Conceptual-Speed-Dating

Conceptual Speed Dating

Brian Massumi

1. Choose a generative text.
2. Choose a minor concept weaving through the generative text.
3. Ask each person in the group to count off as a one or a two.
4. Instruct the ones that they are “posts.”
5. Instruct the twos that they are “flows.”
6. Ask the posts to find a post: a spot in the room where they would like to have a conservation.
7. Ask the flows to pair up with a post.
8. Direct everyone to a page in the text where the minor concept occurs.
9. Ask the participants to discuss the function of the minor concept, staying as close as possible to the text, with detailed attention to how it is constructed.
10. Notify participants that when exactly five minutes are up they will hear a signal, and that when they hear the signal they must end their conversation immediately, even if they are in the middle of a word.
11. When the five-minute signal sounds, ask all flows to move to the next post in a clockwise direction.
12. Repeat eight to ten times.
13. Bring the group back together and discuss in plenary session what was discovered about the minor concept and the text.

From: Brian Massumi, “Collective Expression. A Radical Pragmatics,” The Principle of Unrest (London: Open Humanities Press, 2017) 111-140, here: 111-112, http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Massumi_2017_The-Principle-of-Unrest.pdf German version: https://nocturne-plattform.de/text/kollektiver-ausdruck