Luxus: A Thanatology of Luxury from Nero to Bataille

In this article, I seek to explore the psychopolitical significance of the contemporary idea of luxury through reference to the Roman concept of luxus, which means excess, extravagance, indulgence, and debauchery. In the first section of the article, I examine the politics of the idea of luxus in the Roman context through a discussion of the relationship between the emperor Nero, who pushed luxury toward its psychopathic limits, and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who championed mos maiorum, the moral life of moderation, and a utopia of balance and proportion. In order to further my analysis of the pure experience of luxus, which exceeds any object that is always too base and objective to be truly luxurious, I seek to psychoanalyze Nero’s pursuit of the orgy of luxus through reference to Sigmund Freud’s discussion of Thanatos in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In that work, Freud suggests that the luxurious excess of pleasure, hyperpleasure beyond this or that incarnation of pleasure, resides in the endless repetition of pleasure we find in the experience of addiction, which eventually leads the user to overdose into luxurious space where the user dissolves into a kind of universal substance beyond life itself. It is this psychoanalytic concept of luxus, which describes the experience of luxury beyond its objective limits, that I take forward in the final section of the article. Here, I seek to move beyond Nero and Freud to show how we can understand the concept of luxus, which is beyond the relative luxury we might associate with the possession of this or that object, in the contemporary context of global capitalism. I explore neoliberal capitalism, where consumption is endless, through reference to Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share, where economy is less about balancing the books and more about the production of excess that eventually dissolves into what Bataille calls “continuous being”—the universal state of luxury

Discourses of the War on Terror: Constructions of the Islamic Other in the wake of 7/7

It is widely agreed that the events which took place on 11 September 2001 have played a large part in reshaping global imaginings about contemporary acts of terrorism and their Islamic perpetrators. Given this transformation in the understanding of terrorism and terrorists, our objective in this article is threefold. First we want to present a discussion of the roots of the kind of neo-liberal politics that has grown up alongside acts of terrorism and its global media coverage which has, we argue, resulted in a politics of fear that acts to legitimate ever-increasing legislative controls. In an attempt to reveal how discourse works to support such regulation, in the second part of this article we offer a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles from the UK about acts of terrorism that have taken place since the suicide bombings on the London transport system on 7 July 2005. Together with an analysis of the political speeches of Bush and Blair, we examine how far these discourses can be said to have reframed notions of inclusion/exclusion for Muslim populations. Finally we present a discussion of the consequences of such terrorist acts and their varied representations for the future of the British multicultural imaginary

Chaosmic Spasm

In this paper I explore the intersections of digital media, psychoanalysis, and the subject through reference to Felix Guattari's notion of the chaosmic spasm, which the Italian philosopher Franco Berardi picks up in his work and most recently his book And. Guattari's idea, which appears in his Chaosmosis, designates the fatal acceleration of the media semio-universe towards spasm, or apocalyptic collapse, and the emergence of some new form of schizoid organisation. Following an exploration of Guattari's idea, and a broader discussion of its relationship to his wider thought and Anti- Oedipal collaborations with Deleuze, I consider how Bernard Stiegler may be seen to provide a meta-historical account of Guattari's concept of the spasm in his Technics and Time. According to Stiegler's account, the hyper-acceleration of media forms results in a process of disorientation and de-subjectivization where the individual is destroyed because of their inability to situate themselves in social, symbolic, structures that have collapsed towards hyper-rational, meaningless forms. In Lacanian terms, psychosis becomes a kind of generalised condition. In response to this generalisation of madness, Stiegler imagines the need for a new politics of knowledge and grammar that is able to suture individuals back into wider social systems and provide the kind of secure, careful, space that D. W. Winnicott writes about in his work on play. In order to unpack what this politics of culture and knowledge might comprise, I turn to Guattari's work on schizoid subjectivity, or endless subjectivization without subjectivity, and Berardi's contrast between financial semio-capitalism and poetry, in order to suggest an ethical mode of thought and cultural expression that might capture the political core of Stiegler's vision and paint a picture of what human thought might look like on the other side of the new media apocalypse, the chaosmic spasm

The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism

No abstrac

The Politics of the Academic Agora

No abstrac

The Negative Abyss Surface, Depth, and Violence in Virilio and Stiegler

This article explores what one might call the dystopia of contemporary screen-based culture through a discussion of the work of Paul Virilio and Bernard Stiegler. Centrally, it explains that the screen might be seen as a negative abyss, where absolute surface creates the effect of infinite depth and a sense of absolute freedom obscures the truth of solipsistic self-reflection and enclosure. It explores this idea through reference to Virilio’s concept of the “squared horizon” and a short history of screen culture that commences with Plato’s myth of the cave, where perceptions of surface and depth clash and contrast in the underworld. It then turns to Friedrich Nietzsche’s use of the idea of the abyss. This work on Plato and Nietzsche brings together the ideas of the screen and the abyss. The article next takes up Edmund Husserl’s notion of the horizon, which structures the human perception of movement through time, and relates this to Virilio’s concept of the negative horizon, which rushes toward humanity rather than endlessly moving into the future. At this point the negative horizon recalls the abyssal screen that is simultaneously infinite distance and absolute surface and the horror of contemporary media culture. Finally, the article reflects on Virilio’s work on technodesertification and disappearance and Stiegler’s theory of the destruction of the delay of desire in the immediacy of drive through attention capture to show how screen culture annihilates the thickness of the thing itself in favor of flat images. In conclusion, the article explains that this is the future of new media culture—the twenty-first-century dystopia of the negative abyss

Delivery Challenges for Fluoride, Chlorhexidine and Xylitol

The progression or reversal of dental caries is determined by the balance between pathological and protective factors. It is well established that a) fluoride inhibits demineralization and enhances remineralization, b) chlorhexidine reduces the cariogenic bacterial challenge, and c) xylitol is non-cariogenic and has antibacterial properties. The challenge that we face is how best to deliver these anti-caries entities at true therapeutic levels, over time, to favorably tip the caries balance. High caries risk people, including children with Early Childhood Caries (ECC), are a special challenge, since high cariogenic bacterial activity can override fluoride therapy. Current fluoride and chlorhexidine varnishes deliver all their activity within about 24 hours. Early studies with experimental slow release fluoride devices retained elevated levels of fluoride for months in a therapeutic range but have not been pursued. Preventive dentistry has largely ignored the benefits of reducing the bacterial challenge, partially due to primitive and inadequate delivery systems. For example, Chlorhexidine applied as a rinse partially reduces some bacteria but not others that are hiding within the biofilm. Better antibacterials and better delivery systems are needed. Xylitol delivered by gum or lozenge appears to be effective clinically in reducing cariogenic bacteria and caries levels, but novel systems that deliver therapeutic amounts when needed would be a major advance, especially for young children. Reducing the cariogenic bacterial challenge and enhancing the effect of fluoride by the use of new sustained-delivery systems would have a major effect on dealing with caries as a disease

Neurexin in Embryonic Drosophila Neuromuscular Junctions

Background: Neurexin is a synaptic cell adhesion protein critical for synapse formation and function. Mutations in neurexin and neurexin-interacting proteins have been implicated in several neurological diseases. Previous studies have described Drosophila neurexin mutant phenotypes in third instar larvae and adults. However, the expression and function of Drosophila neurexin early in synapse development, when neurexin function is thought to be most important, has not been described. Methodology/Principal Findings: We use a variety of techniques, including immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy, in situ hybridization, and electrophysiology, to characterize neurexin expression and phenotypes in embryonic Drosophila neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). Our results surprisingly suggest that neurexin in embryos is present both pre and postsynaptically. Presynaptic neurexin promotes presynaptic active zone formation and neurotransmitter release, but along with postsynaptic neurexin, also suppresses formation of ectopic glutamate receptor clusters. Interestingly, we find that loss of neurexin only affects receptors containing the subunit GluRIIA. Conclusions/Significance: Our study extends previous results and provides important detail regarding the role of neurexin in Drosophila glutamate receptor abundance. The possibility that neurexin is present postsynaptically raises new hypotheses regarding neurexin function in synapses, and our results provide new insights into the role of neurexin i

From Aristotle to Arendt : a phenomenological exploration of forms of knowledge and practice in the context of child protection social work in the UK

This paper attempts to explore the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice. The argument that social work is more than either ‘science’ or ‘art’ but distinctly ‘practice’ is put through a historical description of the development of Aristotle’s views of the forms of knowledge and Hannah Arendt’s later conceptualisations as detailed in The Human Condition (1958). The paper supports Arendt’s privileging of Praxis over Theoria within social work and further draws upon Arendt’s distinctions between Labour, Work and Action to delineate between different forms of social work activity. The author highlights dangers in social work relying too heavily on technical knowledge and the use of theory as a tool in seeking to understand and engage with the people it serves and stresses the importance of a phenomenological approach to research and practice as a valid, embodied form of knowledge. The argument further explores the constructions of service users that potentially arise from different forms of social work activity and cautions against over-prescriptive use of ‘outcomes’ based practice that may reduce the people who use services to products or consumables. The author concludes that social work action inevitably involves trying to understand humans in a complex and dynamic way that requires engagement and to seek new meanings for individual humans

Targeting HOX/PBX dimers in cancer

The HOX and PBX gene families encode transcription factors that have key roles in establishing the identity of cells and tissues in early development. Over the last 20 years it has become apparent that they are also dysregulated in a wide range of solid and haematological malignancies and have a predominantly pro-oncogenic function. A key mode of transcriptional regulation by HOX and PBX proteins is through their interaction as a heterodimer or larger complex that enhances their binding affinity and specificity for DNA, and there is growing evidence that this interaction is a potential therapeutic target in malignancies that include prostate, breast, renal, ovarian and lung cancer, melanoma, myeloma, and acute myeloid leukaemia. This review summarizes the roles of HOX and PBX genes in cancer and assesses the therapeutic potential of HOX/PBX dimer inhibition, including the availability of biomarkers for its application in precision medicine