For a Pragmatics of the Useless

For a Pragmatics of the Useless
Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
Total Pages : 236
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781478012597
ISBN-13 : 1478012595
Rating : 4/5 (97 Downloads)

Book Synopsis For a Pragmatics of the Useless by : Erin Manning

Download or read book For a Pragmatics of the Useless written by Erin Manning and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In For a Pragmatics of the Useless Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter two that a central refrain echoes: "All black life is neurodiverse life." This is not an equation, but an "approximation of proximity." Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity "schizz" around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with FĂ©lix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition's accounts of black life and the aesthetics of black sociality, proposes a "schizoanalysis" of the more-than, charting a panoply of techniques for other ways of living and learning.


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