scholarly journals Misreading Generalised Writing: From Foucault to Speculative Realism and New Materialism

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Jonathan Basile
Keyword(s):  
Market Value ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Temporal Progress

Misreadings of Derrida's Of Grammatology were prevalent from the time of its debut (Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari), up to the present day (Speculative Realism and New Materialism). For fifty years, Derrida's generalised textuality has been misread as though he meant there was nothing outside text in the traditional sense. This misreading always serves to re-institute notions of linear temporal progress, either among self-styled avant-garde authors who would like to break with past traditions, or among self-styled conservatives who hope to repeat them. If the binaries that divide these works from past texts are undecidable, the ground for such temporal progress disappears, along with the divisions by which we create linear narratives of history. The misreading of Derrida is an attempt to exorcise this undecidability and regain the intellectual and market value of novelty or repetition.

scholarly journals The New Novelty: Corralation as Quarantine in Speculative Realism and New Materialism

Derrida Today ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-229
Author(s):  
Jonathan Basile
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Speculative Realism

The foundational gesture of New Materialism and Speculative Realism dismisses vast swaths of past philosophy and theory in order to signify their own avant-garde status. The violence of this gesture, which tries to corral difference within past texts in order to feign its own purity, can be considered as a theoretical quarantine. Examples of medical and spiritual quarantine, the 2014 ebola epidemic and Jesus’ temptation, are analyzed to show that the figure is inherently compromised – the harder one fights to keep the other away, the more one becomes inseparable from it. Derrida's reflections on the reactions against deconstruction show that this desire for progress is always inherently conservative; Meillassoux and Jane Bennett are considered as contemporary examples. A deconstruction of corralation and the academico-capitalist forces driving these ‘innovations’ might open us to reading the never-simply-past text, and to the possibility of the event.

Quantum Creativity: Afracting New Materialism in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110666
Author(s):  
jan jagodzinski
Keyword(s):  
Creative Destruction ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Quantum Level ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Karen Barad

This essay engages the vicissitudes of new materialism at the quantum level, attempting to differentiate what I take to be fundamental differences in the theoretical positions of vitalist theories as developed by Karen Barad and Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the Anthropocene. I treat matter at the quantum level to differentiate conceptions of apparatus and assemblage. It is argued that one should not treat them under the same signifiers. There is the question of creativity that runs through the essay which also raises questions concerning an “affirmative” Deleuze, the dominant position when it comes to the arts, humanities, and pedagogy. Against these particular developments, anorganic life as in|different comes to fore where issues of creative destruction must be faced.

scholarly journals V-v-Vertov R-r-Re-Made

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ole Pedersen ◽  
Jan Løhmann Stephensen
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Dziga Vertov ◽  
Film Language ◽  
Movie Camera

Abstract The seminal work of pioneering avant-garde filmmaker Dziga Vertov, The Man with the Movie Camera (Chevolek s kino-apparatom, 1929) has given rise to a number of discussions about the documentary film genre and new digital media. By way of comparison with American artist Perry Bard’s online movie project entitled Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake (2007), this article investigates the historical perspective of this visionary depiction of reality and its impact on the heralded participatory culture of contemporary digital media, which can be traced back to Russian Constructivism. Through critical analysis of the relation between Vertov’s manifest declarations about the film medium and his resulting cinematic vision, Bard’s project and the work of her chief theoretical inspiration Lev Manovich are examined in the perspective of ‘remake culture,’ participatory authorship and the development a documentary film language. In addition to this, possible trajectories from Vertov and his contemporary Constructivists to recent theories of ‘new materialism’ and the notion of Man/Machine-co-operation is discussed in length.

Ecology, Capitalism and Waste: From Hyperobject to Hyperabject

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 87-109
Author(s):  
Mikkel Krause Frantzen ◽  
Jens Bjering
Keyword(s):  
Object Oriented ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Ecological Thought ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

The article develops the notion of the ‘hyperabject’ – coined by Danish poet Theis Ørntoft – into a proper theoretical concept. The term hyperabject is a synthesis of Timothy Morton's concept of hyperobjects and Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, and in the article we argue that the concept of the hyperabject entails a necessary critique of and correction to Morton's ecological thought, as well as various other versions of speculative realism, new materialism and object-oriented ontology.

scholarly journals Notes Toward an Extimate Materialism: A Reply to Graham Harman

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-123
Author(s):  
Russell Sbriglia
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The Future ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

Abstract This article mounts a defense of my and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology, Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, against the two main criticisms of it made throughout Graham Harman’s article “The Battle of Objects and Subjects”: (1) that we and our fellow contributors are guilty of gross overgeneralization when we classify thinkers from various schools of thought – among them New Materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor–network theory – under the broad rubric of the “new materialisms”; and (2) that despite our pretensions to the mantle of materialism, our Lacano-Hegelian position is actually a full-blown idealism. In responding to and attempting to refute these criticisms, I make the case that our Lacano-Hegelian model of dialectical materialism is an “extimate materialism.”

scholarly journals Ecocriticism and "Thinking with Writing": An Interview with Tim Ingold

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-215
Author(s):  
Antonia Spencer ◽  
Tim Ingold
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Emerging Issues ◽  
The University

      Over the course of an influential career spanning several decades, Tim Ingold, Professor Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen, has established himself as a preeminent voice in the field of Social Anthropology. Author of studies including The Perception of the Environment (2000), Being Alive (2011) and The Life of Lines (2015), this interview was inspired by the potential of his wide-ranging scholarship to unearth some fascinating avenues for research in literary studies. The breadth of his writing on habitation, perception and skilled practice, suggests myriad applications for his thinking beyond the purely anthropological, and particularly for bridging the concerns of literary and environmental studies. The philosophical depth of his work, apparent in his analyses of processes of growth and formation in both biological and socio-cultural domains (indeed questioning the supposed divisions between these fields), proves that his scholarship provides a refreshing counter-narrative to many prevailing schools of thought in current literary theory, especially to much of the discourse of New Materialism and Speculative Realism. In addition, this interview contains his views regarding certain emerging issues in literary studies, such as the material practices of reading, and the ascendency of the computer screen over the printed book, areas where his anthropological perspective is both stimulating and revealing. As a renowned scholar who has recently surveyed the changes in the academy and in disciplinary relationships throughout his long career, his observations provide valuable insights into the capability of the arts to guide us into a wider, more interconnected world. Crucially, his responses also speak to the world of academia, and how we can foster a practical awareness of ecological issues within the often-rarefied spheres of academic research and practice.

Marta Minujín's Destructive Intervention

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Michaëla de Lacaze Mohrmann
Keyword(s):  
Market Value ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
The Sixties

On June 6, 1963, after living in Paris for several months, Argentine artist Marta Minujín performed her first happening, The Destruction, at the Impasse Ronsin, the now legendary abode of many modern and neo-avant-garde artists. This article examines how The Destruction responded to the mediatization of Nouveau Réalisme's performances, especially Niki de Saint Phalle's Tirs, by entering a Duchampian discourse through its destabilization of authorship, originality, and authenticity—concepts central to Modernism and the anchoring of art's market value. In addition, The Destruction used Brechtian strategies and routinized actions to undercut the ritualism, immediacy, and collaboration fundamental to the emancipatory promise of both French and US happenings as developed by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Allan Kaprow, respectively. In its self-conscious consideration of the intertwinement between performative art forms and spectacle culture, Minujín's first happening thus opened a path of inquiry that later Argentine avant-garde artists of the sixties would continue to explore.

scholarly journals Dispositif, Matter, Affect, and the Real: Four Fundamental Concepts of Lyotard's Film-Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Woodward
Keyword(s):  
New Materialism ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Real ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Contemporary Context ◽  
Untapped Resource

Jean-François Lyotard's work remains a largely untapped resource for film-philosophy. This article surveys four fundamental concepts which indicate the fecundity of this work for current studies and debates. While Lyotard was generally associated with the “theory” of the 1980s which privileged language, signs, and cultural representations, much of his work in fact resonates more strongly with the new materialisms and realisms currently taking centre stage. The concepts examined here indicate the relevance of Lyotard's work in four related contemporary contexts: the renewed interest in the dispositif, new materialism, the affective turn, and speculative realism. The concept of the dispositif (or apparatus) is being rehabilitated in the contemporary context because it shows a way beyond the limiting notion of mise en scène which has dominated approaches to film, and Lyotard's prevalent use of this concept feeds into this renewal. While matter is not an explicit theme in Lyotard's writings on film, it is nevertheless one at the heart of his aesthetics, and it may be extended for application to film. Affect was an important theme for Lyotard in many contexts, including his approaches to film, where it appears to subvert film's “seductive” (ideological) effects. Finally, the Real emerges as a central concept in Lyotard's last essay on cinema, where, perhaps surprisingly, it intimates something close to a speculative realist aesthetics. Each of the fundamental concepts of Lyotard's film-philosophy are introduced in the context of the current fields and debates to which they are relevant, and are discussed with filmic examples, including Michael Snow's La Région centrale (1971), Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli (Stromboli, terra di Dio, 1950), Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), and neo-realist cinema.

From Constellations to Assemblages: Benjamin, Deleuze and the Question of Materialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-570
Author(s):  
Tanja Prokić
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The One

This essay investigates the differences and points of contact between Walter Benjamin's concept of ‘constellation’ (developed in various texts written between 1920 and 1940) and the notion of ‘assemblage’ as theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Both concepts address the entanglement of discourse and matter, bodies and devices, and raise questions regarding the historicity and temporality of different kinds of multiplicity. Presently, the term ‘assemblage’ figures prominently in the context of the new materialism, a theoretical movement which calls for a renewal of materialist ideas, proposing a break with the historical materialism of the past. Against this backdrop, the essay has a twofold purpose: first, by focusing on the notions of constellation and assemblage, it seeks to highlight the differences and analogies between the materialisms of Benjamin, on the one hand, and Deleuze and Guattari, on the other. Second, by examining the new materialism's appropriation of Deleuzian ‘assemblage theory’, it will not only analyse what is ‘new’ about the new materialism, but also underline its conceptual errors and political problems. Eventually, what the essay argues is that our contemporary (‘new materialist’) understanding of assemblages might indeed benefit from a more thorough engagement with the historical materialism of an author like Benjamin.

Intra-acting bio-object: A posthuman approach to the player–game relation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justyna Janik
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Object A ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Player Game

The main aim of this article is to explore how posthuman values and premises can change the approach to video game research, in terms of reframing the relation between game and player as a meaning-making process. The idea of the bio-object, which originated in Tadeusz Kantor’s avant-garde theatre, is introduced and reread in the context of the critical posthumanism and new materialism of Karen Barad, especially her concept of intra-action. By meshing together Kantor’s and Barad’s ideas, a framework is developed for conceptualizing the bond between the player and the video game object, pointing out how their constant rivalry is not only resolved in meaning-generative tension, but also intra-actively shapes their ontic borders. The game and the player become equal in this new unity, and the video game object stops being perceived as a secondary to the player and can be analysed as the equal partner in this relation.

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