How do we understand affective experience as a particular dimension of specific historical conjunctures? If ‘affect’ names a plane of experience that is characterised by feeling and physicality, how can we understand it as always socially conditioned and always historically specific? Has the nature of affect itself changed since the 1950s? And how can thinkers from Spinoza to Stuart Hall help us answer these questions?

Lawrence Grossberg has been a key figure pioneering such answers since the 1970s, having played a major role in introducing the ideas of Stuart Hall and the intellectual programme of Cultural Studies to the US academy, and having made major contributions to the development cultural theory and methods of cultural and political analysis, including the theorisation of affect, hegemony and conjuncture. In this seminar, he explores some of the key issues raised by this crucial convergence of themes.

This seminar was part of our series From Marx to Spinoza: Affect, Ideology, Materiality: https://culturepowerpolitics.org/from-marx-to-spinoza-affect-ideology-materiality/

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Culture, Power, Politics Live: ‘The Conjuncture’

Thursday November 12th 2026, 18:30

Oxford House, London (and also live on YouTube)

When are we?

How can we understand the way things are now? What is the balance of power or forces in British politics and economics, what contradictions are taking shape in culture and society, and how do these define the moment we live in?

This live ‘episode’ of the Culture, Power, Politics podcast is all about analysing ‘the conjuncture’ – the histories and possible futures shaping the present. Alan Finlayson and Jeremy Gilbert will discuss some of the general ideas and concepts and invite the audience to join them in making sense of our particular now, the opportunities to seize and the dangers to avoid.

To Register: https://actionnetwork.org/events/culture-power-politics-live-the-conjuncture

Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/2kMn1wn_Yl0