Second workshop of the School for Politics and Critique 2015

The Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje (ISSHS) has the great pleasure to announce the second workshop of the School for Politics and Critique with the eminent philosophers and activists François Laruelle (France), Svetlana Slapšak (Slovenia) and Katerina Kolozova (Macedonia) The workshop moderators are: Igor Jovanoski and Artan Sadiku, with Anastas Vangeli who will hold an informal session. The second workshop of the School for Politics and Critique will be held from June 26 – June 28, 2015 at the ‘Klimetica’ Hotel in Ohrid.

FRANÇOIS LARUELLE – “NON-STANDARD PHILOSOPHY AND MARXISM.”

François Laruelle is a French philosopher, formerly of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre. He developed the concept of non-philosophy as a kind of non-standard philosophy rather than anti-philosophy or meta-philosophy. Laruelle’s non-Marxism is an attempt to rethink Marxism after the collapse of the communist states by asking the question “What is to be done with Marxism itself?” He proposes non-Marxism as a heretical science of Marxism that will investigate both its failures and possibilities to develop a new theory.
SVETLANA SLAPŠAK – “SUSPICIOUS SUBVERSION: REVOLUTIONARY ETHICS”

Svetlana Slapšak is retired Professor of Anthropology of the Ancient Worlds and Anthropology of Gender, Co-ordinator, at ISH, Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, a postgraduate school in humanities in Ljubljana, since 1995, and a former Dean of ISH.
KATERINA KOLOZOVA – “WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH MARXISM TODAY?”

Katerina Kolozova, is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje and a professor of philosophy, sociological theory and gender studies. Kolozova is the author of Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy (2014), The Lived Revolution: Solidarity with the Body in Pain As the New Political Universal (2010), The Real and “I”: On the Limit and the Self 2006), The Crisis of the Subject with Judith Butler and Zarko Trajanoski (2002), The Death and the Greeks: On Tragic Concepts of Death from Antiquity to Modernity (2000), and editor of a number of books from the fields of gender studies and feminist theory.

SCHOOL FOR POLITICS AND CRITIQUE 2015

The series of four political workshops under the frames of the School for politics and critique 2015 are conceptual flow from the activities of the School for politics and critique 2014 and they aim at enabling a space both for learning on strategies of enacting large coalitions and action within them, as well as to generate new theoretical knowledge on the political challenges of the current context. The School will provide a larger group of activists an opportunity to work with experienced political activists and theorists.

The increase in neoliberal policies on the one hand and the increase of the authoritarian practice of governments on the other, continuously produce social devastation, fear and political demobilization of social movements. The lack of strategies for outreach to different social groups by the social activists in order to forge a broad alliance of social actors which will enact strategies of action towards social justice, freedom and democracy, produce a fragmented space for change. We need to unite the progressive forces in action.

The lack of a more serious political confrontation to the current neoliberal consensus among the political factors requires the mobilization of a leftist discourse and wide social structures. There is a need to link sectors of labor with other citizen structures in order to organize a political resistance against the terrible social consequences in the areas of freedom, democracy and social justice. At the present moment a serious challenge towards the active political mobilization is the fear and disbelief of the wide popular masses on any political undertaking that would challenge the current governing mentality.

The “School for politics and critique 2015” is organized by the Institute of social sciences and humanities – Skopje with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe.