New Materialism: Forgetting Postmodernism Gabrielle Dixon-Ritchie A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW School of the Arts and Media Faculty of Social Sciences May 2018 .. • • PLEASE TYPE • THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES ' Thesis/Dissertation Sheet • Surname or Family name: Dixon-Ritchie ' First name: Gabrielle Other name/s: Abbreviation for degree as given in the • University calendar: PhD • School: Sct-ool of Arts and Media Faculty: Facuty of Arts and Social Sciences Title: New Materialism: Forgetting Post modernism Abstract 350 words maximum: In their monograph on the emerging cuttural paradigm known as 'new materialism', Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin argue for a transversal approach to dealing with various dualisms that dog current thinking, such as between matter and meaning, or between ·realist essentialism and social constructivism" (New Materialism 98). Ttis transversal approach is an affirmative play of conceptual immanence rather than the implementation of a transcendental ordering through the operation of conceptual negation. They contend that new materialism ·cuts across postmodernist and modernist paradigms as it shows that both epistemologies start from a distinctive pole of what [Claire) Colebrook (2004, 56) has called 'the representation/materiality dichotomy'" (New Materialism 108). In response to the obscurity that attends this call to ·cut across· postmodernism, this thesis delivers a series of distinct performances - predominantly deconstructionist and deterritorialising - that demonstrate and clarify the details of this transversal action. By engaging specific textual iterations of postmodernism across three diverse media types - prose, film, and poetry - this thesis elucidates how and why postmodernism is productively reconceived in line with various new materialist problems and insights. Ttis thesis argues that new materialism engages postmodernism via a 'dual action'. This includes the recognition of postmodernism, on the one hand, as both actual and able to be negated, and on the other hand, as ethereal and implicated in new materialism's own cultural-theoretical becoming. Part One argues that a distinctly West Indian materialist deconstruction is at work in Dionne Brand's novel, In Another Place, Not Here, which has partly been construed as postmodern. Part Two draws entirely on the cinematic philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to make manifest several ways that cinematic postmodernism can and should be re-thought for its more material, textt.ral properties. Finally, Part Three contends that Kate Fagan's collection of poetry, The Long Moment, which has also been read as postmodern, is an aesthetics of complexity theory, or rather, that it mobilises the materialist pragmatics that Deleuze and Felix Guattari defend in A Thousand Plateaus: Gapitalism and Schizophrenia. 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Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Introduction 1 Part One: New Materialism and Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here 30 Doubleness and its In/visible Third Eye 41 Desires Material and Ideal 52 In Limbo: The Event and the Machine 58 “Here Blood was Long and Not Anything that Ran Only in the Vein”1: Dialectics and Deconstruction 66 The Caribbean and Adela 68 Adela and “The Woman They Left Her With”, or, Mirelda Josefena 70 “The Woman They Left Her With”, Adela, and Elizete 72 Verlia and her Family 76 Verlia and her Uncle 80 Verlia’s Caribbean Family (Papa Ti) and Verlia’s Uncle from Sudbury 82 Dialectics and Deconstruction Caught in a Riptide Abena and her Mother 83 The Gravity and Force of Matter: Derrida to Deleuze 89 Part Two: A Deleuzian Taxonomy of Postmodern Film Chapter I: The Cinema of Spectacle 97 The Perception-Image: Léos Carax’s Boy Meets Girl 107 The Affection-Image: Léos Carax’s The Night is Young 113 The Impulse-Image: Besson and Beineix 124 Chapter II: The Action-Image: Avatar and District 9 136 1 Dionne Brand, In Another Place, Not Here 39. i Criticism Thus Far: Computing or Perpetuating a Lingering Aristotelianism 143 The Two-Faced Action-Image: Avatar as Utopian ‘Large Form’ and District 9 as Dystopian ‘Small Form’ 148 The Signs of Genesis of the Large and Small Forms: The ‘Imprint’ and the ‘Vector’ as Insemination and Dissemination 157 Noosigns – The ‘Classic Image of Thought’ and the ‘Thought of the Outside’ 161 Part Three: “Aesthetics in Welcome Crisis”2: The Long Moment as Transversal, New-Lyricist, Post-/Language Poetry 170 Critical Response Thus Far 171 The Long Moment as Post-/Language Poetry 182 Testing Waters: The Long Moment as Deleuzoguattarian 188 ‘Lighthouse series’ 190 Conclusion 213 Works Cited 216 2 Kate Fagan, The Long Moment 24. ii Acknowledgements Deep thanks to my supervisor, Liz McMahon, for providing enduring encouragement and support. For performing the final proofreads, thanks to Kate Livett and Brook Emery. Thanks Kate, for your kind enthusiasm and for meticulously refreshing the thesis’ works cited list in line with the most recent MLA referencing system. Thanks Brook, for bringing your poet’s eye and measure to the thesis, for seeing what I could not. Thank you to my co-supervisor, Brigitta Olubus, as well as to Sigi Jottkandt, to Fiona Morrison, and to Lisa Trahair for their insightful feedback as readers in progress reviews over the years. Thank you to Scott Slovic for being a kind and inviting host in Moscow, Idaho, on a research trip in 2013. Thank you to UNSW’s GRS for funding both this research trip and a conference trip to Kelowna, Canada, in 2012. Thanks to my family. To Robyn Dixon, Sue Emery, and Brook Emery, for copious practical and emotional support. Thanks to my dear friend and gentle-hearted confidence instiller, Helen Rydstrand, for being an inclusive and invaluable source of inspiration and wisdom. iii Abstract In their monograph on the emerging cultural paradigm known as ‘new materialism’, Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin argue for a transversal approach to dealing with various dualisms that dog current thinking, such as between matter and meaning, or between “realist essentialism and social constructivism” (98).3 This transversal approach is an affirmative play of conceptual immanence rather than the implementation of a transcendental ordering through the operation of conceptual negation. They contend that new materialism “cuts across postmodernist and modernist paradigms as it shows that both epistemologies start from a distinctive pole of what [Claire] Colebrook (2004, 56) has called ‘the representation/materiality dichotomy’” (108).4 In response to the obscurity that attends this call to “cut across” postmodernism, this thesis delivers a series of distinct performances – predominantly deconstructionist and deterritorialising – that demonstrate and clarify the details of this transversal action.