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Abstract:

We live amid constant outbursts of particularist enjoyment that finds a libidinal charge in targeting an enemy for disapprobation. The problem is that this particularism leads to the destruction of the enemy and the particular identity targeting the enemy. It will soon lead to the inhabitability of the planet. The only possible recourse is an insistence on a universal form of enjoyment that doesn’t require an enemy and instead focuses on the universal failure to belong—universal nonbelonging—that characterizes the situation of everyone, even those who assert most strenuously their belonging through the erection of an enemy.

Biographies:

Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity, Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, Only a Joke Can Save Us, The Impossible David Lynch, and other works. He is also the cohost of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.

Ben Highmore is a writer, researcher and teacher with expertise in many areas of 20th- and 21st-century culture. He has published books on post-war taste, British art, domestic interiors and playgrounds (Playgrounds: the Experimental Years). He’s also published extensively in the field of everyday life studies (‘Everyday Life and Cultural Theory’, ‘Michel de Certeau: Analysing Culture’, ‘Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday’, and ‘Cultural Feelings: Mood, Mediation, and Cultural Politics’).

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Posted on behalf of: Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Thursday, 27 March 2025