Shared Knowledge and Affirmative Subjectivities : Re-reading Spinoza with Lloyd, Braidotti and Deleuze

In which way can we support, theoretically and practically, a dynamic and nomadic ethics that favours affirmative processes of subjectification? Who can help us, from a genealogical point of view, to overcome the concept of the rational subject, self-reliant and self- sufficient? To what extent can we think and practice a materialist ethic that enhances the affirmative subjectivities, as well as new models of participation and shared responsibility? To address those questions, this essay traces the rediscovery of Spinoza’s thought in many contemporary thinkers: Genevieve Lloyd, Rosi Braidotti, and Gilles Deleuze. The reason why those thinkers return to Spinoza lies in the affirmative power of his philosophy. Spinoza innovates materialism not only because he brings it back to monism, but mostly because he connects, in the Ethics, the cognitive, imaginative and affective human powers to the power of the whole subjectivity. In conclusion the essay focuses on the political ontology provided by Braidotti and Deleuze, as a perspective that enables us to be affirmative starting from our bodies.