EXTERMINATING REALITY

Tutor: Ray Brassier

Course Synopsis

Philosophical materialism converges with apocalyptic fiction at that point where ‘matter’

-whether in the guise of ‘the unconscious’ or ‘the thing-in-itself’- names a Real that

exterminates consensual reality. Thus, there is a sense in which the annihilation of reality

explored by hallucinatory brands of speculative fiction has already been experimentally

rehearsed in the more adventurous variants of post-Kantian materialism. Suspending

distinctions between philosophy, speculative fiction and pharmaceutically fuelled

delirium, this course will examine the work of philosophical materialists, fictionalists and

drug-crazed cranks who, by acknowledging the Real’s resistance to conceptualization and

recognizing reality’s intrinsically synthetic character, grasp the way in which the Real’s

obdurately unintelligible nature pulverizes the parameters of consensual reality (i.e.

common sense) along with the privileges of consciousness, thereby licensing a total

reconfiguration of the possibilities of perceptual experience. Emphasizing the extent to

which this hallucinatory reconfiguration of experience, as explored by writers like J.G.

Ballard and John Lilly, find a rigorous theoretical footing in the abstract materialism

engineered by philosophers such as J.F. Lyotard and Francois Laruelle, this course will

highlight the latent indiscernibility between hypercritical materialism and hallucinatory

speculation, and strive to identify the point at which transcendental scepticism coincides

with drug-fuelled psychosis.

In so doing, we will be reexamining the relation between art and cognition, the

better to begin formulating an ‘aesthetics of cognitive dissonance’. Because art provides a

particularly interesting locus for the manner in which the Real’s foreclosure to cognition

exterminates synthetic reality, we will be reconsidering the way in which much ‘modern’

art sets out to challenge the normative parameters of cognition -forcefully bypassing the

spectator’s consent and necessitating a reconfiguration of those cognitive structures

through which we synthesize information. Kant plays a crucial role here: our hypothetical

distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘the Real’, or between the knowable and the

unknowable, is ultimately rooted in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Thus, in

underlining the extent to which art can force us to change the way in which we

experience reality, we’ll have to understand how a ‘non-representational’ art must

presume to intervene at the transcendental level. For instance: what does it mean to say

that the modernist artwork functions as an object that resists objectification; which is to

say, a ‘thing in itself’? We’ll be using Schopenhauer to try to get a grip on what Kant

meant by ‘the transcendental conditions for the possibility of representation’ and ‘the

thing in itself’. One of the suggestions we’ll be exploring is the following: because the

artwork’s ‘non-representational’ dismantling of objectivity necessitates some sort of

violent circumvention of subjectivity, as well as the collapse of horizons of intelligibility,

the artwork’s ‘non-representational’ functioning becomes akin to that of a car-bomb.

Finally, one of the interesting ramifications of all this is a critique of the rhetoric of

‘transgression’ ubiquitous in much contemporary art discourse (the possibility of

‘transgression’ is liquidated along with that of intelligibility); but also of the idea that art

has nothing left to do other than indulge in an ironic celebration of its own status as

exorbitant commodity (pace Baudrillard). Just as the ‘subversiveness’ of an artwork need

not entail the pious melodrama of ‘transgression’, its degree of cognitive sophistication

need not be gauged by the extent to which it participates in the defeatist complacency of

postmodern ‘irony’. Circumventing the exigencies of transgression and irony

simultaneously, art articulates a form of cognitive experimentation that radicalizes

transcendental critique. An artwork is difficult or challenging insofar as it constitutes a

meticulously engineered information overload unit reconfiguring the parameters of

cognition by engaging directly with the ‘spectator’s’ nervous system.

Here’s some additional reading you might find interesting:

P.M.Churchland – Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-521-33827-1,

pp. 7-45.

J.F.Lyotard – Libidinal Economy, trans. by I.H.Grant, London: Athlone, 1993,

ISBN 0485-12083-6, pp. 21-32

Adam Parfrey – ‘Aesthetic Terrorism’ in Apocalypse Culture, A.Parfrey (ed.),

expanded and revised edition, Los Angeles: Feral House, 1990,

ISBN 0-922915-05-9, pp. 49-53.

J.G.Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition, Glagow: Triad/Panther, 1985,

ISBN 0-586-03574-5

David Britton – Motherfuckers, Manchester: Savoy, 1996, ISBN 0-86130-098-X

David Britton – Baptized In The Blood of Millions, Manchester: Savoy, 2001,

ISBN 0-86130-101-3

Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta – The Eyes, London: Headpress-Critical Visions, 1995,

ISBN 0-9523288-3-6

Peter Sotos – ‘Tool’ in Total Abuse, Pittsburgh, OR.: Goad to Hell Enterprises, 1996,

pp. 88-127 (no ISBN available)