Dr. Aislinn O'Donnell

Date: Tuesday, 21st November 2006
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: A019, Atrium Building, IADT, Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Lecture title: The Fragile Self: Deleuze and Affect

In his Ethics Spinoza suggests that expanding one’s powers of existing involves both the ability to multiply one’s powers of acting and affecting - to compose relations with other bodies and minds - and the ability to be affected in diverse ways. The first element has garnered considerable attention in Western philosophical thought and social imaginings; however the second element remains somewhat neglected. Dr. O’Donnell explores philosophical perspectives on this idea of ‘active-passivity’. Dr. O’Donnell discussed that by developing more nuanced reflections on the ways in which life cannot be mastered, such as when we experience vulnerability, fragility, and contingency, we can begin to develop a positive appraisal of the experience of passivity that can itself lead to a different understanding of the self in relation to others.

Dr. Aislinn O Donnell lectures at UCD and NCAD.