In this provocative lecture delivered at our Spinoza Passionate Reason symposium in 2019, Katja Diefenbach looks at Spinoza’s system of knowledge and tried to propose what might be a “politics of the Third Kind”, a radically democratic and transindividual politics which always remains open to new potentials. Responding to commentaries from such great readers of Spinoza as Althusser, Deleuze and Negri, Diefenbach elaborates a daringly original thesis where human beings can collaborate and cooperate as never before in difference and heterogeneity.

A good accompaniment to this lecture is the essay available here: https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article...

Katja Diefenbach is professor for cultural theory at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart Germany. Her work explores contemporary aesthetic theory, the reception of Spinoza and Descartes in contemporary French philosophy. Her most recent book examines Spinoza in post-marxist philosophy, exploring the concept of structural materialism. Katja Diefenbach was one of the speakers at the 2-day symposium Spinoza & the Arts: Passionate Reason at 04.10.2019 and 05.10.2019 at West Den Haag. Her lecture is recorded and edited by West.