Rosi Braidotti a Roma – Deleuze Studies Conference

Wednesday 13th July: 16:00 – 17:30 Aula Magna

Rosi Braidotti (University of Utrecht)  (Chair Federica Giardini, University Roma Tre)

Affirmative Ethics and Generative Life

This lecture addresses one of the paradoxes that marks all critical thought, namely: how to engage in affirmative politics, which entail the creation of sustainable alternatives geared to the constructions of social horizons of hope, while at the same time doing the work of critique, which implies resistance to the present. The relationship between creation and critique is a problem that has confronted all activists and critical theorists: how to balance the creative potential of critical thought with the dose of negative criticism and oppositional consciousness that such a stance necessarily entails. Central to this debate is the question of how to resist the present, more specifically the injustice, violence and vulgarity of the times, while being worthy of our times, so as to engage with them in a productive, albeit in oppositional and affirmative manner. This paper engages with the contextual and the conceptual aspects of this question.

Rosi Braidotti is a Philosopher and Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University as well as director of the Centre for the Humanities in Utrecht. In 2014 she was elected Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in the section Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA), in 2009. Among her latest book publications: The Posthuman, Polity Press, 2013; Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti, Columbia University Press, 2011; Nomadic Subjects, second edition, revised and enlarged, Columbia University Press, 2011; La Philosophie, là oú on ne l’attend pas, Larousse, 2009; Transpositions: on Nomadic Ethics, Polity Press, 2006; Feminismo, diferencia sexual y subjetividad nomade, Gedisa, 2004; Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Polity Press, 2002. She has edited 5 volumes in Dutch on feminist issues. She also edited (with Gabriele Griffin) Thinking differently: a reader in European women’s studies, Zed Books, 2002; (with Nina Lykke) Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs, Zed Books, 1996; and co-authored: Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development, Zed Books, 1994.