How to Move in Space at the End of the World?
Meeting 4 with Sofia Di Gironimo
Welcome back ! from the girlies at End of the World Research <3
Last week, we asked “How to Read Space at the End of the World?” We discussed data, ecologies, and ‘being-with’ or ‘lingering’ in our environments in times of great change, ecological destruction, turmoil.
This week, we are back with a new question: “How to Move In Space at the End of the World?” We will be working with the thought of postmodern French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and that of a great influence to his work, Baruch de Spinoza, early modern Dutch philosopher. We will discuss the power of bodies to affect and to be affected, to tune in and to tune out of those networks of resonances and rhythms which can both form us as distinct and unite us as radical totality. The passages assigned from each of these thinkers are brief but dense. Spend some time highlighting difficult passages, laden phrases. We hope to discuss these in-depth.
As an accompaniment, an excerpt from an article one of our group members is working on is provided, which applies the concepts being discussed today to techno-rave subjectivities. This grounds the theory being discussed in our contemporary moment--one in which the fragility of the everyday occasionally allows glimpses to the radically outside, the beyond to discrete subjectivity, the something else.
The 3 texts for this week can be found here:
Spinoza, Benedictus de, George Eliot, and Clare Carlisle. 2020. Spinoza’s Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
pp.125, “Axiom 1” → pp. 127, “Def”. Can be found here.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2001. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers.
pp. 48-51, “Affections, Affects”. Can be found here.
And a section from “Missed Connections: Affective Anatomy of a Night Out”.
Can be found here.
The intention of this week is to discuss the transformative and/or destructive possibilities of ‘moving together’ in a time where the structures that make things ‘make sense’ crumble around us. There are a few questions to keep in mind while reading:
What makes up an individual subjectivity, what structures of signification, exclusion, and law form the subject as distinct from its environment? What are the limitations of a politics grounded in the individual subject?
How might we rehearse or explore the possibilities for ‘being-outside-of-self’? How might this space ‘outside’ be useful for political organizing, subjective transformation?
When and Where?
Before the meeting begins, we’ll share our exact coordinates on Instagram (@endoftheworld.research) to help us find each other. Expect to spot us on picnic blankets along Mentana Street, posted beside a lamp post parallel to the road, or some other patch of grass that we can borrow for the evening.
Happy reading ! Looking forward to seeing you all soon xx