‘Why does Africa matter and what should be our aim?’ British Foreign Policy, the Commonwealth, and the 1965 East and Central African Heads of Missions Meeting

A review of late quaternary pollen studies in East, Central and Southern Africa

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is worldwide, but the clinical and epidemiological pattern of the disease in Africa is different from that in developed areas. "Type 1 AIDS" occurs in industrialized North America and Europe; it has a distinctive sex ratio (16:1) and risk pattern of IV drug use and sexual practices. "Type 2 AIDS" occurs in Third World countries, particularly in eastern, southern, and central Africa. It is characterized by an entirely different sex ratio (1:1) and by distinctively different risk patterns. Both epidemics are caused by the HIV-1 virus. The key concept for understanding the origins of the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 AIDS is the migratory labor system in eastern, central, and southern Africa. This system causes long absences, increased family breakdown, and increased numbers of sexual partners. Historically the organization of this labor market has created a population which suffers from epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. These historical patterns are presented as evidence for the contemporary transmission of AIDS. When contemporary AIDS and HIV-1 seropositivity prevalence data are examined, a systematic temporal and geographic pattern emerges for the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Despite a paucity of good data, the prevalence data from eastern, central, and southern Africa support the thesis of migrant labor's role in the transmission of AIDS.

In the recent decades, East African region has been attracting more inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) than Central Africa, while the trend was different for the period before 1990. This study aimed at identifying factors that determine FDI attraction in the two regions using a panel data of six countries (three in Central Africa and other three in East Africa) over the year 1990-2018. We applied the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (P-ARDL) model based on the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimation to capture short and long-run relationships amongst variables. Results indicated that in the long-run, infrastructure quality, trade openness and market size explain the attraction of FDI inflows in both Central and East Africa. A comparison of the two regions shows a sharp contrast of factors that attract FDI. While trade openness and natural resources endowment are key factors for Central Africa, infrastructure quality and market size are critical in East Africa. However, resource curse hypothesis has been found in Central Africa since the increase in resource rents decreases the attraction of FDI inflows. Therefore, policies which promote cooperation among countries by increasing the levels of trade, reduce the costs of doing business and invest in infrastructures should be implemented in the two regions.

Patterns of twentieth century genocides: the Armenian, Jewish, and Rwandan cases

This paper analyzed the factors that drive foreign direct investments (FDI) by looking at regional heterogeneity among the five African regions. For the first time, FDI drivers are analyzed for each of the five regions of Africa contrary to previous studies which focused on Africa as a whole. The paper used a panel dataset from 1970 to 2010 of 53 African countries divided into: Central, East, North, Southern, and West Africa. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques are used for the estimations. The main results indicate that: (i) agglomeration has a strong positive relationship with FDI inflows in all the regions except Central Africa. However, in West Africa, the second lag of FDI is significantly negative; (ii) there is a negative relationship between FDI inflows and GDP per capita in all the five regions, but a U‐shaped relationship is observed in Central, North, and West Africa. But GDP growth rate has a strongly positive relationship with FDI inflows in Central Africa but negatively significant in West Africa; (iii) FDI follows domestic investment in East, Southern, and West Africa; (iv) democracy is a major factor in attracting FDI to Southern Africa, being upward concave; (v) infrastructure development has a positive impact on FDI inflows in East and North Africa; (vi) trade openness has a positive relationship with FDI inflows in all the five regions except in East Africa; (vii) inflation deters FDI inflows to East Africa; (viii) the level of urbanization has a strong positive relationship with FDI inflows only in West Africa; (ix) net foreign aid has a negative relationship with FDI inflows to East, North, and Southern Africa; (x) higher life expectancy deters FDI inflows to Central Africa but promotes the same to East and North Africa; (xi) metal production and exportation attract significant FDI to Central Africa while oil production and exportation attract higher FDI to West Africa; (xii) monetary union attracts greater FDI to Central and West Africa; and (xiii) political instability is a strong hindrance to FDI inflows to West Africa.

Cocquyt C., de Haan M., Jahn R. and Hinz F. 2012. Nitzschia epiphytica, N. epiphyticoides and N. pseudepiphytica (Bacillariophyta), three small diatoms from East and Central Africa. Phycologia 51: 126–134. DOI: 10.2216/10-61.1Nitzschia epiphytica and N. epiphyticoides are two small diatoms from Central and East Africa described by Müller in 1905 and by Hustedt in 1949, respectively. To reduce the confusion that exists between the two species, the type of N. epiphyticoides and the original material of N. epiphytica were reexamined by light and scanning electron microscopy. Because N. epiphytica was described from several samples by Müller, a lectotype is designated. The variability of these two Nitzschia species was studied using both historic material and more recent material from Lake Tanganyika. A third taxon, Nitzschia pseudepiphytica, which corresponds rather well with the emended species description of N. epiphytica given by Hustedt in 1949, is described. The distribution of these three small Nitzschia species is probably restricted to tropical Africa and reported occurrences elsewhere in the world need to be re-investigated.

Africa contributes significantly to the global neurosurgical disease burden but has only 1% of the neurosurgery workforce. This study appraises the neurosurgical workforce and training capacity in Africa and projects the workforce capacity by 2030. The authors conducted a systematic review of the online literature on neurosurgical workforce and training in Africa obtained from three journal databases (PubMed, Embase, and African Index Medicus), as well as from a gray literature search, between September and December 2020. Included literature passed a two-level screening conducted using a systematic review software by a team of two independent reviewers. Data were extracted from selected articles and documented and analyzed on spreadsheets. One hundred and fifty-nine eligible articles were analyzed: 1974 neurosurgeons serve 1.3 billion people in Africa (density 0.15 per 100,000 persons, ratio 1:678,740), with uneven distribution between the regions. North Africa has 64.39% of the neurosurgical workforce (n = 1271), followed by Southern Africa (12.66%, n = 250), West Africa (11.60%, n = 229), East Africa (8.26%, n = 163), and Central Africa (3.09%, n = 61). At an exponential growth rate of 7.03% (95% CI 5.83%-8.23%) per annum, Africa will have 3418 (95% CI 1811-6080) neurosurgeons by 2030, with a deficit of 5191 neurosurgeons, based on population workforce targets. In terms of training, there are 106 neurosurgery training institutions in 26 African countries. North Africa has 52 training centers (49.05%), West Africa 23 (21.70%), East Africa 15 (14.15%), Southern Africa 14 (13.21%), and Central Africa 2 (1.89%). The major regional training programs are those of the West African College of Surgeons (24 sites in 7 countries) and the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa (17 sites in 8 countries). The study is limited as it is based on the online literature, some of which includes modeled estimates with questionable reliability. However, the results indicate that while countries in North Africa are expected to surpass their population workforce requirements, sub-Saharan African countries are likely to have significant workforce deficits accentuated by the paucity of neurosurgery training programs. To meet the 2030 population workforce requirements, the continent's exponential growth rate should be scaled up to 15.87% per annum. Scaling up neurosurgical training would help to meet this target and requires collaborative efforts from continental, regional, and national agencies and international organizations.

Disease, we have argued, influenced patterns of colonization, especially in West Africa, the Americas, and Australia (Chapter 2). In turn, imperial transport routes facilitated the spread of certain diseases, such as bubonic plague. This chapter expands our discussion of environmentally related diseases by focusing on trypanosomiasis, carried by tsetse fly, in East and Central Africa. Unlike plague, this disease of humans and livestock was endemic and restricted to particular ecological zones in Africa. But as in the case of plague, the changing incidence of trypanosomiasis was at least in part related to imperialism and colonial intrusion in Africa. Coastal East Africa presented some of the same barriers to colonization as West Africa. Portugal maintained a foothold in South-East Africa for centuries, and its agents expanded briefly onto the Zimbabwean plateau in the seventeenth century, but could not command the interior. Had these early incursions been more successful, southern Africa may have been colonized from the north, rather than by the Dutch and British from the south. Parts of East Africa were a source of slaves and ivory in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The trading routes, commanded by Arab and Swahili African networks, as well as Afro-Portuguese further south, were linked with the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, slave-holding expanded within enclaves of East Africa, such as the clove plantations of Zanzibar. When Britain attempted to abolish the slave trade in the early nineteenth century, and policed the West African coast, East and Central African sources briefly became more important for the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves from these areas were taken to Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean. Britain did not have the same intensity of contact with East Africa as with West and southern Africa until the late nineteenth century. There was no major natural resource that commanded a market in Europe and British traders had limited involvement in these slave markets. But between the 1880s and 1910s, most of East and Central Africa was taken under colonial rule, sometimes initially as protectorates: by Britain in Kenya and Uganda; Germany in Tanzania; Rhodes’s British South Africa Company in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi; and by King Leopold of Belgium in the Congo.

BackgroundIn sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Plasmodium falciparum causes most of the malaria cases. Despite its crucial roles in disease severity and drug resistance, comprehensive data on Plasmodium falciparum genetic diversity and multiplicity of infection (MOI) are sparse in SSA. This study summarizes available information on genetic diversity and MOI, focusing on key markers (msp-1, msp-2, glurp, and microsatellites). The systematic review aimed to evaluate their influence on malaria transmission dynamics and offer insights for enhancing malaria control measures in SSA.MethodsThe review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Two reviewers conducted article screening, assessed the risk of bias (RoB), and performed data abstraction. Meta-analysis was performed using the random-effects model in STATA version 17.ResultsThe review included 52 articles: 39 cross-sectional studies and 13 Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)/cohort studies, involving 11,640 genotyped parasite isolates from 23 SSA countries. The overall pooled mean expected heterozygosity was 0.65 (95% CI: 0.51–0.78). Regionally, values varied: East (0.58), Central (0.84), Southern (0.74), and West Africa (0.69). Overall pooled allele frequencies of msp-1 alleles K1, MAD20, and RO33 were 61%, 44%, and 40%, respectively, while msp-2 I/C 3D7 and FC27 alleles were 61% and 55%. Central Africa reported higher frequencies (K1: 74%, MAD20: 51%, RO33: 48%) than East Africa (K1: 46%, MAD20: 42%, RO33: 31%). For msp-2, East Africa had 60% and 55% for I/C 3D7 and FC27 alleles, while West Africa had 62% and 50%, respectively. The pooled allele frequency for glurp was 66%. The overall pooled mean MOI was 2.09 (95% CI: 1.88–2.30), with regional variations: East (2.05), Central (2.37), Southern (2.16), and West Africa (1.96). The overall prevalence of polyclonal Plasmodium falciparum infections was 63% (95% CI: 56–70), with regional prevalences as follows: East (62%), West (61%), Central (65%), and South Africa (71%).ConclusionThe study shows substantial regional variation in Plasmodium falciparum parasite genetic diversity and MOI in SSA. These findings suggest a need for malaria control strategies and surveillance efforts considering regional-specific factors underlying Plasmodium falciparum infection.

For the government of New Zealand, the role of high commissioner in the United Kingdom was of paramount significance. The Labour government's 1935 electoral success was followed quickly by the appointment of William Jordan to fill this role. British-born and with a very visible loyalty to the Crown and the imperial idea, during the pre-war years he was nonetheless not averse to offering stringent opinions on British foreign policy. An active participant in the League of Nations, he believed passionately in the value of collective security and the need to forcefully deter the dictators. The war's outbreak in September 1939 hit him particularly hard but his support for the British Empire's greatest challenge remained resolute. His High Commission was blessed with an abundance of talent to handle all the key issues and despite the considerable distances involved, a regular stream of visitors from New Zealand were prepared to make the arduous journey, including among them Prime Minister Peter Fraser. Their host was a complex character who was noted for a ‘volcanic’ temper and clashed regularly with members of his staff, visiting political figures from home, fellow dominions' high commissioners and even British dignitaries. Yet, for the sake of the Commonwealth alliance, all this was kept successfully behind closed doors.

The spread of any infectious disease can be accelerated in a situation of large-scale migration, especially in the face of inadequate facilities to contain the disease. This observation has already been made in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The spread of tuberculosis from South Africa to the towns and villages of the neighbouring countries in the fifties and sixties by mine workers who migrated to the South African mines is well documented (Packard 1989). More recently, from the late 70’s to the early 80’s, this pattern of disease spread has occurred again in Eastern and Central Africa with AIDS, fuelled by what Baldo and Cabral (1990) have termed Low Intensity Wars (LIW). Free movement of people, including prostitutes, to where business is profitable, has also been blamed as partly responsible for the high AIDS incidence in the exBritish colonies such as Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania (Konotey-Ahulu 1989). Despite this historical evidence, very little has been done by way of the study of the relationship between migration and AIDS in West Africa until recently (see Painter 1992). Migration and AIDS in West Africa The development of AIDS as a social problem in West Africa occurred several years later than in Eastern and Central Africa, around the mid-eighties. At present the governments in the sub-region have recognized it as a health threat. However, massive mobility of people, which is a common feature in the sub-region, has been observed to have historical pre-eminence over Eastern and Central Africa (Parkin, 1975). Two principal patterns of population movement have been established over the years. The first is the North-South movement within coastal countries of Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, and the second is the movement over longer distance between the hinterland Sahelian countries in the north (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad) and the coastal countries to the south. The main feature of the migratory movements in West Africa is that they were male dominated. The migrants were more likely to be young unmarried males and if married, they were more likely to leave their wives behind. Women’s participation in the movement is increasingly becoming important in recent times but as yet their movement seems to be towards a few places in the sub-region (Anarfi 1990). Another feature is its periodic, seasonal nature. This massive, region-wide mobility is strongly linked to the effects of seasonality on the ability of rural dwellers in West Africa to earn the real income that their families need to survive and get ahead (Painter 1992: 3). A situation of seasonally limited opportunities and a scarcity, over a period of 7 to 8 months, related to the rainfall pattern of the Sahelian countries, prevails. Seasonal migration has therefore become a form of strategy to survive harsh conditions imposed by nature. According to Painter (1992) each year, from September through December, hundreds of thousands of men leave their homes in the Sahelian countries in the north and travel to countries along the coast. These men may remain in the coastal countries from four to eight months looking for money, before they return home. It is estimated that from 6 to 16 per cent of the total population of Niger, for example, may be affected each year by seasonal migration. Other studies have observed that men from the Sahelian countries participate in these yearly migrations from 10 to 15 years during their individual lifetimes (Painter 1992). Participating in the migration process has become more or less a way of life for rural households in Sahelian West Africa.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology will reduce the costs of transactions to both customers and providers. This is a good thing, mostly. But it will be harder than people suppose, and it may have some adverse consequences. There are numerous technical and policy problems, including privacy and security issues. All these likely will be resolved, but only with time, experience, and money. Thus, it is unclear just how RFID will be used, just when various applications will become feasible. Also, as transaction costs decline, providers will be inclined to charge for things that are now free, such as public parks and congested roads. We may wait less at each transaction point, but such points may proliferate. Rather than obsess about this one technology, we should aim to think creatively about transactions and ways to improve them. Transactions affect our lives in many ways. A transaction is a process, not just an event. When people are involved, the process becomes intertwined with other intricate processes—product choice, social interaction, and the expression of power relations. RFID certainly offers the potential for improvement, but there are some lower-tech methods worth considering. This is not a systematic survey, but rather an essay, a sketch in broad strokes of an immense and varied landscape. Many topics are touched on lightly. The goal is to stimulate thought and discussion. More questions are raised than answered. In places the tone is personal, some might say eccentric.

The Theology of Money

This article argues against the naive instrumentalism which sees the Race Relations Acts as having a specific ‘purpose’ or purposes against which their effectiveness can be measured. The measure cannot be racial disadvantage, because this is outside the scope of the law, nor can it be social patterns of discrimination against groups, because no legal definition can embrace these. Nor can the Acts be satisfactorily explained from an ‘educational’ perspective. Instead one may examine the functions of the law, either in Parsonian terms, as a mechanism for the ‘negotiation’ of change, or as containing symbols around which struggles for change can be organised. The law can be seen as simply one expression of power relations. From that perspective the tactical advantages of being linked to sexual politics may now be outweighed by the strategic objectives of: (1) improving the litigation process generally; and (2) concentrating on facilitative powers which will enable remedial action to be taken.

Nietzsche continues to be a source of inspiration for political thinking, as this diverse collection of articles makes clear. The aim of the volume—according to its commissioning editor Keith Ansell-Pearson, known for his seminal Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Nietzsche contra Rousseau (Cambridge University Press, 1996)—is not to determine, once and for all, what that contribution to political thought ought to be, but rather to show how Nietzsche continues to provide new and interesting ways of thinking about politics today. So Rosalyn Diprose in “Nietzsche on Truth, Honesty and Responsibility in Politics,” for instance, criticizes Hannah Arendt's view of the role of truth in politics from a Nietzschean perspective, arguing that Nietzsche's commitment to perspectivism entails that “honesty” be the most important value in the political sphere, and not the distinction between factual and moral truth that Arendt wants to uphold. Peter Sedgwick, in “Nietzsche, Naturalism and Law,” challenges the view that Nietzsche is the enemy of law, characterized here as only the expression of power relations, positing instead that after the birth of the state law becomes a site of contestation in which authority itself comes into question. Taking his cues from Deleuze, Alan Schrift, in “Spinoza vs. Kant: Have I Been Understood?,” explores the possibility of a Nietzschean nontranscendental politics inspired by Spinoza's immanentist alternative to Kant, and which, even if it might not lead to an explicit political theory, opens up the space within which one can be developed. In “Nietzsche and the Engine of Politics,” Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, focusing on Nietzsche's concern with physiology, offers an interpretation of the Übermensch that privileges physis over logos, and thus affords us a glimpse into her recent work The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).As these examples show, the collection keeps its promise of opening up new and different avenues through which to explore how Nietzsche's political thinking might be used to think about politics today. This is amplified by the fact that it brings together both well-established and more up-and-coming Nietzsche scholars, and makes certain authors who work in the broader field address more specifically Nietzschean topics. In doing so, the collection offers a rather full and fertile snapshot of the state of Nietzsche scholarship today, and will not be of interest just to Nietzsche scholars, but can also serve as an excellent introduction to students entering the field, as a way of grasping a number of the different positions available in a rather concise manner.This thinking, it must be said, is done very much in the “Continental” vein: the collection after all appears in the Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy series. It is interesting to note, however, that while the figures that are called upon are very much Continental, or more to the point French—Deleuze, Badiou, Klossowski, and Lacan in particular loom large—the contributors themselves are more often than not drawn from the Anglo-American world, notably the United Kingdom, the United States, and, increasingly, Australia. So aside from Bruno Bosteels (a Belgian who teaches at Cornell), Vanessa Lemm (who studied in Paris, now in Australia), and Herman Siemens (of Leiden but, like much of the Netherlands, working in English), none of the authors are themselves French, and there is little engagement with contemporary French interpreters of Nietzsche. That, however, might be more of a commentary on the state of the French literature, which has seen a (natural) decline since its postmodern heyday, than anything else, and in any case contemporary French scholars such as Patrick Wotling and Monique Dixsaut do not work within the framework that interests the contributors to this collection in the first place.While the collection explores new terrain in Nietzsche studies, this does not mean that more conventional topics are not treated. So the theme of perfectionism runs throughout the book: Michael Ure, in “Nietzsche's Political Therapy,” is interested in how in his middle period Nietzsche draws on Hellenistic therapies to inform his reimagining of ancient ethical perfectionism, which in his later work he transforms into an aristocratic political program to enhance the capacities of the human species as a whole. This notion of “species” perfectionism—by which he means Nietzsche's interest in future human forms of justice and the broader social and political order—is present also in Paul Patton's chapter on “Nietzsche, Genealogy and Justice.” And David Owen, in “Nietzsche's Freedom: The Art of Agonic Perfectionism,” joins Nietzsche's interest in the ancient Greek agon, particularly as it is developed in Nietzsche's early unpublished piece “Homer's Contest,” with the notion of perfectionism, arguing that it is through an agonistic construction of the self that autonomy and freedom can be achieved.Indeed, the agon, and in particular how closely it is linked to Nietzsche's understanding of democracy, has been one of the most important themes that has emerged in the study of Nietzsche's political theory in the past twenty or so years, and what Nietzsche might teach us about democracy remains the most hotly contested topic in the literature. Much of this interest in Nietzsche and democracy has focused on Nietzsche's “middle period,” because it is thought that Nietzsche there expresses opinions that are more sympathetic to democracy than his “aristocratic radicalism.” Patton picks up on this theme, arguing that Nietzsche combines his interest in the origins of justice and rights with the theory of democratization he develops over the course of this period, to ask whether these might be made compatible with our contemporary understanding of democracy. This attempted appropriation of Nietzsche for a refounding of modern democratic politics has not gone unchallenged, however, and in many ways Robert Guay, in his “Movements and Motivations: Nietzsche and the Invention of Political Psychology,” takes up the baton here. Rejecting the view that Nietzsche is interested in political perfectionism, Guay offers instead an interpretation of Nietzsche's theory of democracy as one of a “movement,” a psychological formation writ large that has become reactively pathological.But perhaps the most striking chapter on this topic is Herman Siemens's “Reassessing Radical Democratic Theory in the Light of Nietzsche's Ontology of Conflict,” which lays down a challenge that postmodern appropriations of Nietzsche's theory of the agon for contemporary democratic theory will find hard to meet. Arguing against William Connolly's interpretation of the agon—and by extension David Owen's in the collection—as one based on “respect” between participants, Siemens offers instead a reading of Nietzsche's agon as one based on “agonal hatred,” where the notion of “valuing enemies” is grounded not in mutual respect, but rather in the valuing of enmity that is guaranteed by the institutions of the agon. In doing so Siemens moves the discussion about the agon in Nietzsche from one centered on the supposed positive virtues that it is meant internally to foster, to one centered on the fact that it is the structure, and not the content, of the agon that guarantees positive outcomes for society as a whole. This is a move, one might say, from a politics based on good faith to one based on bad faith, where the benefits of the agon do not arise from the intentions of the participants themselves, which may in fact be absolutely nefarious, but from the institution of the agon, which channels and directs this hatred into something positive. Therein might lie the true lesson of Nietzsche's theory of the agon for politics today.Another noteworthy aspect of the collection is the return of “great politics” as an entry point into theorizing about Nietzsche's politics. This is not the first time that Nietzsche's politics has been apprehended from the perspective of great politics. In fact the interwar period saw a large—and indeed perhaps the first—debate surrounding Nietzsche's politics between a diverse number of interlocutors, including Heidegger, Jaspers, and Alfred Baeumler (of the “Hitler prophecy”), and that debate was articulated through the notion of grosse Politik. If the political context of that time means that this should come as no surprise, it is interesting to see its return in the last three chapters of this collection: Vanessa Lemm's “Nietzsche's Great Politics of the Event,” Daniel Conway's “Nietzsche's Immoralism and the Advent of ‘Great Politics,’” and Bruno Bosteels's “Nietzsche, Badiou, and Grand Politics: An Antiphilosophical Reading.”All three chapters—along with Gary Shapiro's “Kairos and Chronos: Nietzsche and the Time of the Multitude,” which explores Nietzsche's declaration in BGE that “this is the century of the multitude [Menge]!” and how it can help us enrich discussions about cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism—link great politics to an event of a certain kind, whether it is the great politics of going beyond time and morality to affirm the eternity of the moment through amor fati (Lemm), the advent of immoralism and the transformation of politics into the “great” ideological politics of the twentieth century after a fateful “day of decision” (Conway), or again the “grand” “anti-” or “archi-” politics of the revaluation that breaks history into two (Bosteels). This recent interest in the “event” finds its origins in Heidegger's writings, where the “event” was meant to determine the existence of Being instead of Nothingness. As such it has associations with a certain theology of which Nietzsche would have been highly suspicious. Indeed, in its fascination with the “spectacular” and the “great,” understood as the “big,” the notion of “event” seems related to the “grand” power politics of which Nietzsche was so critical, and which he ultimately associated with slave morality. So if Lemm and Conway are right to point out that Nietzsche rejected the “petty politics” of his day, that of the nationalist state and its jockeying for position within the European balance of power, Lemm's claim that events become great only if they are received as such by the democratic people seems a little harder to accept: Nietzsche's claim that a culture is judged not solely by its great men but also by how they are received is made in the first instance about a particular people, namely the Greeks, and we know that for Nietzsche the ancients were in fact the aristocrats par excellence.Both Lemm and Bosteels refer to Badiou's idea of “anti-” or “archi-” philosophy as a way of capturing Nietzsche's “great politics,” understood as either going beyond or even breaking with a conventional understanding of politics, and it has become commonplace to depict Nietzsche's political thought as being in some sense “supra-” political. But we need not appeal to extraneous notions to be able to make sense of Nietzsche's political thought. Indeed, in depicting Nietzsche in this way, the end result might prove more of a double peine of contributing neither to our understanding of Nietzsche nor to a deepening of the philosophical project that was called upon in the first place. Nietzsche wanted us to “relearn” politics, yet we can do so from within the structures of his own thought, for instance by analyzing contemporary politics from the perspective of either master or slave morality. As this collection shows, we still have a lot to learn from him.