“Possible Worlds, Contingency and Potentiality. Leibniz in the Configuration of Possible Worlds in the Novel around 1800”, Lecture/Seminar with Anja Lemke
Schedule of Events:
2 April Lecture, (HQ 136, 5:30pm): Possible Worlds, Contingency and Potentiality. Leibniz in the Configuration of Possible Worlds in the Novel around 1800
Contingency and potentiality, as two possible translations of Aristotle’s concept of dynamis, gradually emerged as a new epistemological and social theoretical paradigm in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How this paradigm configured itself, what tensions were involved, what came to the fore and what remained latent, can be observed in an outstanding way in the genre of the novel around 1800. Starting from Leibniz’s model of possible worlds, the lecture will examine how and why the novel became the crossroads of the discourses involved in this paradigm shift, how it intertwined the epistemic and representational lines of theory that formed the new order of knowledge, and how it opened up the space in which both the unfolding of the possible on the one hand and its various attempts to contain and discipline it on the other could be traced.
3 April Seminar, (HQ 276, Noon): Labor, Agency, Aesthetics (Arendt, Human Condition, and Virno, Grammar of the Multitude)
The contemporary forms of labor in the so-called postfordistic information society and service economy bear a striking resemblance to the conceptualisations of artistic processes and practices within the domain of aesthetics since the late 18th century. The seminar will examine the changing positions of art in the field of production and action, discussing Hannah Arendt’s famous analysis on labor in The Human Condition (1958) together with Paolo Virno’s attempt to reconfigure art, work and politics in the age of postfordism. Particular emphasis will be placed on Virno’s exploration of the dimension of potentially and workforce, under the assumption that these categories are pivotal for a more profound comprehension of contemporary forms of labor and the concomitant forms of subjectivation.
RSVP is requested no later than 27 March so we can plan accordingly for the lunch: https://forms.gle/KwZEzawZbHe4LDgV9.