Bernd Herzogenrath: Joy is an act of resistance/ Art is the joy of resistance

Organized by the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences

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Prof. Bernd Herzogenrath (Goethe Univaersitaet Frankfurt am Mein):
Joy is an act of resistance/ Art is the joy of resistance

Abstract
In this talk I want to make a case for joy as the anarchistic affect per se – in a cross-polluting reading of Spinoza, Deleuze, and Kropotkin. Trying to extend Kropotkin's idea (and practice) of mutual aid to the non-human realm, I'd like to include also art into the picture – in particular a multi-contributor arts project I curated during the various lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

Bernd Herzogenrath is professor of American literature and culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster; An American Body|Politic: A Deleuzian Approach and editor of a.o. The Farthest Place: The Music of John Luther Adams and Deleuze|Guattari & Ecology. At the moment, he is planning a project, cinapses: thinking|film that brings together scholars from film studies, philosophy, and the neurosciences (members include António Damasio and Alva Noë). His latest publication include the collections The Films of Bill Morrison. Aesthetics of the Archive (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), Film as Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and Practical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury 2021). He is also (together with Patricia Pisters) the main editor of the media-philosophical book series thinking|media with Bloomsbury.