Lacan and the Algorithm

Exploring the development of algorithms in Lacanian theory, specifically the R schema in the 1950s, I argue that psychoanalysis, read through contemporary debates about the algorithmic cult of Netflix and other avatars of popular culture, can be said to reveal the inhuman, machinic essence of subjectivity. The etiology of algorithms, mathemes, and other formulae and diagrams in Lacan’s oeuvre has been under-studied, in part because for some readers they are not as attractive as his more bravura flourishes of word play as exegetical excess, and in part because they derive largely from the ‘hard’ structuralist moment of his work in the 1950s, largely eclipsed in Lacan studies by interests in the ‘Late Lacan’ period of the Sinthome, the knots, jouissance and the semblant. Here I extend (and refine) arguments I began in Does the Internet Have An Unconscious, determining that algorithms in Lacanian theory help us understand the split subjectivity of internet discourse

Love and Sex in the Age of Capitalist Realism: On Spike Jonze’s Her

Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) is a film about a romantic relationship between a man and an operating system. Using a Lacanian and Žižekian psychoanalytic framework, we interpret this film in the context of what the cultural theorist Mark Fisher has called “capitalist realism.” Referring to the Lacanian thesis that “there is no sexual relationship,” we discuss the film’s unique treatment of our enjoyment of digital technology and how it deals with the parallel deadlocks of the sexual relationship and the work relationship. We address these topics by looking at how Her deals with the sexual relationship, love, work, and fantasy. The premise of the film is original—suited to the zeitgeist of the digital present—and we claim that it reveals important insights about processes of subjectivization.Postprin

Contingent Bodies : Brigitta Kocsis

"Brigitta Kocsis’ paintings blend realism, illustration and expressive painterly gestures in a chaotic and visually charged landscape. Her current series, Contingent Bodies, focuses on the representation of bodies in transformation – both organic and unfamiliar. The painting’s surface is used to transform energies and refabricate the body with suggestions of contamination, connectivity and displacement, reflecting Kocsis’ cultural history as a Hungarian, Romany and Canadian. Fragmented bodies emerge in the play between abstraction and figuration, embedded in perpetual rootlessness, containing exile and otherness within themselves. These polymorphic figures confront sexual and cultural categorization, recasting the body as part imaginary and part construct. Exploring notions of the cyborg and the prosthetic, these figures exist between the human and post-human, biotechnological and sexualized bodies, and the fashion industry and anime." -- Publisher's website

Hegel without Lacan: on Todd McGowan’s Emancipation after Hegel

If Todd McGowan’s new book on Hegel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. McGowan is the giant of Vermont, the Bernie Sanders of the academy, the Larry David of Lacanian theory. In my review I make the following argument: desire is algorithmic, and realized in clickbait (clickbait names Hegel’s dialectics). McGowan’s book finds in Hegel a philosopher for the “after theory” era, a philosopher who forbids us from remaining satisfied with particularisms of the left or the right, a philosopher whose theory of contradiction is both universalist and grounded in the singular, a Hegel for whom love and duty are the slamdance of emancipation

New Media as Event

The Event is a philosophical concept coming out of the Continental tradition (Heidegger, Deleuze, Badiou, Žižek), useful for designating historical situation in which a multiplicity suddenly acquires a critical mass. After tracing the concept’s genealogy in the aforementioned thinkers, we argue that the term is useful for thinking about the variety of technologies and practices (desktop computers, tele-computation, smartphones, social media) that are now designated as “new media”. This designation, furthermore, allows us to understand and distinguish between meaningful critiques (political gestures such as those of Aaron Swartz), and those less meaningful (bit-torrenting and other forms of Internet piracy)

Decolonizing “Mayakovsky”: Listening to Listening

The following pieces expand upon oral responses given at the SpokenWeb event “From Reel to Reel: Animating the Archive” on February 11, 2021. The cultural object at the heart of this discussion was the poem “Mayakovsky,” performed by the Canadian avant-garde sound collective The Four Horsemen

Interactive effects between nest microclimate and nest vegetation structure confirm microclimate thresholds for Lesser Prairie-Chicken nest survival

Citation: Grisham, B. A., Godar, A. J., Boal, C. W., & Haukos, D. A. (2016). Interactive effects between nest microclimate and nest vegetation structure confirm microclimate thresholds for Lesser Prairie-Chicken nest survival. Condor, 118(4), 728-746. doi:10.1650/CONDOR-16-38.1The range of Lesser Prairie-Chickens (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) spans 4 unique ecoregions along 2 distinct environmental gradients. The Sand Shinnery Oak Prairie ecoregion of the Southern High Plains of New Mexico and Texas is environmentally isolated, warmer, and more arid than the Short-Grass, Sand Sagebrush, and Mixed-Grass Prairie ecoregions in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the northeast panhandle of Texas. Weather is known to influence Lesser Prairie-Chicken nest survival in the Sand Shinnery Oak Prairie ecoregion; regional variation may also influence nest microclimate and, ultimately, survival during incubation. To address this question, we placed data loggers adjacent to nests during incubation to quantify temperature and humidity distribution functions in 3 ecoregions. We developed a suite of a priori nest survival models that incorporated derived microclimate parameters and visual obstruction as covariates in Program MARK. We monitored 49 nests in Mixed-Grass, 22 nests in Sand Shinnery Oak, and 30 nests in Short-Grass ecoregions from 2010 to 2014. Our findings indicated that (1) the Sand Shinnery Oak Prairie ecoregion was hotter and drier during incubation than the Mixed- and Short-Grass ecoregions; (2) nest microclimate varied among years within ecoregions; (3) visual obstruction was positively associated with nest survival; but (4) daily nest survival probability decreased by 10% every half-hour when temperature was greater than 34°C and vapor pressure deficit was less than - 23 mmHg during the day (about 0600-2100 hours). Our major finding confirmed microclimate thresholds for nest survival under natural conditions across the species' distribution, although Lesser Prairie-Chickens are more likely to experience microclimate conditions that result in nest failures in the Sand Shinnery Oak Prairie ecoregion. The species would benefit from identification of thermal landscapes and management actions that promote cooler, more humid nest microclimates. © 2016 Cooper Ornithological Society

Eraser Street : Hubris, Humility and Humanity in the Making of a City

"ERASER STREET – HUBRIS, HUMILITY AND HUMANITY IN THE MAKING OF A CITY! is an exhibition that mixes Robideau’s newest and oldest photographs of moments, milestones and monuments in Vancouver, tracing the character of the city and its residents during the last 40 years of non-stop growth. The work reflects upon the quality of life in Vancouver, the value of heritage, the economic engine of development, homelessness and the voice of the people. Robideau’s holographic satirical text charts history while critiquing the forces of government and commerce that have had a hand in shaping our urban environment." -- Publisher's website