What are the non-Occidentalist resources of radical imagination of the “other Europe”, and how can the former socialist bloc and its allies rearticulate hope in today’s world? What is to be done …when the “European dream” is not only criticized, but potentially abandoned in a turn towards autarchy, ethno-nationalism and/or fundamentalist forms of Christianity? …at a moment in history when the civilization of capitalist modernity seems to be aware about so many of its worst drives yet cannot control or stop them? And then how can one make a meaningful passage from the airy tunes of such lofty observations to shared experiences of humble victories? I propose an exercise in both decolonizing sensibilities and rethinking critical theory, over a workshop in two stages: a preliminary investigation into non-Occidentalist precedents, using political, literary and visual materials from the socialist experience of the 1960s-1970s, followed by a theoretical critique of skeptical reason accompanied by a practical exercise in lifting voices.
Workshop
3.11.2018, 15-18
Email info@oddweb.org to register.
Please mention if you do not speak Romanian.
Public talk
3.11.2018, 19-21
Photos by Petre Fall.
Biography
Ovidiu Țichindeleanu
Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu (b.1976). Romanian philosopher, translator and culture theorist living in Chişinău, Moldova, writing on critical social theory, decolonial theory, history of philosophy, Eastern Europe and the cultural history of socialism and postcommunism. PhD in Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New York (2009). Studied philosophy in Cluj-Napoca, Strasbourg and Binghamton. Editor of the biannual magazine of critical theory and contemporary arts IDEA arts + society and collections coordinator at IDEA publishing house, Cluj, Romania. Translator into Romanian of works by Jean Casimir, Gilles Deleuze, Arturo Escobar, Silvia Federici, Lewis R. Gordon, Ivan Illich, Sylvia Marcos, Walter Mignolo, Peter Sloterdijk, and Immanuel Wallerstein. From 2012 teaches at the Decolonial Summer School, University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, Netherlands, and from 2015 at the Telciu International Summer School, in the village of Telciu, Romania. Co-curator, with Igor Mocanu and Raluca Voinea (The Committee for Ressurection), of the research exhibition The Veil of Peace, on the iconography and conceptual history of „peace” and the „friendship among peoples” during Romania’s real existing socialism 1945-1989 (tranzit.ro/Bucharest, 6.11.-7.7.2017). Author of: The Graphic Sound. An Archeology of Sound, Technology and Knowledge at 1900 (Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2008, 555p.); Counterculture. Rudiments of Critical Philosophy (IDEA, 2016, 320p.). Co-editor of CriticAtac. Antologie I 2010-2011 (with V. Ernu, M. Iovănel, F. Poenaru, C. Rogozanu, C. Şiulea, CARTIER, Chişinău, 2011); Romanian Revolution Televised (with K. Petrovszky, IDEA, 2009); The Anticommunist Illusion (with V. Ernu, C. Şiulea, C. Rogozanu, CARTIER, 2008).