(This is the text of a presentation given at Wyrd Patchworks 5, a digitally mediated lecture series and round-table based in Prague, Czech Republic on November 28, 2020. #WyrdPatchwork is an ongoing series of events organized and moderated by Diffractions Collective. Thanks to Dustin Breitling for the invitation. The same text is also hosted on… Continue Reading Existentially weighted time decay: speculative fragmentation and political immunology
Tag: politics of exit
Notes on ecopessimism (2): morbid opportunism
(A slightly different version of this post was presented at the 2019 Western Political Science Association conference “The Politics of Climate Change,” on the panel “The Status of Nature in the Anthropocene.”) My central claim has two parts. First: ecopessimism is being misunderstood, even by the still relatively few thinkers and writers who we could… Continue Reading Notes on ecopessimism (2): morbid opportunism
Notes on ecopessimism (1): decathexis as a mode of futural projection
(A slightly different version of this post was presented at the 2017 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference “Out of Time,” on the panel “Collective Manifestations: Thinking Futures beyond the Dark Mountain.”) A preliminary clarification: climate change isn’t the problem. Instead, climate change is a symptom of a much deeper problem called the… Continue Reading Notes on ecopessimism (1): decathexis as a mode of futural projection
Long live the new flesh: reflections on Videodrome (1983)
According to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), we live in the midst of an occult or psychic war – “the battle for the mind of North America.” Underlying the epiphenomenal worlds of economy and sexuality, there are actually two philosophies in conflict, each vying for control of the future. Call the first Videodrome; call the second… Continue Reading Long live the new flesh: reflections on Videodrome (1983)
From extinction: nine strategies for a left-hand exit
This piece has been partially reproduced at the DePaul University Institute for Nature and Culture‘s website, Environmental Critique. Thanks to Dr. Christine Skolnik for the invitation to contribute.
Cold new world: Borgman as a politics of exit
“[…] exit becomes possible only if we divest ourselves of the libidinal constraints and demands we inherit from the civilization into which we are thrown.” “Marina searches the grounds, presumably for Camiel. In the summer house, she encounters a pale hound. Overwhelmed by a sense of the uncanny, she whispers, ‘Camiel?’” “It’s certainly true that… Continue Reading Cold new world: Borgman as a politics of exit