Theory and Practice of Leaderlessness

This seminar reflects on the collapse of leadership (Benjamin, Jelinek, Labatut) and on the question of what political action might look like that does not take the classic, centralized form of leadership. We find inspiration in German moments of counter-history (the Peasant Wars, Council Republics, environmental movement), in anarchist writing (Landauer, Graeber, Robinson), in the pedagogical and psychoanalytical setting (Rancière, Walser, Bion), in small organizations approaches to worker’s rights, housework and childcare, queer rights (Sander, Federici, Rackete), and finally in the arts of leaderlessness. (Romanticism, Dickinson, Melville). Seminar discussions in English.