(2009). Text and deployment of the masochist. Angelaki: Vol. 14, shadows of cruelty sadism, masochism and the philosophical muse – part one, pp. 45-57.

Can the public sphere be conceptualised in a manner that is non-reductive and inclusive? In this article, we survey the main literature on the public sphere and demonstrate that, despite apparent diversity, the dominant approaches to its conceptualisation share the same ‘matter and form’ or hylomorphic assumptions. In challenging these assumptions, our aim is to demonstrate that it is the hylomorphic model of the public sphere that prevents non-reductive conceptualisation of its essentially changing nature. Hylomorphic models of the public sphere, (...) we argue, will never yield this result because they perpetuate established identities over emergent differences. We conclude that progress toward non-reductive and inclusive accounts of the public sphere would be best served by foregoing hylomorphic models in favour of ontogenetic ones, when thinking about the changing nature of the public sphere. (shrink)

In recent years ‘bioart’ has been lauded in the social sciences for its creative engagements with the ontological stakes of new forms of biotechnical life in-the-making. In this paper I push further to explore the ontogenetic potentials of bioart-encounters to generate new capacities for thinking and perceiving the nonhuman agencies imbricated in the becoming of subjects. To explore this potential I stage an encounter with Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, highlighting three implications for theorizations of the constitution and transformation of (...) subjects. First, Simondon forces us to rethink the subject in terms of its transductive emergence from pre-individual processes, and its metastable susceptibility to ongoing transformations. Second, he substitutes voluntarist conceptions of thought with an involuntarist primacy of material encounters as the conditions for novel individuations. Finally, I argue that Simondon enables a thinking of the politics of the art-encounter in terms of its ontogenetic capacity to materially produce, rather than merely represent, new subjects and worlds. (shrink)