Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines the desire for, and intoxication with destruction as it appears in cultural objects and representation, arguing that all cultural and aesthetic value is fundamentally predicated on its own fragility, as well as the living transience of those who make and encounter it. Beginning with a philosophy of expenditure after Georges Bataille, each chapter maps different operations of destruction in media and culture. These operations are expressed and located in representations of human extinction and explosive architecture, in execution and in eroticism, and in media and digital archives, which constitute a further destabilization of the notion of destruction in the dynamic between aspirational immortality and material volatility embedded in the archival systems of digital cultures.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Preface: The Intoxication of Destruction
Introduction: Destruction and Immortality
Destruction I: Energy
Part 1: The General Economy
Part 2: Sovereignty and Heterogeneity
Destruction II: World
Part 1: Exploding Monuments (The Destruction Of Architecture)
Part 2: Extinction (The Destruction of Everyone Else)
Destruction III: Body
Part 1: Spectacular Expenditure (from Sacrifice to Execution)
Part 2: Eroticism (The Destruction of Sexuality)
Destruction IV: Matter
Part 1: Accelerating Destruction (The Material of Media)
Part 2: The Material of the Digital (Computational Immortality)
Conclusion: The Destroyers
Bibliography
Index
