Essay written on the artist George Rouy on the occasion of his solo exhibition, 'Squeeze Hard Eno... more Essay written on the artist George Rouy on the occasion of his solo exhibition, 'Squeeze Hard Enough it Might Just Pop!' at Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2018). The essay was published in a small-run exhibition catalogue to accompany the show.
Essay on the work of artist Simon Linington written on the occasion of 'La La Land', a solo exhib... more Essay on the work of artist Simon Linington written on the occasion of 'La La Land', a solo exhibition of his work at William Bennington Gallery, London (2019). The essay was published by the gallery in a small-run risograph exhibition catalogue.
In his article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze reconfigures Foucault’s n... more In his article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze reconfigures Foucault’s notion of disciplinary societies. Written in 1990, Deleuze had seen a change in the structures of power that Foucault had spent a career analysing within the framework of the nation-state. Deleuze’s analysis of these changes is far from sympathetic – a charge that is frequently levied against Foucault after his series of lectures in 1979, titled The Birth of Biopolitics. Borrowing his terminology from the schizophrenic worlds of writer William S. Burroughs, Michael Hardt observes how in Deleuze’s ‘Societies of Control’, “the structured tunnels of the mole are replaced by the infinite undulations of the snake.”2 Everywhere he looked, Deleuze had seen the historical enclosures of discipline in flux. The walls that had previously partitioned the social body were dissolved; the institutions that had hitherto regulated its control and surveillance, embodied.
Looking to the recent work of Paul B. Preciado – in particular, the seminal work of auto- theory, Testo Junkie – I will elaborate on ideas concerning the contemporary formulation of societies of control with regards to Foucault’s analysis of state biopower. As we shall see, this manoeuvre will first require an appropriation of Foucauldian biopower through a bio- politicisation of gender. Further, following Preciado, we will analyse the molecularisation of biopower within the bio-politicisation of gender that emerged in the new post-war sexual apparatus. Finally, I will consider the implications of a molecular form of biopower for the agency of micro-political warfare. For this, I will turn to the work of Deleuze & Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, paying particular attention to their conception of a Body without Organs and the molecular, intensive nature of different subject-becomings and the (non)production of identity.
The history of electronic dance music is a long and colourful continuum. Since its inception in t... more The history of electronic dance music is a long and colourful continuum. Since its inception in the underground house, garage and disco scenes of Chicago and New York, it has developed an ever-increasing matrix of techno-tools and cultural manifestos. It has inspired competing and collaborating worlds of gadgets, gizmos and garments; circuit boards, synthesisers and electronic drum patterns. Rave, its enfant terrible, now stands as a global phenomenon. Born in colloquial terms in the United Kingdom during the Second Summer of Love (1988 – 1989), the cultural significance of rave has oscillated from counter-cultural ekstasis to humdrum corporate leisure-activity. Yet, despite its pre-88 genealogy and current state of techno-globalism, it was specifically the UK Rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s which fuelled the tsunami of electronic dance music that soon swept the world. Attuned to these brief and emphatic years (1988 – 1994), the purpose of this dissertation will be to critically analyse the social and experiential history of UK Rave through the current ecological discourse of Dark Ecology. Published in 2016 by philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology is a bold manifesto for a new form of ecological awareness—or ecognosis—heralded by the urgency of our contemporary geological era – The Anthropocene. Faced with objects so far beyond the limits of human epistemology, the primary task of this new ecognosis is the ontological restructuring of human and non-human relations, or the radicalisation of post-Kantian philosophy toward a weird metaphysical realism. Moving beyond straightforward environmentalism to the corollary proposition of an 'Ecology without Nature', I will look to the work of Morton, supported by further engagement and comparison with the writings Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, to argue that the heyday of UK Rave culture is in many aspects better understood through the concept of Dark Ecology: as the dismantling of post-Kantian correlationism and the opening up of human experience to a truly symbiotic ecological awareness. Furthermore, I will argue that the countercultural phenomenon of UK Rave is thus less a question of social escapism and rather a positive drive towards this new ecognosis. A will to both access and be accessed.
In his 1996 essay, ‘Music and Identity’, sociologist and music critic Simon Frith argued that ide... more In his 1996 essay, ‘Music and Identity’, sociologist and music critic Simon Frith argued that identity was not a thing but a process. That our identities came from the outside, not the inside; subjectivity, a question of doing rather than being. Taking its cue from this short epigraph the purpose of this essay will be to address the conceptual legacy of Afrofuturist music through the hydrophonic frequencies of Drexciya, an electronic music duo from Detroit active during the 1990s and early 2000s. Often referred to as the darker edge of Afrofuturist music, their eponymous neo-nautical mythology and posthuman soundwaves have created a sonic fiction of techno Afro-becoming that has persisted well beyond their operative years. An aural wormhole, siphoning from past to future and back again. Looking at the work of Paul Gilroy and his seminal work of cultural theory, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), alongside sonic theories of Afrofuturist affect and post-structuralist cultural studies, I wish to underscore Frith’s aforementioned hypothesis: that the production of identity is non-essentialist in character, in so far as Drexciya’s sub-aquatic politics affirm the privileged position of music in constructing new forms of techno-subjectivity in the dystopian realm of late capitalist social hegemony. That Drexciya provide a model for future subject becomings anchored in the dark soul of the present.
In 2017 the Barbican Curve Gallery opened its doors to a new work by the Irish conceptual documen... more In 2017 the Barbican Curve Gallery opened its doors to a new work by the Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse. Created in 2016 and titled Incoming, the exhibition included a series of still prints, a large video installation projected across three 8-metre-wide screens with an accompanying soundtrack, and several smaller assemblages of black and white television screens with audio-visual content. The subject of Mosse’s work was the contemporary refugee crisis. Using a powerful heat-sensitive military camera, able to detect human bodies from over 30km and identity specific individuals from 6.3km, Mosse filmed as refugees journeyed from the East, hiking through the Persian Gulf and across the Turkish border, and from the West, trekking through the Saharan Desert to the Libyan coastline—each fleeing from war, persecution and fear with the hope of finding refuge in Western Europe. Analogous to the work’s visceral impact and affectivity, Incoming explores important questions of contemporary biopolitics, surveillance and citizenship—issues I shall explore in the work of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben—at its core, questioning the very foundations that our current political modernity rests upon. Furthermore, Mosse’s position as a European artist provokes questions raised in Hal Foster’s seminal essay of 1996, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’—a polemic against the projection of ideological patronage in post-colonial struggles—a text best unpacked with reference to the earlier work of Indian literary theorist Gayatri Spivak and her famous work ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988). Through these two conversations I will present a critical analysis of Incoming, exploring the complex political landscape it seeks to address whilst highlighting the potential difficulties of this as an aesthetic project.
In 1972, at a symposium titled ‘Nietzsche Today?’ held in the remote French town of Cerisy-la-Sal... more In 1972, at a symposium titled ‘Nietzsche Today?’ held in the remote French town of Cerisy-la-Salle, Gilles Deleuze presented the following statement: “Marx and Freud may be the dawn of our culture, but Nietzsche is quite another thing, the dawn of a counterculture.” The implication Deleuze was making is clear. Seen within the history of critique, Marx and Freud had become paradigmatic, yet outdated figures. Their combined theories of society, history and subjectivity – still then the cultural foundations of modern thought – were a set of analyses identifiable as the status quo: as static, homogenous and non-productive modes of critique. Conversely, Deleuze saw in Nietzsche a radical and marginalised force. Through his introduction of the concept of genealogy and the will-to-power, Deleuze saw in Nietzsche a rejection of all that had come before him: the value of values of themselves; the a priori value of judgment. Known in Nietzsche’s own words as the process of ‘philosophising with a hammer’, Deleuze saw in his philosophy the birth of a new form of productive critique; one that could overcome the passive nihilism and deterministic readings of life found in the history of political philosophy and modern critical thought.
The purpose of this essay will be to analyse the conceptual singularities present in Deleuze & Guattari’s formulation of ‘desiring-production’ – as articulated in their work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) – through a reading of Marx’s philosophy of history and Nietzsche’s own radical conception of genealogical critique. By doing so I hope to highlight the productive nature of desire if thought of as a differential mode of critique. This will require an investigation into the genealogy of desire in Marx and its subsequent repurposing by Deleuze through Nietzsche. A full analysis of the more explicit notions of desire found in modern critical theory will not be possible here, such as in the psychoanalytic libidinal economy of Freud. Nonetheless, by articulating the ontological status of Deleuzo-Guattarian desire, I hope to demonstrate how the divergent claims of orthodox Marxism in philosophies of history and subjectivity are equally unable to compensate for the alinear, contingent and emergent properties of complex socio-material assemblages.
In contemporary theory, no speculative gesture from the Left has come under more scrutiny and rea... more In contemporary theory, no speculative gesture from the Left has come under more scrutiny and reaction than that of Accelerationism. A response to the impasses of the present – that, to quote Thatcher, there is really is no alternative – Accelerationism looks to conjure a new politico-philosophical programme, one that can break the shackles of neoliberal, late-capitalist society and propel us into a post-capitalist milieu of a world without work. Behind the political economies of thinkers such as Srnicek and Williams and the more divergent rhetoric of figures such as Nick Land, lies a genealogy of thought originating in the wake of May 1968 and the work of philosophers such as Deleuze and Guattari and Lyotard. Arguing that there can be no outside of capitalism, these arguments tether their understating of contemporary politics as one that must work through capitalism in order to achieve its goals, using the methods and qualities of a global, abstract and complex system against itself. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore first the genealogy of this thought and its ramifications on contemporary thinkers. But also, to explore the trajectories of what may lie in pursuit of an Accelerationist Aesthetic, and whether it is possible to imagine a practice that would reflect the priorities of a truly Accelerationist agenda.
Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It... more Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one of properties. It is haptic rather than optical perception.
The earth itself becomes an impediment, something to be hollowed out in order to facilitate the c... more The earth itself becomes an impediment, something to be hollowed out in order to facilitate the circulation of capital.
Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, bu... more Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, but of 'probe-heads' -Deleuze and Guattari, 1980 In our contemporary milieu, the organisation of bodiestheir behaviours, affects, spacializationsbecomes less a question of what Foucault would describe as the operations of a 'disciplinary society', and Deleuze, the organisation of "spaces of enclosure," 1 but a question of 'neoliberal subjectivity.' In other words, it concerns the configuration of bodies under the flows and manoeuvres of a fully libidinised capital. The standardization of subjectivities that this imposes produces a significant threat to our transformative capabilities, our resingularizations, and our collective enunciations. What Deleuze and Guattari describe as 'the faciality-machine', the black hole/white wall system, is in effect the modus operandi of neoliberal subjectivity. It is the system through which subjectivies and bodies operate under neoliberal ideologiesalthough of course, it should not be limited to thisand it is the mechanism that radically directs and determines them. From this premise, the role of aesthetics in escaping faciality becomes particularly cogent. Indeed, what Deleuze and Guattari describe as 'probeheads', are in many ways aesthetic objects. They are where the "cutting edges of deterritorialization become operative and lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becomings, new polyvocalities." 2 In a sense then, probe-heads are the aesthetic rupturing of the faciality-machine itself; which begs the question, what potential does contemporary art pose for, and attribute to, escaping faciality?
During the expanse of post-punk sounds and aesthetics from the late 70s to mid-80s the career and... more During the expanse of post-punk sounds and aesthetics from the late 70s to mid-80s the career and artistic production of Grace Jones shifted to the music industry. Her profile subsequently became a substantial protagonist in the former's legacy, through her amalgamation of music, fashion and performance. Jones' works are sexually and racially referential, and use typical motifs of post-punk aesthetics such as technological or 'cyborgian' synthesis and androgyny to problematize these issues. The cultural production of Jones in this period can be seen as both particular to its own fields, such as music or fashion, but also as a larger artistic performance; her cohesion of individual aesthetic persona with creative practice has formed a succinct example of Postcolonial and Popular Modernist art practice, one which helped "contribute to a reconceptualization of Afrocentric culture and identity; complicate our understanding of performance art; and suggest the interdependence of the postcolonial and the postmodern" (Kershaw, 1997: 19). Jones developed these ideas through many aesthetic and conceptual frameworks, such as her music tracks, her cover artworks, her media personality and aesthetic persona, and her live performances; this essay will attempt to explore these areas of Jones' culture production and assess its significance.
Essay written on the artist George Rouy on the occasion of his solo exhibition, 'Squeeze Hard Eno... more Essay written on the artist George Rouy on the occasion of his solo exhibition, 'Squeeze Hard Enough it Might Just Pop!' at Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2018). The essay was published in a small-run exhibition catalogue to accompany the show.
Essay on the work of artist Simon Linington written on the occasion of 'La La Land', a solo exhib... more Essay on the work of artist Simon Linington written on the occasion of 'La La Land', a solo exhibition of his work at William Bennington Gallery, London (2019). The essay was published by the gallery in a small-run risograph exhibition catalogue.
In his article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze reconfigures Foucault’s n... more In his article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze reconfigures Foucault’s notion of disciplinary societies. Written in 1990, Deleuze had seen a change in the structures of power that Foucault had spent a career analysing within the framework of the nation-state. Deleuze’s analysis of these changes is far from sympathetic – a charge that is frequently levied against Foucault after his series of lectures in 1979, titled The Birth of Biopolitics. Borrowing his terminology from the schizophrenic worlds of writer William S. Burroughs, Michael Hardt observes how in Deleuze’s ‘Societies of Control’, “the structured tunnels of the mole are replaced by the infinite undulations of the snake.”2 Everywhere he looked, Deleuze had seen the historical enclosures of discipline in flux. The walls that had previously partitioned the social body were dissolved; the institutions that had hitherto regulated its control and surveillance, embodied.
Looking to the recent work of Paul B. Preciado – in particular, the seminal work of auto- theory, Testo Junkie – I will elaborate on ideas concerning the contemporary formulation of societies of control with regards to Foucault’s analysis of state biopower. As we shall see, this manoeuvre will first require an appropriation of Foucauldian biopower through a bio- politicisation of gender. Further, following Preciado, we will analyse the molecularisation of biopower within the bio-politicisation of gender that emerged in the new post-war sexual apparatus. Finally, I will consider the implications of a molecular form of biopower for the agency of micro-political warfare. For this, I will turn to the work of Deleuze & Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, paying particular attention to their conception of a Body without Organs and the molecular, intensive nature of different subject-becomings and the (non)production of identity.
The history of electronic dance music is a long and colourful continuum. Since its inception in t... more The history of electronic dance music is a long and colourful continuum. Since its inception in the underground house, garage and disco scenes of Chicago and New York, it has developed an ever-increasing matrix of techno-tools and cultural manifestos. It has inspired competing and collaborating worlds of gadgets, gizmos and garments; circuit boards, synthesisers and electronic drum patterns. Rave, its enfant terrible, now stands as a global phenomenon. Born in colloquial terms in the United Kingdom during the Second Summer of Love (1988 – 1989), the cultural significance of rave has oscillated from counter-cultural ekstasis to humdrum corporate leisure-activity. Yet, despite its pre-88 genealogy and current state of techno-globalism, it was specifically the UK Rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s which fuelled the tsunami of electronic dance music that soon swept the world. Attuned to these brief and emphatic years (1988 – 1994), the purpose of this dissertation will be to critically analyse the social and experiential history of UK Rave through the current ecological discourse of Dark Ecology. Published in 2016 by philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology is a bold manifesto for a new form of ecological awareness—or ecognosis—heralded by the urgency of our contemporary geological era – The Anthropocene. Faced with objects so far beyond the limits of human epistemology, the primary task of this new ecognosis is the ontological restructuring of human and non-human relations, or the radicalisation of post-Kantian philosophy toward a weird metaphysical realism. Moving beyond straightforward environmentalism to the corollary proposition of an 'Ecology without Nature', I will look to the work of Morton, supported by further engagement and comparison with the writings Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, to argue that the heyday of UK Rave culture is in many aspects better understood through the concept of Dark Ecology: as the dismantling of post-Kantian correlationism and the opening up of human experience to a truly symbiotic ecological awareness. Furthermore, I will argue that the countercultural phenomenon of UK Rave is thus less a question of social escapism and rather a positive drive towards this new ecognosis. A will to both access and be accessed.
In his 1996 essay, ‘Music and Identity’, sociologist and music critic Simon Frith argued that ide... more In his 1996 essay, ‘Music and Identity’, sociologist and music critic Simon Frith argued that identity was not a thing but a process. That our identities came from the outside, not the inside; subjectivity, a question of doing rather than being. Taking its cue from this short epigraph the purpose of this essay will be to address the conceptual legacy of Afrofuturist music through the hydrophonic frequencies of Drexciya, an electronic music duo from Detroit active during the 1990s and early 2000s. Often referred to as the darker edge of Afrofuturist music, their eponymous neo-nautical mythology and posthuman soundwaves have created a sonic fiction of techno Afro-becoming that has persisted well beyond their operative years. An aural wormhole, siphoning from past to future and back again. Looking at the work of Paul Gilroy and his seminal work of cultural theory, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), alongside sonic theories of Afrofuturist affect and post-structuralist cultural studies, I wish to underscore Frith’s aforementioned hypothesis: that the production of identity is non-essentialist in character, in so far as Drexciya’s sub-aquatic politics affirm the privileged position of music in constructing new forms of techno-subjectivity in the dystopian realm of late capitalist social hegemony. That Drexciya provide a model for future subject becomings anchored in the dark soul of the present.
In 2017 the Barbican Curve Gallery opened its doors to a new work by the Irish conceptual documen... more In 2017 the Barbican Curve Gallery opened its doors to a new work by the Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse. Created in 2016 and titled Incoming, the exhibition included a series of still prints, a large video installation projected across three 8-metre-wide screens with an accompanying soundtrack, and several smaller assemblages of black and white television screens with audio-visual content. The subject of Mosse’s work was the contemporary refugee crisis. Using a powerful heat-sensitive military camera, able to detect human bodies from over 30km and identity specific individuals from 6.3km, Mosse filmed as refugees journeyed from the East, hiking through the Persian Gulf and across the Turkish border, and from the West, trekking through the Saharan Desert to the Libyan coastline—each fleeing from war, persecution and fear with the hope of finding refuge in Western Europe. Analogous to the work’s visceral impact and affectivity, Incoming explores important questions of contemporary biopolitics, surveillance and citizenship—issues I shall explore in the work of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben—at its core, questioning the very foundations that our current political modernity rests upon. Furthermore, Mosse’s position as a European artist provokes questions raised in Hal Foster’s seminal essay of 1996, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’—a polemic against the projection of ideological patronage in post-colonial struggles—a text best unpacked with reference to the earlier work of Indian literary theorist Gayatri Spivak and her famous work ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988). Through these two conversations I will present a critical analysis of Incoming, exploring the complex political landscape it seeks to address whilst highlighting the potential difficulties of this as an aesthetic project.
In 1972, at a symposium titled ‘Nietzsche Today?’ held in the remote French town of Cerisy-la-Sal... more In 1972, at a symposium titled ‘Nietzsche Today?’ held in the remote French town of Cerisy-la-Salle, Gilles Deleuze presented the following statement: “Marx and Freud may be the dawn of our culture, but Nietzsche is quite another thing, the dawn of a counterculture.” The implication Deleuze was making is clear. Seen within the history of critique, Marx and Freud had become paradigmatic, yet outdated figures. Their combined theories of society, history and subjectivity – still then the cultural foundations of modern thought – were a set of analyses identifiable as the status quo: as static, homogenous and non-productive modes of critique. Conversely, Deleuze saw in Nietzsche a radical and marginalised force. Through his introduction of the concept of genealogy and the will-to-power, Deleuze saw in Nietzsche a rejection of all that had come before him: the value of values of themselves; the a priori value of judgment. Known in Nietzsche’s own words as the process of ‘philosophising with a hammer’, Deleuze saw in his philosophy the birth of a new form of productive critique; one that could overcome the passive nihilism and deterministic readings of life found in the history of political philosophy and modern critical thought.
The purpose of this essay will be to analyse the conceptual singularities present in Deleuze & Guattari’s formulation of ‘desiring-production’ – as articulated in their work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) – through a reading of Marx’s philosophy of history and Nietzsche’s own radical conception of genealogical critique. By doing so I hope to highlight the productive nature of desire if thought of as a differential mode of critique. This will require an investigation into the genealogy of desire in Marx and its subsequent repurposing by Deleuze through Nietzsche. A full analysis of the more explicit notions of desire found in modern critical theory will not be possible here, such as in the psychoanalytic libidinal economy of Freud. Nonetheless, by articulating the ontological status of Deleuzo-Guattarian desire, I hope to demonstrate how the divergent claims of orthodox Marxism in philosophies of history and subjectivity are equally unable to compensate for the alinear, contingent and emergent properties of complex socio-material assemblages.
In contemporary theory, no speculative gesture from the Left has come under more scrutiny and rea... more In contemporary theory, no speculative gesture from the Left has come under more scrutiny and reaction than that of Accelerationism. A response to the impasses of the present – that, to quote Thatcher, there is really is no alternative – Accelerationism looks to conjure a new politico-philosophical programme, one that can break the shackles of neoliberal, late-capitalist society and propel us into a post-capitalist milieu of a world without work. Behind the political economies of thinkers such as Srnicek and Williams and the more divergent rhetoric of figures such as Nick Land, lies a genealogy of thought originating in the wake of May 1968 and the work of philosophers such as Deleuze and Guattari and Lyotard. Arguing that there can be no outside of capitalism, these arguments tether their understating of contemporary politics as one that must work through capitalism in order to achieve its goals, using the methods and qualities of a global, abstract and complex system against itself. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore first the genealogy of this thought and its ramifications on contemporary thinkers. But also, to explore the trajectories of what may lie in pursuit of an Accelerationist Aesthetic, and whether it is possible to imagine a practice that would reflect the priorities of a truly Accelerationist agenda.
Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It... more Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one of properties. It is haptic rather than optical perception.
The earth itself becomes an impediment, something to be hollowed out in order to facilitate the c... more The earth itself becomes an impediment, something to be hollowed out in order to facilitate the circulation of capital.
Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, bu... more Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, but of 'probe-heads' -Deleuze and Guattari, 1980 In our contemporary milieu, the organisation of bodiestheir behaviours, affects, spacializationsbecomes less a question of what Foucault would describe as the operations of a 'disciplinary society', and Deleuze, the organisation of "spaces of enclosure," 1 but a question of 'neoliberal subjectivity.' In other words, it concerns the configuration of bodies under the flows and manoeuvres of a fully libidinised capital. The standardization of subjectivities that this imposes produces a significant threat to our transformative capabilities, our resingularizations, and our collective enunciations. What Deleuze and Guattari describe as 'the faciality-machine', the black hole/white wall system, is in effect the modus operandi of neoliberal subjectivity. It is the system through which subjectivies and bodies operate under neoliberal ideologiesalthough of course, it should not be limited to thisand it is the mechanism that radically directs and determines them. From this premise, the role of aesthetics in escaping faciality becomes particularly cogent. Indeed, what Deleuze and Guattari describe as 'probeheads', are in many ways aesthetic objects. They are where the "cutting edges of deterritorialization become operative and lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becomings, new polyvocalities." 2 In a sense then, probe-heads are the aesthetic rupturing of the faciality-machine itself; which begs the question, what potential does contemporary art pose for, and attribute to, escaping faciality?
During the expanse of post-punk sounds and aesthetics from the late 70s to mid-80s the career and... more During the expanse of post-punk sounds and aesthetics from the late 70s to mid-80s the career and artistic production of Grace Jones shifted to the music industry. Her profile subsequently became a substantial protagonist in the former's legacy, through her amalgamation of music, fashion and performance. Jones' works are sexually and racially referential, and use typical motifs of post-punk aesthetics such as technological or 'cyborgian' synthesis and androgyny to problematize these issues. The cultural production of Jones in this period can be seen as both particular to its own fields, such as music or fashion, but also as a larger artistic performance; her cohesion of individual aesthetic persona with creative practice has formed a succinct example of Postcolonial and Popular Modernist art practice, one which helped "contribute to a reconceptualization of Afrocentric culture and identity; complicate our understanding of performance art; and suggest the interdependence of the postcolonial and the postmodern" (Kershaw, 1997: 19). Jones developed these ideas through many aesthetic and conceptual frameworks, such as her music tracks, her cover artworks, her media personality and aesthetic persona, and her live performances; this essay will attempt to explore these areas of Jones' culture production and assess its significance.
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Looking to the recent work of Paul B. Preciado – in particular, the seminal work of auto- theory, Testo Junkie – I will elaborate on ideas concerning the contemporary formulation of societies of control with regards to Foucault’s analysis of state biopower. As we shall see, this manoeuvre will first require an appropriation of Foucauldian biopower through a bio- politicisation of gender. Further, following Preciado, we will analyse the molecularisation of biopower within the bio-politicisation of gender that emerged in the new post-war sexual apparatus. Finally, I will consider the implications of a molecular form of biopower for the agency of micro-political warfare. For this, I will turn to the work of Deleuze & Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, paying particular attention to their conception of a Body without Organs and the molecular, intensive nature of different subject-becomings and the (non)production of identity.
The purpose of this essay will be to analyse the conceptual singularities present in Deleuze & Guattari’s formulation of ‘desiring-production’ – as articulated in their work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) – through a reading of Marx’s philosophy of history and Nietzsche’s own radical conception of genealogical critique. By doing so I hope to highlight the productive nature of desire if thought of as a differential mode of critique. This will require an investigation into the genealogy of desire in Marx and its subsequent repurposing by Deleuze through Nietzsche. A full analysis of the more explicit notions of desire found in modern critical theory will not be possible here, such as in the psychoanalytic libidinal economy of Freud. Nonetheless, by articulating the ontological status of Deleuzo-Guattarian desire, I hope to demonstrate how the divergent claims of orthodox Marxism in philosophies of history and subjectivity are equally unable to compensate for the alinear, contingent and emergent properties of complex socio-material assemblages.
Looking to the recent work of Paul B. Preciado – in particular, the seminal work of auto- theory, Testo Junkie – I will elaborate on ideas concerning the contemporary formulation of societies of control with regards to Foucault’s analysis of state biopower. As we shall see, this manoeuvre will first require an appropriation of Foucauldian biopower through a bio- politicisation of gender. Further, following Preciado, we will analyse the molecularisation of biopower within the bio-politicisation of gender that emerged in the new post-war sexual apparatus. Finally, I will consider the implications of a molecular form of biopower for the agency of micro-political warfare. For this, I will turn to the work of Deleuze & Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, paying particular attention to their conception of a Body without Organs and the molecular, intensive nature of different subject-becomings and the (non)production of identity.
The purpose of this essay will be to analyse the conceptual singularities present in Deleuze & Guattari’s formulation of ‘desiring-production’ – as articulated in their work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) – through a reading of Marx’s philosophy of history and Nietzsche’s own radical conception of genealogical critique. By doing so I hope to highlight the productive nature of desire if thought of as a differential mode of critique. This will require an investigation into the genealogy of desire in Marx and its subsequent repurposing by Deleuze through Nietzsche. A full analysis of the more explicit notions of desire found in modern critical theory will not be possible here, such as in the psychoanalytic libidinal economy of Freud. Nonetheless, by articulating the ontological status of Deleuzo-Guattarian desire, I hope to demonstrate how the divergent claims of orthodox Marxism in philosophies of history and subjectivity are equally unable to compensate for the alinear, contingent and emergent properties of complex socio-material assemblages.