Welcome to the launch of Toward a Transindividual Self, by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić, co-presented by Kaaistudio's and rile*.

For this book lauch, the authors invited several practitioners to choose a passage of the book to read, one which speaks to their practice. Their responses will spark an argued dialogue with the authors.  

The respondents are Femke Snelting, Nadia Fadil, Anna Franziska Jäger and Silvia Mollicchi. The evening will be moderated by Tom Engels.

Please note
This event will take place at Kaaistudio's. You can reserve a free ticket on their website. (https://www.kaaitheater.be/nl/agenda/book-launch-toward-a-transindividual-self)

Find the publication here: https://rile.space/books/towards-a-transindividual-self

About the publication
Starting from a concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Toward a Transindividual Self examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies and dramaturgy intersect, and thus critically asks: How is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? 

This question demands that we look into the process of individuation, which precedes and exceeds the individual. And that process encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which the authors investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual horizon. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it through an array of tangible social, aesthetic and political acts and practices. 

Praise of Toward a Transindividual Self:

… Convinced that the current neoliberal conjuncture has only heightened a form of capitalist individualism that blocks notions of the social, the authors aim to show that a ‘transindividual formation of the self can bring about different courses of action and a more socially driven imagination’. Transindividuation, they assure us, shows how "we form ourselves on the basis of interdependence, sharing, commonality, as well as indispensability of the individual as the agent of creativity/ knowledge, freedom, and change, who 'possibilizes' their own conditions of formation."

— Janelle Reinelt, co-editor of Critical Theory and Performance (2006)

… the focus on the transindividual makes it possible to grasp individuation as a process: “Instead of pondering how the passage from one to many occurs, individuation permits us to immediately trace a bidimensional process in which both individual persons and the collectivities they form are altered. Another meaning of the crisis of the social has brought about a perfect slogan of such a process of transindividuation: ‘No one will be left alone in the crisis.” Towards a Transindividual Self does a brilliant job of not only arguing for the importance and relevance for the transindividual as a concept for politics, performance, and the politics of performance, but of demonstrating a bold standard for political and aesthetic inquiry. 

— Jason Read, author of The Politics of Transindividuality (2015)

Published by KHIO/-SARMA/Multimedijalni Institut, Oslo-Brussels-Zagreb, 2022.

[Cover image credit: Komal Purbe - A woman flying a rocket (2019)]