SYMPOSIUM: The Problem of Existence, Delirium and Revolutionary Love

Time and Place: 12. september 2022 kl. 16:00 – 18:30 í Háskólanum í Reykjavík, stofa M209. The symposium is in English.

The Department of Business Administration at Reykjavík University and The Institute of Philosophy at the University of Iceland invite you to a symposium engaging with the ideas of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). The influence of Deleuze's ideas can be felt across the humanities, social sciences and arts, including literature, film, feminism, architecture, organization studies and entrepreneurship.

At the symposium, two internationally renowned scholars, Prof. Ian Buchanan and Assoc. Prof. Janae Sholtz, engage with selected concepts from Deleuze and his collaborator, Félix Guattari (1930–1992), in the context of affect theory and feminism.

Find additional information about the content of lectures and the two researchers below.     

Additional information

Topics of lectures

The problem of existence in the age of capitalism

by Ian Buchanan

Summary: Affect theory, it seems to me, has more or less the same status as assemblage theory: it is broadly recognised that it exists, but its precise configuration is unclear. Neither its ontological commitments nor its methodological requirements are universally agreed upon. It is generally agreed, though, that the field of affect theory began to take shape in the wake of Brian Massumi's influential essay "The Autonomy of Affect". However, despite Massumi's prominence in the field of Deleuze and Guattari studies it would not – I think – be unjust to say that Massumi's goal in that and subsequent work is to develop his own theory of affect rather than elucidate Deleuze and Guattari's theory of affect. The same can be said of the entire field of affect theory which, like assemblage theory, occasionally acknowledges a debt to Deleuze and Guattari but does not see itself as being either explicitly derived from their work or in any way directly indebted to it. Most of the key contemporary affect theorists, such as Massumi, but also Lauren Berlant, Eve Kosofsky Sedwick, Elspeth Probyn, and Greg Seigworth (among many others), draw on Deleuze and Guattari's work at some point, but it cannot be said that Deleuze and Guattari are their most important influences, much less their definitive points of reference. The field of affect theory, as it has emerged over the past two decades, has obviously been fruitful and yielded a great many important insights into the state of contemporary society, but – putting my own cards on the table – I would argue it has also been something of a missed opportunity inasmuch that a great deal of what Deleuze and Guattari have to contribute to affect theory has been left unexplored and in many cases undiscovered. This should not be construed as a criticism of the field of affect theory, nor indeed of any the authors just mentioned; rather, it stands as an invitation to return to Deleuze and Guattari's work and inquire what their version of affect theory might entail.

Delirium and Revolutionary Love - A New Direction for Deleuzian Feminism

by Janae Sholtz

Summary: In Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus volumes, revolution, social transformation, and the possibility of a new future are all linked to desire: minimally, to the freeing of desire from the false refuges of Oedipalization and its constructs of molar sexuality. Everywhere, they seek to uncover the potential of desire, sexuality, and love, asking us to consider that what we take to be the most personal is impersonal, how the most intimate is the collective and social. Thus, it calls us to rethink our material and affective relations and reconceptualize the sphere of intimacy itself. I develop the concepts of delirium and revolutionary love, suggesting that we interpret these as perpetual processes of transformation and conjugation, advocating for more nuanced, complex forms of subjectivity and for becoming more sensitive to the varying relational complexes within a given space in order to propose what I am arguing is a new direction in Deleuzian feminism. This direction gains its newness from both the extension of Deleuzian desire and from its return to several heritages of feminisms which have themselves been marginalized in the forward sweep of new materialist and posthumanist discussions.

About the lecturers:

Ian Buchanan is a Professor of Culture Studies at the University of Wollongong. Buchanan has published on a wide variety of subjects across a range of disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, communications studies, and philosophy. His most recent book is Assemblage Theory and Method: An Introduction and Guide. He is the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory and the founding editor of the international journal Deleuze Studies.  He is also the editor of four book series: Deleuze Connections (Edinburgh UP), Critical Connections (EUP), Plateaus (EUP) and Deleuze Encounters (Continuum). Link to bio: https://scholars.uow.edu.au/display/ian_buchanan  

Janae Sholtz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Alvernia University and the author of The Invention of a People, Heidegger and Deleuze on Art and the Political. She is also the editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism: Alliances and Allies for Bloomsbury and a special journal edition entitled Infinite Eros: Deleuze, Guattari, and Feminist Couplings. Link to bio: https://www.alvernia.edu/faculty-staff/janae-sholtz