Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) PDF
Preview Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
praise for Parables for the Virtual “ It is not enough to describe Massumi’s book as a brilliant achievement. Seldom do we see a po liti cal thinker develop his or her ideas with such scrupulous attention to everyday human existence, creating a marvel- ously fluid architecture of thought around the fundamental question of what the fact of human embodiment does to the activity of thinking. Massumi’s vigorous critique of both social- constructionist and essen- tialist theorizations of embodied practices renews the Deleuzian tradi- tion of philosophy for our times.” — Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago “ This is an extraordinary work of scholarship and thought. Massumi’s prose has a dazzling and sometimes cutting clarity, and yet he bites into very big issues. P eople will be reading and talking about Parables for the Virtual for a long time to come.” — Meaghan Morris, author of Too Soon Too Late: History in Popu lar Culture “ Have you been disappointed by books that promise to bring ‘the body’ or ‘corporeality’ back into culture? Well, your luck is about to change. In this remarkable book, Brian Massumi transports us from the dicey intersection between movement and sensation, through insightful ex- plorations of affect and body image, to a creative reconfiguration of the ‘nature- culture continuum.’ The writing is experimental and adventur- ous, as one might expect from a writer who finds inventiveness to be the most distinctive attribute of thinking. The perspective Massumi unfolds will have a major effect on cultural theory for years to come.” — William Connolly, Johns Hopkins University “ A fter Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Guattari, the great radical empir- icist protest against naïve objectivism and naïve subjectivism resonates again, bringing won der back into the most common- day experiences. After reading Brian Massumi you w ill never listen to Sinatra or watch a soccer game the same way again.” — Isabelle Stengers, Université Libre de Bruxelles “Parables for the Virtual is required reading for anyone working with digi- tal art. The complex relationship of the user’s body to the work of art in this field has no theoretical language in e ither the history of art or cul- tural theory. It is from these emerging theorizations that scholars can approach related issues such as digital aesthetics and the relationship of digital cultural forms with other media.” — María Fernández, Art Journal “ [A] new voice that has great potential for cinema studies and theoret- ical discourses in the humanities in general. . . . [ A] challenging read that forces the reader to think actively about the usefulness of interpre- tative language.” — Angela Ndalianis, Leonardo Reviews “ For performers and per for mance scholars, this paradox [of the virtual] is both a blessing and a curse— constituting those life- altering expe- riences that elude the resources of repre sen ta tional and deterministic language— and always at the very heart of per for mance studies.” — Michael Levan, Text and Per for mance Quarterly “ Massumi has brought to fruition a profound theoretical statement . . . as well as a direct engagement with cultural studies as academic practice. . . . If Massumi’s proj ect is to render thinkable movement, sen- sation, and the quality of experience, each of these chapters takes a slightly diff er ent and apparently successfully approach.” — Adam Gall, Cultural Studies Review “ Parables is an impor tant (detailed and far-r eaching) attempt to re- vision via Deleuze-i nspired speculation what feeling (or being?) humans could be when we jettison the deterministic empiricisms of the past. In so far as t hese diverse and competing modern, post- Kantian psychologies assumed they were ‘about’ the one class of objects— the species Homo sapiens, they were mostly humanistic, or at least anthropocentric.” — Philip Bell, Continuum “ Reading Massumi on philosophy’s ‘gloriously useless’ undertakings is a breath of fresh air in the foul wind of culturecrats insisting on the social relevance of humanities research, waiting in the wings to fin ger the next round of tokenism in the same manner as ge ne tics has done to ethics. . . . Parables for the Virtual is the latest chapter in the Deleuzean challenge to constructivist cultural studies and theory.” — Gary Genosko, Topia “ Massumi’s book shines with the joy of taking abstraction just one step too far, into radical empiricism. The author sets out to be inventive, affirmative, pragmatic, down to earth and up in the clouds— and well succeeds—in a book that will richly repay rereading for some time to come.” — Gerard Goggin, Eur o pean Journal of Cultural Studies “ Parables for the Virtual heralds Massumi’s inauguration . . . as a key phi- los o pher in his own right.” — Patricia MacCormack, Theory, Culture, and Society “ In short, perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay to any theorist is to be paid to Massumi, that his study will not leave the reader indiffer- ent and that it w ill continue to provoke thought and reaction, but also henceforth action and creative production in the complex and mutat- ing domains for which Massumi’s ‘parables’ unmistakably provide the coordinates.” — Charles J. Stivale, Criticism This page intentionally left blank parables for the virtual post- Contemporary interventions B R I A N M A S S U M I Parables for the Movement, Virtual Affect, Sensation Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a new preface Duke university press Durham anD lonDon 2021 © 2002 Duke University Press Preface, Keywords for Affect, and Missed Conceptions © 2021, Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Courtney Richardson and Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Quadraat and Meta by Westchester Book Group Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Massumi, Brian, author. Title: Parables for the virtual : movement, affect, sensation / Brian Massumi. Other titles: Post-contemporary interventions. Description: Twentieth anniversary edition. | Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: Post-contemporary interventions | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2021000050 (print) lccn 2021000051 (ebook) isbn 9781478013747 (hardcover) isbn 9781478014676 (paperback) isbn 9781478021971 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Movement (Philosophy) | Senses and sensation. | Affect (Psychology) Classification: lcc b105.m65 m37 2021 (print) lcc b105.m65 (ebook) | DDc 128/.6—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000050 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000051 Cover art: Simryn Gill, Egg drawing #39, 2019. Collage and ink on paper. Photo credit: Jenni Carter. Courtesy of the artist. contents Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition xi Keywords for Affect xxxiii Missed Conceptions xliii Introduction: Concrete Is as Concrete Doesn’t 1 1 The Autonomy of Affect 25 2 The Bleed: Where Body Meets Image 49 3 The Po liti cal Economy of Belonging and the Logic of Relation 7 3 4 The Evolutionary Alchemy of Reason: Stelarc 97 5 On the Superiority of the Analog 145 6 Chaos in the “Total Field” of Vision 157 7 The Brightness Confound 177 8 Strange Horizon: Buildings, Biograms, and the Body Topologic 1 93 9 Too- Blue: Color- Patch for an Expanded Empiricism 227 Notes 279 Works Cited 333 Index 343
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