Senda Sferco

Senda Sferco is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina) and at the Gino Germani Research Institute of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, where she heads the ‘Desire and Political Experience’ study group. She also teaches ‘Philosophical Anthropology’ at the National University of the Litoral and ‘History of Contemporary Philosophy’ at the National University of San Martín. Her research focuses on contemporary political thought, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, which informs all of her academic, editorial, and cultural work. She is also involved in several international networks on contemporary political thought.

The project

Title: Foucault’s Historical Critique of Desire and the Making of Contemporary Subjectivity

"The research project aims to broaden our understanding of the formation of contemporary political subjectivities by taking Michel Foucault’s critique of ‘desire’ as a starting point. Desire is considered a foundational concept for interpreting subjectivity and the possibilities for action of the Western subject. Foucault’s analyses, relatively solitary in their time, interrogate desire both as a means of exploring one’s own subjective interiority and as a site through which the subject’s action is conducted. By engaging with revolutionary psychological discourses, particularly Freudo-Marxist ones, Foucault challenges the post-May 1968 celebration of desire as merely the category of volition and the source of erotic freedoms. This project seeks to explore the critical dynamic opened up by Foucault’s critique of desire, comparing it with the notion of ideology and examining its limits and potentialities. It focuses on the relationship between subjectivity and truth, as well as on the possibilities for action and imagination in the present. The question of desire and its relation to experience reflects a concern with connecting eroticism, ethics, and politics today—towards fostering alternative ways of living and developing a new understanding of otherness in response to the current troubling libidinisation of social bonds."

Hosting institution: Laboratoire d’études et de recherches sur les Logiques Contemporaines de la Philosophie (LLCP EA-4008 | Université Paris 8)

Selective Bibliography

• Sferco, Senda. Foucault y kairós : los tiempos discontinuos de la acción política. Bernal : Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2015. 388 p. ; 21x14 cm. ISBN 978-987-558-346-7.
• Antonelli, Marcelo et Sferco, Senda (comp.) Políticas del deseo, ética de los placeres. Entre el poder y la vida, la encrucijada de la sexualidad en Foucault y Deleuze, 1ère éd. Vicente López : Red Editorial, 2020. 254p. ISBN
• Castro, Edgardo et Sferco, Senda (Éditeurs) Publication espagnole de Foucault, Michel. Binswanger et l'analyse existentielle. Une approche philosophique de la maladie mentale, 1 édition, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Siglo XXI Editores, Argentina, 2022, 256 p. (Biblioteca Clásica de Siglo Veintiuno, serie Fragmentos foucaultianos, sous la direction d'Edgardo Castro). Titre original : Binswanger et l'analyse existentielle. Paris, Seuil, Gallimard, 2020. Traduction de Horacio Pons. ISBN 978-987-801-145-5.
• Sferco, Senda; Rancière, Jacques; Penchaszadeh, Ana; Espinosa, Luciana; Greco, Beatríz; Ruiz del Ferrier, Cristina, et. al. Alteridades alteradas. O cuando las dicotomías no explican nada, Ubu ediciones, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, novembre 2023.
• Cassin, Barbara et Sferco, Senda. Qu'est-ce que la traduction ? Dialogues philosophiques. Buenos Aires : Editorial Teseo, 2018. 40p. ISBN : 9789877860030.
• Sferco, S. et Penchaszadeh, A.-P. (2017) Traduction du français vers l'espagnol de la Poétique de la Relation d'Édouard Glissant. Ce projet a été soutenu par le Programme d'aide à la publication Victoria Ocampo de l'Ambassade de France en Argentine et publié par l'Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, pp. 250, ISBN 978-987-558-465-5, Bernal.