Research Group (Berlin, 2013-2016)

We started as a reading group focusing on queer approaches to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felíx Guattari, and later opened the frame in order to discuss desire as a political concept. The guiding research question is how to understand desire as a political force. What does this mean in relation to current politics, sexual politics as well as politics, which on first sight have nothing to do with sexuality? Sharing the understanding that desire cannot be reduced to a personal phenomenon, but is constituted by and constitutive of the social, we ask: Which concepts present desire as connecting subjectivity and sociality? How do they contribute to justifying and installing or, on the contrary, challenging social hierarchies, normalcies, and exclusions? Are there queer notions of desire, which open up alternative forms of sociality? And does one need to rethink the political, if desire is acknowledged as a driving force? These are the questions providing a common framework for researchers from Social Sciences, Humanities, and Cultural Studies.