exterminating reality
TRANSCRIPT
EXTERMINATING REALITY
Tutor: Ray Brassier
Course Synopsis
Philosophical materialism converges with apocalyptic fiction at that point where ‘matter’
-whether in the guise of ‘the unconscious’ or ‘the thing-in-itself’- names a Real that
exterminates consensual reality. Thus, there is a sense in which the annihilation of reality
explored by hallucinatory brands of speculative fiction has already been experimentally
rehearsed in the more adventurous variants of post-Kantian materialism. Suspending
distinctions between philosophy, speculative fiction and pharmaceutically fuelled
delirium, this course will examine the work of philosophical materialists, fictionalists and
drug-crazed cranks who, by acknowledging the Real’s resistance to conceptualization and
recognizing reality’s intrinsically synthetic character, grasp the way in which the Real’s
obdurately unintelligible nature pulverizes the parameters of consensual reality (i.e.
common sense) along with the privileges of consciousness, thereby licensing a total
reconfiguration of the possibilities of perceptual experience. Emphasizing the extent to
which this hallucinatory reconfiguration of experience, as explored by writers like J.G.
Ballard and John Lilly, find a rigorous theoretical footing in the abstract materialism
engineered by philosophers such as J.F. Lyotard and Francois Laruelle, this course will
highlight the latent indiscernibility between hypercritical materialism and hallucinatory
speculation, and strive to identify the point at which transcendental scepticism coincides
with drug-fuelled psychosis.
In so doing, we will be reexamining the relation between art and cognition, the
better to begin formulating an ‘aesthetics of cognitive dissonance’. Because art provides a
particularly interesting locus for the manner in which the Real’s foreclosure to cognition
exterminates synthetic reality, we will be reconsidering the way in which much ‘modern’
art sets out to challenge the normative parameters of cognition -forcefully bypassing the
spectator’s consent and necessitating a reconfiguration of those cognitive structures
through which we synthesize information. Kant plays a crucial role here: our hypothetical
distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘the Real’, or between the knowable and the
unknowable, is ultimately rooted in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Thus, in
underlining the extent to which art can force us to change the way in which we
experience reality, we’ll have to understand how a ‘non-representational’ art must
presume to intervene at the transcendental level. For instance: what does it mean to say
that the modernist artwork functions as an object that resists objectification; which is to
say, a ‘thing in itself’? We’ll be using Schopenhauer to try to get a grip on what Kant
meant by ‘the transcendental conditions for the possibility of representation’ and ‘the
thing in itself’. One of the suggestions we’ll be exploring is the following: because the
artwork’s ‘non-representational’ dismantling of objectivity necessitates some sort of
violent circumvention of subjectivity, as well as the collapse of horizons of intelligibility,
the artwork’s ‘non-representational’ functioning becomes akin to that of a car-bomb.
Finally, one of the interesting ramifications of all this is a critique of the rhetoric of
‘transgression’ ubiquitous in much contemporary art discourse (the possibility of
‘transgression’ is liquidated along with that of intelligibility); but also of the idea that art
has nothing left to do other than indulge in an ironic celebration of its own status as
exorbitant commodity (pace Baudrillard). Just as the ‘subversiveness’ of an artwork need
not entail the pious melodrama of ‘transgression’, its degree of cognitive sophistication
need not be gauged by the extent to which it participates in the defeatist complacency of
postmodern ‘irony’. Circumventing the exigencies of transgression and irony
simultaneously, art articulates a form of cognitive experimentation that radicalizes
transcendental critique. An artwork is difficult or challenging insofar as it constitutes a
meticulously engineered information overload unit reconfiguring the parameters of
cognition by engaging directly with the ‘spectator’s’ nervous system.
Here’s some additional reading you might find interesting:
P.M.Churchland – Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-521-33827-1,
pp. 7-45.
J.F.Lyotard – Libidinal Economy, trans. by I.H.Grant, London: Athlone, 1993,
ISBN 0485-12083-6, pp. 21-32
Adam Parfrey – ‘Aesthetic Terrorism’ in Apocalypse Culture, A.Parfrey (ed.),
expanded and revised edition, Los Angeles: Feral House, 1990,
ISBN 0-922915-05-9, pp. 49-53.
J.G.Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition, Glagow: Triad/Panther, 1985,
ISBN 0-586-03574-5
David Britton – Motherfuckers, Manchester: Savoy, 1996, ISBN 0-86130-098-X
David Britton – Baptized In The Blood of Millions, Manchester: Savoy, 2001,
ISBN 0-86130-101-3
Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta – The Eyes, London: Headpress-Critical Visions, 1995,
ISBN 0-9523288-3-6
Peter Sotos – ‘Tool’ in Total Abuse, Pittsburgh, OR.: Goad to Hell Enterprises, 1996,
pp. 88-127 (no ISBN available)