| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: In this essay, I reconsider the politics of contemporary philanthropy by navigating between two dominant ideological perspectives on civil society: depoliticization and demonization. I do so with reference to the recent tribulations of three famous magnate-philanthropists, Osman Kavala, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and George Soros. By revisiting my concept of the “civil society effect” - the romanticizing of civil society as a domain free from instrumental political motivations - I aim to shed light on the broader political terrain of contemporary capitalism, in which private capital is too easily understood as a neutral medium for political transformations. At the same time, I focus on the histories and genealogies that the depoliticization of civil society silences, especially the imperial legacies that opponents of liberal philosophy - new authoritarians such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán - frequently invoke with pugnacity. |
