On the notion of the political in postmarxist theory.
04.12.2014
Speculative materialism in queer-feminist perspective
Emerging life and syntheses of matter and time
14.06.2013
Aesthetic existence and the ontologisation of poverty
Whatever life
20.04.2013
The practise of doing nothing
Unemployed positivity
04.11.2012
Miguel Abensour as reader of Spinoza
Spinoza, Marx, Moses Hess
05.10.2012
Agamben and Nancy as readers of Spinoza
Leaving Immanence?
06.06.2012
Feminist readings of Spinoza
Becoming woman?
03.05.2012
Deleuze on Spinoza's theory of affects
From the ontological to the affective
04.04.2012
Spinoza with Deleuze
The underground current of the philosophy of immanence
07.03.2012
Macherey's Spinoza
Ontology of multiplicity or materialist dialectic?
08.02.2012
Althusser's concept of immanent causality
- Seminar
Marx with Spinoza
08.12.2011
Exhausting politics
Being out of class (Deleuze)
01.11.2011
What is an inoperativity that consists in contemplating one's own potentiality to act?
The messianic class
29.06.2011
Sharing the inappropriable
The retreating class
26.05.2011
The political capacity of the proletariat
The subtractive class II
07.04.2011
The political capacity of the proletariat
The subtractive class
03.03.2011
Disrupting the logic of division
The supplementary class
04.02.2011
The antinomies of proletarian politics
The paradoxical class
02.12.2010
Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe on political difference
Retreating the political
08.11.2010
Lars T. Lih as Reader of Lenin
What Is to be Done? and Bolshevism
03.10.2010
The concept of capitalism in "Anti-Oedipus"
Capitalism deterritorialized
30.06.2010
Deleuze, Guattari, Lacan
An impossible encounter I
28.05.2010
An impossible encounter: Deleuze, Guattari and Lacan
Preparatory Meeting
27.05.2010
Micropolitics in "A thousand plateaus"
Molecular Politics I
07.04.2010
On affectivity and potentiality
Spinoza with Deleuze
04.03.2010
Nietzsche with Deleuze
The negative in the positive
04.02.2010
The notion of becoming in Deleuze and Guattari
Becoming
04.11.2009
On Esposito's concept of bio/politics
Biopotentiality
08.10.2009
Reading Althusser
07.10.2009
Rancière's farewell to Althusserian Marxism
La leçon d'Althusser
06.10.2009
Debating Althusser's philosophy of the encounter
What is aleatory materialism?
03.09.2009
Negri on materialism
Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo
02.09.2009
Tronti and Cacciari's concept of the political
The autonomy of the political
17.06.2009
"From Capital-Labor to Capital-Life" by M. Lazzarato
Invention
20.05.2009
Reading Simondon
Individuation
09.04.2009
Nancy on the singularity of death
Excess
11.03.2009
Agamben and Deleuze on pure immanence
Immanence
11.03.2009
Encountering Althusser
Preparatory meeting
11.03.2009
Workshop: becoming-major, becoming-minor
Preparatory meeting
07.02.2009
Foucault with Deleuze
The force of the outside II
06.02.2009
Superimposing diagrams: discipline and governmentality
The force of the outside
06.02.2009
Encountering Althusser
Preparatory Meeting
05.12.2008
Reading Jacques Rancière's "Dis-agreement"
Marx's Metapolitics
04.11.2008
Reading Balibar's "The Vacillation of Ideology in Marxism"
The non-totalizable complexity of the historical process
05.10.2008
Reading Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx"
Deconstructing Value Theory
11.09.2008
Reading Moishe Postone's "Time, Labor and Social Domination"
Value and Capitalist Capacities
01.07.2008
Debating "The mirror of production" by Jean Baudrillard
Marx with Bataille
06.06.2008
The coming communities of commons
05.06.2008
Feminist comments on the relation between politics and labor
The arcane of reproduction
09.05.2008
Rancière on the inactuality of communism and the intelligence of the unqualified
07.05.2008
Virno on Marx's "Fragments on machines"
Notes on the general intellect
04.04.2008
Virno on the concept of bio-politics in Postoperaism
What is living and what is dead in Marx's philosophy? II
03.04.2008
Jason Read on abstract and living labor
What is living and what is dead in Marx's philosophy?
07.03.2008
Reading Negri's "Twenty Theses on Marx"
The autonomy of living labor
08.02.2008
Class composition in Italian autonomist Marxism
The emergence of the socialised worker II
07.02.2008
Class composition in Italian autonomist Marxism
The emergence of the socialised worker
07.12.2007
On Badiou's concept of truth procedure
Assigning a measure to the excessive power of the state
09.11.2007
Reading Jacques Ranciere's "Ten theses on politics"
The supplementary part that disconnects the people from itself
04.10.2007
Deleuze and Guattari on the concept of minoritarian struggle
Micropolitics
07.09.2007
On class composition and radical negativity
Domestic work and class struggle within the class II
06.09.2007
On class composition and radical negativity
Domestic work and class struggle within the class
02.07.2007
From class to minority
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism III
01.07.2007
On the concept of the concrete universal
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism II
30.06.2007
On Marx and Foucault
The relationship of Marxism and Post-Structuralism
30.05.2007
Dictatorship of the proletariat and council movement
The Soviet experience II
29.05.2007
Rosa Luxemburg on the Russian Revolution
The Soviet experience
06.04.2007
Negri on Lenin
Democracy beyond law II
05.04.2007
Lenin's concept of the dictatorship of protetariat
Democracy beyond law
09.03.2007
Benjamin's concept of mysthic and divine violence
To bring about the real state of exception II
08.03.2007
Agamben's reading of Benjamin
To bring about the real state of exception
09.02.2007
Agamben's sovereign theoretical turn in thinking potentiality
Potentiality of impotentiality II
08.02.2007
Agamben's theory of autonomous potentiality
Potentiality of impotentiality
‘Spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that immanence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with intensive ordinates.’
Deleuze/ Guattari: What is Philosophy? London: Verso, p. 48
As discussed at our last session, Macherey's 1979 book Hegel or Spinoza supplements Althusser's reading of Spinoza by adding arguments lacking in Althusser's reconstruction of immanent causality. Refering to Guéroult and Deleuze, Macherey pinpoints a series of concepts invented or radicalised by Spinoza, in order to think creative determination, non-numerical distinction in the infinite and intensive individuation of differences. According to Macherey, these problematics allow to think the negative beyond negation and to sketch a materialist dialectic.
In April, we will examine, how Deleuze tackles these very problems looking again at one dramatic question Macherey has dealt with: How does Spinoza think the traversal of the infinite through the finite, and which difficulties occur right at this point in Spinoza's thinking? How does he relate the physics of bodies to the theory of essences avoiding to think the infinite as a whole composed of parts infinitely adding one to the other?
Gilles Deleuze 1992: Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, New York: Zone Books
Chap. 11: Immanence and the Historical Components of Expression, pp. 169-186
Chap. 13: Modal Existence, pp. 201-217
Further references:
Simon Duffy 2006, The logic of expression. Quality, quantity and intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze, Aldershot: Ashgate
Martial Gueroult 1973, ‘Spinoza’s letter on the infinite (Letter XII, to Louis Meyer)', in Spinoza, a colletion of critical essays, edited by Marjorie Grene, New York: Anchor Books, pp. 182-212
Pierre Macherey 1996, 'The Encounter with Spinoza' in A Critical Deleuze reader, edited by Paul Patton, Blackwell Publishers, pp. 139-161