Denis Petrina | Lithuanian Culture Research Institute (original) (raw)
Conference Presentations by Denis Petrina
The conference 'Post-Pandemic Condition: Biopolitics in the Aftermath of the COVID-19' revisits t... more The conference 'Post-Pandemic Condition: Biopolitics in the Aftermath of the COVID-19' revisits the concept of biopolitics by asking how the pandemic has redefined the political field and what new concepts and prospects it can offer for conceptualising our post-pandemic condition. The worldwide health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly signalled the need to reconsider, modify, and even transform the notion of biopolitics. Numerous attempts to do so were ranging from nearly apocalyptic visions of entirely 'negative' biopolitics, such as Giorgio Agamben's collection of brief essays Where Are We Now? (2021), to surveillance-friendly 'positive' biopolitics, exemplified by Benjamin Bratton's The Revenge of the Real (2021). Most of these, however, were published at the very peak of the pandemic, and therefore mostly based on different approaches of national governments towards the management of the pandemic and their implementation, and not the consequences of the pandemic biopolitics itself.
The conference “Immunity and Contagion: Philosophical Approaches toward the Pandemic” will seek t... more The conference “Immunity and Contagion: Philosophical Approaches toward the Pandemic” will seek to reconceptualize the notions of immunity and contagion and redefine the concept of biopolitics in the current crisis caused by the COVID-19. We invite scholars from different philosophical backgrounds to consider key questions that constitute and are constituted by the concepts of immunity and contagion.
In his text on pornography, Cesare Cassarino makes an argument that pornography is very much simi... more In his text on pornography, Cesare Cassarino makes an argument that pornography is very much similar to the revolution, as both drastically reshape the perception of time. Chronological time is transformed into cairological (or pornocairological): the pleasure of meaningful present destroys the coherent narrative of then and now (or then thus now). From this viewpoint, not only does cairos change the concept of time, but offers new affective regimes, inviting the subject to embrace new experiences, too. On the other hand, if we were to perceive pornography as visual re/production of sex, and supplement this statement with Foucault’s remark made in “The History of Sexuality” that biopower, in fact, produces sex, Cassarino’s praise for the inherently revolutionary praxis of pornography seems rather precipitate.
In my presentation, I am going to argue that pornography is intrinsically linked with biopower that Foucault associated with neoliberalism and demonstrate how biopower blends the visual and the affective to make the subject transgress beyond the limits of linear everyday life and occupy the most intimate domain – pleasure and sexuality. Mainly drawing on Beatriz Preciado argument that in the contemporary era, which she has conceptualized as “pharmacopornographic”, it is pornography that highly contributes to the production of subjectivity, and the concept of “biomedia” elaborated by Patricia Clough, I will show les liaisons dangereuse among the visual (the media), the affective and the biological.
Ultimately, I am offering to contemplate possible ways of liberating cairos – and here I will closely look at Deleuze’s notion of “orgiastic representation” and illustrate it with contemporary visual artworks.
„Jie vis dar pakibę ore šios erdvės ribose ką tik atsidariusios Dėl jų galiu padaryti tik du daly... more „Jie vis dar pakibę ore
šios erdvės ribose
ką tik atsidariusios
Dėl jų galiu padaryti tik du dalykus –
aprašyti jų skrydį
ir nerašyti paskutinės eilutės “, –
taip lenkų poetė Wislawa Szymborska aprašė rugsėjo vienuoliktosios tragedijos nuotrauką. Poetės sprendimas „nerašyti paskutinės eilutės“ yra tarsi kvietimas tylos minute pagerbti žuvusiuosius. Sykiu šią tylos poetiką papildo noras „aprašyti jų skrydį”, skausmingas bandymas atrasti tinkamus kalbos resursus tam, kas iš esmės priešinasi bet kokiam aprašymui, pačiai kalbai, išsakyti: gedėjimui. Kalbėti ir tylėti – du gedėjimo scenarijai, kurie, vis dėlto, nėra atskirti disjunkcija AR, bet yra sujungti, juos mėginama mąstyti drauge: „aprašyti” ir „nerašyti”.
Be abejo, praradimo skausmas yra didžiausias, kai netenkama artimo žmogaus: bičiulio, giminaičio arba mylimojo – žodžiu, draugo, žmogaus, su kuriuo mus siejo philia ryšys. Tokio praradimo siaubą galima pajausti dar intensyviau, įkontekstinus jį į Aristotelio citatą. Anot Aristotelio, draugystė yra „viena siela dviejuose kūnuose”.
Kas atsitinka, kai vienas kūnas miršta? Ar kažkokia svarbi sielos dalis, kuri dar neseniai buvo gyva ir teikė džiaugsmo, miršta drauge su kūnu? Ar kūnas, išgyvenęs kitą kūną, yra tarsi pasmerktas gyventi su mirties pažymėta siela – siela, kurios vienam kūnui yra per daug?
Konf. Galia, diskursas ir subjektas: Michelio Foucault mąstymo paradigma, LKTI, 2016
International conference "The Many Faces of Social Media", VMU, 2016
International conference "Roland Barthes' Time", VU/EHU, 2015
Konf. Prasmės klausimas šiuolaikinėje filosofijoje, MRU, 2015 m.
Papers by Denis Petrina
Athena: filosofijos studijos, 2021
The aim of this article is to present, discuss and critically reflect the emerging in media studi... more The aim of this article is to present, discuss and critically reflect the emerging in media studies notion of biomedia, which refutes the alleged dichotomy between technology and the body. In the broadest sense, biomedia can be construed as a particular way of mediation whereby the media directly affect and transform the biological dimension of the body and vice versa. The article opens with the discussion of the context in which biomedia emerge – the societies of control (G. Deleuze). In the this first part, the genesis of the concept of biomedia is discussed, as well as two conceptual paradigms – epistemological (E. Thacker’s “dark media”) and ethical (M. Fuller, A. Goffey’s “gray media”) are presented. In the second part, the nexus between biomedia and the cyberbiopolitical regime is highlighted, as well as a peculiar form of biopower, functioning through biomedia – neuropower (W. Neidich) is presented. Ultimately, two potential resistance lines (negative and critical) are examined.
Media Transformations, 2016
The article opens up with a discussion about two scientific attitudes towards the interrelation b... more The article opens up with a discussion about two scientific attitudes towards the interrelation between politics and social networks: practical and discursive. Starting with an endeavor to problematize the very possibility of politics on social networks, the second, discursive attitude, is investigated. First, argued is the fact that there are two breaks between political action and social networks: the absence of continuity between politics and media, and the agency-structure break. In either case, the intermediary link is discourse, which produces certain subjectivity of a political agent. Next, Foucaldian theory of discourse and subject is applied in order to examine the discursive resources that are used by the user to construct itself as the subject of politics. Finally, two symptomatic examples of medialized political actions on social networks, namely " share if care " and changing the color of the profile photo, are analyzed in attempt to prove that " media " (rather than " political ") component prevails, which reinforces a critical view on political actions on social networks.
Trópos. Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Criticism, 2020
This essay argues that current neoliberal regime is primarily characterized by synchronicity as i... more This essay argues that current neoliberal regime is primarily characterized by synchronicity as its main mode of temporality. My claim is that despite the apparent impression that the imperative of synchronicity enhances the subject’s capacity to act in time and therefore shape her future, it instead hinders it. This observation leads to a critical re–examination of the dominant mode of temporality and necessitates the development of a new conceptual apparatus that accounts for both synchronical production of subjectivity and intrinsic to it (bio)political implications. I offer the synthetic notion of synchronobiopolitics as a means to look closely at how contempo- rary biopower synchronizes with subject’s productive affects and, vice versa, makes her synchronize with it. The essay starts with the analysis of precarious socioeconomic conditions of production and then moves to the exploration of epistemontological premises of synchronobiopolitics, so as to provide a detailed account of the affective mechanics of the latter. Particular attention is paid to the problem of the future, its construction under synchrobiopolitical conditions, and possible ways to resist syn- chronization and thus participate in the production of alternative future(s).
Athena: Filosofijos studijos, 2018
Šis straipsnis - atsakas į Derrida raginimą "reabilituoti" Vakarų filosofijos subjektą. Todėl, vi... more Šis straipsnis - atsakas į Derrida raginimą "reabilituoti" Vakarų filosofijos subjektą. Todėl, viena vertus, straipsnyje yra vykdoma klasikinės subjekto sąvokos interpretacijos kritika ir revizija, kita vertus-(re)konstruojama alternatyvi subjekto samprata. Šioms užduotims atlikti pasitelkiamas deridiško poststruktūralizmo ir afekto teorijos (daugiausia delioziškos versijos) potencialas - kaip dviejų filosofinių prieigų, skirtingais būdais kvestionuojančių tradicinę subjekto sampratą ir sykiu plėtojančių originalią subjekto koncepciją. Subjekto sąvokos kritika / revizija vykdoma trimis kryptimis: konceptualine, fenomenologine ir ontologine. Tokia "mišria" prieiga bandoma įrodyti, jog, nepaisant teorinių, konceptualinių ir praktinių skirtumų, poststruktūralizmas ir afekto teorija iš esmės aptinka tuos pačius klasikinės subjekto sąvokos probleminius mazgus.
Michelis Foucault biopolitikos sąvoką sieja su politiniame diskurse atsiradusia populiacijos figū... more Michelis Foucault biopolitikos sąvoką sieja su politiniame diskurse atsiradusia populiacijos figūra, kuri ilgainiui tapo politizuota pačios gyvybės figūra. Viena vertus, tai reiškia, kad politika yra biologizuojama, nes naujos galios (biogalios) užduotis tampa per populiacijas valdyti gyvybę; kita vertus, gyvybės kaip tokios politizavimas atrodo problemiškas, pirmiausia todėl, kad pati savaime gyvybė yra imanentiškai rezistencinė, besipriešinanti bet kokiems būdams ją užvaldyti. Šiame straipsnyje populiacijos yra nagrinėjamos iš afekto – gyvybingumo, galimybės veikti arba būti paveiktam/ai – perspektyvos, bei mėginama atsakyti į klausimą, kokiais būdais biogalia sukiekybina afektą, kuris nėra apskaičiuojamas ir pačia savo prigimtimi prieštarauja bet kokiai tvarkai. Siekiant atsakyti į šį klausimą, nagrinėjama Foucault dispozityvo sąvoka bei jos santykis su populiacijomis, rekonstruojama populiacijos sampratos genealogija, galiausiai, naujos sukiekybinančios galios technologijos yra priešpriešinamos kokybiniam afekto pokyčiui.
The goal of this paper is to scrutinize how the phenomenon of digital poetry is related to the c... more The goal of this paper is to scrutinize how the phenomenon of digital poetry is related to the culture of late capitalism and how reification transforms the semantics of the digital poetry genre. e performed analysis reveals that reification of lyrical discourse is a distinctive feature of digital poetry, thus, there is the influence of the culture of late capitalism on the semantics of this poetic genre. Reification as a semantic dimension of digital poetry is characterized by such textual symptoms as alienation, irrationality, dystopia, serialization, simplification, spectacularity, the aestheticization of consumption as well as the dominant role of the political rather than the poetic. Digital poetry is analyzed from the perspective of discursive practices (the digital environment) as well as social practices (the practices symptomatic of late capitalism). Finally, possible counter-practices aimed at overcoming lyrical discourse reification are taken into consideration.
Keywords: digital poetry, reification, late capitalism, critical theory, Marxist literary criticism, CDA (critical discourse analysis).
In "Visual Propaganda of Personal Care during the Stalinist Cultural Revolution" I explore how pu... more In "Visual Propaganda of Personal Care during the Stalinist Cultural Revolution" I explore how public service messages were used to cement socialist ideology and help create the "new Soviet man."
Thesis Chapters by Denis Petrina
![Research paper thumbnail of (Beveik) nieko politika: (į/iš)kūnijant afektyviąją subjektyvybę / The Politics of (Almost) Nothing: (dis)Embodying the Affective Subjectivity [MA thesis/magistro darbas]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/53273198/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The title of this paper – “The Politics of (Almost) Nothing: dis/Embodying the Political Subjecti... more The title of this paper – “The Politics of (Almost) Nothing: dis/Embodying the Political Subjectivity” – includes the key categories that are analyzed in this paper: the affect, the body, the political subjectivity. In traditional, rational political theories the affect is either considered “nothing” (that is, there have been no attempts to conceptualize it) or is granted only a marginal conceptual place. It has become possible to consider the body and immanent to it affectivity as a part of politics only since the occurrence of a new political paradigm – biopolitics – which, in the broadest sense, reflects upon the nexus between politics and life. In this paper, different biopolitical theories are analyzed from the perspective of the body, as a prerequisite for the subjectivity (the political subjectivity is no exception), while the key question is “What can a body do?”
Books by Denis Petrina
ECO-CONCEPTS CRITICAL REFLECTIONS IN EMERGING ECOCRITICAL THEORY AND ECOLOGICAL THOUGHT, 2024
What happens when we move from reason to affect? What, after all, is affect? And what – borrowing... more What happens when we move from reason to affect? What, after all, is affect? And what – borrowing the term from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – lines of flight (32) does it offer? First and foremost, affect does not equal emotion (as it might appear at first sight): as argued by Brian Massumi, emotion is only a (subjectified and rationalized) remainder of affective content (28) – thus affect is not something that is uniquely human. To experience affect, one does not need to be a human, to have reason, or even, strictly speaking, be ‘alive’ – instead, what one needs is to be entangled in a network of relations with others. This entanglement, relationality, (co-, inter-, infra-, …)dependence is the starting point of what I call in this paper ‘affective ecocriticism’ – ecocriticism that operates from the difficult to grasp conceptually yet very tangible and palpable position of affect. The introduction of the affective dimension into ecocriticism allows us to rethink our ‘locatedness’ in larger ecosystems from the perspectives of interconnectedness (immanent ontology, Spinoza), molecular actors (‘becoming-molecule’, Deleuze and Guattari), caused by the feeling of ‘doom and gloom’ negative sentiments (‘affect aliens and killjoys’, Ahmed), speculative analytics (‘staying with the trouble’, Haraway) and, ultimately, based on those accounts, to attempt to answer the question of how we could imagine a brighter tomorrow (ethics of care, Grosz, Braidotti).
Living and Thinking in the Postdigital World: Theories, Experieces, Explorations (Szymon Wrobel, Krzysztof Skonieczny (eds.)), 2021
In 1992, Gilles Deleuze established a frame to analyze new taxonomies of power, based less on dis... more In 1992, Gilles Deleuze established a frame to analyze new taxonomies of power, based less on disciplinary power than on “free-floating” control. Tech- nologically, this novel society of control breaks from disciplinary societies that mainly relied on energy-producing mechanisms, employing much more com- plex machines – computers. This paper argues that the shift from machines to computers is not merely a technologically induced reconfiguration of the socioeconomic field but, more importantly, a biopolitical one, for it establishes a new regime that targets, governs, and controls subjects, their minds and bodies – that is, their affects. In the digital environment, the latter is captured and transformed by algorithms – the operational principle of the machines mentioned above. Thus, this paper aims to examine a biopolitical framing of algorithm-driven media closely, discuss how algorithms function as biopower mechanisms, and, finally, raise a question whether (and how) it would be pos- sible to resist becoming algorithmic biopower.
KEYWORDS:
algorithms, affect, control, apparatus of security, biopolitics
The conference 'Post-Pandemic Condition: Biopolitics in the Aftermath of the COVID-19' revisits t... more The conference 'Post-Pandemic Condition: Biopolitics in the Aftermath of the COVID-19' revisits the concept of biopolitics by asking how the pandemic has redefined the political field and what new concepts and prospects it can offer for conceptualising our post-pandemic condition. The worldwide health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly signalled the need to reconsider, modify, and even transform the notion of biopolitics. Numerous attempts to do so were ranging from nearly apocalyptic visions of entirely 'negative' biopolitics, such as Giorgio Agamben's collection of brief essays Where Are We Now? (2021), to surveillance-friendly 'positive' biopolitics, exemplified by Benjamin Bratton's The Revenge of the Real (2021). Most of these, however, were published at the very peak of the pandemic, and therefore mostly based on different approaches of national governments towards the management of the pandemic and their implementation, and not the consequences of the pandemic biopolitics itself.
The conference “Immunity and Contagion: Philosophical Approaches toward the Pandemic” will seek t... more The conference “Immunity and Contagion: Philosophical Approaches toward the Pandemic” will seek to reconceptualize the notions of immunity and contagion and redefine the concept of biopolitics in the current crisis caused by the COVID-19. We invite scholars from different philosophical backgrounds to consider key questions that constitute and are constituted by the concepts of immunity and contagion.
In his text on pornography, Cesare Cassarino makes an argument that pornography is very much simi... more In his text on pornography, Cesare Cassarino makes an argument that pornography is very much similar to the revolution, as both drastically reshape the perception of time. Chronological time is transformed into cairological (or pornocairological): the pleasure of meaningful present destroys the coherent narrative of then and now (or then thus now). From this viewpoint, not only does cairos change the concept of time, but offers new affective regimes, inviting the subject to embrace new experiences, too. On the other hand, if we were to perceive pornography as visual re/production of sex, and supplement this statement with Foucault’s remark made in “The History of Sexuality” that biopower, in fact, produces sex, Cassarino’s praise for the inherently revolutionary praxis of pornography seems rather precipitate.
In my presentation, I am going to argue that pornography is intrinsically linked with biopower that Foucault associated with neoliberalism and demonstrate how biopower blends the visual and the affective to make the subject transgress beyond the limits of linear everyday life and occupy the most intimate domain – pleasure and sexuality. Mainly drawing on Beatriz Preciado argument that in the contemporary era, which she has conceptualized as “pharmacopornographic”, it is pornography that highly contributes to the production of subjectivity, and the concept of “biomedia” elaborated by Patricia Clough, I will show les liaisons dangereuse among the visual (the media), the affective and the biological.
Ultimately, I am offering to contemplate possible ways of liberating cairos – and here I will closely look at Deleuze’s notion of “orgiastic representation” and illustrate it with contemporary visual artworks.
„Jie vis dar pakibę ore šios erdvės ribose ką tik atsidariusios Dėl jų galiu padaryti tik du daly... more „Jie vis dar pakibę ore
šios erdvės ribose
ką tik atsidariusios
Dėl jų galiu padaryti tik du dalykus –
aprašyti jų skrydį
ir nerašyti paskutinės eilutės “, –
taip lenkų poetė Wislawa Szymborska aprašė rugsėjo vienuoliktosios tragedijos nuotrauką. Poetės sprendimas „nerašyti paskutinės eilutės“ yra tarsi kvietimas tylos minute pagerbti žuvusiuosius. Sykiu šią tylos poetiką papildo noras „aprašyti jų skrydį”, skausmingas bandymas atrasti tinkamus kalbos resursus tam, kas iš esmės priešinasi bet kokiam aprašymui, pačiai kalbai, išsakyti: gedėjimui. Kalbėti ir tylėti – du gedėjimo scenarijai, kurie, vis dėlto, nėra atskirti disjunkcija AR, bet yra sujungti, juos mėginama mąstyti drauge: „aprašyti” ir „nerašyti”.
Be abejo, praradimo skausmas yra didžiausias, kai netenkama artimo žmogaus: bičiulio, giminaičio arba mylimojo – žodžiu, draugo, žmogaus, su kuriuo mus siejo philia ryšys. Tokio praradimo siaubą galima pajausti dar intensyviau, įkontekstinus jį į Aristotelio citatą. Anot Aristotelio, draugystė yra „viena siela dviejuose kūnuose”.
Kas atsitinka, kai vienas kūnas miršta? Ar kažkokia svarbi sielos dalis, kuri dar neseniai buvo gyva ir teikė džiaugsmo, miršta drauge su kūnu? Ar kūnas, išgyvenęs kitą kūną, yra tarsi pasmerktas gyventi su mirties pažymėta siela – siela, kurios vienam kūnui yra per daug?
Konf. Galia, diskursas ir subjektas: Michelio Foucault mąstymo paradigma, LKTI, 2016
International conference "The Many Faces of Social Media", VMU, 2016
International conference "Roland Barthes' Time", VU/EHU, 2015
Konf. Prasmės klausimas šiuolaikinėje filosofijoje, MRU, 2015 m.
Athena: filosofijos studijos, 2021
The aim of this article is to present, discuss and critically reflect the emerging in media studi... more The aim of this article is to present, discuss and critically reflect the emerging in media studies notion of biomedia, which refutes the alleged dichotomy between technology and the body. In the broadest sense, biomedia can be construed as a particular way of mediation whereby the media directly affect and transform the biological dimension of the body and vice versa. The article opens with the discussion of the context in which biomedia emerge – the societies of control (G. Deleuze). In the this first part, the genesis of the concept of biomedia is discussed, as well as two conceptual paradigms – epistemological (E. Thacker’s “dark media”) and ethical (M. Fuller, A. Goffey’s “gray media”) are presented. In the second part, the nexus between biomedia and the cyberbiopolitical regime is highlighted, as well as a peculiar form of biopower, functioning through biomedia – neuropower (W. Neidich) is presented. Ultimately, two potential resistance lines (negative and critical) are examined.
Media Transformations, 2016
The article opens up with a discussion about two scientific attitudes towards the interrelation b... more The article opens up with a discussion about two scientific attitudes towards the interrelation between politics and social networks: practical and discursive. Starting with an endeavor to problematize the very possibility of politics on social networks, the second, discursive attitude, is investigated. First, argued is the fact that there are two breaks between political action and social networks: the absence of continuity between politics and media, and the agency-structure break. In either case, the intermediary link is discourse, which produces certain subjectivity of a political agent. Next, Foucaldian theory of discourse and subject is applied in order to examine the discursive resources that are used by the user to construct itself as the subject of politics. Finally, two symptomatic examples of medialized political actions on social networks, namely " share if care " and changing the color of the profile photo, are analyzed in attempt to prove that " media " (rather than " political ") component prevails, which reinforces a critical view on political actions on social networks.
Trópos. Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Criticism, 2020
This essay argues that current neoliberal regime is primarily characterized by synchronicity as i... more This essay argues that current neoliberal regime is primarily characterized by synchronicity as its main mode of temporality. My claim is that despite the apparent impression that the imperative of synchronicity enhances the subject’s capacity to act in time and therefore shape her future, it instead hinders it. This observation leads to a critical re–examination of the dominant mode of temporality and necessitates the development of a new conceptual apparatus that accounts for both synchronical production of subjectivity and intrinsic to it (bio)political implications. I offer the synthetic notion of synchronobiopolitics as a means to look closely at how contempo- rary biopower synchronizes with subject’s productive affects and, vice versa, makes her synchronize with it. The essay starts with the analysis of precarious socioeconomic conditions of production and then moves to the exploration of epistemontological premises of synchronobiopolitics, so as to provide a detailed account of the affective mechanics of the latter. Particular attention is paid to the problem of the future, its construction under synchrobiopolitical conditions, and possible ways to resist syn- chronization and thus participate in the production of alternative future(s).
Athena: Filosofijos studijos, 2018
Šis straipsnis - atsakas į Derrida raginimą "reabilituoti" Vakarų filosofijos subjektą. Todėl, vi... more Šis straipsnis - atsakas į Derrida raginimą "reabilituoti" Vakarų filosofijos subjektą. Todėl, viena vertus, straipsnyje yra vykdoma klasikinės subjekto sąvokos interpretacijos kritika ir revizija, kita vertus-(re)konstruojama alternatyvi subjekto samprata. Šioms užduotims atlikti pasitelkiamas deridiško poststruktūralizmo ir afekto teorijos (daugiausia delioziškos versijos) potencialas - kaip dviejų filosofinių prieigų, skirtingais būdais kvestionuojančių tradicinę subjekto sampratą ir sykiu plėtojančių originalią subjekto koncepciją. Subjekto sąvokos kritika / revizija vykdoma trimis kryptimis: konceptualine, fenomenologine ir ontologine. Tokia "mišria" prieiga bandoma įrodyti, jog, nepaisant teorinių, konceptualinių ir praktinių skirtumų, poststruktūralizmas ir afekto teorija iš esmės aptinka tuos pačius klasikinės subjekto sąvokos probleminius mazgus.
Michelis Foucault biopolitikos sąvoką sieja su politiniame diskurse atsiradusia populiacijos figū... more Michelis Foucault biopolitikos sąvoką sieja su politiniame diskurse atsiradusia populiacijos figūra, kuri ilgainiui tapo politizuota pačios gyvybės figūra. Viena vertus, tai reiškia, kad politika yra biologizuojama, nes naujos galios (biogalios) užduotis tampa per populiacijas valdyti gyvybę; kita vertus, gyvybės kaip tokios politizavimas atrodo problemiškas, pirmiausia todėl, kad pati savaime gyvybė yra imanentiškai rezistencinė, besipriešinanti bet kokiems būdams ją užvaldyti. Šiame straipsnyje populiacijos yra nagrinėjamos iš afekto – gyvybingumo, galimybės veikti arba būti paveiktam/ai – perspektyvos, bei mėginama atsakyti į klausimą, kokiais būdais biogalia sukiekybina afektą, kuris nėra apskaičiuojamas ir pačia savo prigimtimi prieštarauja bet kokiai tvarkai. Siekiant atsakyti į šį klausimą, nagrinėjama Foucault dispozityvo sąvoka bei jos santykis su populiacijomis, rekonstruojama populiacijos sampratos genealogija, galiausiai, naujos sukiekybinančios galios technologijos yra priešpriešinamos kokybiniam afekto pokyčiui.
The goal of this paper is to scrutinize how the phenomenon of digital poetry is related to the c... more The goal of this paper is to scrutinize how the phenomenon of digital poetry is related to the culture of late capitalism and how reification transforms the semantics of the digital poetry genre. e performed analysis reveals that reification of lyrical discourse is a distinctive feature of digital poetry, thus, there is the influence of the culture of late capitalism on the semantics of this poetic genre. Reification as a semantic dimension of digital poetry is characterized by such textual symptoms as alienation, irrationality, dystopia, serialization, simplification, spectacularity, the aestheticization of consumption as well as the dominant role of the political rather than the poetic. Digital poetry is analyzed from the perspective of discursive practices (the digital environment) as well as social practices (the practices symptomatic of late capitalism). Finally, possible counter-practices aimed at overcoming lyrical discourse reification are taken into consideration.
Keywords: digital poetry, reification, late capitalism, critical theory, Marxist literary criticism, CDA (critical discourse analysis).
In "Visual Propaganda of Personal Care during the Stalinist Cultural Revolution" I explore how pu... more In "Visual Propaganda of Personal Care during the Stalinist Cultural Revolution" I explore how public service messages were used to cement socialist ideology and help create the "new Soviet man."
The title of this paper – “The Politics of (Almost) Nothing: dis/Embodying the Political Subjecti... more The title of this paper – “The Politics of (Almost) Nothing: dis/Embodying the Political Subjectivity” – includes the key categories that are analyzed in this paper: the affect, the body, the political subjectivity. In traditional, rational political theories the affect is either considered “nothing” (that is, there have been no attempts to conceptualize it) or is granted only a marginal conceptual place. It has become possible to consider the body and immanent to it affectivity as a part of politics only since the occurrence of a new political paradigm – biopolitics – which, in the broadest sense, reflects upon the nexus between politics and life. In this paper, different biopolitical theories are analyzed from the perspective of the body, as a prerequisite for the subjectivity (the political subjectivity is no exception), while the key question is “What can a body do?”
ECO-CONCEPTS CRITICAL REFLECTIONS IN EMERGING ECOCRITICAL THEORY AND ECOLOGICAL THOUGHT, 2024
What happens when we move from reason to affect? What, after all, is affect? And what – borrowing... more What happens when we move from reason to affect? What, after all, is affect? And what – borrowing the term from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – lines of flight (32) does it offer? First and foremost, affect does not equal emotion (as it might appear at first sight): as argued by Brian Massumi, emotion is only a (subjectified and rationalized) remainder of affective content (28) – thus affect is not something that is uniquely human. To experience affect, one does not need to be a human, to have reason, or even, strictly speaking, be ‘alive’ – instead, what one needs is to be entangled in a network of relations with others. This entanglement, relationality, (co-, inter-, infra-, …)dependence is the starting point of what I call in this paper ‘affective ecocriticism’ – ecocriticism that operates from the difficult to grasp conceptually yet very tangible and palpable position of affect. The introduction of the affective dimension into ecocriticism allows us to rethink our ‘locatedness’ in larger ecosystems from the perspectives of interconnectedness (immanent ontology, Spinoza), molecular actors (‘becoming-molecule’, Deleuze and Guattari), caused by the feeling of ‘doom and gloom’ negative sentiments (‘affect aliens and killjoys’, Ahmed), speculative analytics (‘staying with the trouble’, Haraway) and, ultimately, based on those accounts, to attempt to answer the question of how we could imagine a brighter tomorrow (ethics of care, Grosz, Braidotti).
Living and Thinking in the Postdigital World: Theories, Experieces, Explorations (Szymon Wrobel, Krzysztof Skonieczny (eds.)), 2021
In 1992, Gilles Deleuze established a frame to analyze new taxonomies of power, based less on dis... more In 1992, Gilles Deleuze established a frame to analyze new taxonomies of power, based less on disciplinary power than on “free-floating” control. Tech- nologically, this novel society of control breaks from disciplinary societies that mainly relied on energy-producing mechanisms, employing much more com- plex machines – computers. This paper argues that the shift from machines to computers is not merely a technologically induced reconfiguration of the socioeconomic field but, more importantly, a biopolitical one, for it establishes a new regime that targets, governs, and controls subjects, their minds and bodies – that is, their affects. In the digital environment, the latter is captured and transformed by algorithms – the operational principle of the machines mentioned above. Thus, this paper aims to examine a biopolitical framing of algorithm-driven media closely, discuss how algorithms function as biopower mechanisms, and, finally, raise a question whether (and how) it would be pos- sible to resist becoming algorithmic biopower.
KEYWORDS:
algorithms, affect, control, apparatus of security, biopolitics