Reading Hegel

Agon Hamza (Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje)

The School of Materialist Research is proud to present the sixth of its (free) promotional lectures, which will last through May and June. Our sixth lecture, which will take place on May 28, 2021, at 18:30 CET and is part of a cluster called “Hegel and Materialism” is by Agon Hamza, entitled “Reading Hegel.” This seminar explores how the Hegelian Absolute continues to be one of the most, if not the most, monstrous philosophical concepts. One of the standard understandings of the Hegelian dialectical process is that the subject appropriates the substance (with reference to the Preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit: not only as a substance, but also as a subject). Hegel’s Absolute, which is both the substance and the subject, should not be read (like Althusser did, amongst others) as an Aufhebung: the reconciliation of all contingencies into one notion. However, for Hegel, reconciliation is not a sublation of all tensions and contradictions, but the peaceful situation is impossible precisely because contradictions are part of the reconciliation itself. Hegel famously claimed: ‘the wounds of Spirit heal and leave no scars behind.’ We can read this statement either as a sign of a totalizing unification (idealism) or as a sign of the very groundlessness of the dialectical movement. The movement of Spirit leaves no scars (leaves nothing behind) because it is the healing that produces the wound. In this talk, Hamza will discuss the concept of religion in Marx and Hegel, Hegelian theory of the state, and the concept of dialectic in Hegel

Agon Hamza holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and  is an Assistant Professor of political philosophy at the graduate program of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanites Skopje. He is the author of Reading Marx (Polity, 2018; with Frank Ruda and Slavoj Žižek), Althusser and Pasolini: Philosophy, Marxism, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo (Kolektivi Materializmi Dialektik, 2013; with Slavoj Žižek). In addition, he is the editor of Althusser and Theology: Religion, Politics and Philosophy (Brill, 2016) and Repeating Žižek (Duke University Press, 2015), as well as coeditor, with Frank Ruda, of Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He is founder and co-editor (with Frank Ruda) of the international philosophy journal Crisis and Critique. Currently he is working on two books, entitled Reading Hegel (with Slavoj Žižek and Frank Ruda, forthcoming with Polity), and Slavoj Žižek and the Reconstruction of Marxism (forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan). Dr. Hamza was a political advisor to Albin Kurti, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, and the leader of the political party Vetëvendosje.

The School of Materialist Research (SMR) is an informal graduate and post-doc level program that offers seminars and workshops that address the materialisms running through contemporary science, philosophy, art, mathematics, design, architecture, and politics. SMR is an international platform, founded by the Center for Philosophical Technologies at Arizona State University, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje and Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics at TU Wien that functions as a global online school combining education, research, and mentorship to advance academic study at the intersection the Social Sciences and Humanities and the STEM sciences. Two more institutions from Europe are expected to join the platform in the upcoming months. The Spring and Summer Sessions are offered for free and open to the public serving as promotional events that illustrate the programmatic commitment and style of work offered by the School for Materialist Research. Some of the confirmed speakers in the Spring/Symmer series of seminars include: Paul Cockshott, Greg Michaelson, Ray Brassier, Anne-Françoise Schmid, John Ó Maoilearca, Guiseppe Longo, Agon Hamza, Adam Nocek, Katerina Kolozova, Vera Buhlman, Iris van der Tuin and many many more.