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“How To Live Together”: Acephalic Discontents IV
October 29, 2016 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Free
Acephalic discontents is a series of text-based discussions on the question of community and group structure organized in collaboration with various writerly, artistic and intellectual groups. Sessions reflect on the possibilities and limits of alternative organization within the constraints of today’s capitalism while also functioning as nodes of intersection for various acephalic thinkers, groups and projects between New York City and Philadelphia. Each discussion session is relatively autonomous; together they build a discursive commons in preparation for a “case conference” and handful of other events in 2017 treating specific historical and contemporary acephalic formations or “elective communities” as “cases” — singular, producing new possibilities but also new and old pathologies.The next session of acephalic discontents focuses on the notes and transcriptions of Roland Barthes’ 1977 lecture series, “How to Live Together: Some Novelistic Simulations of Everyday Life.” These lectures reflect on sources of imagination for group life and its rhythms in novelistic, religious, political and aesthetic texts. Through a series of discontinuous “traits” — digressive and alphabetically organized keywords — Barthes explores the possibility of “idiorrhythmy”: singular distributions of time, space and the fabric of sense that are generated by group dynamics and practices, and separated from the more automatic interactions of the world at large. Experiments in Barthe’s acephalic method and discussion of the lecture course’s material will be guided by participants from Wendy’s Subway, a library and writing space oriented towards collaborative practice, publication and education.
To register contact Patricia Gherovici at pgherovici@aol.com / Transportation will be facilitated between NYC and Philadelphia, and some hosted accommodations are available / visit acephalicdiscontents.tumblr.com for more information