“A tale told by an idiot”. Truth and power from the baroque twist to the global governance.

Abstract

Over the past decades, we have witnessed a process of centrifugal acceleration with respect to State molarity. On the one hand, this acceleration has generated an interesting polymorphism of values, worldviews and forms of life, releasing those social and political energies that have contributed and still contribute to a radical re-discussion of the deepest assumptions of our common living. On the other hand, this liberogenic charge is obviously linked –both as cause and result– to a growing individual and collective uncertainty. In short, we are living in a panic period, which in many respects reminds us of the Baroque age, which has been the crucible for the birth of modern States and the Westphalian equilibrium. The risk is that the economic valorisation offered by governmental logic, with all its issues of exploitation and alienation, could stand as the only available bank of meaning to face the contemporary emptiness of answers. Can we maybe find in the meta-historical tension between Baroque and Classic a possible line of equilibrium between the dynamism of the Instituting and the stability of the Institution?