2024/25: Resistance

The reciprocity of force and counter-force, of actio and reactio in Newton’s diction, marks a special challenge for thinking about forces – as their relation to corporeal experience shows particularly clearly. Hegel’s dialectic goes so far as to conceive of resistance as ‘soliciting’ force to become force in the first place. Active forces – and the resistances that exert (counter-)effects through their passivity – open up at least three fundamental perspectives for the modeling of forces. First among these is a natural philosophy and metaphysics of antagonisms, which is related to dualistic concepts of both religion and Western thought, above all Stoic philosophy. Second, the theme of resistance opens up perspectives for a description of the political dynamics between domination / action and resistance / reaction. This constitutes a decisive aspect for debates on political resistance, but also for their visual signs and narratives (an aspect that connects at the same time to the applicants’ joint preliminary work in Political Emotions, 2021). And finally, and centrally for the Centre’s inquiry, it opens perspectives for a conceptualization of the artistic ‘resistances’, traditionally attributed to materials, wherein both artistic triumph and failure are manifested. No less relevant is the genuinely rhetorical concept of a ‘pathetic’ effect that overcomes the resistance of a work’s recipients or listeners.