INVITATION FOR COLLECTIVE WORK ON THE PROJECT
�POLITICS AND THOUGHT�

What could be the possible mode of politics today � the politics of emancipation, the politics of the multiplicity � that breaks up with the existing situation by opening up a possibility, by creating something which seems almost impossible from within the situation?

How can we think politics today?

These two questions constitute the fundamental framework for collective work on the project "Politics and Thought". As a starting point, we would like to propose three mutually interrelated directions of thoughts and actions.

In the first place, how is it possible for us, in the contemporary conjuncture of a seemingly globalized world without an outside and an exception, to think affirmatively about this world and to break up with it? How can we reflect the split of the world whilst avoiding the choice between the indifference of universal capital and parliament democracy on one hand, and the "deadlock" of various communitarisms, on the other? In other words, how we are to avoid the false alternative between the position of the "beautiful soul" and that of "cynicism"?

Is the absence of the politics of emancipation at the end of twentieth century correlative with the separation of thought and resistance? Nowadays, this very separation manifests itself both in the increasing incapacity of thought to produce potential effects in the political and social fields, as well as in its open conservativism. At the same time, if resistance is not accorded with its own thinking, it ends up as the resistance to think � and not only that, it turns out to be the resistance that manifests itself in brutal, extreme violence. Does politics today open the possibility for the encounter between thought and resistance? Or has that precious role been passed over to and performed by other fields � art or scientific production?

For all of us living on the territory of what was once called Yugoslavia, it is essential to pose the question of the possibility � beyond demands for integration and necessities imposed by the logic of capital and by state politics � of mutual cooperation based on the grounds of politics of emancipation. Should such a relation be based upon the experience of the Anti-Fascist Movement, should it be inspired by the political idea of the Yugoslav Collective, that is, on the inseparable bond of both the thought of resistance and the constitution of a new collective built on the neutralization of particularities, of national, linguistic, cultural and religious belongings?

These directions of thoughts and actions can be supplemented or expanded by other ones. They may likewise be rejected and replaced by different suggestions and by different problem settings.

The first seminar, organized on behalf of the project "Politics and Thought", was dedicated to the exploration of different forms of the constitution of the collective-in-resistance, and of their validity.

The seminar was held on December 23rd at the Institute for Philosophy in Ljubljana, under the title: "The constitution of the collective-in-resistance � the case of the Peoples� Liberation Struggle and the Yugoslav Collective".

Jelica �umi�-Riha, Rado Riha, Ozren Pupovac, Slobodan Karamani�