Flatline Constructs by Mark Fisher

Flatline Constructs by Mark Fisher

Donna Haraway's celebrated observation that our machines are disturbingly lively, while we ourselves are frighteningly inert has given this issue a certain currency in contemporary cyber-theory. But what is in- teresting about Haraway's remark - its challenge to the oppositional think- ing that sets up free will against determinism, vitalism against mechanism - has seldom been processed by a mode of theorizing which has tended to reproduce exactly the same oppositions. These theoretical failings, it will be argued here, arise from a resistance to pursuing cybernetics to its limits (a failure evinced as much by cyberneticists as by cultural theorists, it must be added). Unraveling the implications of cybernetics, it will be claimed, takes us out to the Gothic flatline. The Gothic flatline designates a zone of radical immanence. And to theorize this flatline demands a new approach, one committed to the theorization of immanence. This thesis calls that approach Gothic Materialism.

Mark Fisher is a well-known arts pundit in Scotland. He is the Scottish theatrical critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List, and a freelance contributor to Variety, The Scotsman, and Scotland on Sunday, with over 25 years of experience. He is the co-editor of Made in Scotland, a Methuen Drama anthology of plays, and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (a great practical but also inspirational book full of solid advice - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian).