„To Believe in this World...“ On the Ethics of Experimental Speculations

Thiele, K. (Participant)

ICON - Gender Studies

Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Workshop, seminar, course › Academic

Period	21 Jun 2019
Event type	Workshop
Location	Berlin, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Documents & Links

Of late, speculation has been a ubiquitous buzz word, even though – or maybe because – the term has been used in so many and often conflicting ways. But now that the buzz seems to have quieted down, it seems timely to ask where the continuing potentials of as well as the necessities for speculative thought might lie. In order to formulate this question, this workshop with Martín Savransky and Kathrin Thiele departs from Deleuze and Guattari’s diagnosis, put forward in What is Philosophy?, that “(i)t may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task”. While an intuitive understanding in today’s crisis-ridden world imposes itself rather quickly, we will unpack the implications of this creed for an ethos of speculative thought, for the practice of doing theory today, in this world, inquiring into the connections between empiricism and speculation. This workshop is a cooperation with Melanie Sehgal and concludes the series of masterclasses “Experimental Speculations / Speculative Experimentations” that she has been organizing at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) since 2012, a series that brought artists, theorists and scientists – among them Xavier Le Roy, Steven Shaviro, Vicki Kirby, and Isabelle Stengers – in conversation about their speculative and experimental practices.