Why the Need for a Philosophical Exploration of Anarchism Today?

In this talk, Catherine Malabou will elaborate on the current crisis of horizontality, which can be attributed to the flexible architecture of the Internet and the factual anarchism it makes possible. Is it possible to genuinely differentiate political anarchism from anarcho-capitalism? Malabou will show that a new philosophical elaboration of anarchy is needed to sustain such a differentiation, and the extent to which the concepts of anarchy provided by some of the most prominent thinkers of the twentieth century (Schürmann, Foucault, or Rancière) can help with yet are ultimately insufficient for this task.

Catherine Malabou is a professor of philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University (UK) and in the departments of Comparative Literature and European Languages and Studies at UC Irvine. Her last books include Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality (2016, trans. Carolyn Shread), Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artifial Brains (2019, trans. Carolyn Shread), and Le Plaisir effacé. Clitoris et pensée (2020).