Tomek Sikora, Queer politics as a non-representational
politics of a people (never) to come
The paper proposes an understanding of queer politics
that draws from Deleuzian theorizations of art and aesthetics rather than from
the liberal-legalistic vocabulary of recognition, representation and rights.
Just as an avant-garde artist, by creating modes of signification and
relationality that do not fall into a pre-existing framework of legibility,
addresses a (virtual) audience that is yet to come (and thus faces a high risk
of failure, as the audience may never come to materialize, after all), so –
arguably – queer activism (and queer theory) performs a politics that is “not
the terrain of the representation of a people […] but of their creation,” to
use Nicholas Thoburn’s characterization of the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of
“minor politics,” i.e. a politics where “the people are missing.” To put my
argument rather formulaically, just as art never ceases to create
(ontologically) “queer objects” (with a broad definition of object), so queer
politics never ceases to create queer “social objects,” i.e. queer practices, subjectivities
and socialities beyond the current liberal-humanist epistemological
normativities. Queer does not and cannot stand for an entity, a “whole“ (such
as the figure of a homosexual or a sexual minority); instead, it is tendency
and event, it resides between the virtual and its actualizations. Closely
related to desire, it defies organic units or taxa and cuts transversally
across any received order of things.
Tomasz Sikora teaches literature, literary theory and
cultural studies at the English Department of the Pedagogical University of
Cracow. In the years 2000-2006 he co-organized a series of conferences that
introduced queer theory into the Polish academic landscape. Three volumes of
essays collected some of the work inspired by the conferences, including A
Queer Mixture (2002) and Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in
Queer Studies (2006). He co-founded and continues to co-edit the online
peer-reviewed journal of queer studies InterAlia (published in English and
Polish), which has run eight issues so far. Sikora has also published Virtually
Wild: Wilderness, Technology and the Ecology of Mediation (2003) and Bodies Out
of Rule: Transversal Readings in Canadian Literature and Film (2014). His main
areas of research and publication include critical and queer theory,
interdisciplinary American and Canadian studies, biopolitics, Deleuze and
Guattari.
tsikora@gmail.com
Gülben Salman, Queer and Rhizome: A Prolific Encounter
This presentation aims to make a comparison between
Judith Butler’s queer theory and a possible “queer” theory which can be derived
from Deleuze & Guattari’s Rhizomatic Model. Butler thinks that formed and
normative subjects can grow different according to the rules of the already
structured heterosexist game. However if we think from Deleuze and Guattari’s
point of view, Butler’s line of reasoning is one that can lead to a sort of
“normalization,” because forming a theory this way necessarily leads to a
relation between the queer and the normal at the end of the day. Because the
subject is still understood in the heterosexist matrix , this can create and
hinder subjective possibilities, and thus the critique of this heterosexist
matrix necessarily ends up being in the same frame. This leads queer theory to
become a critique of the heterosexist structure, which is coherent with queer
theory’s own structure. So queer can again be understood as a way to
differentiate subjects from “the others” in the system. I will argue in favor
of a sort of queer theory that structures identity in accordance with a
rhizomatic model. This rhizomatic, queer theoretical de-centralization of
identities differs from the Foucault-Butler line of queer theory.
Gülben Salman is a Phd candidate in Political Sciences
and Gender Studies (Ankara University). She received her BA degree in
Philosophy from Middle East Technical University, and MA degree in Political
Philosophy from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), with the thesis
entitled “Political Philosophy and Kant’s Aesthetics: An Attempt to Read
History in Kant, Arendt and Lyotard”. She published articles on Lyotard, Kant
and Deleuze in journals in Turkey and delivered several talks at international
conferences. Her main research interests are Contemporary Political Philosophy,
Aesthetics, History, Radical Democracy and Queer Theory.
gulbensalma@gmail.co
Marco Salucci, Deleuze : comment la vie est une
conséquence de ce qu’elle crée
Notre propos sera de montrer que si Deleuze est
vitaliste, comme il le déclare, ce n’est pas sans apporter une nouveauté
fondamentale à la notion de vie. En limitant notre analyse à ses analyses de
Spinoza et de Sacher-Masoch, nous tenterons de voir de quelle façon, pour
Deleuze, le désir et l’écriture reproduisent le mouvement de la vie.D’un côté
le désir « coule et coupe », il semble être discontinu. De l’autre son écriture
répond à une logique agrammatique et schizophrénique, elle aussi produit de la
discontinuité. Mais alors l’écriture reproduit le désir, ce qui signifie que
ces deux discontinuités se retrouvent à l’intérieur d’une même continuité.La vie,
pour Deleuze, suit cette dynamique : elle est une discontinuité en continuité,
elle est un processus vers une indifférenciation, une contraction
(désir-écriture) qui se dilate vers le un-toutes choses (En Panta) du monde.
Docteur en philosophie esthétique (Université Paris8
et Université d’Urbino) avec une thèse intitulée Gilles Deleuze. Une
indéfinition esthétique, Marco Salucci enseigne actuellement la philosophie
dans le secondaire et anime des séminaires à l’Université d’Urbino.Après
plusieurs articles consacrés aux relations entre Deleuze et l’art, il travaille
actuellement sur la notion de vie dans l’interface entre homme et environnement
numérique. marcosalucci@gmail.com
Mathews Lock Santos, Becoming-narrative: the Mass
Protests in Brazil as Irruption of a political Event.
In an interview with Negri in the beginning of the
90’s, Deleuze affirmed that we were passing from a disciplinary society to a
society of control of information. Almost 15 years later, after experiencing
the expansion of digital technologies across most of the globe, we can
certainly state that Deleuze’s analysis was very accurate in describing our
contemporary society. He, nevertheless, also argued that one of the main forms
of resistance would be to ‘hijack the speech’, which means not only to recover
the right to speak for ourselves and to compose our own narrative against the
imposition of pre-established discourses and control of communication, but also
to break this very control over the flux of communication. In this sense, this
paper will address the question of how can speech be hijacked in our
contemporary society departing from Deleuze’s conception of event, but also
from the notions of rhizome and the intertwining of forms of content and
expression co-authored with Guattari. To do so, I am going to look at the mass
protests that happened in Brazil during 2013 as a mass political phenomenon
that had the subversive potential to hijack speech, forming a poly-vocal and
alternative political narrative that both escaped the forms of classification
imposed by the traditional political perspectives, and defied the Brazilian
political system.
Matheus Lock Santos has a Master degree in
Communication and Information from UFRGS, Brazil; Undergraduate degree in
Social Communication from PUCRS, Brazil. My research lies in the intersection
between new mass movement, digital technologies, democracy and public opinion.
Currently, I’m investigating the emergence of new forms of mass demonstration
and the construction of an alternative political narrative by such movements
and its impact on public opinion as a discursive sphere. I’ve published mainly
about political debates on Internet in Brazilian journals, and my latest book,
Comunicações Transversais. O Preconceito Digital E Os Efeitos Na Opinião
Pública, is about public opinion and digital technologies.
Mathewsl.s@yahoo.com.br
Anne Sauvagnargues, The Smooth and the Striated.
Becomology and Ecolgy in Deleuze and Guattari's Art Theory.
Despite binary readings of Deleuze and Guattari's, the
couple "smooth" versus "striated" cannot be taken as a
molar opposition, leading to an ontological difference between smooth
virtuality and striated actualization. A closer understanding of image, as
individuation-image, along with Guattari's conception of ritornello a a
collective and political mode of subjectivation leeds us to a new insight of
Deleuze and Guattari metaphysics. Therefore I would suggest to conceive their
propositions as a new "becomology", leading to an ecological conception
of art.
asauvagnargues@gmail.com
Ioanna Savvidou, O Poiitis os Allos
Στο έργο της Μαρίνας Τσβετάγιεβα, η μορφή του ποιητή
εμφανίζεται ως ο απόλυτος άλλος. Ο άλλος της κοινωνίας. Τρία στοιχεία
κατασκευάζουν αυτή την ετερότητά του : η φυλή (νέγρος), η θρησκεία (εβραίος,)
και το φύλο (γυναίκα). Αυτή η πολύμορφη περσόνα του ποιητή εμφανίζεται από τη
στιγμή που η Μαρίνα, παιδί ακόμη, συλλαμβάνει και αντιλαμβάνεται την έννοια του
ποιητή. Στο αυτοβιογραφικό της έργο, τη στιγμή που το παιδί αναγνωρίζει τον
ποιητή στο πρόσωπο του Αλεξάντρ Πούσκιν, διαπιστώνει ότι είναι νέγρος. Αυτή η
αποκάλυψη διαμορφώνει την αντίληψή της : ο ποιητής ειναι ενας μαύρος σε μια
λευκή κοινωνία: ο άλλος της κοινωνίας αυτής.Αυτή η εικόνα της ετερότητας
εμπλουτιζεται με τη μορφή του εβραίου. Ετσι γράφει τον εύγλωτο στίχο «Σ’αυτόν
τον υπερ-χριστιανικό κόσμο, ο ποιητής είναι οβριός», επιλέγοντας τον υβριστικό
όρο «ζιντ» αντί του απλού «γιεβρέι», αποτυπώνοντας το βλέμμα της κοινωνίας πάνω
του. Τρίτο στοιχείο η φυλετική διάσταση. Ο ποιητής γεννά. Στην αυτοβιογραφία
της, η μικρή Μαρίνα καταγράφει με δέος τη γέννησή της ως ποιήτριας ακριβώς από
την πληγωμένη κοιλιά του ποιητή, υπερβαίνοντας το βιολογικό και την εικόνα του
δημιουργού. Η Τσβετάγιεβα προχωρά με σύνθετο και οξυμορικό τρόπο : ανατρέπει
την εικόνα της ετερότητας ενώ ταυτόχρονα την ενστερνίζεται, σε απο-δόμησης της
ετερότητας μέσα από μια διαδικασία ταύτισης. Η ετερότητα του ποιητή
παρουσιάζεται παράλληλα με την ετερότητας ως αλλοτρίωση των γυναικών.
Προσπαθώντας να υπερβεί αυτή τη διπλή αλλοτρίωση, το διπλό αδιέξοδο, η
Τσβετάγιεβα δημιουργεί ένα έργο αδύνατον να καταταγει σε ένα λογοτεχνικό ρεύμα.
Αποτελεί ενός είδους εξ-αίρεση.
Ioanna Savvidou est Docteure es Lettres et Etudes
Féminines (Université Paris VIII, 1999), Professeure agrégée de Lettres
Classiques (Paris, 2003), DEA de Lettres modernes et Maîtrise de Littérature
russe.
Enseignante à l’Education Nationale.
Participation à des nombreux colloques et conférences
sur la littérature, les études féminines et les études de genre. Publication
d’une thèse (Sur les traces de la Différence : limites et frontières dans le
Poème de la Montagne et le Poème de la Fin de Marina Tsvétaïeva) et de nombreux
articles et de résultats de recherche sur la littérature française et russe
(poésie, théâtre, autobiographie), sur le genre et la pédagogie. Traductions du
russe, de l’anglais et du français. Maîtrise du grec, du français, de
l’anglais, du russe et de l’italien. Participation active aux mouvements
féministes en Grèce et en France depuis 1978 (groupes autonomes de femmes,
Groupe de recherche d’Etudes Féminines de l’Université Aristote de
Thessaloniki, Séminaire d’Hélène Cixous).
Principaux centres d’intérêt : Pratique pédagogique et
genre dans l’enseignement de la littérature à l’école : pratiques de
sensibilisation des élèves à la question de l’égalité filles et garçons et
prise de conscience de la différence sexuelle.
iosavvidou@gmail.com
Valentin Schaepelynck and Emmanuel Valat, Actualité
politique de Deleuze et Guattari
On se souvient de la célèbre formule de Foucault : «
Un jour peut-être le siècle sera deleuzien ». Aussi voudrions-nous poser la
question suivante : notre siècle est-il devenu deleuzien, deleuzo-guattarien ?
D’un côté les concepts mis en place par Deleuze et Guattari ont tellement bien
réussi qu’ils apparaissent même être partis prenants désormais de la
construction de nos sociétés modernes et de leurs systèmes de pouvoir et de
domination. La pensée de Deleuze et Guattari aurait ainsi été digérée et
intégrée au « nouvel esprit du capitalisme », dont la capacité à s’approprier
une pensée critique tout en faisant taire sa puissance subversive n’est plus à
prouver... D’un autre côté, persiste bien sûr un usage et une réappropriation
critiques de la pensée de Deleuze et Guattari, aussi bien sous forme d’un
héritage théorique critique, que sous celle de pratiques instituantes à
l’oeuvre dans les mouvements sociaux et politiques. Ce destin équivoque des
concepts deleuzo-guattariens, comme leurs enjeux politiques actuels seront
ainsi au cœur de nos analyses. Valentin Schaepelynck, philosophe de formation,
enseignant-chercheur en sciences de l'éducation à l'Université Paris 8. Ses
travaux portent sur les différentes formes d'analyse institutionnelle.
Travaille au sein du comité de rédaction de la revue Chimères.
Valentin.skaplink@gmail.com
Miriam von Schantz, Repetition as the Maker of
Difference, Genre-Theory Revisited.
In this paper I propose to rethink the conditions for
analyzing cinematic spectatorship of the documentary/mockumentary beyond the
representationalist notion of genre (Neale, 1990; Nichols, 2001; Roscoe and
Hight, 2001). The crux of the problem is, I argue, the understanding of
cinematic spectatorship of the real as a meeting of, on the one side the
Subject, and on the other the object. This model of representation, as detailed
by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition (1968), produce the problem as one of
analogy, sameness, opposition and similarity, thus methodologically
approachable only through translations and interpretations. Genre-theory as
construed on this model consequently produces the spectator-subject as an
identifier of the real and the false (as irreconcilable categories). Here I
propose a methodological rethinking of spectatorship, namely as an affective
and entangled spectating event (Massumi 2002; Barad 2007; Deleuze 1990 [1969]).
This, I argue produce a moving-image-body. Actualized as a singular assemblage
where every new relation and intensity produced through the event-body changes
the same, the concept of the moving-image-body enables a micropolitical
“molecular analysis that allows us to move from forms of power to investments
of desire” (Guattari, 2009, 284). Thus every moving-image-body can be mapped
following the productive force of repetition, that is, through actualizations
of virtuals in exploration of the production of new images of thought,
realities and subjectivations.
Miriam von Schantz is a cinema scholar, currently
employed as a PhD candidate at Örebro university, Sweden. In her dissertation
she proposes new materialist methodologies for the analysis of cinematic and
media spectating. She teaches documentary theory and media history and has
published on film literacy as well as film tutorials for schoolteachers.
Miriam.von-schantz@oru.se
Alexandros Schismenos
We rarely find both the names of Henri Bergson
(1859-1941) and Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) in the same sentence. We know
that there is no genealogical relation between their philosophies, although
both Bergson and Castoriadis produced theories of an open ontology based on the
notions of temporality, becoming and heterogeinety. They both proposed the
ontology of creativity and Time as Towards-Being, against the contemplative
ontology of Essence and Timeless Being. They both refer to the ontological
heterogeinety and the interweaving of distinct ontological regions, which
Bergson calls ‘interpenetration’, in the way of the mixture, while Castoriadis
considers it a ‘layering’, in the way of the magma. They both deal with the
notion of representation and the problems of epistemology.
They have different starting posts, since Bergson, who
poses the question of Time in an epistemological rather than a sociological
frame, begins by criticizing Kant and proceeds to reject 19th century
scientific positivism, whereas Castoriadis proceeds from his initial criticism
of Marx, to the refutation of the traditional ensemblistic- identitarian
philosophy.
However, the studies of Gilles Deleuze brought forth
the bergsonian, vitalistic notion of Time, once again, allowing a critical
juxtaposition of the aforementioned philosophers. We will attempt to use the
deleuzian interpretation of bergsonism for investigate the similarities and
differences between the two theories of Time.
Alexandros Schismenos was born in Athens in the
January of 1978 and grew up in Agrinio. He graduated from the Philosophical
School of the University of Ioannina, Department of History and Archaeology,
majoring in Archaeology.
He wrote his M.A. dissertation in Political Philosophy
on the subject ‘Psyche and autonomy in the philosophy of Cornelius
Castoriadis’, as a participant of the interdepartmental Programme for
Post-Graduate Studies in Philosophy by the Universities of Ioannina and Crete,
which he completed with excellent grade. He is a Ph.D student of the Philosophy
of Science in the University of Ioannina, working on his thesis, regarding the
notion of Time in the ontology of Castoriadis. He was granted a scholarship by
the joint IKY-ETE programme for Ph.D. studies.
Published treatises: ‘The human tempest: Psyche and
autonomy in the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis (Athens, 2012)
‘After Castoriadis: Routes for autonomy in the 21st
century’ (Athens, 2014)
abonapartis@gmail.com
Alan D. Schrift, Pluralism = Monism: What Deleuze
learns from Nietzsche and Spinoza
In this paper, I examine Deleuze’s readings and
appropriations of Spinoza and Nietzsche, suggesting that the rhizomatic
connections that result in a Spinoza-Nietzsche assemblage anticipate and lead
to what Deleuze and Guattari call their “magic formula . . . PLURALISM =
MONISM.” I explore this formula in terms of their discussion of desiring
production in Anti-Oedipus, and conclude with suggestions as to the political
possibilities this formula opens.
Alan Schrift is F. Wendell Miller Professor of
Philosophy at Grinnell College (USA). In addition to over eighty published
articles or book chapters on Nietzsche and French and German twentieth century
philosophy, he is the author of Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes
and Thinkers (2006), Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of
Poststructuralism (1995), and Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation:
Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (1990). He has also edited sixteen
books, including the eight-volume History of Continental Philosophy (2010),
Modernity and the Problem of Evil (2005), Why Nietzsche Still? Reflections on
Drama, Culture, and Politics (2000), The Logic of the Gift (1997), and The
Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (1990). He continues as General
Editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Stanford University
Press translation of Nietzsche’s Kritische Studienausgabe, edited by Colli and
Montinari, and is currently completing an edition of selected writings of Jean
Wahl.
schrift@grinnell.edu
