This article provides an introductory overview of the theories of Paul Virilio, particularly regarding how technologically-enhanced speed impacts human reality. It positions Virilio as part modernist, part postmodernist and discusses how his ethico-political views color his more aesthetic metaphysics, creating a tension in his final position on the merits of technological speed's blurring of the real and the imaginary. It concludes by contrasting Virilio's position with some comments on aesthetics by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The objective of this article is to explore the value of psychoanalysis in the early twenty-first century through reference to Freud, Lacan, and Stiegler’s work on computational madness. In the first section of the article I consider the original objectives of psychoanalysis through reference to what I call Freud’s ‘normalisation project’, before exploring the critique of this discourse concerned with the defence of oedipal law through a discussion of the post-modern ‘individualisation project’ set out by Deleuze and Guattari and others. (...) Tracking the development of ‘the individualisation project’ in history, I consider its connections with the cybernetic theories of Wiener and Shannon in the psycho-cyber-utopianism of the 1990s, before moving on to consider the other side of the psychoanalytic-cybernetic interaction through a discussion of Jacques Lacan’s rereading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in the second section of the article. In reading Lacan’s seminar on Freudian drive in terms of the cybernetic repression of death, I set up the conclusion to the article which involves a discussion of Bernard Stiegler’s ‘survival project’ that relies on a recognition of the limit of death in order to produce human significance and oppose the madness of our contemporary computational reality. (shrink)

Strikingly, theorizing about digital technologies has led us to recognize many habitual subjects of research as figures against fields that are also worthy of study. Communication, for example, becomes visible only against the field of silence. Silence is critically important for the construction of reality – and the social construction of reality has a complement, the also necessary contemplative construction of reality. Silence is so sensitive and fragile that an inability to achieve it, or to get rid of it, or (...) to correct the wrong kind of silence often provides early indicators of individual, group, communal, and society-wide stresses from information technologies. Indeed, we might treat difficulties with silence as miners treated canaries in coal mines, as early warning signals. The story has already been told that nightingales in London now have to sing so loudly in order to be heard above the ambient noise that the birds are in danger of breaking the noise ordinance law. Surely something has gone awry if nightingales break the law when they sing. Finding ways to protect silence as an arena of personal and social choice is a particularly poignant, evocative, and instructive ethical and policy horizon at this frontier moment for the human species. This article introduces the theory of the contemplative construction of reality, explores what the study of silence tells us about reality construction processes, and outlines a research agenda. (shrink)

This thesis explores issues in aesthetics with reference to Bergson. The first chapter outlines and assesses Bergson's interesting and subtle theory of humour, which emphasises the necessary lack of sympathy in humour, and its generalising, external methodology. In doing so it explores the different ways the motif of 'something encrusted on the living' functions on various levels. This is ultimately found to be an interesting account which has many merits. The second chapter then begins to outline the theoretical structure of (...) Bergson's account of humour in terms of vertical and horizontal movement. This leads to an account of Bergson's critique of 'ordinary' conceptual language and a consideration of other alternatives, including metaphor. The third chapter discusses Bergson's notion of intuition and levels of interpretation - assessing what, if any, relation there is between Russian Formalism and Bergson's own understanding of poetry. The notion of levels helps to define Bergson's anti-modernism, when modernism is understood as the self-referential exposure of the art work's own conditions of possibility. The fourth chapter examines several art forms. Music is discussed in some detail with particular attention being paid to the distinction between rhythm and melody, notions of repetition, creativity and difference. A comparison it then made between Bergson's thoughts on evolution and melodic creativity. This discussion is of importance not only for the light it casts on aesthetic issues, but also because music, or more specifically melody, is often given as an example of the heterogeneous continuity of duration. The thesis also examines painting, particularly in relation to duration, comparing it with photography. Bergson's arguments against cinema are then discussed. The thesis also examines how the role of sympathy functions in artistic production generally. Finally Bergson's ability to distinguish between art and philosophy is examined referring back to notions of self-reflexivity in art. (shrink)