Panel Discussion "Activating the Possibles"
„The Humanities and the Task of Social Potentialisation“
06. Jun
On the occasion of the opening for the Leuphana Institute of Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society, Rosalind Morris, Erich Hörl and Daniel Nemenyi discussed the central theme of "potentialisation".
With the Opening Days over the past three days, the Institute for Advance Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society kicked off with numerous events. Erich Hörl, Vice-President for Research and Co-Director of LIAS, took the opportunity to present the central concept of LIAS along the concept of "potentialisation" in a panel discussion and invited Senior Fellow Rosalind Morris, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Columbia University, New York as well as LIAS Fellow Daniel Nemenyi.
Numerous guests from the university, but also from outside, were interested in the panel discussion, which was accompanied by a graphic recording by the New York artist #Heather Klar that compactly captures the concept of LIAS in a way that everyone can understand.
The lack of alternatives that has characterised politics since the 1970s is, according to Hörl, not only the background to the ongoing crisis policy that characterises our time, but also a downright expertocratic situation that obstructs possibilities. In this respect, the question for the humanities and social sciences is what they can offer in this situation. Hörl also described this as the task of the university.
It became clear that the predominance of the current, the subordination of the potential to the current reduces potential. Nemenyi referred to a similar idea in Leibniz, namely the idea that potential lies in what we cannot foresee. Rosalind Morris emphasised the difference between learning and education for the humanities, citing the latter as an argument against cybernetics.