An informal conversation with Michael Hardt

Sunday 20 May 2007
2:00 – 4:00
Tequila Bookworm (upstairs)
512 Queen Street West

With Michael, we want to take up the question: Can love act as a political concept? In the final pages of Multitude, Hardt and Negri approach the concept of love as what is needed to grasp the constituent power of the multitude. They end by writing, “We can already recognize that today time is split between a present that is already dead and a future that is already living — and the yawning abyss between them is becoming enormous. In time, an event will thrust us like an arrow into that living future. This will be the real political act of love.” (Multitude, 358)

It is with these last words that we would like to begin our conversation on how to construct a new concept of love — a love that is both personal and political; a love capable of constructing new networks and new subjectivities; a love that is learnt and developed in relation to the network; a love based on differences; a love that creatively experiments with singularities; a love that is ontologically productive. Michael Hardt will begin with a few thoughts on why the concept interests him as well as the advantages, problems and limitations he sees with the concept. Together, we will move outwards from there.

In anticipation of the conversation we suggest reading the following texts:
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 348-358
Hardt, “Conclusion: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy,” in Gilles Deleuze, 112-122