Hume’s Aesthetics: On the Standard of Taste

There is undoubtedly a variety of opinion in matters of art appreciation – someone may, for example, detest Damien Hirst’s Continue reading →

The Spectacle of the Scaffold – Foucault, Corporal Punishment, and the Digital Age

Witnesses who described the scene could even be prosecuted, thereby ensuring that the execution should cease to be a spectacle Continue reading →

I’m Not Your Mary: The Derridean Différance in Silent Hill 2

Konami’s Silent Hill 2 (2001), a stand-alone title in the Silent Hill series, may be considered one of the seminal Continue reading →

The Web as Rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari

‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, Continue reading →

Transport for London and the Total Advertisement

When TfL announced that Canada Water station was to be dubbed ‘Buxton Water’ for Marathon Day we witnessed one of Continue reading →

Louis Althusser, the Ideological State Apparatus, and Interpellation

Imagine that you’ve magically transformed into a bourgeoisie capitalist. You wake up one morning and…poof: regal cashmere pajamas, silk blankets, Continue reading →

Deleuze V. Dolezal – Yeah, We’re Actually Doing This

Deleuze and Identity Politics Deleuze has been used before to critique identity politics, sometimes this has been done with the Continue reading →

Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Video Games

The great messianic art critic Walter Benjamin saw the role of film in his era of capitalist culture as creating Continue reading →

On Certainty and Mad Max

“At the end of the world,” our eponymous hero growls in the prologue of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Continue reading →

Hemingway and Modernity’s Necropolis

The works of Ernest Hemingway have always aimed to elucidate the looming presence of death as it follows his characters Continue reading →

Simulacrum in Literature: Baudrillard and Barthelme

Simulacrum, like many terms surrounding postmodernism, has been defined in a number of ways. Perhaps the simplest definition of the Continue reading →

Stiegler’s Memory, 2: The Industrialisation of Consciousness

Technical and Political Memory As I outlined in Stiegler’s Memory,1: The Problem With Husserl, Bernard Stiegler argues that Husserl’s traditional Continue reading →

Stiegler’s Memory, 1: The Problem With Husserl

The Problem With Husserl To French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, the outer objects that human beings create can be looked at exteriorisations of Continue reading →

Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip and Pragmatic Knowledge

Philip K. Dick is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting writers of the 20th century. His prose is Continue reading →

Is Postmodernism Self-Defeating?

In academia postmodernism is nearly impossible to avoid. Characters like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Jameson, Baudrillard (and many others of course), Continue reading →

The ‘Champagne Socialist’ Fallacy

‘Champagne socialist,’ ‘limousine liberal’, or my personal favourite ‘bourgeois bohemian’ are equivalent accusations aimed at people who advocate socialist thought, Continue reading →