Writing subjectivity without subjecthood: the machinic unconscious of Nathalie Sarraute’s <i>Tropisms</i>

Williams, Nina; Burdon, George

doi:10.1080/14649365.2022.2065694

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…In environmental geography, one promising area for future research into the relationship between deep time and nuclear waste politics includes the field of ecosemiotics (Maran 2020), wherein there is already an understanding of how futures emerge in nonchronological time from a present "nonsymbolic semiotic world in which such a future is nested" (Kohn 2013, 206). Another area, and intersecting research into ecosemiotics, includes how conceptual engagements with asignifying semiotics (Keating 2022b;Williams and Burdon 2022) might present alternative modes of memory communication besides linguistic and subject-centred regimes of meaning-making.…”

Section: Conclusion: Towards Nuclear Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a nuclear waste context, speculative modes of memory communication can be detected with the growth of nuclear semiotics in 1980’s. Most prominent, perhaps, is the Atomic Priesthood – a theoretical proposal developed, amongst others, by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and recently reexplored by Robert Williams and Bryan McGovern Wilson (2013) in Cumbrian Alchemy (Figure 2). Reacting to the sense that existing methods for communicating nuclear memory of geological repositories rely too heavily on conventional image and semiotic modes of communication, the Atomic Priesthood instead emphasises how the production of rituals might become a central method of communication over thousand-year time horizons.…”

Section: Speculativementioning

confidence: 99%

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Nuclear memory: Archival, aesthetic, speculative

Keating

Storm

2023

Progress in Environmental Geography

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This article assays geographical research into nuclear cultures, and cognate conversations in atomic heritage, toxic waste studies, and memory and landscape studies, as one way to develop the notion of nuclear memory. In doing so, we survey how geographers and social scientists have sought to think and communicate memory of nuclear things through three specific modes: the archival, the aesthetic, and the speculative. Our central argument is that nuclear memory provides a theoretical orientation for geographers to engage with alternative possibilities for thinking nuclear waste futures besides anthropocentric notions of common sense.

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Section: Conclusion: Towards Nuclear Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Speculativementioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear memory: Archival, aesthetic, speculative

Keating

Storm

2023

Progress in Environmental Geography

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On the technological unconscious: thinking the (a)signifying production of subjects and bodies with sonographic imaging

Keating

2022

Social & Cultural Geography

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Édouard Glissant and the importance of reading well: Opacitic‐reading as geographic method

Jeyasingh

2024

Trans Inst British Geog

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With what intentions and expectations does one arrive at reading a new philosophical text? In the case of the late Martinican thinker Édouard Glissant, engaging with his work usually begins from the premise that his thought is adapted from, or indebted to, that of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this paper I seek to intervene in these non‐representational aspects of our thinking that escape habituated perception and condition, yet colour our reading and thus our resulting research and writing. If — as Paul Gilroy writes, ‘Glissant's time is now’, how do we as geographers respond? I argue that rather than reject the association of Glissant's work with Deleuze and Guattari's, the more philosophically, poetic, and politically challenging and creative task comes from reconceptualising their relationship to one of connection. In order to do this, I begin with Glissant's concept of ‘opacity’, which supports difference against assimilation and which Katherine McKittrick understands as a political tool. Taking this tool in hand, I develop my conceptualisation of the opacitic to refer to the staging or taking‐place of this opacity on a subterranean and micro‐political level. Opacitic‐reading as method contends how our reading of philosophical texts can create anew moments of clarity and connection through complexity, rather than aspiring towards transparent understanding that seeks to ‘grasp’ ideas and hold onto them. For geographers, opacitic‐reading intervenes in important debates about reading Glissant specifically, engaging with the work of so‐called minority thinkers from Western perspectives, as well as contributing to broader debates about how geographers engage with philosophy and theory.

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Writing subjectivity without subjecthood: the machinic unconscious of Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropisms

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

Nuclear memory: Archival, aesthetic, speculative

Nuclear memory: Archival, aesthetic, speculative

On the technological unconscious: thinking the (a)signifying production of subjects and bodies with sonographic imaging

Édouard Glissant and the importance of reading well: Opacitic‐reading as geographic method

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