Open Lecture – Katja Diefenbach
Event organized as part of the regular activities of Praxis-CFUL
Free Attendance
Katja Diefenbach
European University Viadrina
In no one’s time. Event and politics in Deleuze and Badiou
30 March 2023 — 10h00 – 12h00
School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon
Room B112.B (Library Building)
Abstract
In post-Marxist theory we encounter two extreme ontologies of infinite multiplicity, both of which are of impressive anti-phenomenological rigor but hold wholly contrary views of Being, time and event. Few other theories in continental philosophy stand in a more confrontational relationship around a set of common questions than Gilles Deleuze’s and Alain Badiou’s theories of infinite multiplicity. In attempting to disentangle causality models from mechanical or totalizing schemes of determination and foundation, both authors end up with divergent concepts of difference and time, in which the event is conceived one time univocal, the other time equivocal, one time immanent, the other time transcendent, one time ontological, the other time metaontological. This dispute about the eventfulness of the event will be traced back to different understandings of political intervention in Badiou’s minimal Marxism and Deleuze’s apocalyptic theory of individuation.
Katja Diefenbach is Professor of Cultural Philosophy/ Philosophies of Culture at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). Her research focuses on 20th-century French philosophy and epistemology, with special attention to the relationship between Marxism, deconstruction and (post)structuralism. Her theoretical interests also include decolonial and feminist philosophies as well as Spinoza and Althusser research. She has written various texts in these fields. Her last book was published in 2018 by Turia + Kant under the title Spekulativer Materialismus. Spinoza in der postmarxistischen Philosophie. She is a member of the publishing collective and venue b_books (Berlin).
This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDB/00310/2020.