On the notion of the political in postmarxist theory.

Research project by Katja Diefenbach

All seminars take place at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

Syllabus 2012

Which Spinoza? Ontology of multiplicity, politics of affects

The last seminar in the framework of this research project examines, how to read Spinoza in terms of a non-substantialist metaphysics and how to deal with the internal problematics of such a reading, in particular regarding the question of immanence and the theoretical strategy used to progress from a positive ontology of multiplicity to a politics of affects.

One could conceive the Spinozian idea of immanence in the coupling of two formulas, a speculative and a practical or ethical one: Speculatively, Spinoza grasps immanence in the sentence that before all production, before all genesis and creation there is distinction. In other words, Spinoza’s substance is not like a One, from which there proceeds difference; the attributes are not emanations; the substance is thus nothing but its problematising expression through an infinity of different attributes and its solving or integrating expression through finite modes. Practically and ethically, however, Spinoza considers immanent causality as a mode of life or individuation characterised by the tension between an absolute potential defining the impersonal nature and a tendential potentialisation, a becoming-potential, so to speak, defining the individual.

In this sense, Spinoza’s Ethics is indeed a book of liberation that conceptualises the temporalities and modalities of the constitution of freedom. Key is that the free individual is grasped as a potentiality of impersonal nature itself; it is pars potentiae. Through its capacity to arrive at a certain degree of causality for itself, it expresses a part of nature: »Thus the power of man, in so far as it is explained through his own actual essence, is a part of the infinite power of God or Nature, in other words, of the essence thereof [...].« [E4p4d] This capacity reveals a dramatic torsion that can take place in the process of individuation turning a situation, in which one has only contingent, fluctuating and imaginary affective experiences, to a situation, in which one is slowly entering a selective path leading from joyful passions to active affections and adequate ideas. Taking this path, individuals increasingly participate in the infinite without ever leaving the limitations of an individual that is always affected by other individuals, never autonomous, always surpassed by the potentiality of nature. That is to say, the free individual is a tendency, a tension or threshold. It will never arrive at complete self-presence. The imaginary, the passions, the inadequate ideas will persist. Hence, Spinoza endeavours, in the ethico-political dimension of his thought, to show, how the sad passions instituted in the regimes of the priests, the despots and masters, »so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety«, though the masses are tendentially capable, by way of the joyful passions, of amplifying their potentiality to act and thus their freedom and rationality.

Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza is defined by an extreme co-articulation, even short-circuit, of the speculative and the practical formula of immanence: The very relationship itself, through which the differentiality of being is expressed, is conceived as life by Deleuze. This is one of the strategies by which he keeps at bay the anthropological figures of thought present in Spinoza by substituting anomal singularisation for emancipatory humanisation. Hence, for Deleuze, potentiality is nothing but the selective process of transmutation that opens in differential being itself, in which elements composed by infinite sets of other elements do mutually specify and singularise in infinite relations. Those relations are thought as (indeterminate) modes of life. In brief, immanence is not immanent to life, but immanence is a life itself.

Read more about the problem of the seminar

08.02.2012
18:00-20:30
Marx with Spinoza Althusser's concept of immanent causality
— Seminar
— Auditorium

08.12.2011
14:00-17:30
Samuel Beckett's "Quad II" and "The Ghost Trio"
- Screening
- New Auditorium

08.12.2011
14:00-17:30
Being out of class (Deleuze) Exhausting politics
- Seminar
- New Auditorium

01.11.2011
19:00 - 21:00
The messianic class (Agamben) What is an inoperativity that consists in contemplating one's own potentiality to act?
- Seminar
- Auditorium

06.10.2011
15:00-20:00
Althusser's Lesson On the political and theoretical effects of Althusserian Marxism
- Lecture and workshop with Jacques Rancière and Emiliano Battista
- Video Studio

29.06.2011
17:00-19:00
The retreating class (Nancy) Sharing the inappropriatable
- Seminar
- Auditorium

26.05.2011
11:00-13:00
The subtractive class II (Badiou) The political capacity of the proletariat
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Katja Diefenbach and Dominiek Hoens

24.05.2011
11:00 - 13:00
Walter Benjamin Romanticism and Zivilisationskritik
- Lecture by Michael Löwy
- introduced by Nathaniel Boyd
- Auditorium

08.04.2011
11:00-20:00
The impossible encounter Deleuze, Guattari, Lacan II
- Workshop
- organized by the JVE Theory Department
- Auditorium

07.04.2011
13:30-15:30
The subtractive class (Badiou) The political capacity of the proletariat
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by K. Kolsek, A. Kukuljevic

07.04.2011
16:30-18:30
Deleuze's affective “thinking with” Reading Spinoza with Nietzsche
- Lecture by Michaela Ott
- Auditorium

07.04.2011
20:00-22:00
Becoming major, becoming minor Book presentation
- Auditorium
- with Emiliano Battista, Vanessa Brito, Jack H. Fischer

04.03.2011
15:00-17:00
The theory of politics in the young Marx Counter-politicisation of the non-political
- Lectures by Sara Farris, Peter Thomas

03.03.2011
16:00-18:00
The supplementary class (Rancière) Disrupting the logic of division
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Karl Lyden

04.02.2011
15:00-17.00
The paradoxical class (Balibar) The antinomies of proletarian politics
- Seminar
- Auditorium

02.12.2010
10:00-12:00
Retreating the political Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe on political difference
- Seminar
- Auditorium

08.11.2010
10:00-12:00
Lenin's Scenario of Class Leadership The Unifying Theme of his Political Career
- Lecture by Lars T. Lih
- introduced by Sara Farris + Peter Thomas
- Auditorium

08.11.2010
13:30-15:30
What Is to be Done? and Bolshevism Lars T. Lih as Reader of Lenin
- Workshop with Sara Farris, Lars. T. Lih, Peter Thomas + Katja Diefenbach
- Auditorium

07.11.2010
20:00 - 22:00
Maggots and Men Remembering Kronstadt
- Screening of a movie by Cary Cronenwett
- Auditorium

05.10.2010
14:00-16:00
Subject, event, separation The politics of Badiou and Deleuze/ Guattari
- Lecture by Rodrigo Nunes
- Auditorium

05.10.2010
19:00-22:30
'Stronger are the powers of the people' III Politics, poetics and popular education in Brazilian cinema
- 'Terra em Transe', Glauber Rocha, 1967
- 'A Queda', Ruy Guerra, 1976
- Video Studio
- introduced by R. Nunes

04.10.2010
15:00-17:00
'Stronger are the powers of the people' I Politics, poetics + popular culture in Brazilian cinema 1962-1979
- Lecture by Rodrigo Nunes
- Auditorium

04.10.2010
20:00-22:00
'Stronger are the powers of the people' II Politics, poetics and popular education in Brazilian cinema
- Cinco vezes favela, various, 1962
- Video Studio
- introduced by R. Nunes

03.10.2010
18:00-20:00
Capitalism deterritorialized The concept of capitalism in "Anti-Oedipus"
- Seminar introduced by Kerstin Stakemeier
- Auditorium

30.06.2010
13:00-21:00
An impossible encounter I Deleuze, Guattari, Lacan
- Collective workshop
- Annex
- After 1968, CLiC, the Hegel seminar and the Versus Lab group

28.05.2010
19:00 - 21:00
Preparatory Meeting An impossible encounter: Deleuze, Guattari and Lacan
- Workshop preparation
- Room 204

27.05.2010
11:00-13:00
Molecular Politics I Micropolitics in "A thousand plateaus"
- Seminar
- Room 204

08.04.2010
18:00-20:00
Politics unbound Reading Badiou with and against his postmarxist contemporaries
- Lecture by Thomas Seibert
- Auditorium

07.04.2010
14:00-16:00
Spinoza with Deleuze On affectivity and potentiality
- Seminar
- Auditorium

05.03.2010
20:00-22:00
The thought of becoming Nietzsche with Deleuze II
- Lecture by Kathrin Thiele
- Auditorium

04.03.2010
18:00 - 20:00
The negative in the positive Nietzsche with Deleuze
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Nathaniel Boyd

04.03.2010
22:00-00.00
Satan's brew Fassbinder's own private Nietzsche
- Screening
- Auditorium

04.02.2010
11:00-11:30
Abécédaire A comme animal
- Screening of a movie by Claire Parnet, F 1988
- Auditorium
- English transcript by Dominique Hurth

04.02.2010
11:00 - 13:30
Becoming The notion of becoming in Deleuze and Guattari
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Oxana Timofeeva

03.12.2009
05.12.2009
B. Arsic, E. Battista, K. Diefenbach, D. Hoens, E. Lecerf, O. Marchart, M. J. Mondzain, E. Pellejero, N. Perin, D. Sardinha, R. Scherer, J. Volbers Becoming major, becoming-minor, International conference
- Auditorium
- organized by Vanessa Brito

02.12.2009
15:00 - 17:00
Global capitalism, necropolitics and contemporary art
- Lecture by Marina Gržinić
- Auditorium

01.12.2009
17:00 - 19:00
The dispositif of the person
- Lecture by Roberto Esposito
- Auditorium
- introduced by G. Bianco

04.11.2009
19:00 - 21:00
Biopotentiality On Esposito's concept of bio/politics
- Seminar
- Auditorium

09.10.2009
11.10.2009
Encountering Althusser Conference material: schedule, abstracts, articles

09.10.2009
11.10.2009
Encountering Althusser International Conference
- organised by Sara Farris, Gal Kirn, Peter Thomas, and Katja Diefenbach
- Studio

08.10.2009
A selection of texts
Reading Althusser

07.10.2009
14:00 - 16:00
La leçon d'Althusser Rancière's farewell to Althusserian Marxism
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Emiliano Battista

06.10.2009
17:00 - 19:00
What is aleatory materialism? Debating Althusser's philosophy of the encounter
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- introduced by Gal Kirn

03.09.2009
11:00 - 13:00
Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo Negri on materialism
- Seminar with Matteo Mandarini
- Auditorium
- introduced by Giorgos Papadopoulos

03.09.2009
20:00 - 22:00
The Surplus of Paradoxes Queer/ing Images of Sexuality and Economy
- Lecture by Antke Engel
- Auditorium
- introduced by Giorgos Papadopoulos

02.09.2009
10:30 - 12:30
Communists like us Negri's encounter with Guattari: the elision of Lenin
- Lecture by Matteo Mandarini
- Auditorium

02.09.2009
14:00 - 18:00
The autonomy of the political Tronti and Cacciari's concept of the political
- Workshop with Sara Farris, Matteo Mandarini, Peter Thomas
- Auditorium

01.09.2009
17:00 - 19:00
The cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne A cinematic diagnosis of biopolitics
- Lecture by Ruth Sonderegger
- Auditorium

01.09.2009
20:00-22:00
Screening Dardenne's Rosetta Portray of a precarious survival
- Screening & discussion with Ruth Sonderegger
- Auditorium

17.06.2009
11:00 - 13:00
Invention "From Capital-Labor to Capital-Life" by M. Lazzarato
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- Introduced by K. Stakemeier + P. Thomas

16.06.2009
11:00 - 13:00
The Meanings of Immanence in Deleuze's Philosophy The specter of an unsolved problematic
- Lecture by Christian Kerslake
- Auditorium
- Introduced by Peter Thomas

20.05.2009
14:00-16:00
Individuation Reading Simondon
- Auditorium
- Seminar
- Introduction by Sara Farris

19.05.2009
14:00 - 18:00
The singular, the trans-individual and the common A French Marx
- Auditorium
- Lectures by L. Basso + V. Morfino
- Organised by Sara Farris

09.04.2009
14:00 - 16:30
The Intruder Screening of a film by Claire Denis
- Auditorium
- Introduction by Pietro Bianchi

09.04.2009
17:00 - 19:00
Excess Nancy on the singularity of death
- Seminar
- Auditorium
- Introduction by Pietro Bianchi

07.04.2009
08.04.2009
Biopolitics of scale State-space symposium no. 1
- Berlage Institute Rotterdam
- Workshop
- organised by L. Stanek

11.03.2009
14:00-16:00
Immanence Agamben and Deleuze on pure immanence
— Seminar
— Auditorium
— Introduced by V. Brito + T. Tho

11.03.2009
16:30-18:00
Preparatory meeting Encountering Althusser
— Room 204

11.03.2009
20:00-22:00
Preparatory meeting Workshop: becoming-major, becoming-minor
- initiated by Vanessa Brito
- Room 204

09.03.2009
10.03.2009 10:00 - 19:00
A Workshop on Baudrillard Against the economic: Reading Baudrillard with Bataille, Lacan, Marx, and Debord
— The Annex
— organised by Giorgos Papadopoulos

07.02.2009
10:00 - 12:00
The force of the outside II Foucault with Deleuze
— Seminar
— Auditorium

06.02.2009
14:00-16:00
The force of the outside Superimposing diagrams: discipline and governmentality
- Seminar
- Auditorium

06.02.2009
16:30-18:30
Preparatory Meeting Encountering Althusser
- Group meeting
- Room 204

03.02.2009
19:30-21:30
Is Marx a Fichtean? Lecture of Tom Rockmore at the International Institute for Research and Education, Amsterdam
- organised by Sara Farris
- Returns of Marxism Series

05.12.2008
11:00 - 13:00
Marx's Metapolitics Reading Jacques Rancière's "Dis-agreement"
- Seminar with Martin Saar
- Paper by E. Battista
- Room 204

04.12.2008
16:00 - 18:00
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 O. Pupovac + S. Wright
- Room 204

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

05.10.2008
17:00 - 19:00
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 S. Geene
- Screening
- Room 201

04.04.2008
11.00 - 13.00
What is living and what is dead in Marx's philosophy? II 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 II 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
18.00 - 20.00
The politics of bohemia
- Lectures by S. Dillemuth and others
- Auditorium

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

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 by Maria Muhle
- Auditorium

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

05.10.2007
11.00 - 13.00
The poetics of knowledge On political hegemony and militant becoming: Gramsci and Deleuze
- Lecture by Serhat Karakayali
- 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 II 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 III From class to minority
- Seminar
- Room 204
- Paper: Marina Vishmidt

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

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

30.06.2007
20:00 - 24:00
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict A selection of movies presented by Tsila Hassine
- Screening
- Auditorium
- Introduction: T. Hassine

29.06.2007
18:00 - 21:00
In the mood for work The cultural producer as model of the post-fordist worker
- Lectures by R. Martinez, J. Rowan, M. Vishmidt, K. Diefenbach
- Gallery Space

30.05.2007
11:00 - 15:00
La Commune. Paris 1871 Part II A movie by Peter Watkins
- Screening
- Studio

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

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 A movie by Peter Watkins
- Screening
- Studio

06.04.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Democracy beyond law II 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 by Grahame Lock
- Auditorium

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

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

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 by Raul Zelik
- Auditorium

08.03.2007
21.00 - 23.00
Road to Guantanamo Winterbottom and Whitecross's image of exception
- Screening
- Auditorium
- Guest: Raul Zelik

09.02.2007
11.00 - 13.00
Potentiality of impotentiality II 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