Introduction: Foucault’s Legacy in Contemporary Thinking: Forty Years Later (1984-2024)

Valentina Antoniol is a Junior Assistant Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Bari Aldo Moro and an associate at the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. For three years, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bologna, in the Departments of Political Science, of History, Cultures and Civilizations and of Architecture. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at Brown University and CUNY, and she held her PhD in Political Theory from the University of Bologna, in joint supervision with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She serves on the scientific and editorial boards of several journals, including materiali foucaultiani (as co-editor). Her recent research aims to explore the theories of war in Western political thought from the ancient world to the present day. She is also actively working on a project related to Cyber Social Security (SERICS), taking a critical interest in aspects related to social control and user profiling with digital technologies. Valentina Antoniol is the author of various essays and two books: Foucault critico di Schmitt. Genealogie e guerra (Rubbettino, 2024) (Foucault as a Critic of Schmitt. Genealogies and War), and Foucault et la guerre. À partir de Schmitt, contre Schmitt (Les Éditions Mimésis, 2023), (Foucault and War. From Schmitt, Against Schmitt).

Stefano Marino is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna. His main research interests and research fields are philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory of society, neo-pragmatism and somaesthetics, philosophy of music, and aesthetics of fashion. He is the author of the books Verità e non-verità del popular. Saggio su Adorno, dimensione estetica e critica della società (2021), La filosofia dei Radiohead (2021), Le verità del non-vero. Tre studi su Adorno, teoria critica ed estetica (2019), Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer (2015), La filosofia di Frank Zappa (2014), and Gadamer and the Limits of the Modern Techno-Scientific Civilization (2011). He has translated from German into Italian two books of Hans-Georg Gadamer and a book of Theodor W. Adorno, and has translated from English into Italian a book of Richard Shusterman and a book of Carolyn Korsmeyer. He has co-edited several volumes and special issues of philosophical journals: Foucault's Aesthetics of Existence and Shusterman’s Somaesthetics (2024), Perspectives on Nancy Fraser’s Thought (2023), Varieties of the Lifeworld (2022), Popular Culture and Feminism (2022), Pearl Jam and Philosophy (2021), The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (2021), Popular Culture and Social Criticism (2021), Aesthetics and Affectivity (2021), Romanticism and Popular Music (2021), Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” in the 20^th Century (2020), “Be Cool!” Aesthetic Imperatives and Social Practices (2020), Adorno and Popular Music (2019), Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (2017), Theodor W. Adorno: Truth and Dialectical Experience (2016), Nietzsche nella Rivoluzione Conservatrice (2015), Domandare con Gadamer (2011), and I sentieri di Zarathustra (2009).