Quantum Creativity: Afracting New Materialism in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This essay engages the vicissitudes of new materialism at the quantum level, attempting to differentiate what I take to be fundamental differences in the theoretical positions of vitalist theories as developed by Karen Barad and Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the Anthropocene. I treat matter at the quantum level to differentiate conceptions of apparatus and assemblage. It is argued that one should not treat them under the same signifiers. There is the question of creativity that runs through the essay which also raises questions concerning an “affirmative” Deleuze, the dominant position when it comes to the arts, humanities, and pedagogy. Against these particular developments, anorganic life as in|different comes to fore where issues of creative destruction must be faced.

The Significance of Art Education for the Post‐Anthropocene: Non‐Philosophy in a Newer Key

“…The speculative philosophies of Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier and the Lacanian Hegelianism of Slavoj Žižek have had a remarkable influence in the 90s. Nevertheless, it has been the oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that have garnered an equal theoretical impetus for post‐Anthropocene thought that separates their position from these others (jagodzinski 2022). In media, we see the emergence of ‘discorrelated images’ (Denson, 2020) that far surpass any notions of ‘realist’ correlated perspectives.…”

Akokisa River Pedagogies

“…5). To not personify or anthropomorphise the River forces us to dwell on the specificity of a singular individuation without categorisation or generalisation as framing or subtracting fictional devices to tame ‘the world as its intensity overwhelms it’ (jagodzinski 2022, 594). While slippages of anthropomorphism and personification may over‐rely on discursivity for matter's meaning and further humanistic determinations to overcontrol for chaos and paradox, they also point to a slippery pedagogy of undoing and unlearning the individualised self by allowing for what humans cannot know about the more‐than‐human.…”

“…But other forces might also be at play, indwelling the excluded middles of the incongruence of creative destruction. In Flowing Blades of Growth , Faz seems on the edge of a breakdown and breakthrough, perhaps conjuring something ‘different’ to open (jagodzinski 2022, 592).…”

“…These are not voids to a‐void or de‐void as in ‘the coloniser's continuing practices of avoidance’ (Barad 2017, 83), but in befriending more‐than‐human relations, we may still facilitate the de‐centring of the human subject and rationalist mechanisms of capture to remain open to imaginative leaps. For as jagodzinski (2022) proclaims, ‘[c]reative thought only ‘thinks’ when it encounters the cruelty of what is not‐thought, the violence of that which is disparate, and not comforting’ (592). To embrace the River in mutual wounding and invisibility ‘is to undo the conceit of our ‘humanness’ by facing our impotence’ (jagodzinski 2022), ‘a move from “art” to aisthetics’ (592) requiring ‘the artist to face impossibility, which may perhaps end in failure rather than breakthrough’ (593).…”

“…For as jagodzinski (2022) proclaims, ‘[c]reative thought only ‘thinks’ when it encounters the cruelty of what is not‐thought, the violence of that which is disparate, and not comforting’ (592). To embrace the River in mutual wounding and invisibility ‘is to undo the conceit of our ‘humanness’ by facing our impotence’ (jagodzinski 2022), ‘a move from “art” to aisthetics’ (592) requiring ‘the artist to face impossibility, which may perhaps end in failure rather than breakthrough’ (593).…”