Inventions

Organised by: Institut für Theorie and BA in Media & Art / Vertiefung Theorie at the Zürich University of the Arts, in cooperation with Shedhalle Zürich. 

Coordinated by: Isabell Lorey, Roberto Nigro and Gerald Raunig.

‘L'essentiel d'une inven­tion est de faire s'utiliser réciproquement des moyens d'action qui aupa­ra­vant paraissaient étrangers ou opposés; elle est une association de forces substituée à une opposition ou à une stérile juxtaposition de forces’. 

(Gabriel Tarde, L’opposition universelle).

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The most influential theoretical current of the late 20^th century is no longer as young as it once was. Emerging within the social and political context of the 1960s and the 1970s, ‘post-structuralism’ was not a school of thought as such, and its protagonists did not necessarily harbour the same theoretical concerns. It was a period of intellectual intensity that brought about deep-reaching transformations in life styles and forms of knowledge, leading to new discursive orders and new social practices. 

Today, many of its main protagonists – among them the theory-stars Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida – are no longer alive. Now it seems increasingly easy for the cooptation, decontextualisation and depoliticisation of such theoretical endeavours to occur. On different levels and in a variety of social contexts, ‘post-structuralism’ reappears watered down, isolated and reduced to mere slogans within an academic mainstream.  

In a series of double lectures, the aim of Inventions is to present contemporary positions of ‘post-structuralism’ and recompose, transversalise and queer its currents. A reinvention of the political and theories thereof may emerge from those very same marginal fields that have  for decades been the source of nourishment: (Queer-) feminist praxis, critical production of art and knowledge, critical migration studies, social movements and extra-academic philosophy.

Maybe the term ‘post-structuralism’ – never much more than an auxiliary construction to sum up very different theoretical currents – will finally become obsolete. Maybe it will be replaced by a new conceptual arrangement. Inventions aims to provide the necessary impulses that can make possible this new arrangement of concepts and its association with social machines.

Concept-Paper