there’s no I in me (or, “I Don’t Necessarily Agree with Everything I Say”)
// performative lecture // The first iteration of this performative essay reading took place at the "Tuning Speculation: De-Tuning Speculation" Symposium (Organized by The Occulture) in Toronto from November 18-20, 2016 //
There’s No In Me (or, “I Don’t Necessarily Agree with Everything I Say”) provided was an experiment in practicing “unified disunity” when confronting questions of communication, particularly in academic settings and in light of complex geotraumatic upheaval taking place in the age of the (so-called) Anthropocene. Responding to Deleuze’s (2006) provocation that “discussion is just an exercise in narcissism where everyone takes turns showing off” (384) and contextualized in terms of what might be called “Anthropocene discourse,” this performative lecture enacted an entangled discussion between several dissident voices, all of whom debated their position from distinctive philosophical and sonic positions.
Taking cues from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1994) critique of consensual and communicative models of philosophy, this discussion took the form of a performative conference presentation, wherein I tried to work my way through a reading of my paper, as is the norm in a conference setting, all the while being interrupted by my own voice, which was pre-recorded and then rendered sonic via a two-channel audio track.
By weaving together the often contradictory aural (dis)encounters of (anti)catastrophism, (cosmic) pessimism, scientism, techno-fetishism, and new materialism, all of which were nevertheless articulated by my own voice, this ‘patasonic experiment was an attempt to investigate both the potential and limits of “logical” discussion and argumentation given today’s increasingly toxic milieu.