Desires we live by

Miguel de Beistegui on the changing role of desire

The Government of desire : a genealogical perspective

Desire is everywhere – everywhere recognised, displayed, discussed, and drawn upon. It is so much part of our lives, so deeply entrenched in our bodies and minds – so “hard-wired” into our brains, some would say – that we cannot imagine a life without it, indeed cannot imagine what it could mean to live without experiencing its force and appeal, but also the conflicts and struggles it gives rise to. The Law of Desire, Almodóvar would say, is one by which we live. It seems to play a crucial part in understanding who we are, our sense of self, and our relations to others. Its ubiquity, we claim, is a sign of its rootedness in human nature. We readily admit that it is a force we need to reckon with, and governs us, often beyond our own will, but we do not question that we are creatures – and not just subjects – of desire

Immanent Anthropology: A Comparative Study of 'Process' in Contemporary France

This paper presents a comparative critique of the ‘processual temporalities’ which infuse both social-scientific theorizing and selected Western cultural practices. Through study of a public-private partnership which emerged from a biotechnology project devised for producing ‘self-cloning’ maize for resource-poor farmers, I analyse how processual temporalities were central to re-gearing knowledge practices towards market-orientated solutions. In a study of characterizations of the ‘state of flux’ which affects life in a French peri-urban village, I explore how processualism is identified as a component of a metropolitan hegemony which villagers ‘resist’ through idealizing ‘enduring temporalities’ of cultural practice. Drawing on Arendt and Deleuze, I analyse processualism as a dominant contemporary chronotope, mediating and disciplining conflictive temporalities and practices, underwriting economic projects of deterritorialization and restructuring – whose idiom is also prominent in social-scientific paradigms. I substitute an ‘immanent anthropology’, which advocates a non-transcendental ontology of cultural practice and analysis – displacing anthropological analysis onto a polychronic temporal foundation

New technologies for 3D realization in Art and Design practice

As digital design technologies become ever more widespread, CAD-CAM, virtual and rapid prototyping techniques are increasingly being exploited by creative practitioners working in areas outside the industrial design and engineering contexts in which these technologies are currently predominantly employed. This review paper aims to critically examine work by artists, craft practitioners, and designer-makers who creatively engage with these new and rapidly emerging technologies and, by doing so, extend their own practice and push at the boundaries of art and design disciplines. Historic precedents for new 3D technologies in the fine and applied arts are identified, and writing by Heidegger, Baudrillard, and Virilio informs the critical review of work by art and design practitioners in sculpture, metalwork, jewellery, and ceramics. The discussion reflects on relationships between art and technology and physical and virtual making, and concludes by pointing to the possibility of new “hybrid” forms of practice which bridge the gap between physical and virtual design worlds. The paper closes by suggesting that the notion of “truth to materials” in the arts and crafts might now be extended to one of “truth to virtual materials”, as practitioners creatively negotiate relationships between digital cause and physical effect

Gilbert Simondons ‚Transduktion‘ als radikale Immanenz der Performanz

Transduktion ist Gilbert Simondons Schlüsselkonzept für das Verständnis von Prozessen der Differenzierung und Individuation in einer Reihe von Gebieten, einschließlich der naturwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften, technischer Hilfsmittel sowie der Domänen des Künstlerischen. Beruhend auf den Naturwissenschaften und bezüglich seiner philosophischen Implikationen entscheidend weiterentwickelt durch Simondon, bezieht sich die Transduktion auf eine dynamische Operation, in deren Verlauf Energie aktualisiert wird, indem sie im Verlaufe eines Prozesses, der neue Materialitäten individuiert, von einem Zustand in einen anderen gebracht wird. Der vorliegende Text macht dieses Konzept auf die Musikpraxis anwendbar und zielt darauf ab, eine konzeptionelle Grundlage für umfangreichere Forschungsbemühungen zu schaffen, die entscheidend die künstlerische Praxis – sowohl Komposition als auch Performance – als ihren Ausgangs- und Endpunkt miteinschließt. Nach einer einleitenden Darstellung der Bedeutung, welche die Transduktion für Musiker_innen haben kann, konzentriert sich der vorliegende Text auf die Darlegung unterschiedlicher Definitionen der Transduktion, die hauptsächlich von Simondon selber stammen, aber auch zwei Erweiterungen betreffen: zum einen von Deleuze’ Konzept der Haecceïtas (bzw. ausgehend von Deleuze von meiner eigenen Mikro-Haecceïtas), zum anderen von Brian Massumis Begriff der Körperlichkeit. Vor dem Hintergrund des Potentials, welches diese Definitionen für die Herstellung von Musik entfalten können, untersucht der vorliegende Aufsatz acht unterschiedliche, aber komplementäre Möglichkeiten, die Transduktion zu denken, und dies in steigernder Komplexität, von der Glühbirne (3.1.) bis zu den Feinheiten der Entscheidungsfindung in lebenden Organismen (3.8.), wobei auch die Frage von Zeit und Temporalität (3.2.), die Thermodynamik (3.3.), die Informationstheorie (3.4.), eine überarbeitete Theorie der Haecceïtas (3.5), die Riemannsche Topologie (3.6.) sowie die Körperlichkeit angesprochen (3.7.) werden. All diese Themen werden nur kurz vorgestellt, als Eingangstore zu weiteren Untersuchungen, als Vorschläge für zukünftige Richtungen der Forschung, und ohne den Anspruch, abgeschlossene Gedankengänge darzustellen

The world in ruins : Heidegger, Poussin, Kiefer

The aim of this paper is to begin to respond to the question of how to engage the presence of catastrophic climate change as a locus of philosophical thought. What has to be thought is the end of the world. Central to that project is Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and in particular, Heidegger’s thinking of the earth/world relation, both in itself and in terms of the limits it encounters. Heidegger’s use of “examples” of artwork, as well as works by Nicolas Poussin and Anselm Kiefer, are deployed in order to begin to understand the role of art in thinking the end of the world

From the writing of desire to the desire of writing : reflections on Proust

In Search of Time Lost can be seen as a novel about dissatisfaction and disappointment, suffering and melancholy – in short, a novel about despair. Whether in relation to Marcel or Swann, whether in matters of love or art, the novel is filled with flawed experiences, failures, and deeply skeptical and pessimistic views regarding our ability to reach genuine happiness, which can all be attributed to the fact that we are desiring beings. Desire is what seems to propel us into the world, and towards others, yet in the cruelest way, since the share of unhappiness it brings about far outweighs its moments of satisfaction. Furthermore, desire seems without end and condemned to being reborn as soon as soon as it’s satisfied. What desire does is to create a disjunction within experience, a gap as it were, between a reality that we can imagine, or anticipate, and the reality to which, sooner or later, it finds itself confronted. The present, then, becomes the site of a negative experience: it is either the not yet of a fulfillment to come, or the frustration of a promise that’s always betrayed. Does the novel provide a way out of the aporia of desire? And if so, is such a solution also a way out of desire itself? Or does the novel indicate another level, or, better said perhaps, another economy of desire, which would not be premised on lack, and on the disjunction between perception and imagination, present and future, but on another sense of experience