The present state of labour and the future of political praxis. The second seminar session.

Saturday 17 April, 16.00, CAC Reading Room
DEMOS institute of critical thought in association with LUNI, Vilnius,
invite you to the second seminar session of the project

The present state of labour and the future of political praxis
A political-philosophical project to re-evaluate labour and new possibilities for democracy

Organised jointly by Andrius Bielskis and J.D. Mininger, this project brings together a diverse group of professional scholars, public intellectuals, and politically engaged citizens to examine foundational theoretical texts, recent studies of globalisation, urgent theories of labour, and the potential and emergent forms of democratic collectivism and power attendant to the situations that these theories describe and analyze. The seminar sessions are held in English, open to the public and free of charge.
Each seminar session is organised in relation to a common reading, and each session includes at least two prepared commentaries from experts in the chosen field (e.g. political philosophy; labour law; political science and diplomacy; etc.). Each session has a two-fold goal: 1) to collectively read, comprehend, and analyse the chosen text through commentary and open discussion; 2) to place the collectively pursued and inevitably plural insight from the textual study into the Lithuanian context, and to debate the stakes and results of these theories from this local application. The intent of the sessions’ structure is to create a participatory seminar-style atmosphere, in which all voluntary contributors cooperate to interpret the texts, ideas, questions, and problems at hand. The role of the speakers is not as teachers speaking ex cathedra, but as instigators, provocateurs, and to deliver starting points for organic discussion.
For more information or to request copies of the readings, please contact J.D. Mininger ([email protected]) or Andrius Bielskis ([email protected]).

Topic: ‘How the Multitude Works’: Contemporary Forms of Labour

Reading: David Harvey, (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, (chapter 1) “Freedom’s Just Another Word”.

Speakers:
Simon Rees. On Cultural Labour as Slavery: a response to Hardt and Negri’s “The Dialectic of Colonial Sovereignty” in Empire
Audronė Žukauskaitė. On Deleuzean Multiplicity & Minor Politics
J.D. Mininger. Spinoza and the Politics of the Common
Audronė Žukauskaitė. On Deleuzean Multiplicity & Minor Politics
J.D. Mininger. Spinoza and the Politics of the Common”