Avoiding the Subject
Media, Culture and the Object
Distributed for Amsterdam University Press
216 pages
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10 halftones
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6-1/4 x 9-1/4
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© 2004
What can Roger Rabbit tell us about the Second Gulf War? What can a woman married to the Berlin Wall tell us about posthumanism and inter-subjectivity? What can DJ Shadow tell us about the end of history? What can our local bus route tell us about the fortification of the West? What can Reality TV tell us about the crisis of contemporary community? And what can unauthorized pictures of Osama Bin Laden tell us about new methods of popular propaganda? These are only some of the thought-provoking questions raised in Avoiding the Subject, which highlights the feedback-loops between philosophy, technology, and politics in today's mediascape.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Influence of Anxiety
Chapter 1: The Aesthetic Object
A break in Transmission: Art, Appropriation and Accumulation
Chapter 2: The Love Object
Relations with Concrete Others
(or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Berlin Wall)
Chapter 3: The Elusive Object
"Look at the Bunny": The Rabbit as Virtual Totem
(or, What Roger Rabbit Can Teach Us About the Second Gulf War)
Chapter 4: The Media(ted) Object
From September 11 to the 7-11:
Popular Propaganda and the Internet's War on Terrorism
Chapter 5: The Shared Object
Abandoned Commonplaces: Some Belated Thoughts on Big Brother
Chapter 6: The Moveable Object
Public Transport: Jaunting from the Spaceship Nomad to the HSS Tampa
Chapter 7: The Foreign Object
The Floating Life of Fallen Angels
Unsettled Communities and Hong Kong Cinema
Chapter 8: The Abject Object
Sovereignty, Sacrifice and the Sacred in Contemporary Australian Politics
Conclusion
A Spanner in the Works
Notes
Index
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