Tillsammans med filosofen Miguel de Beistegui, specialist på Heidegger och Deleuze, håller årets Cassirer-föreläsare Chiara Bottici ett seminarium på temat ”Spinoza and the hydraulic discipline of affects. From the theologico-political to the economic regime of desire”.
Why do people fight for their servitude as if it were their own deliverance? How can compliant subjects be created? Spinoza’s Theologico-political treatise provide a clear answer to the question: through superstition, technically understood as an art of discipline of the body and of the mind via imagination. While Spinoza explores the way in which the Hebrew rituals disciplined the bodies (and thus desires) through a sort of hydraulic system comparable to the functioning of a siphon, we will further argue that the neoliberal regime of desires works in a similar way: in both cases it is by the artificial introduction of a lack that desires are drained, siphoned off, precipitated into the master-desire of a void that can never be filled up.
Seminariet, som är ett samarrangemang mellan Ernst Cassirer-sällskapet och konstnärliga fakultetens Kollegium för kritik, äger rum den 10 december kl. 12–15 i Glashuset på Akademin Valands innergård.
