Page 291 - Cyberculture and New Media

282 Desistant Media
______________________________________________________________

transformation of Gregor Samsa? These classics are very much the
preconditions also for the discussion about madness as metaphor and motive
in contemporary media art, not only represented and formatted in Paranoid
Mirror, or, Frames, but also in artworks like Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s The House
(2002) which explores the mind of a young woman undergoing severe
episodes of psychosis. Dinkla says that in The House inside and outside,
subject and object merge. As classic narrative means, Ahtila employs the
stream-of-consciousness technique, by which we can leave the world of
linearity, logic and clarity. According to Dinkla, Ahtila’s works, like those of
Lynn Hershman, take for granted the dissolution of the subject’s boundaries.
They demonstrate that the compulsive, the absurd and the fantastic are all
parts of our reality. For this, see Dinkla 2004, 263.
119
Cf. Puetz 2002.
120
Derrida 1976, 112.
121
Derrida 1976, 112. I’m willing to stress that arche-violence, in its double
logic, could be interpreted also (in terms of satire and irony) as paradoxical
humour.
122
Lai 2003.
123
Paz 1991, 110-111 & 129; Melchior-Bonnet 2004, 249.
124
Critchley 1999: 163.
125
Lai 2003, 23-46.
126
Lacoue-Labarthe 1999, 37 & 54.
127
Lai 2003.
128
Sparks 1997, xvii.
129
Jenks 1995, 14-15.
130
Derrida 1976, 143.
131
For Lacoue-Labarthe’s relation to Plato’s concept of mimesis, see
especially Lacoue-Labarthe 1989, passim.
132
Derrida 1976, 143.
133
Lacoue-Labarthe 1990, 80-83.
134
Lacoue-Labarthe 1993,xv.
135
Ulmer 1989, 59-60.
136
Bolter & Grusin 2000, 218. For art and “post-visual surveillance” see also
Arns 2004, 235-236.
137
Lacoue-Labarthe 1989, 264.
138
Haraway 2003, 478.
139
Ibid., 477.
140
Ibid, 479.
141
Lacoue-Labarthe 1989, 264. “Passive mimesis” is not an invention of
Lacoue-Labarthe, but he has given it the very attention this thought regards.
142
Derrida 2004, 144.