The Plastic Turn

IF 0.2 4区 文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM
R. Ghosh
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract:There is currently considerable interest, across a variety of different fields, in the quality of plasticity. The philosopher Catherine Malabou, for instance, identifies plasticity as “the motor scheme of our time,” and has applied the concept to fields ranging from continental philosophy to neuroscience to literature. In this essay, I propose a plastic turn that emphasizes not the formal quality of plasticity, as do Malabou and others, but rather a plastic turn that takes inspiration from the materiality of plastic itself—what I call the material-aesthetic. Plastic speaks as a material, in its material formations, in modes of structuration, and in metaphoric figurality that imports “excess signification” into our aesthetic understanding and critical thinking. Explaining briefly what I mean by material-aesthetic, I propose to construct the plastic turn around two points of connection: first, through what I call the “in-laboratory” event that foregrounds the distinctness of polymeric forms and the manifestations that additives bring to plastic’s behavior, and second, the “outside-laboratory” event where plastic becomes an increasingly ubiquitous contaminant within the global ecosystem and develops its own ways and character traits. My argument considers the growth and formation (substance-variety through multiple applications and chemical synthesis) and dissemination (oceanic movements and sea-land drifts and percolations) of plastic in the context of corresponding developments in literature and critical thought beginning with the turn of the twentieth century. In its molecularity, polymericity and molarity, plastic points to a turn in twentieth-century thinking across disciplines and discourses. It is the material-aesthetic as the operative theory-machine.
塑料转向
摘要:目前,在各种不同的领域,人们对塑性的质量产生了相当大的兴趣。例如,哲学家凯瑟琳·马拉布(Catherine Malabou)将可塑性视为“我们这个时代的运动方案”,并将这一概念应用于从大陆哲学到神经科学再到文学的各个领域。在这篇文章中,我提出了一种塑性转向,它不像马拉布和其他人那样强调塑性的形式质量,而是一种从塑性本身的物质性中获得灵感的塑性转向——我称之为材料美学。塑料作为一种材料,在其材料形态、结构模式和隐喻形象中说话,将“过度意义”引入我们的审美理解和批判性思维。在简要解释我所说的材料美学的含义时,我建议围绕两个连接点构建塑料转向:首先,通过我所称的“实验室内”事件,它突出了聚合物形式的独特性以及添加剂对塑料行为的表现,其次,在“外部实验室”事件中,塑料成为全球生态系统中越来越普遍的污染物,并发展出自己的方式和特征。我的论点考虑了塑料的生长和形成(通过多种应用和化学合成的物质多样性)以及传播(海洋运动、海陆漂移和渗透),这是从20世纪之交开始的文学和批判思想的相应发展的背景下进行的。塑性的分子性、聚合性和摩尔性表明了20世纪跨学科和跨话语思维的转变。它是作为操作理论机器的物质美学。
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来源期刊
DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM
DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM-
CiteScore
0.80
自引率
0.00%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: For over thirty years, diacritics has been an exceptional and influential forum for scholars writing on the problems of literary criticism. Each issue features articles in which contributors compare and analyze books on particular theoretical works and develop their own positions on the theses, methods, and theoretical implications of those works.
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