One of the most profound moments for an academic publisher is when we lose one of our authors. Their work is a lasting legacy, a reminder of the career and passion they dedicated their lives to. For us, as their publishers, we become the caretakers of that legacy.

This responsibility becomes even more significant when a project is still in production. Fortunately, we often have the honour of working with the author’s family or co-authors to ensure their work continues to reach the global research community.

This is the case with a forthcoming trio of titles: Hope and Despair, Wounded Nostalgia, and The Madness That Is Also in Us—English translations of works by the renowned psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna.

Eugenio Borgna, who passed away the 4th of December 2024, aged 94, was the most prominent Italian psychiatrist of his time. His works have made mental illness comprehensible to the readership and removed the boundaries created by misconception and fear. In his writing he makes acceptable what the society instinctively rejected as different and dangerous. His written work is a complement to Franco Basaglia’s psychiatric revolution.

We are proud to be able to publish these translated texts and continue to raise awareness of Eugenio Borgna’s work and the difference he made in making mental illness better understood.

Each title will feature a preface and we share a small snippet of these here.

“I write as an editor for the publishing house that is bringing Borgna into English for the first time, with a trilogy composed of Hope and Despair, Wounded Nostalgia, and The Madness That Is Also in Us. Again here, one need only glance at the titles to grasp the author’s aims: as a phenomenologist, opposed to any form of biological reductionism of psychiatric disorders and backed by direct clinical experience, the intention is to make madness understandable, acceptable, “normalize” it, in today’s parlance, by demonstrating readers its proximity to us all.”
Ilaria de Seta

“Of Eugenio Borgna, we appreciate his objectivity and composure, the measure that gives his texts, never caustic or brutal, the hushed tone of quiet reflection. Yet this moderation conceals a great radicalism. If there is such a thing as an intimately relational psychiatry, based on listening, “humanistic” and anti-authoritarian, this is precisely the psychiatry to associate with Borgna”.
Michele Dantini

“Eugenio Borgna is, equally with Franco Basaglia, the most important Italian psychiatrist. If Basaglia gave psychiatric patients back their freedom (with his reform that led to the passage of Law 180 in Italy in 1978), Borgna gave psychiatry back its soul.”
Stefano Redaelli

In seiner Rezension auf KlimabildungSalzburg.org bespricht der Artikelautor Hans Holzinger Werner Mittelstaedts neuesten Titel „Transformation und Ambivalenz. Steht die Welt vor dem Kollaps? Kurskorrektur oder Klimakatastrophe Mit einem Vorwort von Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker“:

„Werner Mittelstaedt zählt zu den Vertretern einer kritischen Zukunftsforschung in der Tradition von Robert Jungk. In seinem aktuellen Buch „Transformation und Ambivalenz“ steht die Klimakrise im Fokus. Diese sieht er aktuell als größte Gefahr für die Menschheit, wie der Untertitel des Bandes „Kurskorrektur oder Klimakatastrophe“ anzeigt. Mittelstaedt widmet sich zunächst den beiden Begriffen des Buchtitels. Unter Transformationen seien die „vielen winzigen bis sehr großen Veränderungsschritte auf praktisch allen Ebenen menschlichen Handelns zu verstehen“ (S. 15). Ihre Realisierung impliziere einen fundamentalen gesellschaftlichen Wandel, der die Lebenswirklichkeiten der Menschen fast überall auf der Erde umgestalten werde. Der Autor spricht von einem „Epochenumbruch“ (S. 16), den nicht nur Politik, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Technologie, sondern „möglichst viele Menschen aus allen gesellschaftlichen Umfeldern“ (ebd.) zu gestalten hätten.

Was hat dies mit Ambivalenz zu tun? „Wir wollen etwas verändern, aber scheuen uns, dafür etwas zu tun oder zu unterlassen.“ (S. 18) Dies gelte, so Mittelstaedt, nicht nur für einzelne Menschen, sondern das Handeln ganzer Länder oder Staatengemeinschaften, die die Ambivalenz der Bürger und Bürgerinnen widerspiegeln, wie etwa die bislang 27 Klimakonferenzen der Vereinten Nationen seit 1995 zeigen würden: „Seitdem hat sich die Erwärmung beschleunigt und die Schäden in der Biosphäre und für die Menschen durch die Klimakrise werden Jahr für Jahr größer, weil praktisch nichts erreicht wurde.“ (S. 19) Wir seien gefangen im Fortschrittsversprechen und der Wachstumsgläubigkeit: „Durch das enorme Wirtschaftswachstum im noch jungen 21. Jahrhundert wurde das gesamte Erdsystem stärker als jemals zuvor im Anthropozän belastet.“ (S. 50) Mittelstaedt spricht hier von einem „drohenden Wachstumsdilemma“ (S. 73), denn das bestehende Wachstumsparadigma sei alles andere als nachhaltig, wenn das Wachstum aufgrund von zunehmenden Klimakatastrophen jedoch einbreche, drohten „soziale Unruhen und politische Krisen nie gekannten Ausmaßes“ (ebd.). Der Rechtsruck und die Proteste in Europa durch die Gas- und Energiekrise hätten einen kleinen Vorgeschmack darauf geliefert. Eine Megakrise wäre auch unter dem Einsatz klugen Handelns und allergrößter Disziplin der meisten Menschen nicht mehr zu lindern.

Im Zentrum der globalen Transformation steht die Umstellung der Energieversorgung. Auch hier habe der Krieg Putins gegen die Ukraine die Krisenhaftigkeit unseres Energiesystems deutlich gemacht, so Mittelstaedt. Flüssiggas (LNG) sei davor nur als Ergänzung, etwa für LKW-Treibstoff, verwendet worden. Im Zuge der Gas-Krise sei dieses aber zum Ersatz für russisches Gas geworden – mit problematischen ökologischen Folgen: „LNG aus den USA mit hohem Fracking-Anteil ist mehr als 6-mal und das aus Australien rund 7,5-mal klimaschädlicher als Pipeline-Gas aus Norwegen.“ (S. 93)

Mittelstaedt fordert ein neues „Aufstiegs-Narrativ“ (S. 134), das Klimaschutz in allen Bereichen und Berufen ins Zentrum stellt. Und er plädiert für ein neues „Fortschritts-Narrativ“ (S. 135). Dieses müsse vermitteln, dass gesellschaftlicher Fortschritt sich nur noch erzielen lasse, „wenn Menschen ein neues Verständnis im Umgang mit der Biosphäre und der Begrenztheit der Erde entwickeln und danach handeln“ (ebd.) Da kommt die „neue Aufklärung“ von Ernst U. v. Weizsäcker ins Spiel, der ein Vorwort zum Buch verfasst hat.

Einschätzung: Werner Mittelstaedt vermittelt die Dringlichkeit der Umsteuerung und zitiert zahlreiche Fakten, die diese untermauern. Seine Vorschläge zur Transformation sind pragmatisch und reformorientiert. Sie reichen vom Stopp der Flächenversiegelung über den Ersatz von Kunststoffen durch biobasierte Ersatzstoffe bis hin zu Tempolimits auf Straßen und auf den Weltmeeren sowie einer deutlichen Verteuerung des Flugverkehrs. Auch eine faire Verteilung des Wohlstands und die Begrenzung der Reichen mit ihrem gigantischen CO₂-Fußabdruck wird angesprochen. Heftig kritisiert werden die neuen Militarisierungsschritte, die ökologisch desaströs seien und für die Transformation nötige Ressourcen verschlingen. Der Autor setzt auf strukturelle Veränderungen und damit auf eine Zähmung des Kapitalismus – die Systemfrage stellt das Buch so nicht. Deutlich wird, dass der Wandel auch unserer Denkmuster und kulturellen Bilder von Fortschritt notwendig ist, wie die 95 neuen Wertorientierungen und Handlungsmuster am Ende des Buches nochmals vor Augen führen. Ein Buch, das einmal mehr die Dringlichkeit der Umsteuerung aufzeigt.“

Der Artikel wurde am 01. März 2024 von Hans Holzinger auf klimabildungsalzburg.org unter dem folgenden Link veröffentlicht https://klimabildungsalzburg.org/2024/03/01/werner-mittelstaedt-transformation-und-ambivalenz/

Mehr Informationen zu „Transformation und Ambivalenz. Steht die Welt vor dem Kollaps? Kurskorrektur oder Klimakatastrophe Mit einem Vorwort von Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker“ von Werner Mittelstaedt erhalten Sie unter dem folgenden Link https://www.peterlang.com/document/1358981

Series co-editors Patrícia Vieira and Susan McHugh share their vision

With our new book series Plants and Animals: Interdisciplinary Approaches, we aim to grow connections between the emerging fields of critical plant studies and animal studies. Our editorial partnership represents a rare convergence of strengths in both areas, so we bring to the book series a keen sense of potentials for bridging them. In tandem with related fields like posthumanism and ecocriticism, the series is geared to enrich scientific knowledge by shining a spotlight on the connections across vegetal and animal life through studies grounded in the humanities. What can animal studies scholars learn from current plant research and vice versa? How do studies that encompass both plants and animals (and, potentially, other living and non-living forms of existence) enrich our understanding of our planet in all its diversity? Recognizing that a need for more equitable and harmonious forms of coexistence cuts across the most pressing social and environmental issues, Plants and Animals embraces both imaginative critique as well as creative problem solving in order to overcome obstacles to growing relations.

Until recently, plants and animals alike were studiously avoided as serious subjects for academic humanists. Worse, efforts to correct this mistake sometimes contributed to the further misperceptions of them as two mutually exclusive areas of interest for non-scientists. Critical plant studies, which has accelerated in the last decade, was initially posited as having been developed in opposition to the exponential growth in animal-centered research in the humanities since the end of the last century. Perceptions of the neglect of the vegetal in favour of the animate gained traction, particularly in studies that emphasized the western tradition. What is more, those seeking to define critical plant studies against animal studies scholarship characterized animal studies scholars as actively undermining interests in vegetal life. The heterogeneity of animal studies — a field variously known as human-animal studies, critical animal studies, or anthrozoology, and home to such diverse offshoots as vegan studies, literary animal studies, and cryptozoology — makes room for such criticisms. But the ever-growing multiplicity of voices espousing interests that bridge animal and plant studies also helps to erode claims that the barriers between them are insurmountable.

Intriguingly, few critical plant studies or animal studies researchers today appear to perceive each other as threats. If anything, the numbers of established animal studies scholars now also publishing in critical plant studies and vice versa are on the rise, meaning that any old sense of rivalry simply rings untrue. Instead, the disproportionately slow development of institutional support for humanistic studies of nonhuman life has emerged as one among many common causes, and a pressing reason for thinking that moves across academic silos, not to mention what/ why/ how different species converge in their literal referents. The stakes have never been higher.

Pushing traditional humanist thought beyond anthropocentrism, animal together with plant thinking is vital to solving the global problems of climate change and anthropogenic extinction. To support and develop the mutual growth of critical plant and animal studies, we want the series to publish scholarship that connects them more immediately, and ultimately to provide a framework that guides these nascent fields toward more purposeful interactions for years to come. The genuinely new knowledges that can emerge from crossover conversations need to be nurtured. Doing so entails not only dispelling the specters of schisms that may be holding back students and junior faculty from owning allegiances in both fields, but also providing them with encouragement to develop new pathways of research.

To be clear, we seek to learn from past mistakes, especially in order to create a robustly welcoming environment for equitable, inclusive, and diverse scholarship across plant and animal studies. It cannot be said often enough that the success of the “animal turn” in humanities and social sciences research can be credited to scholars reaching across disciplinary divides, particularly in the early days when nonhumans were considered scientific (again vs. humanistic) subjects. The strong feminist and queer-theoretical orientations of many early animal studies scholars had the significant benefit of rendering self-reflexive critique along the lines of feminist ecocriticism unnecessary. That said, the emergence only within the past few years of a robust body of animal studies scholarship that directly addresses the concerns of critical race and decolonial studies indicates how the field has been hampered in its inception by inattention to a broader range of social justice issues and contexts.

The over-representation of Anglophone and Euro-American scholars and projects is an ongoing issue in the academy, though one that the persistence of plants and animals across places and times can enable us to overcome. As editors, the global reach of our own different research networks — and those of our international editorial board — empowers our search for greater representation. The goal is a robust future for plant and animal studies research that will inspire action, ideally leading to meaningful socio-environmental changes for the benefit of all.

Critics should take note that the material history of writing alone makes the series a no-brainer. From ancient times, bark, bast, and vellum have been used as writing surfaces, inked in with ingredients like tree resin or gallnuts, animal bone or hide glue. Before the twentieth-century invention of synthetic adhesives, even books promoting animal rights contained remains of the proverbial horse sent to the glue factory. The detail in Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) that enslaved protagonist Sethe is tasked with making the gallnut ink used by her white tormentor Schoolteacher likewise serves as a subtle reminder that the modern proliferation of writing materials has deep roots in the plantations of settler colonialism. That such details are not — or not yet — common knowledge, however, gives pause to consider how justice for those written out of the human fold can be advanced only by taking plants and animals seriously.

Non-human beings, including plants and animals, exist, like humans, in tight communities, where mutual exchanges are ongoing. Humanistic knowledge should embrace these complexities and avoid artificial compartmentalizations of different forms of life. With Plants and Animals, we want to encourage the creation of scholarship that overcomes such boundaries, which exist nowhere but as relics of hackneyed thought. Among many other vital connections, plants need animals, such as insects, to reproduce, and animals need plants to breathe. What better example is there than symbiotic relationships to illustrate the kinds of scholarly exchanges we wish to foster with our series?

Learn more here. For further information, please contact Dr. Laurel Plapp, Senior Acquisitions Editor, at Peter Lang at l.plapp@peterlang.com