In this talk, I read the Immanence of Truths (2018) as an extended exercise that is directed towards the transformation of the self. Building on Pierre Hadot, Michel Foucault, and Ian Hunter, I outline how Being and Event (1988) constitutes a spiritual ascesis, aimed at the transformation of the participant’s subjectivity by means of a series of Heideggerian conversion-paradoxes. However, in light of divergences between the reticent comportment characteristic of Heidegger and Badiou’s emphasis on political engagement, I argue that Hunter’s account is incomplete. To illustrate this point, I analyse how Badiou transmutes set-theoretic objects into ontological notions such as covering-over, the ultrafilter, and the Absolute. With reference to the work of Quentin Meillassoux, I conclude that the corresponding aporiae operate as intellectual vehicles that articulate a post-Heideggerian spirituality, thus inculcating a militant philosophical persona.  

Zoom link: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/85838988082 

Žižek and Badiou are two self-professed proponents of dialectical materialism, defined by Badiou as the belief that: ‘there are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths.’ Against what Žižek has called scientific materialism or discursive materialism, and against what Badiou calls democratic materialism (that asserts the existence only of bodies and languages), dialectical materialism involves an attempt to think the traditional idealist categories of the infinite or the eternal within a materialist frame by conceiving material reality as non-all. But these two thinkers’ versions of dialectical materialism rely on different conceptions of subjectivity. For Žižek, the subject is a pre-evental point of negativity or the Real which is a necessary condition not only of an encounter with the Truth-Event but of reality itself. For Badiou, the subject is a post-evental effect of a truth process that involves faithfully working through the implications of a Truth-Event in a particular situation. In this paper I will argue that the different ways in which these thinkers conceptualise the subject has important implications for the ontological and political dimensions of their thought. In exploring these differences, I will attempt to evaluate the extent to which Žižek’s and Badiou’s dialectical materialisms are compatible.

Karl Marx is often thought of as having very little to offer moral philosophy. For decades, Anglo-American philosophers have debated if Marx’s thought is “amoral” and if his discussion of “exploitation” is normative or descriptive. Against these typical views, I argue that Marx is best understood in a tradition of ethics originating in Aristotle and Hegel that envisions the human good in the life-well lived of the political community. In Absolute Ethical Life (2025), I suggest that Marx’s early alienation critique is not only preserved in Capital, but the concept of abstract labour further develops his appraisal of domination and estrangement. Capital not only sets out to understand capitalism in thought, but at the same time looks to grasp why social life is impoverished by relations of abstract sociality. The limitlessness accumulation of capital acts as a barrier to mutual recognition between interdependent social agents and the form of life conducive to our flourishing. Drawing out the ethics of Marx’s critique of “value” pays rich dividends to grasping the role of human action in his thinking.

Presenter: Michael Lazarus is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute. Until recently, he was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. He works across political theory, moral philosophy and political theory. His writing has appeared in Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Thesis Eleven, Historical Materialism and critical theory publications. He has an article on Smith and Hegel on poverty forthcoming in the Cambridge Journal of Economics. His popular writing has been published in places including Jacobin and The Conversation. His next book focuses on Smith and Hegel. 

Beauvoir’s beautiful memoir of her experience of her mother’s death Un Mort très douce (A Very Easy Death) (1963) is treated here in counterpoint with Mia Hansen-Løve’s lyrical film Un Beau Matin (One Fine Morning) (2022), a year in the life of a single mother, Sandra (Léa Seydoux), dealing with the mental deterioration of her father, a philosophy professor, caring for her daughter and falling in love anew. In her memoirs Beauvoir describes how her book touched readers, overcame their isolation, and helped them ‘to bear the loss of someone they loved’ (1977, 135). Beauvoir’s evocation of her mother’s vitality and her admiration for it in some ways prefigures the vitality with which Sandra seizes life in Un Beau Matin. I argue that they both consider mortality and finitude—the difficulty of facing death as well as the question of how the choices we make create our lives, and that is significant for both the parent and the child who cares for them. In both the memoir and the film an acknowledgement of the irreversibility of time gives their choices about their parents and their own lives a strong sense of urgency.

Presenter: Marguerite La Caze is Professor of philosophy at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on European philosophy, philosophy of the emotions and philosophy of film. Her recent books include Ethical Restoration after Communal Violence (2018), and the edited collection Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought (2022), with Daniel Brennan and Film and Everyday Resistance, 2024. 

Žižek lost many friends on the left in 2016 when he declared that he would vote for Trump over Hilary Clinton. Eight years later, and with another Trump election around the corner, Žižek has never taken back what he said. So what is his justification for endorsing Trump? For Žižek, Trump is a symptom of the failure of Western liberal democracy to keep the violence inherent in globalism and capitalism at bay. He is a symptom also of the left’s opting for identity politics rather than class politics – choosing Clinton over Sanders – and the left’s being identified with an elitist ‘woke’ culture that has become anti-working class and pro-corporate. But more than just a symptom, Trump is an instance of a new type of populist politics of pleasure, which no longer bases itself on policy but on an obsession with an ‘other’ (liberal elites, immigrants, trans-athletes, corrupt politicians) who is stealing one’s enjoyment. Trump is a clown figure and an anti-politician, whose vulgar behaviour and illegal actions legitimise his claims to being a leader who is ’outside the system’ and so the only one capable of pulling it down. Trump’s shallow narcissism allows him to embody a super-egoic master who gives his followers permission to engage in acts of forbidden enjoyment, from being impolite to engaging in acts of violent insurrection. Žižek sees in Trump a likely disaster, but also a possibility for the left to finally abandon its complacency with the democratic status quo, and to clarify a genuine anti-establishment position grounded in the absolute universality of the communist hypothesis rather than false fantasies of nationalist purity.  

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's groundbreaking works, "Anti-Oedipus" and "A Thousand Plateaus," introduce a new critical theory and alternative left politics that diverge from the conventional forms of ideology critique practiced within the Freudo-Marxist tradition. Their conceptual brainchild, Schizoanalysis, is an interdisciplinary endeavour drawing from a vast spectrum of social sciences, philosophy, and the arts. Schizoanalysis seeks to discard the notion of collective revolution championed by Marxism, which has repeatedly fallen short in challenging the oppressive systems perpetuated by capitalism. Instead, it focuses on an emancipatory politics attained through smaller communal projects and the pursual of authentic identity.

Deleuze and Guattari's work requires a substantial background in philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, sociology, and French political history, in order to be engaged with, and has thus often been perceived as impenetrable due to its esoteric and complex nature. This paper endeavours to render Deleuze and Guattari's Schizoanalysis accessible and comprehensible through four key sections, bridging the gap for readers seeking to engage with this intricate and transformative theoretical framework:

• A critique of psychoanalysis: the development of a material psychiatry

• Philosophical background and systems of control: Capitalism, machines and Desire

• Becoming Schizo: Emancipation and figurative nomadicy

• Practical Schizoanalysis: La Borde Clinic, This is Serious Mum and Slipknot

The influence of ancient Greek culture on Friedrich Nietzsche's thought has been extensively investigated. Nietzsche's profound admiration for the ancient Greeks and the factors that he believed rendered them exceptional has predominantly revolved around arguments expounded in ‘The Birth of Tragedy.’ Consequently, scholars have attributed Nietzsche’s view of Ancient Greek exceptionality as being primarily rooted in the Greek’s tragic worldview as reflected in their literature (with its vital Apollonian-Dionysian forces). However, a lesser-known source of insight into Nietzsche's admiration for the Greeks can be found in his 1878 lecture notes, 'The Greek Worship of the Gods,' in which Nietzsche argues it was the Greek’s exceptional prowess as celebrators of festivals that earned them a prominent place in world history. Nietzsche's emphasis on worship as the defining feature of Greek excellence sheds light on various philosophical themes recurrent in his oeuvre, such as the significance of Dionysus and the concept of the Ubermensch. This paper will argue that an appreciation of Nietzsche's perspective on Greek worship is indispensable for a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental tenets of his philosophy.

This is an open discussion to follow up on the previous session, which was on philosophy and the institution. (Tony Thwaites gave a talk as an introduction to this. It's called ‘…and…: doing philosophy outside the university,’ and you can find a link to the recording here.)  

This meeting is to discuss what the activities of the QSCP could look like as it explores the discipline of philosophy outside the institution of the university. Everyone is invited to raise ideas and present responses. We'll start from what Alain Badiou identifies broadly as the three bands of the knot that gives philosophy its institutional coherence:

• • Address – who is philosophy to, and where is it from? 

  • Transmission – what does it mean to follow philosophy?

  • Inscription – what does philosophy leave as a legible mark?

What do they suggest about how we might do philosophy outside the university? 

Philosophy would seem to belong to the university in a way its neighbours in the arts and social sciences don’t. Where it occurs outside the university—the Melbourne and Queensland Schools of Continental Philosophy, U3A—it largely takes the familiar university form of lectures (such as this one) and courses. How is philosophy bound up with the needs and routines of the institutions that are its support? It would be naïve to see this relation as little more than a matter of repressions to be removed: for many of us, after all, the university been central to our awakening to, passions for and engagements with philosophy. But as the university struggles with chronic underfunding, exploitative work practices and unsympathetic governments, that swathe of activities and passions it bundles together as “Arts” may be dying within it. What might it be to do philosophy outside the university?

Tony Thwaites taught English literature and literary theory at the University of Queensland for many years. He has written books on Joyce and Freud, co-edited a collaborative book on Derrida, published on Lacan and Žižek among others, and is involved in reading groups on Joyce, Lacan and Badiou.

This paper is a Žižekian reading of Squid Game, in which I will read the text as an attempt to understand and express the Real of the inherent, mindless violence of a global capitalist order that privileges profit over human life. My argument is that Squid Game presents two different fantasy frames of the instigators of capitalist violence which I call figures of sado-capitalism. The first is the fantasy of the primordial father who engages in an excessive, uncastrated enjoyment – the rich men who arrive on the island to watch the final game of the competition. The second is the fantasy of the disciplined, inhuman, zombie-like administrator, in the figure of Front Man and his masked minions, who follow orders without question or remorse. While these figures fail in different ways and in different degrees to capture the objective violence inherent in the functioning of global capitalism, this failure is a key part of the text’s suggestive allusion to a form of revolutionary subjectivity that could resist capitalist interpellation.