The eight event of the Technology and Socialization Project — the conference Energy and the Question of Investment — took place in Warsaw, 3-4 November 2025. It was held in the Conference Room at the College of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw (Dobra 72, 00-312 Warszawa).
In thinking about the energies and future libidinal investments of man, we tried to bypass the simple hypotheses according to which death drive lies within the life drive and describe drive-based excess, the overflowing of the drives, as a true collective suicide, in which like lemmings who, pushing and shoving in large numbers, fall off the edge of cliffs, humanity itself is in the course of unconsciously rushing towards death. Certainly, capitalism has liberated what lies buried deep within it, and that moves it with all its energy: the death drive. We do not deny that capitalism is a particular moment in human history in which technics and science are perverted towards the over-productivity of labour. But we ask: do these statements about capitalism exhaust the spectrum of knowledge and analysis about the future of human energy and investment?
As striking as the analysis of contemporary capitalism may be, they are not convincing, for it confuses the accursed share analysed by Bataille with consumerist waste. Quite unlike the unbinding of the destructive drives by calculation, characteristic of unbridled capitalism, Bataille’s general economy affirms incalculability – where the surplus, instead of submitting to calculation in reinvestment, is sacrificed and not simply destroyed. We ask in this context: is man caught up in the morbid tendency of capitalism? What does it mean that he does not just accumulate wealth, but also, above all, negative goods, waste destroying more than he accumulates? Does all investment require abandoning immediate destruction and consumption and allowing deferred action and greater future consumption?
Confirmed keynote speakers include Joanna Bednarek, Michał Federowicz, Andrzej Leder, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Antti Salminen, Allan Stoekl, Andrzej Waśkiewicz, Szymon Wróbel, and Noam Yuran.
Below you will find the full program of the event:
Click here to view the Book of Abstracts for the conference.
The conference is organized by the Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw (Poland).
Organizing Committee:
Professor Szymon Wróbel
Dr Krzysztof Skonieczny
Dr Katarzyna Szafranowska
Mgr Adam Cichoń