Pathology or intervention? – Deleuze’s masochism and its relation to parody

In his 1967 work, Presentation of Sacher-Masoch – Coldness and Cruelty (2007), Gilles Deleuze famously distinguishes the symptomatologies commonly designated by the names Masochism and Sadism, arguing that despite their shared feature of algolagnia, they are more rigorously approached as two very distinct regimes, having nothing to do with the ‘economy’ of the other. In the work’s preface, Deleuze also notes about Sacher-Masoch himself: ‘His whole oeuvre remains influenced by the problem of minorities, of nationalities and of revolutionary movements’ (2007: 9). Deleuze identifies that, within Masoch’s oeuvre, the masochist is he (normally a ‘he’) who insists on the contract. This insistence is neither to honour any particular contract or contracting per se, nor to safeguard himself within it, but to perform, through parodying it to its letter and pushing its operation towards its own limit, the inherent injustice that is its inexorable outcome. This article seeks to explore, using Masochistic ‘humouring’ or mockery of the contract as example, what might constitute a practice of intervention in regimes of power, and in which instances these iterations serve instead only as gestures of complicity with the injustices of the established logics. The article seeks to clarify, at the level of mechanism, a region of parody’s slippery operation, one which would determine the criteria for it to be intervention, as opposed to functioning as compliance and ‘bare repetition’ or ‘repetition of the Same’ (see Deleuze 2004: 27).

Precarious decencies: negotiating creative (im)mortalities, in life, together

This paper takes up the question of what might hinder the collaborative impulse among artists and specifically poets, and offers—as one possible answer—the complication posed by the urge of an artist for immortality, or for their (individual) name to live on. The paper begins by returning to a moment in Plato, namely that of the Symposium and its observations concerning the connection between poiesis (making) and a questing after immortality. Contrasting with what seems like Plato's broadly positive framing, the paper takes up a second reading of immortality (or the 'will-to-live') found in an early text of the Yogic canon, that of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. In this second text, written somewhat later than Plato's, the will-to-live is framed otherwise, as one of five afflictions that can be 'made thin' by practice. The paper's wager is that, viewed in this way, as an affliction, the will-to-live (or urge for immortality) deserves consideration as a hindrance to the impulse towards collaboration. Noting, however, that in the poiesis of writing poetry, where there is both the making of things and the action of making things, this creative constellation always contains the tempering solution to its own inherent lures. Writing, although providing fuel for immortal appetites (due to what it makes), also works to temper the worst of this same impulse via the contribution of practice—as dedication, craft and community-as-practice. The practice of writing, therefore, is already at play, and can be emphasised explicitly for any poet or maker who also wants to be able to want to collaborate. The practice of writing, then, and its turn away from investments in identity, works to thin out the more destructive face of an urge for a dubious eternity that can eclipse our ability to work together creatively with others in this life.

The Amplifier - v. 15, no. 7

In this issue...Liberal Art Degree, Climbing Club, Caterpillar Tractor Company, Gary Lee Knudson, Wilhelm's Flower Shop, Marcus Daly, Baseball, Du Pont Research

The poetics of collaboration

The question of collaboration is one that arguably can't be ignored in contemporary academia, creative fields, or current philosophical and critical landscapes. The word ‘collaboration’ at once brings to mind the conspiratorial nature of crime as well as the cooperative nature of teamwork and the harmonious meeting of minds and practices. It is, then, a slippery word, and for this reason serves as a fertile provocation for the inquiries unpacked and developed in this special issue of Axon.

Beyond the market: alternate possibilities for valuing art

In our creative workshop we recreate the three 'types' of society by asking our audience to enact a society in which one particular mode of evaluation is dominant and subsequently enact another society based on another mode of evaluation. Participants will experience how different types of evaluation affect how we assemble ourselves as a society and ontologically. We make use of artworks that are representative of the three different eras as sensemaking devices of how societies have been ordered through different modes of evaluation.

The widow

Single poem, translated into Chinese

Encountering causalities

The distinction between morality and ethics is a fizzy topic. Morality often seems to involve a kind of code-withcontent, that’s to say, there are categories and actions fall into them or they don’t – no matter when, where or with whom. Ethics, in comparison, would speak to principles of action, those from which we might derive responses that we, and others, can live with in certain moments and contexts. Ethics considers the how of navigating a life rather than what’s to be coolly assessed.

Development, Evaluation and Optimization of Fabrication Processes for Daylight Guiding Systems Based on Micromirror Arrays

In this work, fabrication processes for daylight guiding systems based on micromirror arrays are developed, evaluated and optimized.Two different approaches are used: At first, nanoimprint lithography is used to fabricate large area micromirrors by means of Substrate Conformal Imprint Lithography (SCIL).Secondly,a new lithography technique is developed using a novel bi-layered photomask to fabricate large area micromirror arrays. The experimental results showing a reproducible stable process, high yield, and is consuming less material, time, cost and effort.