Beckman explores the ways that some of J. G. Ballard’s works can be seen as exemplifying a “dark ... more Beckman explores the ways that some of J. G. Ballard’s works can be seen as exemplifying a “dark ecology,” a critique of the universalist concept of “Nature” that keeps animals and the nonhuman world distinct and separate from “the human”. Instead, Ballard’s surreal novels can be seen as resisting a fetishized representation of birds in particular, while calling into question the literary tropes of metamorphosis and allegory that have often served to keep nonhuman animals at a distance, “locking them up” discursively, rather than deconstructing the line between “the human” and “the animal.” Beckman prioritizes questions of form and representation in order to track changes in the development of Ballard’s novels over the course of his career. For Beckman, a different form of potential advocacy can be found in Ballard’s work in which postmodern allegory can be aligned with Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, refusing to hold up Nature as an ideal form.
Med utgangspunkt i W.J.T. Mitchells utforskande av vad bilder kan och vill gora i dag erbjuder de... more Med utgangspunkt i W.J.T. Mitchells utforskande av vad bilder kan och vill gora i dag erbjuder denna artikel ett konkret exempel pa hur vad som kan ses som en postmodernistisk metafiktion ocksa kan ...
This forward-thinking, non-traditional reference work uniquely maps out how new developments in 2... more This forward-thinking, non-traditional reference work uniquely maps out how new developments in 21st century philosophy are entering into dialogue with the study of literature. Going beyond the fam ...
Killing Mothers : Feminisms, Love Power, and Critique, A Review of Lena Gunnarsson's The Cont... more Killing Mothers : Feminisms, Love Power, and Critique, A Review of Lena Gunnarsson's The Contradictions of Love: Towards a Feminist-Realist Ontology of Socio-Sexuality
Magnus Ullen (red.) Valdsamma fantasier. Studier i fiktionsvaldets funktion och attraktion. Kultu... more Magnus Ullen (red.) Valdsamma fantasier. Studier i fiktionsvaldets funktion och attraktion. Kulturvetenskapliga skriftserien, 2:2014. Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 2014, 230 s.
The voice brings us straight into the core of schizoanalysis.1 To begin with, both Lacan and Dele... more The voice brings us straight into the core of schizoanalysis.1 To begin with, both Lacan and Deleuze follow a general as well as long-standing philosophical interest in the nature of the voice and its relation to issues of self-presence and interiority, or of the Other and inaccessible exteriority. Indeed, Mladen Dolar (2006) notes, the voice is “inherently and necessarily linked with all major metaphysical preoccupations” (42). From Emperor Chun in the 2200 BC through Plato to St. Augustine, from Freud through Lacan to Derrida, Dolar shows how the tensions between presence and absence and between the sound of the voice versus the logos of meaning have haunted both religious and philosophical discourses. Also, an ostensible friction emerges between, on the one hand, Lacan’s promotion of the voice to the status of petit objet a and thus to an object of perceived absence and, on the other, Deleuze’s positioning of the voice as indicative of full presence; as an expression of possible worlds. The voice of interdiction (the voice of the father) and of fantasy (the voice of the mother) are thus contrasted with the voice as conferring a variable and plural reality. Yet, Deleuze and Guattari do not reject Lacan’s theory but rather decide “to give him some schizophrenic help” (Smith, 2004, 647) and affirm the petit objet a as part of real production. What are the implications of this “help” on how we may understand the voice and the way in which it links the absent and the present?
Beckman explores the ways that some of J. G. Ballard’s works can be seen as exemplifying a “dark ... more Beckman explores the ways that some of J. G. Ballard’s works can be seen as exemplifying a “dark ecology,” a critique of the universalist concept of “Nature” that keeps animals and the nonhuman world distinct and separate from “the human”. Instead, Ballard’s surreal novels can be seen as resisting a fetishized representation of birds in particular, while calling into question the literary tropes of metamorphosis and allegory that have often served to keep nonhuman animals at a distance, “locking them up” discursively, rather than deconstructing the line between “the human” and “the animal.” Beckman prioritizes questions of form and representation in order to track changes in the development of Ballard’s novels over the course of his career. For Beckman, a different form of potential advocacy can be found in Ballard’s work in which postmodern allegory can be aligned with Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, refusing to hold up Nature as an ideal form.
Med utgangspunkt i W.J.T. Mitchells utforskande av vad bilder kan och vill gora i dag erbjuder de... more Med utgangspunkt i W.J.T. Mitchells utforskande av vad bilder kan och vill gora i dag erbjuder denna artikel ett konkret exempel pa hur vad som kan ses som en postmodernistisk metafiktion ocksa kan ...
This forward-thinking, non-traditional reference work uniquely maps out how new developments in 2... more This forward-thinking, non-traditional reference work uniquely maps out how new developments in 21st century philosophy are entering into dialogue with the study of literature. Going beyond the fam ...
Killing Mothers : Feminisms, Love Power, and Critique, A Review of Lena Gunnarsson's The Cont... more Killing Mothers : Feminisms, Love Power, and Critique, A Review of Lena Gunnarsson's The Contradictions of Love: Towards a Feminist-Realist Ontology of Socio-Sexuality
Magnus Ullen (red.) Valdsamma fantasier. Studier i fiktionsvaldets funktion och attraktion. Kultu... more Magnus Ullen (red.) Valdsamma fantasier. Studier i fiktionsvaldets funktion och attraktion. Kulturvetenskapliga skriftserien, 2:2014. Karlstad: Karlstads universitet, 2014, 230 s.
The voice brings us straight into the core of schizoanalysis.1 To begin with, both Lacan and Dele... more The voice brings us straight into the core of schizoanalysis.1 To begin with, both Lacan and Deleuze follow a general as well as long-standing philosophical interest in the nature of the voice and its relation to issues of self-presence and interiority, or of the Other and inaccessible exteriority. Indeed, Mladen Dolar (2006) notes, the voice is “inherently and necessarily linked with all major metaphysical preoccupations” (42). From Emperor Chun in the 2200 BC through Plato to St. Augustine, from Freud through Lacan to Derrida, Dolar shows how the tensions between presence and absence and between the sound of the voice versus the logos of meaning have haunted both religious and philosophical discourses. Also, an ostensible friction emerges between, on the one hand, Lacan’s promotion of the voice to the status of petit objet a and thus to an object of perceived absence and, on the other, Deleuze’s positioning of the voice as indicative of full presence; as an expression of possible worlds. The voice of interdiction (the voice of the father) and of fantasy (the voice of the mother) are thus contrasted with the voice as conferring a variable and plural reality. Yet, Deleuze and Guattari do not reject Lacan’s theory but rather decide “to give him some schizophrenic help” (Smith, 2004, 647) and affirm the petit objet a as part of real production. What are the implications of this “help” on how we may understand the voice and the way in which it links the absent and the present?
Why does it seem like our everyday life is shadowed by something menacing? This book identifies a... more Why does it seem like our everyday life is shadowed by something menacing? This book identifies and illuminates paranoia as a significant feature of contemporary American society and culture. Centering on what it identifies as three key dimensions – power, truth, and identity – in three different contexts – society, literature, and critique – the book explores and explains the increasing influence of paranoid thinking in American society during the second half of the twentieth century and first decades of the twenty-first, a period that has seen the rise of control systems and neoliberal ascendency.
Inquiring about the predominance of white, male, American subjects in paranoid culture, Frida Beckman recognizes the antagonistic maintenance and fortification of a conception of the autonomous individual that perceives itself to be under threat. Identifying such paranoia as emerging from an increasingly disjunctive relation between this conception of the subject and the changing nature of the public sphere, she develops the concept of the paranoid chronotope as a tool for the theoretical analysis of social, literary, and critical practices today. Investigating twenty-first century paranoid fictions, New Sincerity novels, conspiracist online culture, and postcritique, Beckman shows how the paranoid chronotope constitutes a recurring feature of modern consciousness.
Is control is the cultural logic of the 21st century?
Starting from Deleuze's brief but influent... more Is control is the cultural logic of the 21st century?
Starting from Deleuze's brief but influential work on control, the 11 essays in this book focus on how control mechanisms influence, and are influenced by, cultural expression today. They also collectively re-evaluate Foucault and Deleuze's theories of discipline and control in light of the continued development of biopolitics.
Written by an impressive line-up of contemporary scholars of philosophy, politics and culture the essays cover the particularity of control in relation to various fields and modes of expression including literature, cinema, television, music and philosophy.
Gilles Deleuze, the person and philosopher, was both singular and multifaceted. Frida Beckman tra... more Gilles Deleuze, the person and philosopher, was both singular and multifaceted. Frida Beckman traces Deleuze’s remarkable intellectual journey, mapping the encounters from which his life and work emerged. She considers how his life and philosophical developments resonate with historical, political and philosophical events, from the Second World War to the student uprisings in the 1960s, the opening of the experimental University of Paris VIII and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Although less of a public figure than many of his contemporaries, Deleuze’s life and philosophy are bound up with his numerous friendships, collaborations and disputes with several of the period’s most influential thinkers, as well as his connections with writers, artists and film scholars.
Beckman considers the events, moods and intensities that were generated by this multiplicity of encounters throughout his life. The book follows Deleuze from the salons to which he was invited as a young student through his popularity as a young teacher to the development of the rich phases of his philosophical work. While resisting the idea of ‘Deleuzians’, the book also reviews a post-Deleuzian legacy and the influence of this extraordinary thinker on contemporary philosophy.
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Inquiring about the predominance of white, male, American subjects in paranoid culture, Frida Beckman recognizes the antagonistic maintenance and fortification of a conception of the autonomous individual that perceives itself to be under threat. Identifying such paranoia as emerging from an increasingly disjunctive relation between this conception of the subject and the changing nature of the public sphere, she develops the concept of the paranoid chronotope as a tool for the theoretical analysis of social, literary, and critical practices today. Investigating twenty-first century paranoid fictions, New Sincerity novels, conspiracist online culture, and postcritique, Beckman shows how the paranoid chronotope constitutes a recurring feature of modern consciousness.
Starting from Deleuze's brief but influential work on control, the 11 essays in this book focus on how control mechanisms influence, and are influenced by, cultural expression today. They also collectively re-evaluate Foucault and Deleuze's theories of discipline and control in light of the continued development of biopolitics.
Written by an impressive line-up of contemporary scholars of philosophy, politics and culture the essays cover the particularity of control in relation to various fields and modes of expression including literature, cinema, television, music and philosophy.
Beckman considers the events, moods and intensities that were generated by this multiplicity of encounters throughout his life. The book follows Deleuze from the salons to which he was invited as a young student through his popularity as a young teacher to the development of the rich phases of his philosophical work. While resisting the idea of ‘Deleuzians’, the book also reviews a post-Deleuzian legacy and the influence of this extraordinary thinker on contemporary philosophy.