How to do things in the Plasticene: Ontopolitics of plastics in Arendt, Barthes, and Massumi

Authors

  • Andrija Filipović

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i23.399

Keywords:

Plasticene, plastic, ontopolitics, intransitivity, signification, affect

Abstract

In this paper, I develop three models for understanding plastic in the Plasticene epoch through readings of Arendt, Barthes, and Massumi. In the Ardentian model, plastic is made intransitive. It is withdrawn so far into the background of human experience as that which enables social and individual life of humans that it becomes the unthinkable. It can be argued that it is pushed to the background and made intransitive because of a certain image of the human and cyclical image of nature. The second model is Barthesian, and in it plastic becomes a signifying matter understood through a semiotic model. Plastic and products of plastic become signifiers in the ideological work of discourse. In the Massumian model, plastic is affective; it is a relational body in the process of becoming, simultaneously intensive and multiple in its eventfulness.

 

Article received: April 30, 2020; Article accepted: May 30, 2020; Published online: October 15, 2020; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Andrija Filipović

Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade,
Serbia

Andrija Filipović (1984) is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications. He is the author of Conditio Ahumana: Immanence and the Ahuman in the Anthropocene Epoch (2019), and monographs on Gilles Deleuze (2015) and Brian Massumi (2016). He has recently written about urban ecology and multispecies relationality in postsocialist Belgrade for Contemporary Social Science, (in)visibility of Belgrade’s queer community in culture industry and activism for Journal of Homosexuality, as well as on the construction of masculinity through the soundscape of everyday life in Belgrade for NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies. His research interests include queer studies, environmental humanities, and contemporary philosophy.

References

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i23.399 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i23.399

Provisional Salta Ensemble, Life/NonLife (Amsterdam/Riga), colague, 2012.

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Published

15.10.2020

How to Cite

Filipović, A. (2020). How to do things in the Plasticene: Ontopolitics of plastics in Arendt, Barthes, and Massumi. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (23), 91–101. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i23.399

Issue

No. 23 (2020): Issue No. 23, October 2020 – Main Topic: How to do Things with Speculative Pragmatism: Anthropocene, Aesthetics, Art

Section

Main Topic: How to do Things with Speculative Pragmatism: Anthropocene, Aesthetics, Art

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Publisher: Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia

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