Slovenian School Reading Group

Basic Reading Group Info:

The Slovenian School Reading Group is a year-long monthly reading group starting January 22nd 2025. The first six months of the year will be devoted Mladen Dolar's A Voice and Nothing. In this inventive and foundational work, Dolar grounds his philosophical theory of the voice as a Lacanian object-cause (objet petit a). The book traverses different disciplines to delve into this underexplored terrain of philosophy and psychoanalysis. In the study group, we'll be going into the linguistics, metaphysics, physics, ethics and politics of the voice.

For the remainder of the year, the study group will come together to read and discuss Alenka Zupančič's The Odd One In. This work hones in on comedy with a Hegelian and Freudo-Lacanian lense. In this work, Zupančič goes into the political and subversive nature of comedy, and juxtaposes it to its ideological forms.

Both these understudied works of the Slovenian School will help us to think the politics of subjectivity. The goal of the study group is to come to a refined understanding of the dialectical and unconscious dimensions of the subject's life in regards to the voice and comedy. Both of these books are urgent in today's world that is decidedly in need of psychoanalytically informed theory.

Reading Group Leader: Dimitri Crooijmans

Dimitri Crooijmans is a philosopher and artist from the Netherlands. Ever since the beginning of Philosophy Portal, he has been publishing articles, short stories and songs inspired by an array of themes spanning metaphysics, ethics, politics and aesthetics. His writings, video-essays and podcasts can be found on his platform Actual Spirit. He sings and raps under the name Objet lil a. By bringing the highly extimate domains of music, literature and philosophy together he's embarking on a path that takes much repetition to bring about creative novelty. The result is both estranging and connective.

Schedule:

Wednesdays 7pm CET / Online

January 22nd / Reading Group 1: A Voice and Nothing More / The Linguistics of the Voice

February 26th / Reading Group 2: A Voice and Nothing More / The Metaphysics of the Voice

March 26th / Reading Group 3: A Voice and Nothing More / The “Physics” of the Voice

April 30th / Reading Group 4: A Voice and Nothing More / The “Ethics” of the Voice

May 28th / Reading Group 5: A Voice and Nothing More / The “Politics” of the Voice

June 25th / ​ Reading Group 6: A Voice and Nothing More / Kafka’s/Freud’s Voices

September 24th / Reading Group 7: The Odd One In / The Concrete Universal

October 22nd / Reading Group 8: The Odd One In / Figures of Comedy

November 26th / Reading Group 9: The Odd One In / Conceptualisations

(THURSDAY) December 18th / Reading Group 10: The Odd One In / The Phallus

Access:

Two ways to access: purchase the course as a stand-alone reading group via Actual Spirit’s Patreon or Substack, or join The Portal as a monthly/yearly member. ​ All information can be found here: