Deleuze Against Control: from Fictioning to Myth-Science

Tools

O'Sullivan, Simon D.. 2016. Deleuze Against Control: from Fictioning to Myth-Science. Theory, Culture and Society, 33(7/8), pp. 1-16. ISSN 0263-2764 [Article]

Text
Deleuze_Against_Control.docx - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.
Download (181kB)

Official URL: http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/02/02...

Abstract or Description

Through recourse to Gilles Deleuze’s short polemical essay ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ and the accompanying interview (in Negotiations) on ‘Control and Becoming’, this article attempts to map out the conceptual contours of an artistic war machine (Deleuze’s ‘new weapons’) that might be pitched against control and also play a role in the more ethico-political function of the constitution of a people (or, what Deleuze calls subjectification). Along the way a series of other Deleuzian concepts are introduced and outlined – with an eye to their pertinence for art practice and, indeed, for any more general ‘thought’ against control. At stake here is the development of a concept of fictioning – the production of alternative narratives and image-worlds – and also the idea of art practice as a form of myth-science, exemplified by Burroughs’ cut-up method. It is argued that these aesthetic strategies might offer alternative models for a subjectivity that is increasingly standardized and hemmed in by neoliberalism.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276416645154