Anthony Faramelli | Goldsmiths, University of London (original) (raw)
Monographs by Anthony Faramelli
This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between rev... more This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between revolution and fascism and an outlined proposal of a politics of resistance to these forms domination. Through an examination of the psychic conditions created by integrated world capitalism as well as by the revolutionary projects that oppose this form of financial and social organization, this book identifies the limits of revolutionary thinking. In doing so it argues that revolutionary projects are inevitably subsumed by capitalism's organization of life, causing them to reproduce the same structures of control.
Journal Articles by Anthony Faramelli
Deleuze and Guattari Studies , 2023
This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy's politically informed practice by high... more This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy's politically informed practice by highlighting two key concepts: crisis and resistance. It first briefly sketches a conceptual overview of the two concepts, paying particular attention to the complicated interactions between their political and therapeutic meanings. Following each conceptual elaboration there is a discussion exploring the ways in which the concept has been used by two key members of the institutional psychotherapy movement, Frantz Fanon and Félix Guattari.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 2023
In many ways, 2022 was a momentous year. As we slowly emerged from the global COVID-19 pandemic, ... more In many ways, 2022 was a momentous year. As we slowly emerged from the global COVID-19 pandemic, people the world over began rethinking institutions. From issues of policing, governance, territorial sovereignty, public health and, of course, mental health, the austere institutions that guarantee sociality, and which, until recently, have been understood as rigid and inert, have been called into question. The year also marked the 30th anniversary of Félix Guattari's death. Guattari's life and work constantly challenged and reinvented institutions. As a militant philosopher, psychotherapist and activist, he tirelessly sought to transform alienating institutions in order to collectively disalienate them, creating the maximum potential for freedom for the individuals who inhabit and transverse institutional arrangements. It is for this reason that there is an urgent need to revisit Guattari's work of institutional analysis.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2022
Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are... more Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are intimately intertwined and as such, any exploration of the collective unconscious must engage with how the mind is formed with and through media. This understanding of networks of interdependence necessitates an exploration of how platformization has impacted users” collective psyche. Drawing from psychosocial theory, psychoanalysis and the work of Félix Guattari, this article analizes the micropolitics of desire of digital platforms, with an explicit focus on how algorithmic structures amplify extreme Right content, allowing fascisms to metastasis throughout digital spaces. It will first examine the algorithmic architecture of social media platforms, demonstrating how these digital spaces lock in and over-code desire through recursive feedback loops that amplify extremism. Following this will be an exploration of the excess of desire that is cut off and left as a remainder partial object, termed the “fascist abject,” and what role this process plays in the production of subjectivity.
Porto Arte, 2021
This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on a... more This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on aesthetic production and the way in which an individual's freedom is dependent on the "ambience" of the space they occupy. The analysis will be grounded in Algerian colonial psychiatry and anti/de-colonial psychotherapy. Through an examination of Frantz Fanon's application of Institutional Psychotherapy in Bli-da-Joinville Hospital, this article will argue that Fanon's decolonial politics and his commitment to dis-alienation were reliant on the (re)construction of space within the hospital so as to increase what Félix Guattari would later refer to as the "coefficient of transversally". By implication, this article's argument intends to use Fanon's spatial approach to psychotherapy in order to elicit a reading of Institutional Psychotherapy en masse as having, at its heart, a focus on spatial and aesthetic production.
Resumo Este artigo examinará como o colonialismo e o racismo estratificam o espaço, com foco especial na produção estética e na forma como a liberdade de um indivíduo de-pende do "ambiente" do espaço que ele ocupa. A análise será fundamentada na psi-quiatria colonial argelina e na psicoterapia anti/de-colonial. Através de uma análise do trabalho de Frantz Fanon da Psicoterapia Institucional no Hospital Blida-Joinville, este artigo argumentará que a política decolonial de Fanon e seu compromisso com a desalienação dependeram da (re)construção do espaço dentro do hospital. Isso também se soma ao que mais tarde Félix Guattari chamaria de "coeficiente de trans-versalidade". Por implicação, o argumento deste artigo pretende utilizar a abordagem espacial de Fanon para psicoterapia, a fim de obter uma leitura da Psicoterapia Institu-cional em massa como tendo, em seu cerne, um foco na produção espacial e estética. Palavras-chave Psicoterapia institucional. Fanon. Estética. Crise. Colonialismo
Institutional Analysis is the thread that runs through and connects some of the most convincing w... more Institutional Analysis is the thread that runs through and connects some of the most convincing work being done today in philosophy and postcolonial theory. However, little work has been done in this area and no serious studies have ever been conducted in English. As such, we initially viewed this event as giving us a chance to look back and connect the dots between some of the most important therapists, militants and philosophers of the 20 th Century. However, far from being a mere historical object of study, Institutional Analysis gives us a remarkable set of tools to analyse and response to our current cultural-social-political climate. In other words, Institutional Analysis gives us the tools to confront Crisis. This paper examines the role that crisis plays in structuring our contemporary psychosocial landscape and then seeks to answer the question as to how Institutional Analysis can equip us with the tools to respond to omnipresent crisis: the tools to help resist alienation and to create spaces of liberation.
This paper appeared in the London Journal of Critical Thought, v1(2) 2017. Michel Foucault’s famo... more This paper appeared in the London Journal of Critical Thought, v1(2) 2017. Michel Foucault’s famous preoccupation with psychiatric hospitals as spaces of exile and discipline ran throughout much of his work, however what is less known is that much of this analysis stems from his engagement with Frantz Fanon’s clinical writings while Foucault was in Tunisia, where Fanon had established the open clinic. The power of Fanon’s analysis and clinical practice was his acute attention to spatial relations and his attempts to transform both clinical and urban areas from enclosed disciplinary spaces to open heterotopic zones. Fanon’s work with psychosis in colonial France and Algeria led him to a form of institutional analysis that broadened the scope of his therapeutic work beyond the clinic to colonial society as a whole, meaning that his “cure” had to be nothing less than a revolutionary transformation of society.
This paper will propose a Fanonian response to Foucault and outline the method in which Fanon sought to open up the enclosed spaces in his clinical and political practices. It will proceed by first considering Fanon’s institutional analysis of the spatial politics in colonial Algeria and his transformation of Blida Hospital into a political therapeutic community. It will then go on to examine Blida’s role in the Algerian resistance as Fanon broadening his political commitment to reverse the traditional method of psychotherapy that seeks to adjust the individual in relation to society, by addressing social problems of inequality that foster the forms of mental and emotional ill health, which Fanon referred as “pathologies of liberty.” Finally, this paper will present Fanon’s spatial practices as a unified project that sought to transform enclosed spaces of deviation into revolutionary heterotopic spaces of possibility.
This is the English language version of a paper that is forthcoming in the journal Chimères, n. 9... more This is the English language version of a paper that is forthcoming in the journal Chimères, n. 91. This paper proposes an institutional analysis of harm reduction work being done in the London metropolitan area, with a specific focus on working with people classed as "dual diagnosis".
This is the English language version of a paper that was published (in French) in the journal Chi... more This is the English language version of a paper that was published (in French) in the journal Chimères, no. 90. This paper reads Glissant against Fanon in an attempt to locate the shortfalls of Fanon's thinking on language and colonization.
This essay will draw on Soja, Bhabha and Rancière in an examination of the spatiality of " Mexico... more This essay will draw on Soja, Bhabha and Rancière in an examination of the spatiality of " Mexico " that the zapatistas have constructed throughout their numerous communiqués and in their Declarations of the Lacandón Jungle, with special attention given to the writings of Subcomandante Marcos. Drawing from a wealth of Latin American literary traditions, Marcos' writings have constructed a fluid, almost living, and expansive space of Mexico, which has little to do with geopolitical boundaries. Marcos' work builds on the spatial politics of Frantz Fanon who predicted that the coloniality, the continuing legacies colonial power and domination, of zoned urban spaces in post-colonial states would continue to create docile subjects within the cities' confined areas and sought to disrupt the centrality of urban life by shifting political power to rural areas. Although Marcos refrained from reinforcing the urban/rural binary division, and instead created a " third space " of Mexico that would allow political power to become diffuse. This essay will argue that this spatial understanding of Mexico is key to the zapatista democratic project and to their resistance to neoliberal governmentality. This argument will be developed through an analysis of the relationship between their writings, the physical space that they inhabit in the state of Chiapas and their international encuentros (gatherings or encounters). This essay will demonstrate that the relationship between these three distinct ways of constructing and inhabiting space have been characterised by an ever-present sense of movement, discovery and un-learning that lends itself to an overarching spatiality that refuses the positivist and colonial practice of cartography. That is to say: the space itself resists domination. Biography: Dr Anthony Faramelli is an Associate Lecturer at Kingston University and at University of Brighton. His research is situated at the intersection of psychosocial and postcolonial theories and the political philosophy zapatismo. He is editing a collection of essays entitled Critical Spaces: Crisis and Critique with David Hancock and Rob White for Bloomsbury Philosophy and his two forthcoming books examine political and psychosocial resistance in zapatismo.
Forthcoming, Exegesis Journal, issue 4, September 2015
Book Chapters by Anthony Faramelli
From "Serial Killing: A Philosophic Anthology" eds. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley, Schism Book... more From "Serial Killing: A Philosophic Anthology" eds. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley, Schism Books, New York.
Chapter abstract for the edited book Critical Spaces: Crisis and Critique
Conference and other Papers by Anthony Faramelli
Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference
Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference on Satur... more Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference on Saturday 30 November at Goldsmiths, university of London in room RBH137.
The conference brings together academic researchers and practicing psychoanalysts and schizoanalysts from Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay discussing how psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis have been translated into a framework for psychosocial research and therapeutic practice throughout Latin America.
Featuring presentations from:
• Miguel Denis Norambuena
• Cristóbal Durán
• Anthony Faramelli and Mariana Reyes
• Mercedes Fernandez
• Ana Minozzo Marlon
• Miguel
• Alfredo Perdomo
• Cristina Ribas
• Wanderley Santos
• Elena Vogman
• Julie Van der Wielen
Speakers consider:
• The situated postcolonial politics of these practices
• How to utilise the tools of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis in research on images of violence
• The practicalities of setting up a schzioanalytic clinic in the state hospital in Montevideo
• Mapping the psychosocial mutual support in refugee communities from Latin America in London
• The histories of movement and exchange between La Borde and Latin America
• An exploration of Félix Guattari’s time in Chile
The conference will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the publication of two new books: Cristóbal Durán’s Desear la Differencecia: Conversaciones con Félix Guattari Encuentros en Chile, 1991 (Cristobal and I are currently working on an English Translation of this book, more on that soon) and the Publication of newly translated texts by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury which we have published together in the book Psychotherapy and Materialism (2024: ICI Press)
If you can’t make it in person, there is an option to join online: https://gold-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99561889389?pwd=RpJaf3fRbodb8UTzOyhDGjC6YHf5o9.1
Meeting ID: 995 6188 9389
Passcode: 268193
Two of the talks will be in Spanish, however, there will be English Translations available for non-Spanish speakers.
Registration is open for Psychosocial Cartographies Conference in Prague, Czechia. This conferenc... more Registration is open for Psychosocial Cartographies Conference in Prague, Czechia. This conference will seek to elicit psychosocial approaches to mapping space in order to inform how we might address the spatial concerns that structure contemporary issues of race, geography, psychotherapy, ecology and politics.
The conference will include a day-long blended (in person and online) programme of panels, talks and a keynote presentation by Anne Querrien followed by a day of experiential interventions.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/psychosocial-cartographies-tickets-312095565237
Psychosocial Cartographies, 2022
CFP for Psychosocial Cartographies Prague Conference, 17 and 18 June 2022. Email proposals with a... more CFP for Psychosocial Cartographies Prague Conference, 17 and 18 June 2022. Email proposals with a brief bio to Anthony Faramelli at a.faramelli@gold.ac.uk with the subject line “Psychosocial Cartographies Abstract”
Deadline for proposal submission: Friday 15 April
Conference registration fee: 500kč / £18.00 / €21,00 for both days
See the conference website for more information:
https://www.psychosocialcartographies.com
In the United States the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) is a region marked by a particular re... more In the United States the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) is a region marked by a particular relationship to Native Americans. Home to a violent and brutal history of settler colonialism that has lead to a present-day uneasy relationship between white populations and the indigenous populations where the division is demarcated by geopolitical borders between cities and reservations, the region nevertheless aesthetically identifies itself by appropriating indigenous cultural symbols to create a particular form of kitsch art. This aesthetic has since been exported (marketed) throughout the world, often by so-called “new age” cultures and insidious ‘festival clothes,’ manifesting as a white cultural fantasy of Native American culture.
In this semi-autobiographical paper, I will argue that America’s refusal to confront its history of genocide has created a global metonymic figure of the ‘good Indian’ as a way to nullify guilt or culpability with fantasy. This fantasy, however, becomes untenable when confronted with the realities of the reservation system. Beyond the problematic discourses on recognition, I will argue that American and European cultures need to confront the history of genocide and reject the Southwestern aesthetics marketed around the globe.
This paper will be a revitalisation of Bataille's theories of community by looking at the spaces ... more This paper will be a revitalisation of Bataille's theories of community by looking at the spaces of communion that digital telecommunication have opened up. Thinking through Deleuze and Guattari's work on the "virtual," the paper will argue that digital telecommunication has opened an ever expansive space where subjects are brought in a form of communion with the potential to facilitate the formation of new subjectivities that radically break away from philosophy's traditional understandings of community. This paper will begin by briefly sketching out how schizoanalysis (the philosophic system developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) understands the formation of subjectivity and then briefly stich together a schizoanalytic understanding digital telecommunication from the fragments of Deleuze and Guattari's later work. Following that will be an schizoanalytic critique of online communities, arguing that these communities are largely " false " insofar as they lack any sense of communication and communion. These virtual " communities " serve to atomize and alienate people, reducing individuals to dividuals, numbered and controlled bodies lacking both agency and subjectivity. This paper will briefly conclude by looking at points of resistance found within political online communities. By juxtaposing Deleuze's interest in political Third Cinema and his concept of the time-image with Bataille's work on communion and sacrifice, this paper will look at how manifestations of political action are transmitted between globally diffuse activists, engendering new forms of resistant subjectivities.
Paper given at "Critical Spaces: Disorientating to Topological" 2015 conference in the critical h... more Paper given at "Critical Spaces: Disorientating to Topological" 2015 conference in the critical humanities
This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between rev... more This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between revolution and fascism and an outlined proposal of a politics of resistance to these forms domination. Through an examination of the psychic conditions created by integrated world capitalism as well as by the revolutionary projects that oppose this form of financial and social organization, this book identifies the limits of revolutionary thinking. In doing so it argues that revolutionary projects are inevitably subsumed by capitalism's organization of life, causing them to reproduce the same structures of control.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies , 2023
This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy's politically informed practice by high... more This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy's politically informed practice by highlighting two key concepts: crisis and resistance. It first briefly sketches a conceptual overview of the two concepts, paying particular attention to the complicated interactions between their political and therapeutic meanings. Following each conceptual elaboration there is a discussion exploring the ways in which the concept has been used by two key members of the institutional psychotherapy movement, Frantz Fanon and Félix Guattari.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 2023
In many ways, 2022 was a momentous year. As we slowly emerged from the global COVID-19 pandemic, ... more In many ways, 2022 was a momentous year. As we slowly emerged from the global COVID-19 pandemic, people the world over began rethinking institutions. From issues of policing, governance, territorial sovereignty, public health and, of course, mental health, the austere institutions that guarantee sociality, and which, until recently, have been understood as rigid and inert, have been called into question. The year also marked the 30th anniversary of Félix Guattari's death. Guattari's life and work constantly challenged and reinvented institutions. As a militant philosopher, psychotherapist and activist, he tirelessly sought to transform alienating institutions in order to collectively disalienate them, creating the maximum potential for freedom for the individuals who inhabit and transverse institutional arrangements. It is for this reason that there is an urgent need to revisit Guattari's work of institutional analysis.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2022
Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are... more Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are intimately intertwined and as such, any exploration of the collective unconscious must engage with how the mind is formed with and through media. This understanding of networks of interdependence necessitates an exploration of how platformization has impacted users” collective psyche. Drawing from psychosocial theory, psychoanalysis and the work of Félix Guattari, this article analizes the micropolitics of desire of digital platforms, with an explicit focus on how algorithmic structures amplify extreme Right content, allowing fascisms to metastasis throughout digital spaces. It will first examine the algorithmic architecture of social media platforms, demonstrating how these digital spaces lock in and over-code desire through recursive feedback loops that amplify extremism. Following this will be an exploration of the excess of desire that is cut off and left as a remainder partial object, termed the “fascist abject,” and what role this process plays in the production of subjectivity.
Porto Arte, 2021
This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on a... more This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on aesthetic production and the way in which an individual's freedom is dependent on the "ambience" of the space they occupy. The analysis will be grounded in Algerian colonial psychiatry and anti/de-colonial psychotherapy. Through an examination of Frantz Fanon's application of Institutional Psychotherapy in Bli-da-Joinville Hospital, this article will argue that Fanon's decolonial politics and his commitment to dis-alienation were reliant on the (re)construction of space within the hospital so as to increase what Félix Guattari would later refer to as the "coefficient of transversally". By implication, this article's argument intends to use Fanon's spatial approach to psychotherapy in order to elicit a reading of Institutional Psychotherapy en masse as having, at its heart, a focus on spatial and aesthetic production.
Resumo Este artigo examinará como o colonialismo e o racismo estratificam o espaço, com foco especial na produção estética e na forma como a liberdade de um indivíduo de-pende do "ambiente" do espaço que ele ocupa. A análise será fundamentada na psi-quiatria colonial argelina e na psicoterapia anti/de-colonial. Através de uma análise do trabalho de Frantz Fanon da Psicoterapia Institucional no Hospital Blida-Joinville, este artigo argumentará que a política decolonial de Fanon e seu compromisso com a desalienação dependeram da (re)construção do espaço dentro do hospital. Isso também se soma ao que mais tarde Félix Guattari chamaria de "coeficiente de trans-versalidade". Por implicação, o argumento deste artigo pretende utilizar a abordagem espacial de Fanon para psicoterapia, a fim de obter uma leitura da Psicoterapia Institu-cional em massa como tendo, em seu cerne, um foco na produção espacial e estética. Palavras-chave Psicoterapia institucional. Fanon. Estética. Crise. Colonialismo
Institutional Analysis is the thread that runs through and connects some of the most convincing w... more Institutional Analysis is the thread that runs through and connects some of the most convincing work being done today in philosophy and postcolonial theory. However, little work has been done in this area and no serious studies have ever been conducted in English. As such, we initially viewed this event as giving us a chance to look back and connect the dots between some of the most important therapists, militants and philosophers of the 20 th Century. However, far from being a mere historical object of study, Institutional Analysis gives us a remarkable set of tools to analyse and response to our current cultural-social-political climate. In other words, Institutional Analysis gives us the tools to confront Crisis. This paper examines the role that crisis plays in structuring our contemporary psychosocial landscape and then seeks to answer the question as to how Institutional Analysis can equip us with the tools to respond to omnipresent crisis: the tools to help resist alienation and to create spaces of liberation.
This paper appeared in the London Journal of Critical Thought, v1(2) 2017. Michel Foucault’s famo... more This paper appeared in the London Journal of Critical Thought, v1(2) 2017. Michel Foucault’s famous preoccupation with psychiatric hospitals as spaces of exile and discipline ran throughout much of his work, however what is less known is that much of this analysis stems from his engagement with Frantz Fanon’s clinical writings while Foucault was in Tunisia, where Fanon had established the open clinic. The power of Fanon’s analysis and clinical practice was his acute attention to spatial relations and his attempts to transform both clinical and urban areas from enclosed disciplinary spaces to open heterotopic zones. Fanon’s work with psychosis in colonial France and Algeria led him to a form of institutional analysis that broadened the scope of his therapeutic work beyond the clinic to colonial society as a whole, meaning that his “cure” had to be nothing less than a revolutionary transformation of society.
This paper will propose a Fanonian response to Foucault and outline the method in which Fanon sought to open up the enclosed spaces in his clinical and political practices. It will proceed by first considering Fanon’s institutional analysis of the spatial politics in colonial Algeria and his transformation of Blida Hospital into a political therapeutic community. It will then go on to examine Blida’s role in the Algerian resistance as Fanon broadening his political commitment to reverse the traditional method of psychotherapy that seeks to adjust the individual in relation to society, by addressing social problems of inequality that foster the forms of mental and emotional ill health, which Fanon referred as “pathologies of liberty.” Finally, this paper will present Fanon’s spatial practices as a unified project that sought to transform enclosed spaces of deviation into revolutionary heterotopic spaces of possibility.
This is the English language version of a paper that is forthcoming in the journal Chimères, n. 9... more This is the English language version of a paper that is forthcoming in the journal Chimères, n. 91. This paper proposes an institutional analysis of harm reduction work being done in the London metropolitan area, with a specific focus on working with people classed as "dual diagnosis".
This is the English language version of a paper that was published (in French) in the journal Chi... more This is the English language version of a paper that was published (in French) in the journal Chimères, no. 90. This paper reads Glissant against Fanon in an attempt to locate the shortfalls of Fanon's thinking on language and colonization.
This essay will draw on Soja, Bhabha and Rancière in an examination of the spatiality of " Mexico... more This essay will draw on Soja, Bhabha and Rancière in an examination of the spatiality of " Mexico " that the zapatistas have constructed throughout their numerous communiqués and in their Declarations of the Lacandón Jungle, with special attention given to the writings of Subcomandante Marcos. Drawing from a wealth of Latin American literary traditions, Marcos' writings have constructed a fluid, almost living, and expansive space of Mexico, which has little to do with geopolitical boundaries. Marcos' work builds on the spatial politics of Frantz Fanon who predicted that the coloniality, the continuing legacies colonial power and domination, of zoned urban spaces in post-colonial states would continue to create docile subjects within the cities' confined areas and sought to disrupt the centrality of urban life by shifting political power to rural areas. Although Marcos refrained from reinforcing the urban/rural binary division, and instead created a " third space " of Mexico that would allow political power to become diffuse. This essay will argue that this spatial understanding of Mexico is key to the zapatista democratic project and to their resistance to neoliberal governmentality. This argument will be developed through an analysis of the relationship between their writings, the physical space that they inhabit in the state of Chiapas and their international encuentros (gatherings or encounters). This essay will demonstrate that the relationship between these three distinct ways of constructing and inhabiting space have been characterised by an ever-present sense of movement, discovery and un-learning that lends itself to an overarching spatiality that refuses the positivist and colonial practice of cartography. That is to say: the space itself resists domination. Biography: Dr Anthony Faramelli is an Associate Lecturer at Kingston University and at University of Brighton. His research is situated at the intersection of psychosocial and postcolonial theories and the political philosophy zapatismo. He is editing a collection of essays entitled Critical Spaces: Crisis and Critique with David Hancock and Rob White for Bloomsbury Philosophy and his two forthcoming books examine political and psychosocial resistance in zapatismo.
Forthcoming, Exegesis Journal, issue 4, September 2015
From "Serial Killing: A Philosophic Anthology" eds. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley, Schism Book... more From "Serial Killing: A Philosophic Anthology" eds. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley, Schism Books, New York.
Chapter abstract for the edited book Critical Spaces: Crisis and Critique
Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference
Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference on Satur... more Psychoanalysis, Schizoanalysis and Pluralism: Perspectives from Latin America conference on Saturday 30 November at Goldsmiths, university of London in room RBH137.
The conference brings together academic researchers and practicing psychoanalysts and schizoanalysts from Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay discussing how psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis have been translated into a framework for psychosocial research and therapeutic practice throughout Latin America.
Featuring presentations from:
• Miguel Denis Norambuena
• Cristóbal Durán
• Anthony Faramelli and Mariana Reyes
• Mercedes Fernandez
• Ana Minozzo Marlon
• Miguel
• Alfredo Perdomo
• Cristina Ribas
• Wanderley Santos
• Elena Vogman
• Julie Van der Wielen
Speakers consider:
• The situated postcolonial politics of these practices
• How to utilise the tools of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis in research on images of violence
• The practicalities of setting up a schzioanalytic clinic in the state hospital in Montevideo
• Mapping the psychosocial mutual support in refugee communities from Latin America in London
• The histories of movement and exchange between La Borde and Latin America
• An exploration of Félix Guattari’s time in Chile
The conference will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the publication of two new books: Cristóbal Durán’s Desear la Differencecia: Conversaciones con Félix Guattari Encuentros en Chile, 1991 (Cristobal and I are currently working on an English Translation of this book, more on that soon) and the Publication of newly translated texts by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury which we have published together in the book Psychotherapy and Materialism (2024: ICI Press)
If you can’t make it in person, there is an option to join online: https://gold-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99561889389?pwd=RpJaf3fRbodb8UTzOyhDGjC6YHf5o9.1
Meeting ID: 995 6188 9389
Passcode: 268193
Two of the talks will be in Spanish, however, there will be English Translations available for non-Spanish speakers.
Registration is open for Psychosocial Cartographies Conference in Prague, Czechia. This conferenc... more Registration is open for Psychosocial Cartographies Conference in Prague, Czechia. This conference will seek to elicit psychosocial approaches to mapping space in order to inform how we might address the spatial concerns that structure contemporary issues of race, geography, psychotherapy, ecology and politics.
The conference will include a day-long blended (in person and online) programme of panels, talks and a keynote presentation by Anne Querrien followed by a day of experiential interventions.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/psychosocial-cartographies-tickets-312095565237
Psychosocial Cartographies, 2022
CFP for Psychosocial Cartographies Prague Conference, 17 and 18 June 2022. Email proposals with a... more CFP for Psychosocial Cartographies Prague Conference, 17 and 18 June 2022. Email proposals with a brief bio to Anthony Faramelli at a.faramelli@gold.ac.uk with the subject line “Psychosocial Cartographies Abstract”
Deadline for proposal submission: Friday 15 April
Conference registration fee: 500kč / £18.00 / €21,00 for both days
See the conference website for more information:
https://www.psychosocialcartographies.com
In the United States the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) is a region marked by a particular re... more In the United States the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) is a region marked by a particular relationship to Native Americans. Home to a violent and brutal history of settler colonialism that has lead to a present-day uneasy relationship between white populations and the indigenous populations where the division is demarcated by geopolitical borders between cities and reservations, the region nevertheless aesthetically identifies itself by appropriating indigenous cultural symbols to create a particular form of kitsch art. This aesthetic has since been exported (marketed) throughout the world, often by so-called “new age” cultures and insidious ‘festival clothes,’ manifesting as a white cultural fantasy of Native American culture.
In this semi-autobiographical paper, I will argue that America’s refusal to confront its history of genocide has created a global metonymic figure of the ‘good Indian’ as a way to nullify guilt or culpability with fantasy. This fantasy, however, becomes untenable when confronted with the realities of the reservation system. Beyond the problematic discourses on recognition, I will argue that American and European cultures need to confront the history of genocide and reject the Southwestern aesthetics marketed around the globe.
This paper will be a revitalisation of Bataille's theories of community by looking at the spaces ... more This paper will be a revitalisation of Bataille's theories of community by looking at the spaces of communion that digital telecommunication have opened up. Thinking through Deleuze and Guattari's work on the "virtual," the paper will argue that digital telecommunication has opened an ever expansive space where subjects are brought in a form of communion with the potential to facilitate the formation of new subjectivities that radically break away from philosophy's traditional understandings of community. This paper will begin by briefly sketching out how schizoanalysis (the philosophic system developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) understands the formation of subjectivity and then briefly stich together a schizoanalytic understanding digital telecommunication from the fragments of Deleuze and Guattari's later work. Following that will be an schizoanalytic critique of online communities, arguing that these communities are largely " false " insofar as they lack any sense of communication and communion. These virtual " communities " serve to atomize and alienate people, reducing individuals to dividuals, numbered and controlled bodies lacking both agency and subjectivity. This paper will briefly conclude by looking at points of resistance found within political online communities. By juxtaposing Deleuze's interest in political Third Cinema and his concept of the time-image with Bataille's work on communion and sacrifice, this paper will look at how manifestations of political action are transmitted between globally diffuse activists, engendering new forms of resistant subjectivities.
Paper given at "Critical Spaces: Disorientating to Topological" 2015 conference in the critical h... more Paper given at "Critical Spaces: Disorientating to Topological" 2015 conference in the critical humanities
What is needed is a decolonized communism, not a north/south divide but a decolonization of the m... more What is needed is a decolonized communism, not a north/south divide but a decolonization of the mind.
When commenting on the job of the subaltern historian, and I believe that Frantz Fanon would have... more When commenting on the job of the subaltern historian, and I believe that Frantz Fanon would have included the revolutionary here as well, Partha Chatterjee has noted that:
Spaces of Crisis and Critique: Heterotopias Beyond Foucault (Bloomsbury), 2018
In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was ... more In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was an era of crisis and an accumulated past, the present epoch will perhaps be one of space. In his essay Foucault coined the term “heterotopias” to signify other spaces that effectively enact utopic spaces in which, “the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however in the modern epoch heterotopias of crisis have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Rather than disappearing, as Foucault contends, this brief essay can be read as a call to think through how spaces of crisis and critique are in fact still functioning to open up disruptive, subversive or minoritarian fields within already existing discourses, be they philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic.
This book draws on philosophic, aesthetic and political discourses to formulate an interdisciplinary approach to the spatial that aims to rupture not only the particularities of spatial discourses, but the very possibility of thought itself through challenging existing borders, boundaries, horizons, surfaces and planes. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault’s call to think through spaces of crisis and critique in order to give us a better understanding of our present epoch.
In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was ... more In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was an era of crisis and an accumulated past, the present epoch will perhaps be one of space. In his essay Foucault coined the term “heterotopias” to signify other spaces that effectively enact utopic spaces in which, “the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however in the modern epoch heterotopias of crisis have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Rather than disappearing, as Foucault contends, this brief essay can be read as a call to think through how spaces of crisis and critique are in fact still functioning to open up disruptive, subversive or minoritarian fields within already existing discourses, be they philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic.
This book draws on philosophic, aesthetic and political discourses to formulate an interdisciplinary approach to the spatial that aims to rupture not only the particularities of spatial discourses, but the very possibility of thought itself through challenging existing borders, boundaries, horizons, surfaces and planes. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault’s call to think through spaces of crisis and critique in order to give us a better understanding of our present epoch.
Abstract for my PhD, awarded 5 November 2014
Deleuze and Guattari studies, May 1, 2023
This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy’s politically informed practice by high... more This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy’s politically informed practice by highlighting two key concepts: crisis and resistance. It first briefly sketches a conceptual overview of the two concepts, paying particular attention to the complicated interactions between their political and therapeutic meanings. Following each conceptual elaboration there is a discussion exploring the ways in which the concept has been used by two key members of the institutional psychotherapy movement, Frantz Fanon and Félix Guattari.
Deleuze and Guattari studies, May 1, 2023
This thesis explores the relationship between revolution and fascism. While subjectivities produc... more This thesis explores the relationship between revolution and fascism. While subjectivities produced by revolution are assumed to be inherently antifascist, through a sustained analysis of contemporary theories of revolution and the theory and praxis of Frantz Fanon, this thesis will argue that revolution's bio- politics, Prometheanism and accelerated temporality inevitably cause revolutionary projects to reproduce the very fascistic structures they intended to dismantle. This thesis will conclude with an analysis of zapatismo, the theoretical praxis of the zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Arguing against reading zapatismo as a classic Marxist revolutionary system or Orientalizing it within anthropological terms, this thesis will demonstrate how zapatismo functions as what Felix Guattari terms a “metamodel”, and opens up a system of revolutionary change that is achieved through a practice of constant resistance. As it is used in this thesis, fascism is explicitly not limited to statist manifestations of totalitarian regimes, what will be termed “macro” fascisms. Rather fascism represents any form of domination of one group over another. This is explicitly not limited to totalitarian states, but also located within smaller social groups and individuals, what Deleuze and Guattari termed “microfascisms”. The term fascism is intended to have an affective response and through its use this thesis intends to illicit a critical reading that would make an internal diagnostic mechanism, a mechanism for movements to analyse the ways in which power operates within the movement, integral to all revolutionary projects.
CLCWeb, Jan 29, 2023
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Deleuze and Guattari studies, Nov 1, 2022
Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible fo... more Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible for the current social-psychic-ecological crisis of migration demand modes of analysis capable of grasping their complexity, ones grounded in the ethico-aesthetic. It is a text that draws directly from the therapeutic practice that he, Tosquelles, Oury, and others in the Institutional Psychotherapy (IP) movement developed in their clinics. This work entailed the inclusion of aesthetic practices that work to deterritorialise the institution, shifting from carceral sites and creating therapeutic spaces of care and refuge. This article explores the centrality of an ethico-aesthetic approach to the understanding of therapeutic space within the sites and clinical practice of Institutional Psychotherapy. Looking especially at daily life and the inclusion of aesthetic practice, it examines the particular notion of asylum that emerged in these sites that so informed the clinical and critical work of Guattari and Deleuze, and draws connections to the current global crisis of migration in the necessity of such sites to the forced segregation between those deemed mad and sane.
Porto Arte, Dec 23, 2020
This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on a... more This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on aesthetic production and the way in which an individual's freedom is dependent on the "ambience" of the space they occupy. The analysis will be grounded in Algerian colonial psychiatry and anti/de-colonial psychotherapy. Through an examination of Frantz Fanon's application of Institutional Psychotherapy in Blida-Joinville Hospital, this article will argue that Fanon's decolonial politics and his commitment to dis-alienation were reliant on the (re)construction of space within the hospital so as to increase what Félix Guattari would later refer to as the "coefficient of transversally". By implication, this article's argument intends to use Fanon's spatial approach to psychotherapy in order to elicit a reading of Institutional Psychotherapy en masse as having, at its heart, a focus on spatial and aesthetic production. Key Words Institutional psychotherapy. Fanon. Aesthetics. Crisis. Coloniality. Resumo Este artigo examinará como o colonialismo e o racismo estratificam o espaço, com foco especial na produção estética e na forma como a liberdade de um indivíduo depende do "ambiente" do espaço que ele ocupa. A análise será fundamentada na psiquiatria colonial argelina e na psicoterapia anti/de-colonial. Através de uma análise do trabalho de Frantz Fanon da Psicoterapia Institucional no Hospital Blida-Joinville, este artigo argumentará que a política decolonial de Fanon e seu compromisso com a desalienação dependeram da (re)construção do espaço dentro do hospital. Isso também se soma ao que mais tarde Félix Guattari chamaria de "coeficiente de transversalidade". Por implicação, o argumento deste artigo pretende utilizar a abordagem espacial de Fanon para psicoterapia, a fim de obter uma leitura da Psicoterapia Institucional em massa como tendo, em seu cerne, um foco na produção espacial e estética.
International Journal of Art and Design Education, Nov 1, 2020
In politics and philosophy, the question of horizons, the vanishing point that is always out of r... more In politics and philosophy, the question of horizons, the vanishing point that is always out of reach, but provides direction and guidance, underpins utopic thinking. This is a strange phenomenon since, as Jodi Dean suggests, horizons are ‘real’ insofar as they exist both spatially and temporally. Dean invokes the Lacanian concept of the real to demonstrate how horizons are omnipresent, even when we are unable to see them. Here, we disagree with Dean. Rather than view them as a fixed and constant entity, with Deleuze & Guattari we agree that horizons, understood as spaces of possibility, must be constructed through communal enunciations of desire. Following Dean's (re)formulation of horizons alongside of Deleuze & Guattari's concept of desire, we propose that Foucault's idea of ‘heterotopia’, a real, but inverted and potentially uncomfortable counter‐site, is a better schema for thinking the possibilities of arts education's horizon. This article thinks through the construction of other, emancipated, spaces of learning in arts education through the methodological approach of institutional analysis and the work done by the Institutional Pedagogy movement in post‐war France. Drawing from this movement, the work of Fernand Oury and Aïda Vasquez and Félix Guattari, ‘institution’ here is understood loosely as anything that institutes forms of sociability. As such, institutional analysis seeks to radically transform institutions from within and without by creating spaces to facilitate the reconfiguration of desire. Our analysis will be grounded in our own pedagogical practices in universities where we have made use of the techniques of Institutional Pedagogy.
Film Criticism, Sep 1, 2019
2018’s Black Panther is arguably a revolutionary film. Revolutionary as it is the first blockbust... more 2018’s Black Panther is arguably a revolutionary film. Revolutionary as it is the first blockbuster superhero film that features a predominately black cast, allowing people of color to see themselves represented in the film’s heroes. It also places women of color in the forefront of the action, breaking down common sexist tropes within the superhero genre. Beyond those issues of representation, Black Panther recreates what is possibly the most significant and enduring debate in radical politics, the debate between resistance and revolution. Indeed, it was this debate, personified by the conflict between Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, which terminally fractured the Black Panther Party. This article first looks at Black Panther’s use of space and setting (Oakland, California versus the fictional utopic Wakanda) in an analysis of the formation of conflictual black political identities. The article then examines how the conflict between the protagonist, the Wakandan king and Black Panther T’Challa, and the principle antagonist Eric “Killmonger” Stevens, recreates the pivotal debate, a debate that defines much of radical politics. Finally, this article uses Edward Soja’s concept of “Thirdspace” to examine the character of Nakia, arguing that she presents an alternative resistant approach to black emancipation.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies
Deleuze and Guattari Studies
This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy’s politically informed practice by high... more This article seeks to explore institutional psychotherapy’s politically informed practice by highlighting two key concepts: crisis and resistance. It first briefly sketches a conceptual overview of the two concepts, paying particular attention to the complicated interactions between their political and therapeutic meanings. Following each conceptual elaboration there is a discussion exploring the ways in which the concept has been used by two key members of the institutional psychotherapy movement, Frantz Fanon and Félix Guattari.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Deleuze and Guattari Studies
Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible fo... more Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible for the current social-psychic-ecological crisis of migration demand modes of analysis capable of grasping their complexity, ones grounded in the ethico-aesthetic. It is a text that draws directly from the therapeutic practice that he, Tosquelles, Oury, and others in the Institutional Psychotherapy (IP) movement developed in their clinics. This work entailed the inclusion of aesthetic practices that work to deterritorialise the institution, shifting from carceral sites and creating therapeutic spaces of care and refuge. This article explores the centrality of an ethico-aesthetic approach to the understanding of therapeutic space within the sites and clinical practice of Institutional Psychotherapy. Looking especially at daily life and the inclusion of aesthetic practice, it examines the particular notion of asylum that emerged in these sites that so informed the clinical and critical work ...
This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between rev... more This book is an in depth analysis of the intrinsic, but under-theorized, relationship between revolution and fascism and an outlined proposal of a politics of resistance to these forms domination. Through an examination of the psychic conditions created by integrated world capitalism as well as by the revolutionary projects that oppose this form of financial and social organization, this book identifies the limits of revolutionary thinking. In doing so it argues that revolutionary projects are inevitably subsumed by capitalism's organization of life, causing them to reproduce the same structures of control.
Bataille and Film: Sovereignty, Laughter and the Gift of Death From three research students whose... more Bataille and Film: Sovereignty, Laughter and the Gift of Death From three research students whose work concentrates on Georges Bataille, this panel will focus on specific areas of Bataillean philosophy as it relates to film. PAPER 1: “And your poetry will now be written in blood”: Sovereignty as materialist rebellion in Dead Man By Erin K Stapleton Kingston University, London Woven around a character who shares a name with the famous poet, Bill Blake, Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man , entangles the Nietzschean narrative of Zarathustra and the tightrope walker to create an intoxicating material effect of sovereignty circulating within an extended experience of death. In his essay “Base Materialism and Gnosticism”, Georges Bataille makes it clear that materialism is not to stand in for anything else, is not symbolic, or ideological, but rather, “matter as an active principle” (Bataille, 1985: 47). This approach to matter exposes the uselessness of superior ideals, by submitting itse...
In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was ... more In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault asserted that while the 19th Century was an era of crisis and an accumulated past, the present epoch will perhaps be one of space. In his essay Foucault coined the term “heterotopias” to signify other spaces that effectively enact utopic spaces in which, “the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however in the modern epoch heterotopias of crisis have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Rather than disappearing, as Foucault contends, this brief essay can be read as a call to think through how spaces of crisis and critique are in fact still functioning to open up disruptive, subversive or minoritarian fields within already existing discourses, be they philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic. This book draws on philosophic, aesthetic and political discourses to formulate an interdisciplinary approach to the spatial that aims to rupture not only the particularities of spatial discourses, but the very possibility of thought itself through challenging existing borders, boundaries, horizons, surfaces and planes. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault’s call to think through spaces of crisis and critique in order to give us a better understanding of our present epoch.
PORTO ARTE: Revista de Artes Visuais, 2020
This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on a... more This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on aesthetic production and the way in which an individual's freedom is dependent on the "ambience" of the space they occupy. The analysis will be grounded in Algerian colonial psychiatry and anti/de-colonial psychotherapy. Through an examination of Frantz Fanon's application of Institutional Psychotherapy in Blida-Joinville Hospital, this article will argue that Fanon's decolonial politics and his commitment to dis-alienation were reliant on the (re)construction of space within the hospital so as to increase what Félix Guattari would later refer to as the "coefficient of transversally". By implication, this article's argument intends to use Fanon's spatial approach to psychotherapy in order to elicit a reading of Institutional Psychotherapy en masse as having, at its heart, a focus on spatial and aesthetic production. Key Words Institutional psychotherapy. Fanon. Aesthetics. Crisis. Coloniality. Resumo Este artigo examinará como o colonialismo e o racismo estratificam o espaço, com foco especial na produção estética e na forma como a liberdade de um indivíduo depende do "ambiente" do espaço que ele ocupa. A análise será fundamentada na psiquiatria colonial argelina e na psicoterapia anti/de-colonial. Através de uma análise do trabalho de Frantz Fanon da Psicoterapia Institucional no Hospital Blida-Joinville, este artigo argumentará que a política decolonial de Fanon e seu compromisso com a desalienação dependeram da (re)construção do espaço dentro do hospital. Isso também se soma ao que mais tarde Félix Guattari chamaria de "coeficiente de transversalidade". Por implicação, o argumento deste artigo pretende utilizar a abordagem espacial de Fanon para psicoterapia, a fim de obter uma leitura da Psicoterapia Institucional em massa como tendo, em seu cerne, um foco na produção espacial e estética.
Bataille and Film: Sovereignty, Laughter and the Gift of Death From three research students whose... more Bataille and Film: Sovereignty, Laughter and the Gift of Death From three research students whose work concentrates on Georges Bataille, this panel will focus on specific areas of Bataillean philosophy as it relates to film. PAPER 1: “And your poetry will now be written in blood”: Sovereignty as materialist rebellion in Dead Man By Erin K Stapleton Kingston University, London Woven around a character who shares a name with the famous poet, Bill Blake, Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man , entangles the Nietzschean narrative of Zarathustra and the tightrope walker to create an intoxicating material effect of sovereignty circulating within an extended experience of death. In his essay “Base Materialism and Gnosticism”, Georges Bataille makes it clear that materialism is not to stand in for anything else, is not symbolic, or ideological, but rather, “matter as an active principle” (Bataille, 1985: 47). This approach to matter exposes the uselessness of superior ideals, by submitting itse...