Marx vs. Hegel

Katerina Kolozova (Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Arizona State University)

The School of Materialist Research is proud to present the seventh of its (free) promotional lectures, which will last through May and June. Our seventh lecture, which will take place on May 29, 2021 at 18:30 CET, and is part of a cluster called “Hegel and Materialism” is by Katerina Kolozova, entitled “Marx vs. Hegel.” This seminar explores how Marx identifies one structural constant in philosophy, which is the organisational principle of philosophical sufficiency—the subjective perspective. It morphs the outside reality to mirror human subjectivity. This is also the organising principle of another tautological universe, that of capitalism—it is centered on the human and of the form of the “Universal Egoist” (Marx). The science of the species being of humanity postulates all reality, including the subjective, as an object of investigation and, therefore, the thought as objective. This type of objectivity is placed beyond the subject-object dialectics. Rather it assumes the third person’s perspective and from such a posture of thought produces its “philo-fiction” (Laruelle). In this way, Marx circumvents the fallacy of Kant’s noumenon.

Katerina (Katarina) Kolozova, PhD. is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje and a professor of philosophy, epistemology and gender studies at ISSHS and also at the University American College, Skopje. She is also visiting professor at several universities in Southeastern Europe, most notably at the Department of Political Studies of FMK-Belgrade. In 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) at the University of California-Berkeley, under peer supervision of prof. Judith Butler. Kolozova is the author of “The Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststucturalist Philosophy,” NY: Columbia University Press: 2014, “Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle,” (Brooklyn NY: Punctum Books, 2015), “After the ‘Speculative Turn:’ Realism, Philosophy and Feminism,” co-edited with Eileen Joy (Brooklyn NY: Punctum Books 2016). Her most recent monograph is published with Bloomsbury Academic UK (2019) titled “Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital, Philosophy and Patriarchy.” She is also the author of numerous interdisciplinary policy studies dedicated to the issues of “illiberal democracy,” partocratic mechanisms of state-capture in “hybrid regimes,” policy critique of repressive technocracy in the legislation of the authoritarian neoliberal post-socialist states in Europe.

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.