EXTERMINATING REALITY Tutor: Ray Brassier Course Synopsis Philosophical materialism converges with apocalyptic fiction at that point

where matter -whether in the guise of the unconscious or the thing-in-itself- names a Real that exterminates consensual reality. Thus, there is a sense in which the annihilation of reality explored by hallucinatory brands of speculative fiction has already been experimentally rehearsed in the more adventurous variants of post-Kantian materialism. Suspending distinctions between philosophy, speculative fiction and pharmaceutically fuelled delirium, this course will examine the work of philosophical materialists, fictionalists and drugcrazed cranks who, by acknowledging the Reals resistance to conceptualization and recognizing realitys intrinsically synthetic character, grasp the way in which the Reals obdurately unintelligible nature pulverizes the parameters of consensual reality (i.e. common sense) along with the privileges of consciousness, thereby licensing a total reconfiguration of the possibilities of perceptual experience. Emphasizing the extent to which this hallucinatory reconfiguration of experience, as explored by writers like J.G. Ballard and John Lilly, find a rigorous theoretical footing in the abstract materialism engineered by philosophers such as J.F. Lyotard and Francois Laruelle, this course will highlight the latent indiscernibility between hypercritical materialism and hallucinatory speculation, and strive to identify the point at which transcendental scepticism coincides with drug-fuelled psychosis. In so doing, we will be reexamining the relation between art and cognition, the better to begin formulating an aesthetics of cognitive dissonance. Because art provides a particularly interesting locus for the manner in which the Reals foreclosure to cognition exterminates synthetic reality, we will be reconsidering the way in which much modern art sets out to challenge the normative parameters of cognition -forcefully bypassing the spectators consent and necessitating a reconfiguration of those cognitive structures through which we synthesize information. Kant plays a crucial role here: our hypothetical distinction between reality and the Real, or between the knowable and the unknowable, is ultimately rooted in Kants transcendental philosophy. Thus, in underlining the extent to

which art can force us to change the way in which we experience reality, well have to understand how a non-representational art must presume to intervene at the transcendental level. For instance: what does it mean to say that the modernist artwork functions as an object that resists objectification; which is to say, a thing in itself? Well be using Schopenhauer to try to get a grip on what Kant meant by the transcendental conditions for the possibility of representation and the thing in itself. One of the suggestions well be exploring is the following: because the artworks nonrepresentational dismantling of objectivity necessitates some sort of violent circumvention of subjectivity, as well as the collapse of horizons of intelligibility, the artworks nonrepresentational functioning becomes akin to that of a car-bomb. Finally, one of the interesting ramifications of all this is a critique of the rhetoric of transgression ubiquitous in much contemporary art discourse (the possibility of transgression is liquidated along with that of intelligibility); but also of the idea that art has nothing left to do other than indulge in an ironic celebration of its own status as exorbitant commodity (pace Baudrillard). Just as the subversiveness of an artwork need not entail the pious melodrama of transgression, its degree of cognitive sophistication need not be gauged by the extent to which it participates in the defeatist complacency of postmodern irony. Circumventing the exigencies of transgression and irony simultaneously, art articulates a form of cognitive experimentation that radicalizes transcendental critique. An artwork is difficult or challenging insofar as it constitutes a meticulously engineered information overload unit reconfiguring the parameters of cognition by engaging directly with the spectators nervous system. Heres some additional reading you might find interesting: P.M.Churchland Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-521-33827-1, pp. 7-45. J.F.Lyotard Libidinal Economy, trans. by I.H.Grant, London: Athlone, 1993, ISBN 0485-12083-6, pp. 21-32 Adam Parfrey Aesthetic Terrorism in Apocalypse Culture, A.Parfrey (ed.), expanded and revised edition, Los Angeles: Feral House, 1990,

ISBN 0-922915-05-9, pp. 49-53. J.G.Ballard The Atrocity Exhibition, Glagow: Triad/Panther, 1985, ISBN 0-586-03574-5 David Britton Motherfuckers, Manchester: Savoy, 1996, ISBN 0-86130-098-X David Britton Baptized In The Blood of Millions, Manchester: Savoy, 2001, ISBN 0-86130-101-3 Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta The Eyes, London: Headpress-Critical Visions, 1995, ISBN 0-9523288-3-6 Peter Sotos Tool in Total Abuse, Pittsburgh, OR.: Goad to Hell Enterprises, 1996, pp. 88-127 (no ISBN available)