Nexus/Zusammenhang: Rethinking Interconnectivity in Leibniz

Relationality, network, entanglement: the very ubiquity of such tropes tends to obscure their long history, which stretches back to the early-modern concept of the nexus rerum developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his followers. This interdisciplinary workshop will invite scholars from various fields, including philosophy, the history of science, and literary, media, and cultural studies to enter into a dialogue about this newly relevant but little-understood aspect of rationalist thought. Our aim is to invite reflection on interconnectivity as a focal problem in recent scholarly debates across disciplines like ecology, political theory, and aesthetics, paying special attention to early elaborations of the nexus rerum concept (Leibniz, Baumgarten, Kant) and its more recent appropriations (Tarde, Latour, Deleuze, Stengers). The workshop will serve as preparation for a future conference on thinking interconnectivity across the disciplines.