Lexi C M K Turner | Cornell University (original) (raw)
2019- : PhD Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University
2016-2017: MA Contemporary Arts Theory, Goldsmiths
2013-2016: BA Film Studies, King's College London
In 2017, Lexi completed her MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, immediately following a BA in Film Studies at Kings College London. Whilst at King's, her undergraduate dissertation analysing the representation of girls and young women in the Czechoslovak New Wave from a variety of positions including poststructuralist reflections on biopolitics and performativity, Feminist sociology and anthropology, Mulveyan gaze critique and Lee Edelman and Jack Halberstam's respective reflections on the notion of queer time. Lexi's MA thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" discussed noise music's connection with sadomasochism as an investigation of the body as a site of power relations through variations on eternal recurrence and queer time, genealogy, and Eugene Thacker's concept of "demontology."
It is her desire to continue investigations through philosophy and queer, art and film theory of governmentality in an ungovernable world, and establish models of practical resistance as revealed through haptic / corporeal engagement with the avant-garde.
Research interests include:
Film/art/media/communications theory and philosophy
Poststructuralism and postmodernism (Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, Derrida, Massumi)
Queer and gender theory (Buter, Halberstam, Freeman, Edelman)
Artist’s film and moving image
Sound studies/music (extreme metal, noise, jazz, alternative)
Post/non-/humanities and ecosophy (Haraway, Hayward, Neimanis, Alaimo)
Speculative/weird realism, gothic materialism (Thacker, Negarestani, Masciandaro, Fisher)
Psychoanalysis (Lacan, Freud, Klein)
Haptic reception and aesthetics (Laura U. Marks, Linda Williams)
Address: Ithaca, New York
United States
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Papers by Lexi C M K Turner
Given at the "Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities" conference at University of Oxfor... more Given at the "Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities" conference at University of Oxford, 12/5/18
For many readers, Nietzsche exists as a philosophical paradox – a classicist in his studies, his writing contributes to and comments upon the notion of a break from tradition establish him as one of the driving forces of the modernist era. And yet, the greatest appraisals and analyses of Nietzsche’s work are at the hands of postmodernists and poststructuralists, not least of all Deleuze, Foucault and Butler. Such a paradox may be paralleled in the very concept of a Queer Modernist inquiry, considering that, by many accounts, queer theory is itself all but entirely rooted in postmodernist thought.
A solution to these paradoxes may be found through further investigation of the elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy that held such influence over postmodern theory: that of time. Between Deleuze’s reflections and elevation of Nietzsche’s proposition of eternal recurrence to the status a legitimate cosmological theory of the repetition of difference-in-itself and the continuation of generalities, and Foucault’s discussion of genealogy as analysis of the historical implications of incorporation, we break free from linearly chronological constraints.
Similarly, Elizabeth Freeman argues, queer sexual interaction, through the medium of the historically “theatrical” roleplaying sadomasochistic encounter, “us[es] the body as an instrument to rearrange time, becom[ing] a kind of écriture historique,” creating sensational echoes of the results of penal discipline centuries before, now abstracted into pleasures of repetition, within and despite the cyclical recurrence of kyriarchal generality.
Applying through queer performance and sexuality Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to the body and time, as well as remarking on the distinct similarities between Nietzsche’s theory of incorporation and Butler’s work on gender performativity, Nietzsche’s relationship with dance and musicality on his own literature becomes reinvigorated from a queer perspective. We may ask how the drag balls of Paris is Burning up to today, with their eloquent investigation of the power relations inherent in gender expression, relate to the modernist ballet, according to Susan jones, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s “rediscovery” of the Dionysian.
Ultimately, we must ask: in a world of queer-historical erasure at the hands of cisheteropatriarchal hegemonic generality, how may we as queers understand differently the call for affirmation Nietzsche makes in relation to the supposed horror of eternal recurrence?
![Research paper thumbnail of [smashed up against a car at 3am]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55660018/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Written as a member of the Goldsmiths 2017 Spatial Biopolitics Collective in the soon-to-be publi... more Written as a member of the Goldsmiths 2017 Spatial Biopolitics Collective in the soon-to-be published book, "The Crack-Up" approaching from various angles Deleuze and Guattari's invocation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story of the same name. Taking a relatively literal analysis of Fitzgerald's use of the term in relation to alcoholism, this paper extends the line of narcoanalytical inquiry into the socio-cultural, economic and biopolitical implications of cocaine and - of course - crack, itself. Where crack(-up)/s appear, that would normally be thought to divide, so apparently do folds and dissolves at the level of space, time and subject/object. Accordingly, the revelation of divisions but also connections where one had previously thought none to be begins to suggest that an inherently flawed - cracked - system of capitalist perpetuation and perpetuity may indeed contain within its own lines of flight.
Lexi's MA Thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" is an in-depth ... more Lexi's MA Thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" is an in-depth analysis of the noise music scene's connection at levels of content, context and form with sadomasochism, as a sensational analysis of the body as a locus of power relations, first of all through the lens of Deleuzo-Nietzschean eternal recurrence and Foucauldian genealogy in discussion with Elizabeth Freeman's theories of queer temporality and historiography. As the paper progresses, it later ruminates on Foucault's statement in "Nietzsche/Genealogy/History" that "the body is a...volume in perpetual disintegration," whose poetical paradox of eternity and entropy echoes not only noise musician Romain Perrot AKA Vomir's "Harsh Noise Wall Manifesto," but also Michel Serres' continuation of information theory, and the "cosmic pessimism" and "demontology" of Eugene Thacker. Accordingly, the phusis of power causes us to reflect on the notion of governmentality in an ultimately ungovernable universe, and the ways in which haptic / corporeal engagement with as ungovernable an artistic force such as harsh noise may provide new sensational bodily responses to power's implementation on the subject.
Federici’s analysis of the European witch-craze in the C16th-C17th, by honing in on specific prac... more Federici’s analysis of the European witch-craze in the C16th-C17th, by honing in on specific practices in relation to the (particularly female) body punished by the state as part of “primitive accumulation” - the violent transition from a mode of Feudalism to that of early Capitalism – criticises Foucault’s discussion of the change from sovereignty to biopower over the same era for its ungendered approach. However, there remains enough of a parallel - detailing alterations during the same eras in control over the same areas - to the extent that a dialogue may quite easily be formed to establish the persecution and execution of midwives, sex workers, and other women whose bodies and knowledge of bodies were sites of production as the transition to biopower, and the shift from a society of individual bodies to a population mass. Whilst Federici essentially accuses Foucault of allowing the reasons behind the transition to biopower to remain more-or-less shrouded in mystery, on account of his lack of interest in the witch-hunts, Federici’s Marxist-Feminist approach allows for patriarchal capitalism to be the cause in and of itself. This essay suggests patriarchal capitalism may in fact itself be a symptom. Thus, a third dimension may be required – one routinely engaged in the investigation of symptoms for causes: psychoanalysis.
The resemblance of this mass to the Lacanian concept of the Gestalt in addition to the influence of the establishment of privatisation via enclosures / borders allows for the abjection of accused witches to the stake and gallows (as well as criminals to Australia, slaves to the Americas etc) renders this phenomenon not merely an opportunity for comparison, but instead of actual Kristevan psychoanalysis. The mass-population-society built on capital operates as the Gestalt of one hive-mind, with the inherited neuroses of any subject aiming towards the idealised imago, thus abjecting bodies the way an individual abjects materials. Rather than society necessarily behaving as a “big Other,” it may therefore be useful to understand it rather as a “big Self.” Neurotic and paranoid, the system of Capital’s sense of inevitability and immutability may be caused by its parallel to the ideological constitution of one’s subjectivity. Therefore, if we are to break from the system of Capital, it may first be necessary to readdress bodies and concepts rendered abject by our own psyche, and strive to undo our very formation of self.
Reflecting on Carolee Schneemann's description of her film Fuses as being a response to Stan Brak... more Reflecting on Carolee Schneemann's description of her film Fuses as being a response to Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving, this essay studies both films and approaches the ways in which both form and content can be understood as similar or different, and analyses why this may be.
Following Matthew Tinkcom's analysis of the MGM Freed Unit musical aesthetic as a product and sig... more Following Matthew Tinkcom's analysis of the MGM Freed Unit musical aesthetic as a product and signifier of sexually repressed queer labour, and Kelly Kessler's documentation of the later era of musical film's shift towards a darker ambiguity, this essay takes Cabaret as an example of the transformation of queerness' expression from the former era to the latter in musical cinema
This paper puts into conversation Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" with J... more This paper puts into conversation Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" with Jacquelyn Zita's appraisal and analysis of filmmaker Barbara Hammer's work and attempt to establish a "New Lesbian Aesthetic" in the face of heterosexist hegemony.
Do performative theories of identity disenable identity politics or rather re-establish as politi... more Do performative theories of identity disenable identity politics or rather re-establish as political the very categories through which identities are articulated? This essay seeks to answer that question via Foucauldian/Butlerian analysis of the Ball culture documentary Paris is Burning.
Given at the "Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities" conference at University of Oxfor... more Given at the "Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities" conference at University of Oxford, 12/5/18
For many readers, Nietzsche exists as a philosophical paradox – a classicist in his studies, his writing contributes to and comments upon the notion of a break from tradition establish him as one of the driving forces of the modernist era. And yet, the greatest appraisals and analyses of Nietzsche’s work are at the hands of postmodernists and poststructuralists, not least of all Deleuze, Foucault and Butler. Such a paradox may be paralleled in the very concept of a Queer Modernist inquiry, considering that, by many accounts, queer theory is itself all but entirely rooted in postmodernist thought.
A solution to these paradoxes may be found through further investigation of the elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy that held such influence over postmodern theory: that of time. Between Deleuze’s reflections and elevation of Nietzsche’s proposition of eternal recurrence to the status a legitimate cosmological theory of the repetition of difference-in-itself and the continuation of generalities, and Foucault’s discussion of genealogy as analysis of the historical implications of incorporation, we break free from linearly chronological constraints.
Similarly, Elizabeth Freeman argues, queer sexual interaction, through the medium of the historically “theatrical” roleplaying sadomasochistic encounter, “us[es] the body as an instrument to rearrange time, becom[ing] a kind of écriture historique,” creating sensational echoes of the results of penal discipline centuries before, now abstracted into pleasures of repetition, within and despite the cyclical recurrence of kyriarchal generality.
Applying through queer performance and sexuality Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to the body and time, as well as remarking on the distinct similarities between Nietzsche’s theory of incorporation and Butler’s work on gender performativity, Nietzsche’s relationship with dance and musicality on his own literature becomes reinvigorated from a queer perspective. We may ask how the drag balls of Paris is Burning up to today, with their eloquent investigation of the power relations inherent in gender expression, relate to the modernist ballet, according to Susan jones, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s “rediscovery” of the Dionysian.
Ultimately, we must ask: in a world of queer-historical erasure at the hands of cisheteropatriarchal hegemonic generality, how may we as queers understand differently the call for affirmation Nietzsche makes in relation to the supposed horror of eternal recurrence?
Written as a member of the Goldsmiths 2017 Spatial Biopolitics Collective in the soon-to-be publi... more Written as a member of the Goldsmiths 2017 Spatial Biopolitics Collective in the soon-to-be published book, "The Crack-Up" approaching from various angles Deleuze and Guattari's invocation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story of the same name. Taking a relatively literal analysis of Fitzgerald's use of the term in relation to alcoholism, this paper extends the line of narcoanalytical inquiry into the socio-cultural, economic and biopolitical implications of cocaine and - of course - crack, itself. Where crack(-up)/s appear, that would normally be thought to divide, so apparently do folds and dissolves at the level of space, time and subject/object. Accordingly, the revelation of divisions but also connections where one had previously thought none to be begins to suggest that an inherently flawed - cracked - system of capitalist perpetuation and perpetuity may indeed contain within its own lines of flight.
Lexi's MA Thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" is an in-depth ... more Lexi's MA Thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" is an in-depth analysis of the noise music scene's connection at levels of content, context and form with sadomasochism, as a sensational analysis of the body as a locus of power relations, first of all through the lens of Deleuzo-Nietzschean eternal recurrence and Foucauldian genealogy in discussion with Elizabeth Freeman's theories of queer temporality and historiography. As the paper progresses, it later ruminates on Foucault's statement in "Nietzsche/Genealogy/History" that "the body is a...volume in perpetual disintegration," whose poetical paradox of eternity and entropy echoes not only noise musician Romain Perrot AKA Vomir's "Harsh Noise Wall Manifesto," but also Michel Serres' continuation of information theory, and the "cosmic pessimism" and "demontology" of Eugene Thacker. Accordingly, the phusis of power causes us to reflect on the notion of governmentality in an ultimately ungovernable universe, and the ways in which haptic / corporeal engagement with as ungovernable an artistic force such as harsh noise may provide new sensational bodily responses to power's implementation on the subject.
Federici’s analysis of the European witch-craze in the C16th-C17th, by honing in on specific prac... more Federici’s analysis of the European witch-craze in the C16th-C17th, by honing in on specific practices in relation to the (particularly female) body punished by the state as part of “primitive accumulation” - the violent transition from a mode of Feudalism to that of early Capitalism – criticises Foucault’s discussion of the change from sovereignty to biopower over the same era for its ungendered approach. However, there remains enough of a parallel - detailing alterations during the same eras in control over the same areas - to the extent that a dialogue may quite easily be formed to establish the persecution and execution of midwives, sex workers, and other women whose bodies and knowledge of bodies were sites of production as the transition to biopower, and the shift from a society of individual bodies to a population mass. Whilst Federici essentially accuses Foucault of allowing the reasons behind the transition to biopower to remain more-or-less shrouded in mystery, on account of his lack of interest in the witch-hunts, Federici’s Marxist-Feminist approach allows for patriarchal capitalism to be the cause in and of itself. This essay suggests patriarchal capitalism may in fact itself be a symptom. Thus, a third dimension may be required – one routinely engaged in the investigation of symptoms for causes: psychoanalysis.
The resemblance of this mass to the Lacanian concept of the Gestalt in addition to the influence of the establishment of privatisation via enclosures / borders allows for the abjection of accused witches to the stake and gallows (as well as criminals to Australia, slaves to the Americas etc) renders this phenomenon not merely an opportunity for comparison, but instead of actual Kristevan psychoanalysis. The mass-population-society built on capital operates as the Gestalt of one hive-mind, with the inherited neuroses of any subject aiming towards the idealised imago, thus abjecting bodies the way an individual abjects materials. Rather than society necessarily behaving as a “big Other,” it may therefore be useful to understand it rather as a “big Self.” Neurotic and paranoid, the system of Capital’s sense of inevitability and immutability may be caused by its parallel to the ideological constitution of one’s subjectivity. Therefore, if we are to break from the system of Capital, it may first be necessary to readdress bodies and concepts rendered abject by our own psyche, and strive to undo our very formation of self.
Reflecting on Carolee Schneemann's description of her film Fuses as being a response to Stan Brak... more Reflecting on Carolee Schneemann's description of her film Fuses as being a response to Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving, this essay studies both films and approaches the ways in which both form and content can be understood as similar or different, and analyses why this may be.
Following Matthew Tinkcom's analysis of the MGM Freed Unit musical aesthetic as a product and sig... more Following Matthew Tinkcom's analysis of the MGM Freed Unit musical aesthetic as a product and signifier of sexually repressed queer labour, and Kelly Kessler's documentation of the later era of musical film's shift towards a darker ambiguity, this essay takes Cabaret as an example of the transformation of queerness' expression from the former era to the latter in musical cinema
This paper puts into conversation Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" with J... more This paper puts into conversation Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" with Jacquelyn Zita's appraisal and analysis of filmmaker Barbara Hammer's work and attempt to establish a "New Lesbian Aesthetic" in the face of heterosexist hegemony.
Do performative theories of identity disenable identity politics or rather re-establish as politi... more Do performative theories of identity disenable identity politics or rather re-establish as political the very categories through which identities are articulated? This essay seeks to answer that question via Foucauldian/Butlerian analysis of the Ball culture documentary Paris is Burning.