13/11/2025 - 1rst Research Forum session 2025-2026 by Tatiana Llaguno (UPF) "Freedom in Dependence: A Critical Theory of our Dependent Condition"

13/11/2025 - 1rst Research Forum session 2025-2026 by Tatiana Llaguno (UPF) "Freedom in Dependence: A Critical Theory of our Dependent Condition"

02.10.2025
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Imatge inicial -

1rst Research Forum session of the academic year 2025-2026

Date: Thursday, November 13th, 2025

Time:  12pm 1:30pm

Room: 23.S05 (Auditorium) Mercè Rodoreda, Campus: Ciutadella

Speaker: Tatiana Llaguno,  Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Chair: Miguel Beistegui, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Presentation -  Freedom in Dependence: A Critical Theory of our Dependent Condition

Abstract

This lecture presents work in progress from my book proposal, which develops out of my dissertation. The project advances a critical account of dependence by drawing together Hegelian-Marxist philosophy with feminist and environmental theory. It reconstructs the claim that relations of dependence are inevitable, while also defending the possibility of reconciling dependence with freedom. The central argument maintains that modern subjects endure unfree forms of dependence --not because dependence itself is problematic, but because of the specific social conditions under which it is lived. To clarify this, I introduce an analytical distinction between subjective and objective dependence, and between free and unfree forms of dependence.
 
The lecture proceeds in three parts. First, I examine subjective dependence, showing how the logic of dependence shapes modern subjectivity and, following Hegel, how dependence is not antithetical to freedom but rather its very condition of possibility. Second, I turn to objective relations of dependence in capitalist societies, analyzing how dependence and independence are structured across both productive and reproductive realms. Third, I offer a structural-ethical critique of dependence, identifying three normative failures --misrecognition, alienation, and unsustainability. I conclude by outlining the book’s proposal for a dual political praxis, releasement and reappropriation, as a way to reimagine dependence not as a limit to freedom but as its ground.
 

About the Speaker

Tatiana Llaguno is an assistant professor in political theory at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. She received her PhD with distinction from the New School for Social Research in New York, where her dissertation was awarded the Hannah Arendt Dissertation Award. She has been a Fulbright fellow and a DAAD visiting researcher at the Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research areas include post-Kantian philosophy (esp. Hegel and Marx), social and political philosophy, critical theory, feminist theory and political ecology. She is also an organizing member of the Marx & Philosophy Society.

Meet session: https://meet.google.com/ufr-ibmx-znj