Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda
tout va bien / alt går bra

Fatalism and freedom are central concepts in Frank Ruda’s thought. Fatalism is not a solution, but a proposal for a political attitude, consisting in the “affirmation of the impossibility of life, politics, and art” which may “generate the preconditions for a new think-ability (an impossible possibility) of life, politics, and art.” Ruda challenges certain contemporary conceptualizations of freedom, where freedom rather becomes a synonym of oppression. According to Ruda, freedom is not a capacity or a possession we are born with, but, conversely, something to be attained that we may never actually reach.

Along with Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou, Agon Hamza is a proponent of the idea of Communism, which he defines as “the historical endeavors and struggles for universal emancipation.” Religion is central to Hamza’s idea of Communism, conceiving Christianity as a condition for emancipatory movements like Marxism and Communism. In his book Althusser and Pasolini, Hamza draws parallels between the French philosopher and the Italian filmmaker and poet, concluding that Catholicism is a fundamental component not only of Pasolini’s but also of Althusser’s work.

Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza co-edit the international philosophical journal Crisis and Critique since 2011. They have also co-authored Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016) and are currently working on Reading Marx, co-authored with Slavoj Žižek (Polity, 2018).
Agon Hamza’s latest publications are Repeating Žižek (Duke University Press, 2015), Althusser and Theology: Religion, Politics and Philosophy (Brill, 2016), a co-authored book with Slavoj Žižek, entitled From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo (KMD, 2013), and Althusser and Pasolini: Philosophy, Marxism and Film (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
Frank Ruda is cur­rently pro­fessor for social phi­los­ophy at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His most recent pub­li­ca­tions include: The Dash – The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Rebecca Comay, MIT Press, 2017), and Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for A Contemporary Use of Fatalism (Nebraska UP, 2016).

STUDY GROUPS
Alt Går Bra organizes study group sessions for the Tout Va Bien Series at Bergen Kunsthall.
The next study group session will be held at UiB and led by Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza in collaboration with the Radical Philosophy Research Group at UiB.
3. October, kl. 15.00-18.00, Room 300, HF-bygget, UiB.

Alt Går Bra presents philosophers Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza at Tout Va Bien Series on the 4th of October at Bergen Kunsthall Landmark.

In the lineage of Slavoj Žižek and the Ljubljana School, Ruda and Hamza have elaborated a body of philosophical work concerned with politics and aesthetics. Some publications in the field of aesthetics include Agon Hamza’s book Althusser and Pasolini and Frank Ruda’s volume Art and Contemporaneity (with Jan Völker).

Ruda and Hamza have collaborated in several projects including co-editing the journal Crisis and Critique, concerned with conceptualizing a mode of critique able to overcome the current impasse in critical thought.¨