Classes start at 3pm
Every Sunday From July 24th
Register hereNote: We're using P2PU.org, a free platform for self-organized education. You'll have to register, but it's quick. Click "follow" to receive updates as the class begins, or "participate" to immediately take part in discussion and planning.
It's an introduction to philosophy for artists, an introduction to psychoanalysis for philosophers, an introduction to pragmatics for psychoanalysts and an introduction to art for pragmatists.
This summer we're going to be talking about the history of the rhizome idea that lies at the heart of Research Club itself. The idea that sprung out of the collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is itself a metaphor derived from biology: the root structure (rhizome, as Wikipedia will tell you, means 'mass of roots' in Greek) of plants like potatoes, hops, asparagus, ginger, and (a favorite of RC itself) aspen, shoots roots from nodes that connect into a network, though after Deleuze and Guattari get ahold of it the rhizome extends into spaces far beyond the topsoil, inspiring networked decentralized organizational structures that allow for seemingly unrelated pieces to form mutually beneficial wholes.
In this course, we'll explore how this idea emerged out of changes in the practice of psychoanalysis, from Freud's original break with the hypnotic work of Charcot and Breur to Guattari's La Borde Clinic, with all kinds of interesting squeezed in between. You don't need to know anything to show up, and every class is guaranteed to be mind meltingly orchestrated to send you back out into the world with new concepts, new possibilities for practice, and quite possibly a few new friends whether you've been coming to every single session or have just dropped by for a quick taste of the madness. Join us Sunday afternoons every week starting July 24th and come ready to fill your mind with all kinds of awesome.
Class 1: July 24 3pm
I) Wittgenstein: From language games to forms of life
or when a tiger might talk to a salmon
In this first class, we'll dip our toes into the water with some talk about Wittgenstein's understanding of language as always being intimately tied to what he called a a 'form of life'. We'll bridge the gap from last year's work on the infinite game of discourse towards the work we're going to engage in this year on practice and organizational structure and the sort of cultural chaos that slight alterations in a form of life can unleash into the spaces of meaning made up by art, literature, technology and other forms of language. Along the way we'll get our first taste of the rhizome idea with a bit of thinking about interspecies communication and question of just what language is in the first place. Introduce yourself to the menagerie at our first session and come away with a map of the (very near) future.
$5 / $10 per class
higher cost is if class is not filled
