Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243155
Mark Davis
What are the prospects for critique in an age of collapse? Collapsing ecosystems, “democratic decay,” vicious “culture wars,” and changing knowledge economies all impact the conditions of possibility for academic critique. Universities have become bastions of “academic neoliberalism,” driven by managerialism, rankings, and punishing overwork. Terms such as “postcritique” capture the possibility that critique has literally “run out of steam,” as Bruno Latour famously put it. This article takes the form of a staged call to arms to address some of these issues. First, it sets out to name the combination of economic and cultural forces that constitute “academic neoliberalism,” and to propose a constructive strategy against them. Second, it critiques debates about “postcritique.” Third, it argues that academic neoliberalism can be resisted and that this is now primary business for the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The article closes by proposing new scholarly practices based in “constitutive criticism,” explicitly oriented towards the retrograde politics of the present.
{"title":"Resisting Academic Neoliberalism","authors":"Mark Davis","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243155","url":null,"abstract":"What are the prospects for critique in an age of collapse? Collapsing ecosystems, “democratic decay,” vicious “culture wars,” and changing knowledge economies all impact the conditions of possibility for academic critique. Universities have become bastions of “academic neoliberalism,” driven by managerialism, rankings, and punishing overwork. Terms such as “postcritique” capture the possibility that critique has literally “run out of steam,” as Bruno Latour famously put it. This article takes the form of a staged call to arms to address some of these issues. First, it sets out to name the combination of economic and cultural forces that constitute “academic neoliberalism,” and to propose a constructive strategy against them. Second, it critiques debates about “postcritique.” Third, it argues that academic neoliberalism can be resisted and that this is now primary business for the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The article closes by proposing new scholarly practices based in “constitutive criticism,” explicitly oriented towards the retrograde politics of the present.","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243161
Benjamin Nicoll
While considerations of gender predominate in scholarly accounts of why and how people derive pleasure from videogame play, the question of sex remains either undertheorized or conspicuously absent from the conversation. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, this article argues that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play is sexed rather than gendered. It theorizes two logics of enjoyment in videogame play: enjoyment with exception and enjoyment without exception. Through an analysis of the videogame Inside, it argues that the logic of enjoying without exception undergirds the libidinal satisfaction of all videogame play. To accept that the enjoyment of videogame play is predicated on such a logic, however, means to accept the ontological failure of the sexual relation. Videogame culture is subsequently founded on a disavowal of the logic of enjoying without exception and a pathological identification with the logic of enjoying with exception.
{"title":"Enjoyment With(Out) Exception","authors":"Benjamin Nicoll","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243161","url":null,"abstract":"While considerations of gender predominate in scholarly accounts of why and how people derive pleasure from videogame play, the question of sex remains either undertheorized or conspicuously absent from the conversation. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, this article argues that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play is sexed rather than gendered. It theorizes two logics of enjoyment in videogame play: enjoyment with exception and enjoyment without exception. Through an analysis of the videogame Inside, it argues that the logic of enjoying without exception undergirds the libidinal satisfaction of all videogame play. To accept that the enjoyment of videogame play is predicated on such a logic, however, means to accept the ontological failure of the sexual relation. Videogame culture is subsequently founded on a disavowal of the logic of enjoying without exception and a pathological identification with the logic of enjoying with exception.","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243159
Daniel Worden
This essay is a rewriting of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” a classic text in critical theory and media studies. Appropriating Benjamin’s sentence, paragraph, and essay structures, the essay presents a series of theoretical reflections on the status of art during the current age of transmedia production. The essay seeks to contribute to a theory of contemporary art that moves beyond capitalist, and increasingly fascist, ideologies. As in Benjamin’s essay, this work is an effort to think dialectically about the contradictions that structure our contemporary moment, and therefore to formulate a socialist aesthetics.
这篇文章是对沃尔特·本雅明(Walter Benjamin)的《技术可复制时代的艺术作品》(The Work of Art in The Age of Its Technological Reproducibility)的改写,这是批评理论和媒体研究的经典文本。本文借用本雅明的句子、段落和文章结构,对当今跨媒体生产时代的艺术地位进行了一系列的理论反思。这篇文章试图为当代艺术理论做出贡献,这种理论超越了资本主义和日益法西斯主义的意识形态。就像本雅明的文章一样,这部作品是对构成我们当代时刻的矛盾进行辩证思考的努力,因此形成了社会主义美学。
{"title":"The Work of Art in the Age of Transmedia Production (With Regards to Walter Benjamin)","authors":"Daniel Worden","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243159","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is a rewriting of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” a classic text in critical theory and media studies. Appropriating Benjamin’s sentence, paragraph, and essay structures, the essay presents a series of theoretical reflections on the status of art during the current age of transmedia production. The essay seeks to contribute to a theory of contemporary art that moves beyond capitalist, and increasingly fascist, ideologies. As in Benjamin’s essay, this work is an effort to think dialectically about the contradictions that structure our contemporary moment, and therefore to formulate a socialist aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243160
Jishnu Guha-Majumdar
{"title":"Can The Human Speak?","authors":"Jishnu Guha-Majumdar","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243160","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243158
Udith Dematagoda, Christos Asomatos
In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation to contemporary art, literature, and culture. Beginning with a critique of Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2016 work The Exform, we interrogate Bourriaud’s engagement with contemporary art and Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology. We approach Bourriaud’s Althusserian source material through a consideration of its reappraisal by Warren Montag, Althusser’s own Lacanian influences, and through some surprising continuities with the thought of controversial German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Finally, we attempt to synthesize these discussions into our speculative theory of the “Ideological Aesthetic,” which addresses a conceptual gap in past theoretical discourse on ideology.
{"title":"The Ideological Aesthetic","authors":"Udith Dematagoda, Christos Asomatos","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243158","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation to contemporary art, literature, and culture. Beginning with a critique of Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2016 work The Exform, we interrogate Bourriaud’s engagement with contemporary art and Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology. We approach Bourriaud’s Althusserian source material through a consideration of its reappraisal by Warren Montag, Althusser’s own Lacanian influences, and through some surprising continuities with the thought of controversial German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Finally, we attempt to synthesize these discussions into our speculative theory of the “Ideological Aesthetic,” which addresses a conceptual gap in past theoretical discourse on ideology.","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243145
Salah El Moncef
{"title":"General Issue I 2023","authors":"Salah El Moncef","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243145","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243166
{"title":"Notes on the contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243166","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243162
Tom Goodwin
{"title":"Navigating The Psychoanalytic Symbol","authors":"Tom Goodwin","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243162","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243156
Emily McAvan
{"title":"“I Just Care so Much About the Koalas”","authors":"Emily McAvan","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243156","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"156 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243163
Nicolas Abraham, Tom Goodwin
{"title":"The Symbol","authors":"Nicolas Abraham, Tom Goodwin","doi":"10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2023.2243163","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45929,"journal":{"name":"ANGELAKI-JOURNAL OF THE THEORETICAL HUMANITIES","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}