On the notion of the political in postmarxist theory.


Syllabus 2009: On biopolitics

Life and the Political

When Foucault began to consider what biopolitics might be, he thought of it as a gradual, historical inclusion of life in power, a folding of life in practises of drill and administration, and he did so by distinguishing two subsequential and superimposing diagrams, that of discipline (an anatomo-politics, prescribing what a body has to do, imposing a conduct on it) and that of governmentality (a bio-power, administering life in the multiplicity of a population and in a spread out space, making a good distribution of risks probable). In short: Foucault hypothesized that power has neither a substance nor a subject or an immanent telos but passes through every related force. The hidden reverse of Foucault's analytics of the omnipresence of power is the assumption of a force of life in which power occurs and finds its prop and anchor point, a transfer point for relations of power. Foucault, therefore, oscillated between a genealogy of a power that encloses and keeps watch over life and a primacy of resisting living forces power attempts to administer. This oscillation has been resolved by Foucault through proposing a relativity of power and resistance, of heteronomy and autonomy, of powerful productions of life and of life-forms that evade. It has been Deleuze, then, who did reverse the direction of analysis by stating when power is assumed to be bio-power, resistance has to be conceived as a force of life existing in a non-human and non-subjectified mode, the force of the outside.

Postworkerist ontology took this vitalist idea as starting point for a materialist ontology in which the ontological fulfilment of the human being has been projected into the historical development of the capitalist production mode. The Deleuzian idea of life as plane of immanence that neither refers to an object nor contains a subject but is immanent to itself containing only the virtual (i.e., life as non-personal, pre-reflexive milieu of becoming) is transformed to the idea of a transindividual life as living abstract labor and creative flesh.

Departing from the Foucauldian-Deleuzian twist, the seminar focusses on the differend between several ways of articulating life in political terms: a vitalist creative thread (Spinoza - Simondon - Deleuze - Negri) on one side, a negative exceptionalist thread (Heidegger - Agamben - Nancy) on the other side by paying special attention to the question of immanence and excess and how a relation of life and the political might be invented without ending up in productivism and immanentism, the immanence of human potentiality to itself, of the human to the human, community to community.

3 + 4 February — Outside
— Foucault: Lecture of 11 January 1978, in "Security, Territory and Population. Lectures at the College de France, 1977 – 1978", St. Martin's Press, 2007 pp. 1-23
— Deleuze: Strategies or the Non-Stratified: The Thought of the Outside (Power), in Deleuze: "Foucault", Continuum, 2006, pp. 70-93

{3 February 7.30 p.m. Is Marx a Fichtean? – Tom Rockmore, Philosophy Institute of Duquesne University,USA, Lecture at the International Institute for Research and Education, Amsterdam, organised by Sara Farris}

4 February Preparatory Meeting: The Legacy of Althusser

9 + 10 March Workshop on Baudrillard organised by G. Papadopoulos

11 March — Immanence
— Agamben: The absolute Immanence, in "Potentialities", Univ of Stanford Pr, 1999, pp. 220-239
— Deleuze: Immanence: a Life, in John Rachjman (ed.): "Pure Immanence", Zone Books, 2005, pp. 25-33

— Introduction: Vanessa Costa de Branco e Brito

{From 13 to 15 March the conference "On the Idea of Communism" takes place at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/news/communism}

7 April  — Biopolitics of Scale (organised by L. Stanek)
Berlage Institute, Rotterdam

8 April — Excess
— Nancy: The Inoperative Community, University of Minnesota Pr, 1990, pp. 1-19
— Film Screening: Claire Denis "The Intruder"

— Introduction: Pietro Bianchi

19 + 20 May — Individuation
— Toscano: The Disparate: Ontology and Politics in Simondon, Paper delivered at the Society for European Philosophy, 2007
— Simondon: The Genesis of the Individual, in Crary/ Kwinter (ed.): "Incorporations", Zone Books, 1992, pp. 297-319
http://www.skok.uib.no/Deleuze/11%20%20Simondon%20Genesis%20of%20the%20Individual.pdf

— Introduction: Sara Farris

— Workshop: Individuation in Marx + Weber with Luca Basso and Vittorio Morfino, organised by Sara Farris

16 + 17 June — Invention 
— Lazzarato: From Capital-Labor to Capital-Life, in "ephemera" 4:3, 2004, pp. 187-208
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/4-3/4-3lazzarato.pdf

— Introduction Kerstin Stakemeier

— Guest Lectures: 
 — 15 June Christian Kerslake on the discussion between Miller, Milner, Lacan about objet a (CliC)
— 16 June Christian Kerslake: The Meanings of Immanence in Deleuze's Philosophy, introduced by Peter Thomas

Summer Break

1 + 2 September — Naked Life
— Negri: Alma Venus, in "Time for Revolution", Continuum, 2003, pp. 181-223
— Negri: The Political Monster, in Negri/ Casarino (ed.): "In Praise of the Common", University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 193-218
— Braidotti: Transcendence: Transposing Life, in "Transpositions", Cambridge Univ Press, 2006, pp.

— Introduction: Georgios Papadopoulos

— Guest Lectures:
— Ruth Sonderegger: The cinema of Pierre and Jean-Luc Dardenne
— Matteo Mandarini, introduced by Peter Thomas

5 October — La leçon d'Althusser
— Debating chapters of Rancière's "La leçon d'Althusser" (Paris: Gallimard, 1974) Emiliano Battista is going to translate
— Reading "Les leçons de Jacques Rancière" by Badiou translated by Tzuchien Tho

9 - 11 October — The Legacy of Althusser | Workshop
— Althusser: The Underground Current of the Materialism of Encounter, in: "Philosophy of Encounter", Verso, 2006, pp.163-207

— Introduction: Gal Kirn

3 + 4 November – Negation | Affirmation
— Campbell: Bios, Immunity, Life: The Thought of Roberto Esposito (Interview), in "Diacritics" 36:2, 2006, pp. 49-56
— Esposito: Biopower and Biopotentiality in: "Bios", Univ of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 78-109

— Introduction: Giuseppe Bianco

— Guest Lecture:
— Roberto Esposito, introduced by Giuseppe Bianco

1 + 2 December — Surprise