply have before us people who have deceived themselves or have, for some reasons, professed erroneous opinions, that we can try to correct. Whoever thinks this is deluded. We have before us something different, a new figure of man and citizen, to use two terms familiar with our political tradition. In any case, it is a matter of something that took the place of that hendiadys and which I propose to call provisionally with a technical term of criminal law: the accomplice — provided it is made clear that it is a special figure of complicity, or, so to say, of absolute complicity, in the sense that I will try to explain.
In the terminology of criminal law, the accomplice is the one who put in place a conduct that in itself does not constitute a crime, but which contributes to the criminal action of another subject, the offender. We found ourselves, and we find ourselves, facing individuals — indeed an entire society — which made itself accomplice to a crime with no offender present — or, anyway, with no offender to name. That is, a paradoxical situation in which there are only accomplices, but no culprit, a situation in which everyone — be it the President of the Republic or the ordinary citizen, the Minister of Health or a simple doctor — always acts as accomplices and never as offenders.
I believe that this singular situation may enable us to read the Hobbesian pact in a new perspective. That is, the social contract has assumed the figure — which is perhaps its true, extreme figura — of a pact of complicity without the offender — and this absent offender coincides with the sovereign whose body is formed by the same mass of accomplices and therefore it is nothing other than the incarnation of this general complicity, of this being com-plici, i.e. folded together, of all single individuals. A society of accomplices is more oppressive and suffocating than any dictatorship, because whoever does not participate in the complicity — the non-accomplice — is purely and simply excluded by the social pact, he has no longer a place in the city.
There is also another sense in which one can speak of complicity, and it is the complicity not so much and not only between the citizen and the sovereign, but also and rather between the man and the citizen. Hannah Arendt has repeatedly shown how ambiguous the relationship between these two terms is, and how in the Declarations of Rights the inscription of birth, i.e. of the biological life of the individual, is actually in question in the juridical-political order of the modern nation-state.
Rights are attributed to man only to the extent that he is the immediately vanishing presupposition of the citizen. The emergence in our time — on a stable basis — of man as such is the indicator of an irreparable crisis in that fiction of identity between man and citizen upon which the sovereignty of the modern state is founded. What we are faced with today is a new configuration of this relationship, in which the man no longer passes dialectically into the citizen, but establishes a singular relationship with him, in the sense that, with the birth of his body, he provides the citizen with the complicity he needs to constitute himself politically, and the citizen, for his part, declares himself an accomplice to the man’s life, of which he takes care. This complicity, you will have understood, is biopolitics, which has now reached its extreme — and hopefully last — configuration.
Now the question I wanted to ask you is this: to what extent can we still feel obliged to this society? Or if, as I believe, still somehow, despite everything, we feel obbliged, in what ways and within what limits can we respond to this obligation and speak publicly?
I don’t have a comprehensive answer, I can only tell you, like the poet, what I know I can no longer do.
I can no longer, faced with a doctor or anyone who denounces the perverse way in which medicine has been used in these two years, not to question — first of all — the medicine itself. If we do not rethink about what medicine has progressively become and perhaps the entire science of which it claims to form a part, we will in no way be able to hope to stop its lethal rush.
I can no longer, faced with a jurist or anyone who denounces the way in which the law and the constitution have been manipulated and betrayed, not to revoke — first of all — the law and the consitution in question. Is it perhaps necessary, not to mention present times, that I recall here that neither Mussolini nor Hitler needed to question the constitutions in force in Italy and Germany, but rather found in them the devices they needed to establish their regimes? It is possible, i.e., that the gesture of whoever seeks today to base his battle on the constitution and on rights is already defeated from the start.
If I have evoked this double impossibility of mine, it is not, in fact, in the name of vague metahistorical principles, but, on the contrary, as an unavoidable consequence of a precise analysis of the historical situation in which we find ourselves. It is as if certain procedures or principles in which one believed or, rather, pretended to believe, had now shown their true face, which cannot omit to look at.
By this I do not mean to devalue or consider useless the critical work we have carried out so far and that even today will be certainly be carried on with rigour and sharpness. This work can be, and no doubt is, tactically useful, but it would be blind to identify it simply with a long-term strategy.
In this perspective, much still remains to be done and can only be done by letting go of concepts and truths that we took for granted without reservations. The work before us may begin, according to a beautiful image by Anna Maria Ortese, only there where all is lost, without compromise and without nostalgia.
Giorgio Agamben, Intervention at the “Doubt and Precaution Commission” of November 28, 2022
I would like to share with you some reflections on the extreme political situation we have lived through and from which it would be naïve to believe that we have escaped or even that we can escape. I believe that not all of us have realised that what we are dealing with is more and other than a flagrant abuse in the exercise of power or a perversion — however grave — of the principles of law and public institutions. I believe that we are rather faced with a shadow line which, unlike that of Conrad’s novel, no generation can think to climb over with impunity. And if one day historians shall investigate on what happened under the cover of the pandemic, it will result — I believe — that our society has, perhaps, never reached such an extreme degree of cruelty, irresponsibility and, at the same time, decay. I used with reason these three terms, now tied in a Borromean knot, that is, a knot in which each element can’t be untied from the other two. And if, as some, not without reason, claim, the seriousness of a situation is measured by the number of killings, I believe that this index too will result much higher than we believed or pretended to believe. Borrowing from Lévi-Strauss an expression that he used for Europe in the Second World War, one could say that our society “vomited itself up”. That’s why I think that for this society there is no way out of the situation in which, more or less consciously, it confined itself, unless something or someone puts it into question from the beginning to the end.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about; rather, I would like to question myself with you about what we have done so far and what we can continue to do in such a situation. Indeed, I fully share the considerations contained in a document which was circulated by Luca Marini regarding the impossibility of a reconciliation. There can be no reconciliation with those who have said and done what has been said and done in these two years.
We do not simply have before us people who have deceived themselves or have, for some reasons, professed erroneous opinions, that we can try to correct. Whoever thinks this is deluded. We have before us something different, a new figure of man and citizen, to use two terms familiar with our political tradition. In any case, it is a matter of something that took the place of that hendiadys and which I propose to call provisionally with a technical term of criminal law: the accomplice — provided it is made clear that it is a special figure of complicity, or, so to say, of absolute complicity, in the sense that I will try to explain.
In the terminology of criminal law, the accomplice is the one who put in place a conduct that in itself does not constitute a crime, but which contributes to the criminal action of another subject, the offender. We found ourselves, and we find ourselves, facing individuals — indeed an entire society — which made itself accomplice to a crime with no offender present — or, anyway, with no offender to name. That is, a paradoxical situation in which there are only accomplices, but no culprit, a situation in which everyone — be it the President of the Republic or the ordinary citizen, the Minister of Health or a simple doctor — always acts as accomplices and never as offenders.
I believe that this singular situation may enable us to read the Hobbesian pact in a new perspective. That is, the social contract has assumed the figure — which is perhaps its true, extreme figura — of a pact of complicity without the offender — and this absent offender coincides with the sovereign whose body is formed by the same mass of accomplices and therefore it is nothing other than the incarnation of this general complicity, of this being com-plici, i.e. folded together, of all single individuals. A society of accomplices is more oppressive and suffocating than any dictatorship, because whoever does not participate in the complicity — the non-accomplice — is purely and simply excluded by the social pact, he has no longer a place in the city.
There is also another sense in which one can speak of complicity, and it is the complicity not so much and not only between the citizen and the sovereign, but also and rather between the man and the citizen. Hannah Arendt has repeatedly shown how ambiguous the relationship between these two terms is, and how in the Declarations of Rights the inscription of birth, i.e. of the biological life of the individual, is actually in question in the juridical-political order of the modern nation-state.
Rights are attributed to man only to the extent that he is the immediately vanishing presupposition of the citizen. The emergence in our time — on a stable basis — of man as such is the indicator of an irreparable crisis in that fiction of identity between man and citizen upon which the sovereignty of the modern state is founded. What we are faced with today is a new configuration of this relationship, in which the man no longer passes dialectically into the citizen, but establishes a singular relationship with him, in the sense that, with the birth of his body, he provides the citizen with the complicity he needs to constitute himself politically, and the citizen, for his part, declares himself an accomplice to the man’s life, of which he takes care. This complicity, you will have understood, is biopolitics, which has now reached its extreme — and hopefully last — configuration.
Now the question I wanted to ask you is this: to what extent can we still feel obliged to this society? Or if, as I believe, still somehow, despite everything, we feel obbliged, in what ways and within what limits can we respond to this obligation and speak publicly?
I don’t have a comprehensive answer, I can only tell you, like the poet, what I know I can no longer do.
I can no longer, faced with a doctor or anyone who denounces the perverse way in which medicine has been used in these two years, not to question — first of all — the medicine itself. If we do not rethink about what medicine has progressively become and perhaps the entire science of which it claims to form a part, we will in no way be able to hope to stop its lethal rush.
I can no longer, faced with a jurist or anyone who denounces the way in which the law and the constitution have been manipulated and betrayed, not to revoke — first of all — the law and the consitution in question. Is it perhaps necessary, not to mention present times, that I recall here that neither Mussolini nor Hitler needed to question the constitutions in force in Italy and Germany, but rather found in them the devices they needed to establish their regimes? It is possible, i.e., that the gesture of whoever seeks today to base his battle on the constitution and on rights is already defeated from the start.
If I have evoked this double impossibility of mine, it is not, in fact, in the name of vague metahistorical principles, but, on the contrary, as an unavoidable consequence of a precise analysis of the historical situation in which we find ourselves. It is as if certain procedures or principles in which one believed or, rather, pretended to believe, had now shown their true face, which cannot omit to look at.
By this I do not mean to devalue or consider useless the critical work we have carried out so far and that even today will be certainly be carried on with rigour and sharpness. This work can be, and no doubt is, tactically useful, but it would be blind to identify it simply with a long-term strategy.
In this perspective, much still remains to be done and can only be done by letting go of concepts and truths that we took for granted without reservations. The work before us may begin, according to a beautiful image by Anna Maria Ortese, only there where all is lost, without compromise and without nostalgia.
(English translation by I, Robot)
José Manuel Capuletti, Not Guilty, 1967. Courtesy of WikiArt.
Friday, December 2, 2022
A Knight’s Tale
Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk – Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina
FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2022–23 Pool B; Quarterfinal match game 3; Khiva, December 2, 2022
Giuoco Piano C50
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. d3 Nf6 5. Nc3 h6 6. h3 d6 7. Na4 Bb6 8. a3 Be6 9. Bxe6 fxe6 10. 0-0 0-0 11. b4 Qe8 12. c3 Kh8. But also very well playable is 12. ... Nh5 13. Nxb6 axb6 14. Be3 Nf4 15. Kh2 Qh5 16. Ng1 Qxd1 17. Rfxd1 Ra4= with equality, Tari – Anand, 10th Norway Chess, Stavanger 2022, Armageddon game (time control: 10 minutes for White and 7 minutes for Black with a 1-second increment starting at move 40).
13. Ra2 Qf7 14. Re1 Rad8 15. Nxb6 axb6 16. a4 Ne7 17. a5 Ra8 18. Qb3 bxa5 19. Rxa5. If 19. bxa5 Black would reply 19. ... Nc6 20. Qxb7 Qd7 winning back her Pawn.
19. ... Ng6 20. d4 Nd7 21. Be3 b6 22. Ra2 Rxa2 23. Qxa2 exd4 24. cxd4 Nf6 25. Qc2 Nh5 26. Rc1 Nhf4 27. Ne1 d5. “All in all, today, despite the fact that I came out of the opening kind of unsure, the game went on and my opponent didn’t seem to figure it out very well”, Goryachkina said afterwards.
13. Ra2 Qf7 14. Re1 Rad8 15. Nxb6 axb6 16. a4 Ne7 17. a5 Ra8 18. Qb3 bxa5 19. Rxa5. If 19. bxa5 Black would reply 19. ... Nc6 20. Qxb7 Qd7 winning back her Pawn.
19. ... Ng6 20. d4 Nd7 21. Be3 b6 22. Ra2 Rxa2 23. Qxa2 exd4 24. cxd4 Nf6 25. Qc2 Nh5 26. Rc1 Nhf4 27. Ne1 d5. “All in all, today, despite the fact that I came out of the opening kind of unsure, the game went on and my opponent didn’t seem to figure it out very well”, Goryachkina said afterwards.
28. Kh2. A move which probably has to be taken into account sooner or later, but as for now 28. e5! appears decidedly stronger: 28. ... Nh4 29. b5! (not 29. g3?? because of 29. ... Nf3+! 30. Nxf3 Nxh3+ 31. Kg2 Qxf3+ 32. Kxh3 Rf5−+ with a mating attack) 29. ... Nf5 30. Kh2 and White stands better.
28. ... dxe4 29. Qxe4 Nd5
28. ... dxe4 29. Qxe4 Nd5
30. Nd3. It was probably wise to settle for a peaceful outcome with 30. Rc6 Nge7 31. Rxe6 Nf6 32. Qe5 Ng6 33. Qf5 Ne7 (or 33. ... Nh4) drawing by repetition.
30. ... Qf5! 31. Qxf5 exf5. The exchange of Queens has left Black with a somewhat superior endgame due to the weakness of White’s b4- and d4-Pawns.
32. Rc6 Rf6 33. Rxf6 Nxf6 34. Bd2 Kg8 35. f3 Kf7 36. Ne5+ Nxe5 37. dxe5. Despite the fact that the Black Knight is much superior to the White Bishop, if nothing else, Kosteniuk succeeded in getting rid of one of her weaknesses.
37. ... Nd5 38. f4 Ke6 39. Kg3 Ne7 40. Kf3 Kd5 41. g4 g6
30. ... Qf5! 31. Qxf5 exf5. The exchange of Queens has left Black with a somewhat superior endgame due to the weakness of White’s b4- and d4-Pawns.
32. Rc6 Rf6 33. Rxf6 Nxf6 34. Bd2 Kg8 35. f3 Kf7 36. Ne5+ Nxe5 37. dxe5. Despite the fact that the Black Knight is much superior to the White Bishop, if nothing else, Kosteniuk succeeded in getting rid of one of her weaknesses.
37. ... Nd5 38. f4 Ke6 39. Kg3 Ne7 40. Kf3 Kd5 41. g4 g6
42. Be1? Strangely enough, this crucial mistake was committed just after the time control was over! 42. Kg3! was manifestly called for and would have given chances to defend.
42. ... Nc6! 43. gxf5 gxf5 44. Ke3. If the King had been on g3 instead of f3, now White would play Kg3-h4-h5, completely turning the tables.
44. ... Kc4 45. Ke2 Nd4+ 46. Ke3 Ne6 47. Bd2 Kb3 48. Ke2 Kc2 49. Ke1 c5 50. b5. Kosteniuk makes one last desperate threat (Bd2-a5), but Goryachkina is just-in-time to neutralise it.
50. ... Kd3 51. Ba5 Kc4 52. Bxb6 Kxb5 53. Ba7 Nxf4 54. Kd2 Kc4 55. Bb8 Kd5 56.h4 h5 57. Ba7 Kd4 58. Bb8 Ne6 59. Kc2 Ke3 60. Kc3 f4 61. Kc4 f3 62. Kd5 Nf4+ 0 : 1.
42. ... Nc6! 43. gxf5 gxf5 44. Ke3. If the King had been on g3 instead of f3, now White would play Kg3-h4-h5, completely turning the tables.
44. ... Kc4 45. Ke2 Nd4+ 46. Ke3 Ne6 47. Bd2 Kb3 48. Ke2 Kc2 49. Ke1 c5 50. b5. Kosteniuk makes one last desperate threat (Bd2-a5), but Goryachkina is just-in-time to neutralise it.
50. ... Kd3 51. Ba5 Kc4 52. Bxb6 Kxb5 53. Ba7 Nxf4 54. Kd2 Kc4 55. Bb8 Kd5 56.h4 h5 57. Ba7 Kd4 58. Bb8 Ne6 59. Kc2 Ke3 60. Kc3 f4 61. Kc4 f3 62. Kd5 Nf4+ 0 : 1.
Today Goryachkina was lucky enough to be able to reach the type of positions which most exalt her own qualities. Photo: Eteri Kublashvili/Russian Chess Federation. |
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Acrylic Landscapes
Victoria Valentinovna Lomasko, Self-portrait in a Moscow Landscape, 2017, acrylic paint on gallery wall, 14 by 10 feet. Courtesy Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York. |
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