On the notion of the political in postmarxist theory.

Foucault once wrote: “Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.” By criticizing the bureaucrats of the revolution and the sad passions of the militants, Foucault conjured up a positive grammar of the political awakening of 1968, that has not been a second Freudo-Marxist golden age, but an incision into the political itself, in that a changed analysis of power came together with a changed model of rebellion. The events of 1968 saw the emergence of a political potentiality that had left the Leninist model of revolution behind, and turned to a minoritarian and molecular model of the break. It focussed around the question of how various forms of desire traversing a situation unfold their forces in the process by which the societal order is overthrown.

Since 1968, however, minoritarian politics have failed. After they have been detached from an anticapitalist approach, differences are exclusively acknowledged in the mode of commercialized life-forms or essentialist predicates. Thus, the concrete particularity of culturalized or ethnicized differences supplements the homogeneity of capital, and dissident practises disappear in the modernization of normal.

This successful failure of a series of struggles has led to a controversial debate on the question of the political in Postmarxism that is shaped along the following lines: Butler‘s Levinasian ethics of the vulnerability and passivity of a precarious life-form, Badiou’s event of truth, Derrida‘s messianic expectation of an event which evades any expectation, Zizek’s idea of a neo-Leninist decision, Agamben‘s notion of a potentiality that is in any relation to the act, the concept of an empty universality in hegemony theory, the postoperaist ontological belief in the autonomy of the multitude and a coming communism of creative potentiality, Rancière‘s suggestion that the political conflict resides in the tension between the structured social body and the part with no-part.

The project „After 1968“ negotiates the differences between these concepts with regard to an ontological foundation or an irreducible relativity and inner differentiation of the political, the relation of governmentality, valorization, and law, and the conflicting ideas of the immanence or excessivity of a political community. 2008 the seminars focus on the analysis of labor power, immaterial work, and the notion of common.

Research project by Katja Diefenbach

05.12.2008
11:00 - 13:00
Marx's Metapolitics Reading Jacques Rancière's "Dis-agreement"
- Seminar
- Room 204

04.12.2008
18:00 - 20:00
Political Spinozism Negri on Power.
- Guest Lecture by Martin Saar
- Auditorium

04.11.2008
11:00 - 13:00
The non-totalizable complexity of the historical process Reading Balibar's "The Vacillation of Ideology in Marxism"
- Seminar with Steve Wright
- Paper by Ozren Pupovac
- Room 204

03.11.2008
18:00 - 20:00
Tronti's Legacy The Refusal of Labor
- Guest Lecture by Steve Wright
- Auditorium

06.10.2008
16:00 - 18:00
Deconstructing Value Theory Reading Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx"
- Seminar
- Room 204

11.09.2008
10:00 - 12.00
Value and Capitalist Capacities Reading Moishe Postone's "Time, Labor and Social Domination"
- Seminar
- Room 204

01.07.2008
12:30-14:30
Marx with Bataille Debating "The mirror of production" by Jean Baudrillard
- Seminar
- Auditorium

06.06.2008
12:00 - 14:00
The coming communities of commons
- Workshop with Massimo De Angelis, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Anne Querrien
- Room 201

05.06.2008
14:00 - 16:00
The arcane of reproduction Feminist comments on the relation between politics and labor
- Seminar, introduced by M. Vishmidt
- Auditorium
- Guest: Anne Querrien

05.06.2008
17:00 - 21:30
Communists like us The production of commons, subjectivity and space
- Lectures
- Massimo De Angelis, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Anne Querrien
- Gallery Space

09.05.2008
11.00 - 13.00
Rancière on the inactuality of communism and the intelligence of the unqualified
- Seminar
- Room 204

07.05.2008
15:00 - 17:00
Notes on the general intellect Virno on Marx's "Fragments on machines"
- Seminar
- Paper: Gal Kirn
- Guest: Stephan Geene

06.05.2008
17:00 - 19:00
After effect The cool despair of young creatives. Discussion with the filmmaker
- Screening
- Room 201

04.04.2008
11.00 - 13.00
What is living and what is dead in Marx's philosophy? Virno on the concept of bio-politics in Postoperaism
- Seminar
- Room 204

03.04.2008
17.00 - 19.00
What is living and what is dead in Marx's philosophy? Jason Read on abstract and living labor
- Seminar
- Auditorium

07.03.2008
11:00 - 13:00
The autonomy of living labor Reading Negri's "Twenty Theses on Marx"
- Seminar
- Room 204

06.03.2008
16.00 - 19.00
The cell - Toni Negri and the prison Screening + Discussion with the filmmaker Angela Melitopoulos
- Auditorium

04.03.2008
20.00 - 23.00
The body of the worker as paradoxical machine and teaching aid Happiness (1934) by Aleksandr Medvedkin + Cine-Train excerpts (Medvedkin and others)
- Screening
- Introduction by Marina Vishmidt
- Auditorium

08.02.2008
10.00 - 12.00
Porto Marghera: the last firebrands Workers' autonomy in the Veneto in the 1960s and 70s
- Screening
- Auditorium

08.02.2008
10.00 - 12.00
The emergence of the socialised worker Class composition in Italian autonomist Marxism
- Seminar & Screening
- Auditorium

07.02.2008
16:00 - 18:00
The emergence of the socialised worker Class composition in Italian autonomist Marxism
- Seminar
- Room 204

05.02.2008
20.00 - 22.00
Kuhle Wampe Politics of montage
- Screening + Discussion
- Auditorium
- Introduction by Gal Kirn

07.12.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Assigning a measure to the excessive power of the state On Badiou's concept of truth procedure
- Seminar
- Room 204

06.12.2007
14.00 - open end
A visual genealogy of bohemia Video seminar with S. Dillemuth
- Screening
- Auditorium

05.12.2007
21.00 - 23.30
Politics of Bohemia Remembering Fassbinder
- Screening with S. Dillemuth
- Gallery Space

05.12.2007
18.00 - 20.00
The politics of bohemia
- Lectures
- Auditorium

04.12.2007
20:00 - 24:00
The century of the self Adam Curtis' documentary on consumerist subjectivity
- Screening
- Auditorium
- Introduction: M. Vishmidt

09.11.2007
12:00 - 14:00
The supplementary part that disconnects the people from itself Reading Jacques Ranciere's "Ten theses on politics"
- Seminar
- Guest: Maria Muhle

08.11.2007
18:00 - 20:00
Politics, police and power from Foucault to Rancière
- Lecture
- Auditorium

07.11.2007
18:00 - 20:00
In the figurative sense Narrative strategies of subjectivisation in Fassbinder’s "Berlin Alexanderplatz"
- Lecture
- Auditorium

05.10.2007
11.00 - 13.00
The poetics of knowledge On political hegemony and militant becoming: Gramsci and Deleuze
- Lecture
- Room 204

04.10.2007
16:00 – 18:00
Micropolitics Deleuze and Guattari on the concept of minoritarian struggle
- Seminar
- Room 204

07.09.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Domestic work and class struggle within the class On class composition and radical negativity
- Seminar
- Room 204

06.09.2007
16.00 - 18.00
Domestic work and class struggle within the class On class composition and radical negativity
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Paper: Marina Vishmidt

02.07.2007
11.00 - 13.00
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism From class to minority
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Paper: Marina Vishmidt

01.07.2007
14.00 - 16.00
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism On the concept of the concrete universal
- Seminar
- Room 204

30.06.2007
20:00 - 24:00
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Screening
- Auditorium
- Introduction: T. Hassine

30.06.2007
14.00 - 16.00
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism On Marx and Foucault
- Seminar
- Room 204

29.06.2007
18:00 - 21:00
In the mood for work The cultural producer as model of the post-fordist worker
- Lectures
- Gallery Space

30.05.2007
15.00 - 17.00
The Soviet experience Dictatorship of the proletariat and council movement
- Seminar
- Room 204

30.05.2007
11:00 - 15:00
La Commune. Paris 1871 Part II
- Screening
- Studio

29.05.2007
17:00 - 19:00
The Soviet experience Rosa Luxemburg on the Russian Revolution
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Paper: Tanja Widmann

29.05.2007
20:00 - 23:00
La Commune. Paris 1871 Part I
- Screening
- Studio

06.04.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Democracy beyond law Negri on Lenin
- Seminar
- Room 204

05.04.2007
17.00 - 19.00
Democracy beyond law Lenin's concept of the dictatorship of protetariat
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Guest: Grahame Lock
- Paper: Ozren Pupovac

05.04.2007
18:00 - 20:00
Dictatorship of the proletariat as political science The actuality of Althusser's thinking
- Lecture
- Auditorium

04.04.2007
19:00 - 21:00
Hey production! The imposition of creative work
- Lecture
- Auditorium

09.03.2007
11.00 - 13.00
To bring about the real state of exception Benjamin's concept of mysthic and divine violence
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Paper: Anthony Auerbach

08.03.2007
21.00 - 23.00
Road to Guantanamo
- Screening
- Auditorium
- Guest: Raul Zelik

08.03.2007
16:00 - 18:00
To bring about the real state of exception Agamben's reading of Benjamin
- Seminar
- Auditorium

08.03.2007
18:00 - 20:00
Sovereign police Notes on asymmetric warfare and governance
- Lecture
- Auditorium

09.02.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Potentiality of impotentiality Agamben's sovereign theoretical turn in thinking potentiality
- Seminar
- Auditorium

08.02.2007
16:00 - 18:00
Potentiality of impotentiality Agamben's theory of autonomous potentiality
- Seminar
- Auditorium