Forschungsprojekte

After 1968. On the Notion of the Political in Post-Marxist Theory (2007–2012)

In light of the diagnosis early formulated by Socialisme ou barbarie that in Marx’s philosophy the question of politics has been partially obscured by evolutionist, teleological or economist theorems, the research project examines different approaches to instigate a re-politicisation of Marxism undertaken in contemporary currents of French philosophy, particularily in (post)-structuralism, deconstruction and left-Heideggerianism. These undertakings belong to a series of heterodox Marx readings, in which Marx is read through concepts not derived from the critique of political economy, German idealism, or early French socialism, but referencing rather unexpected authors like Epicurus and Lucretius, Spinoza and Descartes, Nietzsche and Sorel, Bataille and Heidegger. Departing from Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe’s work at the Centre de recherche philosophique sur le politique the research project focusses on a critical reconstruction of post-Marxism’s key concepts like class and mass, labour and desire, value and crisis, causality and event, clinamen and den, bio- and necropolitics, subject and assemblage. The project pursues a symptomatic reading strategy in which particular attention is payed to the conceptual fractures, aporiae and equivocations articulated in contemporary French reconstructions of Marx’s critique of political economy and its concomitant idea of politics.

Conferences, workshops and seminars with Miguel Abensour (University of Paris-7), Nathan Brown (University of California, Davis), Andrea Cavaletti (Iuav University of Venice), Roberto Esposito (University of Naples), Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University, London), Giorgos Fourtounis (Panteion University, Athens), Christian Kerslake (Middlesex University, London), Mikko Lahtinen (University of Tampere), Michael Löwy (EHESS, Paris), Matteo Mandarini (Queen Mary University, London),Warren Montag (Occidental College, Los Angeles), Vittorio Morfino (University of Milano-Bicocca), Rodrigo Nunes (PUCRS, Porto Allegre), Michaela Ott (University of Fine Arts, Hamburg), Jacques Rancière (University of Paris-8), Jason Read (University of Southern Maine), Miguel Robles-Duran (Parsons, New York), Martin Saar (Goethe University of  Frankfurt/M.), Thomas Seibert (philosopher, Frankfurt/M.), Ruth Sonderegger (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna), Panagiotis Sotiris (University of Mytilene), Kathrin Thiele (University of Utrecht), Caroline Williams (Queen Mary University, London), Frieder Otto Wolf (Free University of Berlin), Steve Wright (Monash University, Melbourne), and others.

The project is integrated in a three-part research network at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, including the projects of Mladen Dolar (University of Ljubljana) on French Hegelianism and Dominiek Hoens (Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique, Hogeschool Gent) on the future of Lacan.