COMMA Talk, 2022-23

Juan Evaristo Valls Boix, Professor of Philosophical Anthropology, the Complutense University of Madrid

“Towards a Vindication of the Right to Laziness from Anarchy to Paradox”

The talk examines the philosophical foundation of the right to laziness, a right that imposes a limit to the capitalist exploitation of bodies and reclaims life that is not governed by merit or economic logic. Strike, laziness, retirement, play or disconnection have been the subject of important philosophical thought (Lafargue, Benjamin, Luxemburg), but only very few studies offer a systematic reflection on the anti-capitalist potential all these tactics share. They need to be defended as rights that may grant an intrinsic value to life, beyond its utility or profit.

Juan Evaristo Valls Boix is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid. He has been Adjunct Professor in Aesthetics and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, and post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Riverside. He is currently interested in the poetics of inoperosity and the politics of desire within the framework of a critique of neoliberal subjectivity. He is the author of the essays Giorgio Agamben. Política sin obra (Gedisa, 2020) and Metafísica de la pereza (NED Ed., 2022). The title of his current project is The Right to Beautiful Things (forthcoming: Ariel, 2024).