TOOLS FOR TRANSVERSALITY

A Talk with Gary Genosko

Part of A Potential Toronto
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry
More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Thursday 29 November, 7:30pm

Room 103
Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design [Building], U of T
230 College Street


1. Forming collectives that allow people to relate to each other in new ways. 2. Establishing connections that allow individuals and groups to collaborate within and against hierarchical division. 3. Undertaking experiments in institution-building, direct action, and cultural production that subvert, or surpass, societal constraints. The groups, ideas, and actions spotlighted in the A Potential Toronto series addressed these three ongoing practical tasks and theoretical concerns.

One of the concepts that has been used to think about these three dimensions, and their relation, is “transversality.” In this talk, Gary Genosko will address Félix Guattari's concept of transversality. Gary revisits transversality's original application in a psychiatric clinic and follows its subsequent deployments by Michel Foucault as a resistant force.

A Potential Toronto opened with a talk on the concept of “commonism” as a possible macro alternative to capitalism. The series wraps up with a talk on “transversality” as a micro-political logic for remaking social practices.

Gary Genosko trained as an interdisciplinary scholar in philosophy, environmental studies and social and political thought. After many years as an independent intellectual, he took a post at Lakehead University where he is Canada Research Chair in Technoculture Studies and Director of the Technoculture Lab. He has published extensively on Félix Guattari's life and work in The Guattari Reader, Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction, The Party without Bosses: Lessons on Anti-Capitalism from Guattari and Lula da Silva, and the three volume collection Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments. He also edits The Semiotic Review of Books.