DOCSLIB.ORG

Aesthetic Temporalities Today Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Aesthetic Temporalities Today Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation From: Gabriele Genge, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken (eds.) Aesthetic Temporalities Today Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation September 2020, 278 p., pb., 33 B&W-ill., 44 col.-ill. 40,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5462-2 E-Book: PDF: 39,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5462-6 This volume is dedicated to the interrelation between temporality and representation. It presumes that time cannot be conceived of as an abstract chronometric order, but that it is referring to materiality, being measured, represented, expressed, recognized, experienced and evaluated, and therefore is always closely related to cultural contexts of perception and evaluation. The contributions from various disciplines are dedicated to the present and its plural condi- tions and meanings. They provide insights into the state of research with special emphasis on the global present as well as on art and aesthetics from the 18th century until today. The anthology includes contributions by Mieke Bal, Stefan Binder, Maximilian Bergengruen, Iris Därmann, Gabriele Genge, Boris Roman Gibhardt, Boris Groys, Maria Muhle, Johannes F. Lehmann, Nkiru Nzegwu, Francesca Raimondi, Christine Ross, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken, Samuel Strehle, Timm Trausch, Patrick Stoffel, and Christina Wessely. Gabriele Genge is a professor for Modern and Contemporary art history and art theory at the University Duisburg-Essen. Her recent research covers particularly transcultural and post- colonial areas of the discipline with a specific focus on French Colonialism and African and African-American image theory, knowledge systems and epistemology as well as migratory issues in Art History. She supervised the DFG research project »The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic.« Ludger Schwarte is a professor of philosophy at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf. After posi- tions as assistant professor of image theory at the University of Basel and as a professor of aesthetics at the Zurich University of Arts, visiting scholarships led him to University Paris 8, GACVS (Washington), Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), University of Abidjan, Columbia University (New York), the EHESS (Paris) and to the IKKM (Weimar). His areas of research lie in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology, and the history of science. Angela Stercken (PhD) is a senior researcher in the DFG project »The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic« at the University of Duisburg-Essen and member of the DFG-Network »Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents.« Her research fields lie particularly in the theory of image in modern and contemporary art, in space, technology and timekeeping since the 18th century, in phenomena of temporality in art as well as migratory transcultural and transmedia processes especially in maritime spaces such as the transatlantic. For further information: www.transcript-verlag.de/en/978-3-8376-5462-2 © 2020 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Content Preface | 9 Aesthetic Temporalities Today: Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation | 11 Gabriele Genge, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken 1_ The Global Spaces of the Present The Global Promise of Contemporary Art | 17 Gabriele Genge Present, Presence, Presentation | 31 Boris Groys Visible/Unvisible Present | 39 Johannes F. Lehmann Exhibiting Earth History. The Politics of Visualization in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century | 57 Patrick Stoffel, Christina Wessely Painting, Photography, Polychronicity: Lang Jingshan’s Portrait of Zhang Shanzi | 67 Tim Trausch Temporality, Oríkì and Nigeria’s Contemporary Art | 87 Nkiru Nzegwu The Presentness of a Minority. Notes on the Indian Twelver Shia | 101 Stefan Binder 2_ The Present in Art. Perspectives from Art History Time and Form: The “Unthought Known” | 113 Mieke Bal Rhythmical Presentness. On the ‘Rhythmology’ of Perception. Maldiney—Cézanne—Rilke | 129 Boris Roman Gibhardt Temporal Concepts of the Present and their Aesthetic Negotiation in Black Arts Movement and ‘Black Atlantic’ | 143 Angela Stercken The Aesthetics of Coexistence as Ongoing | 169 Christine Ross “There is first of all the doubtful contemporaneity of the present to itself.” The Spectral Present of Control and the Strategies of Performance | 183 Francesca Raimondi 3_ The Presentation of Presentness and Presence Presentations as Aesthetic Temporalities | 197 Ludger Schwarte Extreme Situations of the Political. Hannah Arendt’s Article “The Concentration Camps” (1948) | 207 Iris Därmann “Fortrollende Gegenwart:” Psychopathology and Epical Present Tense in Georg Heym’s Der Irre and Der Dieb | 219 Maximilian Bergengruen Now-time Explosion. The Experience of Time in Social Revolution | 239 Samuel Strehle Histories of the Present—a Media Philosophical Approach | 249 Maria Muhle Biographical Notes | 267 Aesthetic Temporalities Today 11 Gabriele Genge | Ludger Schwarte | Angela Stercken Aesthetic Temporalities Today: Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation1 The present seems familiar to us, hardly worth mentioning. But, has it always been like this? And what does the present really signify, if we consider that its idea and meaning have shifted considerably since its emergence in the 17th and 18th centu- ries? In recent years, the historicization of the concept of a present has gained momentum2 and its “birth” at the dawn of modernity increasingly been examined.3 A marked theorization of the present has also only recently been undertaken. As important as the orientation on the present has become for politics and business, for science and design, and many other social and cultural areas since then, it is no longer available seamlessly or unrestrictedly. This is also particularly noticeable in art. If since the 1960s the term ‘con- temporary art’ has proven to be a suitable vehicle to supplant the ideology of modernism and its associated idea of progress,4 this domination of the present is now itself coming under increasing scrutiny: the suggestion is that an ‘eternal 1| We would like to warmly thank Michael Bies and Michael Gamper for jointly preparing the conference exposé, which serves as the basis for this introduction. 2| Cf. Maria Muhle, “History will repeat itself. Für eine (Medien-) Philosophie des Reenactment, in Kör- per des Denkens. Neue Positionen der Medienphilosophie, ed. Lorenz Engell, Frank Hartmann, Christine Voss (Munich / Paderborn: Fink, 2013), 113-134; Doris Gerber, Analytische Metaphysik der Geschichte. Handlungen, Geschichte und ihre Erklärung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012). 3| Cf. Achim Landwehr, Geburt der Gegenwart. Eine Geschichte der Zeit im 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt o.M.: Fischer, 2014). 4| Christine Ross, The Past is the Present; It’s the Future Too. The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art (New York /London: Continuum, 2012); Juliane Rebentisch, Theorien der Gegenwartskunst zur Einführung 12 Gabriele Genge | Ludger Schwarte | Angela Stercken present,’ instituted by technical dispositifs, has now ousted the preserving of the present from the false promises of the future.5 Considering the media, techno- logical, economic, and not least the political upheavals, more and more voices are proclaiming the ‘end of the present’ as a time we are familiar with and which can be interpreted and stabilized with the help of traditional semantics,6 while, in reference to art, the end of ‘contemporary art’ and a reorientation towards a ‘future art’ is demanded.7 Closely connected to the notion of the present are concepts like presentness [Gegenwärtigkeit] and re-presentation [Vergegenwärtigung], both of which point to how the present is always also a phenomenon of perception and conscious- ness, one that implies a promise of contemporariness,8 i.e. a “shared time.” The fulfilment of this promise is yet to be achieved, although the globalization of the economy and the media seems to have long brought it about.9 Asking what it ac- tually means to be ‘contemporary,’ how the present and presentness are even pos- sible, and how and through which media, techniques, and processes they can be produced—these issues are virulent right now. Right now? These perceptions of a globalized present provoke far more fun- damental questions as to the functions ascribed to re-presentation in transcultural fields of reference. In recent disputes about the present, it has become clear that it can hardly be conceived of as a universal present because this would have to be coupled to a geopolitical opening, the establishing of contact, and the perception of relational authority.10 If the present in this sense is understood as at once a glo- (Hamburg: Junius, 2013). Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All. Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London: Verso, 2013). 5| Cf. Geoffrey C. Bowker, “All Together Now. Synchronization, Speed, and the Failure of Narrativity,” Histo- ry and Theory 53 (2014): 564-576; or also Marcus Quent, ed., Absolute Gegenwart (Berlin: Merve, 2016); Boris Groys, On the New, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London/ New York: Verso, 2014), 38-41. 6| Cf. Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, Anmerkungen zur Metamoderne (Hamburg: Textem, 2015); Armen Avanessian and Suhail Maik, ed., Der Zeitkomplex. Postcontemporary, trans. Ronald Voullié (Berlin: Merve, 2016). 7| Cf. Ludger Schwarte, Notate für eine künftige Kunst (Berlin: Merve 2016). 8| Cf. particularly Giorgio Agamben, “What is the Contemporary,” in What is an Apparatus? And other Essays, ed. id. (Stanford: Stanford University
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Avanessian – Xenoarchitecture (Draft) 1 Introduction Armen Avanessian
    avanessian – xenoarchitecture (draft) Introduction Armen Avanessian “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other,” Lacan, Seminar XI, p. 235 Following Lacan’s infamous dictum, according to which desire is defined as the desire of the Other, we could ask ourselves what a correlate methodology would look like for the humanities (or should we say “the inhumanities”?). Obviously, the structure of the phrase is ambiguous, or even tautological if taken as a predicative proposition. Instead, I propose to read it as a speculative proposition: we do not simply desire what the other has or hasn’t got, but we desire the state of being an Other, an othering, becoming a stranger to oneself and others—literally alienating them as well as “ourselves.” A desire for the xeno? This transformation has at least three central aspects: alienation (the negative mirroring of a given reality), negation (the construction of an asymmetry that initiates an annihilation of the positively given), and a recursion of alienation and negation through speculation.1 It is a poietic qua productive and creative transformation in the sense that it increases the scope of navigation and liberation by means of manipulation. Together with others, I have thought, experimented, and written a lot about questions of othering and “matching” experimental settings2 for the production of knowledge, tactical spaces in the sense of Michel de Certeau, xeno-spaces that are defined by “a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of the Other.
    [Show full text]
  • New Books Catalogue 2017-18
    PHILOSOPHY, PAGE 2 THEOLOGY, BIBLICAL STUDIES& PAGE 29 RELIGIOUS STUDIES PAGE 41 NEW BOOKS CATALOGUE 2017-18 PAGE 50 9 781350 057005 PhilTheoBib_FINAL.indd 1-2 03/08/2017 11:19 TM Instant digital access to more than 6,000 eBooks across the social sciences and humanities, including titles from The Arden Shakespeare, Continuum, Bristol Classical Press, and Berg. Subjects covered include: Anthropology • Biblical Studies • Classical Studies & Archaeology • Education • Film & Media • History • Law • Linguistics • Literary Studies • Philosophy • Religious Studies • Theology CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS FEATURES • 125 Collections, expanded annually by subject discipline • Advanced and full text search across all content. • Archive Collections in key subject areas such as ancient • Filter results by subject, series, or collection history, Christology, continental philosophy, and more • Pagination matches print exactly • Special Collections such as International Critical • Personalization features: save searches, export citations Commentary, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, and and favorite, download, or print documents Education Around the World series • Footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographic references are hyperlinked To register your interest for a free institutional trial, or for further information email: Americas: [email protected] UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia: [email protected] Australia and New Zealand: [email protected] www.bloomsburycollections.com Collections_advert_2.indd 1 19/07/2017 08:52 Contents
    [Show full text]
  • The Regulation of the Subject by the Technology of Time Maxwell Kennel [1]
    Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge: Issue 34 (2018) The Regulation of the Subject by the Technology of Time Maxwell Kennel [1] Abstract: Beginning from the entangled categories of the human and the technological, this exploration surveys thinkers who concern themselves with problems of technology and time, seeking to examine how the confluence of technology and time regulate and condition the formation of subjectivity. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler's work in Technics and Time, Augustine's Confessions, and the myth of Prometheus, the following draws out the technological character of time and makes suggestions about how to reconceptualize these different temporalizing technologies after the critique of capitalism. Surely technology, in its ever-changing form and forms, is a pharmakon that has been with us from the start. Regardless of whether we speak of technology or technologies or the broader field of techne (a practice or craft), it remains that the term ‘technology’ refers to something that, like a double-edged sword, helps us and harms us, something that we use and that uses us, and something that is at once politically charged (often subtly oriented toward particular interests and ends with particular benefactors), yet ambivalent, taking different sides at different times (and therefore available for us to use as means for our own ends).[2] Although it is at our disposal and supposedly outside of ourselves, some have argued that technology is not in fact something extra that is added onto our human nature and experience, but instead something inextricably related to both humanity and history, and indeed something that challenges the legitimacy of these categories.
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 33, Numbers 1-2, Fall 2019-Spring 2020 • Realism Published Twice Yearly, Mediations Is the Journal of the Marxist Literary Group
    Volume 33, Numbers 1-2, Fall 2019-Spring 2020 • Realism Published twice yearly, Mediations is the journal of the Marxist Literary Group. We publish dossiers of translated material on special topics and peer-reviewed general issues, usually in alternation. General inquiries and submissions should be directed to [email protected]. We invite scholarly contributions across disciplines on any topic that engages seriously with the Marxist tradition. Manuscripts received will be taken to be original, unpublished work not under consideration elsewhere. Articles should be submitted electronically in a widely-used format. Manuscripts should not exceed reasonable article length, and should be accompanied by an abstract of up to 300 words, including six keywords. Articles will be published in MLA endnote format, and should be submitted with the author’s name and affiliation on a separate cover page to facilitate blind peer review. Photographs, tables, and figures should be sent as separate files in a widely- used format. Written permission to reproduce copyright-protected material must be obtained by the author before submission. Books for review should be sent to: Mediations Department of English (MC 162) 601 South Morgan Street University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago IL 60607-7120 USA Articles published in Mediations may be reproduced for scholarly purposes without express permission, provided the reproduction is accompanied by full citation information. For archives and further information, visit http://www.mediationsjournal.org Cover
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Marx and Poetic Form in the Communist Manifesto
    FILOZOFIA ___________________________________________________________________________Roč. 71, 2016, č. 4 EPIC OR TRAGEDY? KARL MARX AND POETIC FORM IN THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO JASON BARKER, Department of British and American Language and Culture, Kyung Hee University, South Korea BARKER, J.: Epic or Tragedy? Karl Marx and Poetic Form in The Communist Mani- festo FILOZOFIA 71, 2016, No. 4, pp. 316-327 Although The Communist Manifesto of 1848 was clearly not intended as a work of poetry, this article considers the merits of reading it according to the aesthetic criteria of epic poetry and of tragedy respectively. Following a brief treatment of the role of poetry in Karl Marx’s evolution as a philosopher and critic, the article then specu- lates that the identification of certain poetic themes in the text can aid our under- standing of the Manifesto’s political meaning, particularly in light of the “dialectical Prometheanism” that played such a defining role in Marx’s intellectual and political universe. Keywords: Dialectics − Epic − Odyssey − Prometheus − Prometheanism − Marx Introduction: Prometheus Bound and Unbound. Karl Marx’s favorite poet was Aeschylus and many personal episodes suggest the former’s incarnation as a modern Prometheus. In March 1843 the Rheinische Zeitung – which at the time was one of the largest subscription newspapers in Germany – was suppressed by the Prussian authorities and Marx resigned as its editor. A political cartoon of the period, now famous, was pub- lished depicting Marx bound to a printing press with a Prussian eagle biting out his liver. The final issue of the Rheinische Zeitung carried the following short poem: Our mast blew down, but we were not affrighted, The angry gods could never make us bend.
    [Show full text]
  • Aesthetics of Form Revisited Éric Alliez Art & Language
    /3AB63B71A =4 4=@; @3D7A7B32 p@71 /::73H /@B :/<5C/53 /@;3< /D/<3AA7/< :C7A 1/;<7BH3@ A30/AB7/< 353<6=43@ 2=@=B63/ D=< 6/<B3:;/<< 0@7/< 6=:;3A >/;3:/ ; :33 AB3E/@B ;/@B7< 16@7AB=>6 ;3<93 >3B3@ =A0=@<3 8=6< @/816;/< 8C:7/<3 @303<B7A16 :C93 A9@30=EA97 ‘Aurai-je encore besoin des formes?’ This self-reflexive state- ment, made by Matisse in 1942, is only one example, albeit a telling one, of the struggle with the question of form in art and art theory that would intensify over the course of the twentieth century. While the entire time period of modernity can be seen as occupied with the problematics of form, there has nevertheless been a steady critical distanciation from such concerns over the last few decades. Looking at recent developments in thinking about form, we can determine a particular schema: on the one hand central topoi such as dissolution, opening and break demonstrate the residue of a revolutionary formal rhetoric; on the other hand a negatively inflected understanding of form has been projected as a synonym for paralysed social, political and artistic circum- stances. For numerous reasons, we should object to such overly hasty disavowals of form and instead attempt to examine the seemingly old-fashioned concept of ‘form’ once again in view of contemporary aesthetic reflections. A first requirement is to object to the conception of form as ‘paralysed’, a notion which we can clearly see belied in concepts such as Documenta XII’s ‘migration of form’ (wherein the particular formal meaning of individual artworks was deprioritized in favour of new formal configu- rations created at a curatorial level).
    [Show full text]
  • Time Matters
    APRIA #02 March 2021 Time Matters Peter Sonderen / Laurie Hermans and Katía Truijen / Ienke Kastelein / Marijke Goeting / Jesse Ahlers / Paula Walta / Claudia Molitor / Liza Rinkema / Terike Haapoja / Alice Smits / Rick Dolphijn / Sharon Stewart / Frans Sturkenboom / Saskia Isabella Maria Korsten / Korsten & De Jong / Joep Christenhusz / Sophie Krier, Christel Vesters / Monique Peperkamp APRIA #02 Content 4 Editorial: Time Matters (An Introduction) Peter Sonderen 21 Something Temporary: In Search of Circular Time Laurie Hermans, Katía Truijen 22 Walking Time Ienke Kastelein 35 Through the Time Barrier: Art, Design, and Our Changing Sense of Time in the Digital Age Marijke Goeting 51 How Strange, Her Voice: On Mourning, Language, Texture and Time Jesse Ahlers 54 La Durée Paula Walta 57 Composition as Hyperobject Claudia Molitor 65 (non)human histories: rock reading and remembering as strategies of telling time Liza Rinkema 72 In and Out of Time Terike Haapoja APRIA #02 Content 75 Othering Time: Strategies of attunement to non-human temporalities Alice Smits 84 A Call to Recognise and to Imagine: Amitav Ghosh, and Others, on Writing the Earth Differently Rick Dolphijn 92 moonsong (I have dwelt upon the moon) Sharon Stewart 109 Time in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright Frans Sturkenboom 122 REREREreREREreRERERERERE Parasite Saskia Isabella Maria Korsten 136 Text[ure] Korsten & De Jong 143 Soundings of Ecological Time in Contemporary Music and Sound Art Joep Christenhusz 154 Overtime Sophie Krier, Christel Vesters 166 Ecological Time: Natures that Matter to Activism and Art Monique Peperkamp 184 Colophon APRIA #02 March 2021 Peter Sonderen Time Matters* (an introduction) There is no time, right?, left.
    [Show full text]
  • “I Am an Other and I Always Was…”
    Hugvísindasvið “I am an other and I always was…” On the Weird and Eerie in Contemporary and Digital Cultures Ritgerð til MA-prófs í menningafræði Bob Cluness May 2019 Háskóli Íslands Hugvísindad Menningarfræði “I am an other and I always was…” On the Weird and Eerie in Contemporary and Digital Cultures Ritgerð til MA-prófs í menningafræði Bob Cluness Kt.: 150676-2829 Tutor: Björn Þór Vilhjálmsson May 2019 Abstract Society today is undergoing a series of processes and changes that can be only be described as weird. From the apocalyptic resonance of climate change and the drive to implement increasing powerful technologies into everyday life, to the hyperreality of a political and media landscape beset by chaos, there is the uneasy feeling that society, culture, and even consensual reality is beginning to experience signs of disintegration. What was considered the insanity of the margins is now experienced in the mainstream, and there is a growing feeling of wrongness, that the previous presumptions of the self, other, reality and knowledge are becoming untenable. This thesis undertakes a detailed examination of the weird and eerie as both an aesthetic register and as a critical tool in analysing the relationship between individuals and an impersonal modern society, where agency and intention is not solely the preserve of the human and there is a feeling not so much of being to act, and being acted upon. Using the definitions and characteristics of the weird and eerie provided by Mark Fisher’s critical text, The Weird and the Eerie, I set the weird and eerie in a historical context specifically regarding both the gothic, weird fiction and with the uncanny, I then analyse the presence of the weird and the eerie present in two cultural phenomena, the online phenomenon of the Slender Man, and J.G.
    [Show full text]
  • Art Space, Within the Terms of a Historical Ontology of Urban Form
    ANYWHERE OR NOT AT ALL Philosophy ofContemporary Art PETER OSBORNE VERSO London • New York For First published by Verso 2013 © Peter Osborne 2013 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 13579108642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F OEG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-094-0 (PBK) ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-113-8 (HBK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Osborne, Peter, 1958- Anywhere or not at all : philosophy of contemporary art / Peter Osborne. - First edition, paperback. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78168-094-0 (pbk. : a1k. paper) - ISBN 978-1-78168-113-8 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Art, Modern-20th century-Philosophy. 2. Art, Modern-21st century-Philosophy. L Title. N6490.07332013 709.05'101-dc23 2013003012 Typeset in Fournier by Hewer Text UK, Edinburgh Printed and bound by cpr Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY Contents Introduction The fiction ofthe contemporary 15 Together in time? three periodizations of contemporary art - idea, problem, fiction, task - the global transnational, or, the contemporary today - Joseph Bitar - fictionalization of artistic authority / collectivization of artistic fictions: a First Transnational 2 Art beyond aesthetics 37 Art versus aesthetics (Jena Romanticism contra Kant) - perio­ dization as historical ontology: postconceptual
    [Show full text]
  • Deleuze Against Control
    Deterritorializing Deleuze 2 Theory, Culture & Society 2016, Vol. 33(7–8) 205–220 ! The Author(s) 2016 Deleuze Against Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Control: Fictioning DOI: 10.1177/0263276416645154 to Myth-Science tcs.sagepub.com Simon O’Sullivan Goldsmiths, University of London Abstract Through recourse to Gilles Deleuze’s short polemical essay ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ and the accompanying interview (in Negotiations) on ‘Control and Becoming’, this article attempts to map out the conceptual contours of an artistic war machine (Deleuze’s ‘new weapons’) that might be pitched against control and also play a role in the more ethico-political function of the constitution of a people (or, what Deleuze calls subjectification). Along the way a series of other Deleuzian concepts are introduced and outlined – with an eye to their pertinence for art practice and, indeed, for any more general ‘thought’ against control. At stake here is the development of a concept of fictioning – the production of alternative narra- tives and image-worlds – and also the idea of art practice as a form of myth-science, exemplified by Burroughs’ cut-up method. It is argued that these aesthetic strategies might offer alternative models for a subjectivity that is increasingly standardized and hemmed in by neoliberalism. Keywords Burroughs, contemporary art, control, Deleuze, fictioning, Guattari, myth-science Our ability to resist control, or our submission to it, has to be assessed at the level of our every move. We need both creativity and a people. (Deleuze, 1995: 176) Introduction: Deleuze and Control Societies The complexity and heterogeneity of subjectivity is being increasingly reduced and standardized through various economic and political constraints, but also via accompanying images, narratives and other Corresponding author: Simon O’Sullivan.
    [Show full text]
  • A Marxist Heresy? Accelerationism and Its Discontents
    DOSSIER FUTURE STASIS A Marxist heresy? Accelerationism and its discontents David Cunningham In his study of the semantics of historical time, ‘the accelerations of an always globalizing capitalism’ Reinhart Koselleck proposes that ‘two specific deter- produce what Marx identified in the Grundrisse as minants’ characterize modernity’s ‘new experience that ‘constant continuity’ essential to the temporali- of transition: the expected otherness of the future ties of circulation at a world scale – particularly via and, associated with it, the alteration in the rhythm an intersection of the increasing ‘velocity at which of temporal experience: acceleration, by means of new products emerge’ with the pace of technological which one’s own time is distinguished from what development and of its penetration into everyday went before’. If the concept of acceleration is thereby life – this is generative, today, of what appears as central to the emergence of a qualitatively different ‘a time without time’, an ‘ever more congealed and modern or new time (Neuzeit) around the latter half futureless present’.3 Cut loose from historical nar- of the eighteenth century, it is also at this ‘epochal rative, the felt experience of the present is one of an threshold’ that history itself, in the collective sin- ongoing state of transition, which tends to present gular, comes to be first perceived as ‘in motion’ – a itself less as a sense of possibility of the truly new perception that Koselleck locates in a divergence than as a paradoxically frenzied sense of repetition, between the ‘space of experience’ and the ‘horizon with a consequent depoliticization of the ‘dynamic of expectation’.
    [Show full text]
  • On Accelerationism
    Public Books — On Accelerationism http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction/on-accelerationism Log in / Sign up Dedicated to bringing cutting-edge scholarly ideas to a curious public through reviews of today’s books, movies, TV shows, and cultural trends “Where did the business world’s seemingly sudden HOME ABOUT FAQ BLOG PUBLIC CULTURE fixation on gamification com...” SEP 24 FICTION NONFICTION MULTIGENRE BRIEFS INTERVIEWS ART & MEDIA EVENTS TAGS SEARCH ON ACCELERATIONISM FRED TURNER September 1, 2016 — What is to be done? In 1901, when Lenin posed this now-canonical question, the answer was a communist revolution. Today, 25 years since the Internet went public, the answer has come to seem to many on the left to be a technological one. In the 1990s, it was right-wing libertarians such as John Perry Barlow who claimed to know what to do with the information system. In the future, they wrote, we would leave our bodies behind and dive headlong into a glorious pool of universal mind called Cyberspace. In the early 2000s, the builders of social media, some of whom subscribed to the tech-left ideals of open source software and copyleft reproduction rights, sold the public a new utopia. But instead INVENTING THE FUTURE: of the world of technology-enabled interpersonal intimacy they promised, social POSTCAPITALISM AND A WORLD WITHOUT WORK media have become a series of commercially sponsored stages on which to preen for Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams selfies and spin off data to be mined by states and corporations. During the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, pundits on the right and the left even declared that cell Ve r s o, 2 0 1 5 BUY phones and the Internet were becoming tools of political revolution.
    [Show full text]