Liquifying Selves: Toxicity, Tales and Transindividuation
A reading group led by James Hendrix Elsey
9th December 2020, 3-5pm
The governance associated with Covid-19 has sought to establish the ontological boundaries of selfhood at the scale of the ‘bubble’. This aquatic phraseology is more than just a coincidence - those within one of these are, in theory, part of a discrete unit of droplet-circulation. As the pandemic forces us to adopt new hydro-hermetic praxes, we will examine some other ways in which liquid has already presented counter-ontologies to those of the Cartesian self.
These will include the poetic: exploring the prototypical text, the Epic of Gilgamesh, as both a flood-myth and a transformative moment in the historical development of the protagonist-as-self; the biochemical, when many centuries later, the region was invaded by US forces under pretenses of democracy, a system of governance through liquid association, during which bullet cases left behind a toxic leaden aftermath, eventually winding up in bloodstreams, brains, and breast milk; and the philosophical, examining modes of co-individuated, collective and intersubjective being and becoming.
We will read through these ideas at sites of confluence, between the rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, where toxicity, myth, and the viral memetics of the written word enter into general circulation.
Readings (available upon registering for the session)
TBC
The Liquidity Cohort is a growing group of researchers who work with various notions of liquidity from the body (in the broadest sense, human and otherwise) to material infrastructures. We are interested in “liquidity” as an immersive experience of being-in-the-world and its implications for practice; questions of how to write from states of immersion, how to work from the body immersed in experience. We are also interested in hydrological and technological infrastructures and their impacts on the body and its worlds. The Liquidity Cohort was initiated by Dr. Bridget Crone (Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths) in 2018, and is open to researchers from CHASE institutions. Please get in touch if you’d like to join us. Supported by CHASE Consortium Development Grant.
James Hendrix Elsey is a researcher, artist, and certificate student in Critical Philosophy at the New Centre for Research and Practice, currently living between Lisbon and London. Research interests centre around conceptions of time, millenarian theory and speculative fiction. And a recent alumnus of the Contemporary Art Theory MA in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths.
His recent projects include ‘Doomsday Anonymous’ a reading/support group throughout lockdown, in which networked mutual support and discussion of various themes relating to a foreclosure of the future, and forming strategies for conviviality; co-authoring/editing ‘Subtexts’, a collection of literature relating to intense, weird experiences of the subterranean; co-organising ‘Slipstream’, a series of multimedia artist broadcasts on Twitch.tv to fundraise for refugee charities.
https://www.instagram.com/jameshendrixelsey/
Image:
Blood-brain barrier of a mouse: The brain’s blood vessels are lined with endothelial cells that are wedged tightly together, creating a nearly impermeable boundary between the brain and bloodstream. This image shows a section through a blood vessel (black) in the brain of a mouse as well as endothelial cells (surrounded by glial cells in green) and processed from surrounding brain cells (in red). Credit: C.J. Guerin, MRC Toxicology Unit / Science Source.
Terms and Conditions
By registering below you are requesting a place on this training programme or selected sessions that form part of the programme. A member of the CHASE team or the workshop leader will contact you in due course to confirm that a place has been allocated to you. If you are allocated a place but can no longer attend, please cancel your Eventbrite registration or email training@chase.ac.uk so that your place can be reallocated. CHASE training is free to attend and events are often oversubscribed with a waiting list. Failure to notify us of non-attendance in good time means your place cannot be reallocated and repeated failure may mean that your access to future training is limited.
The training is open to:
CHASE funded and associate students,
Arts and Humanities PhD students at CHASE member institutions,
and students and members of staff at CHASE partner institutions
Arts and Hum PhD students (via the AHRC mailing list)