Topological Glossary

Analytical deconstruction – A somewhat-rationalist dissection of the terms of engagement for anything stuck within so-called cultural production and perceived as outdated and/or anathema. Often a socio-political and/or ideological reading of present or past, situational and/or historical biases.

Art-academic industrial complex – The neo-liberalized version of the art world and the academic world, as singular machine, with an emphasis on the commodification of works and authors and artists – i.e., the gamed, for-profit production of celebrity and privilege.

Artist-scholars – A hybrid clan of artisans working against the de facto anti-intellectualism and abject careerism of the neo-liberalized knowledge commons. Generally fated to insignificance and, in some cases, abject poverty. Formerly known as the avant-garde.

Artistic exception – A term deriving from Early Modernist attempts to establish categories of genius and to canonize artists and authors toward valorization of subjects versus works, setting the stage for the commodification of the modernist canon.

Authorial privileges – A set of de facto rights dating to “whenever,” but seriously privileged with the arrival of early forms of copyright in the Venetian Renaissance. Generally reducible to “authorial identity” or “authorial presence” and closely related to moral rights of authors.

Capital – Not money per se, “Capital” is, per Marx, use value (rent) multiplied one-thousand-fold across regimes of exploitation and expropriation since the Late Medieval period but decidedly enhanced in the late-twentieth century with the arrival of vectoral finance capitalism.

“Christic” moment – The Absolute Exception to arbitrary Power and, today, to the fatal caprice (hubris) of Capital.

Debauched religion – Any otherwise well-meaning insurrection turned to privileging a cohort or Kafka-esque Power Itself versus the founding principles of the insurrection – e.g., Christianity, Communism, Socialism, Modernism, Liberalism, etc.

Failed saints – Innumerable artists, scholars, ne’er-do-wells, miscreants, and otherwise dispossessed and damned souls. The true saints.

General Intellect – The Marxist term for the Republic of Letters, per Diderot, but with an important anti-capitalist ethos attached.

Ideational Franciscanism – Early Franciscanism and its categorical rejection of the ownership of anything whatsoever. Denoted the “Highest Poverty” by Giorgio Agamben.

Immanentist paradox – The great existentialist blind spot endured by all, as time passes, and when what is at hand is obscured by what is passing. To be found in Nietzschean-Lacanian exegesis as The Thing (or The Thing from Outer Space). Reality Itself. Both a function of repression and continual versus dialectical sublimation.

Moral rights – A set of rights (legal and a-legal) established in the Enlightenment, but only incorporated into international law as of the early 1900s, and then generally ignored by governments and industry due to the fact that they are inassimilable to the capitalist agenda and a threat to industry.

Nihilist remainder – A curious affectation given to the Left since Time Immemorial – e.g., the Montanists and other heretic sects of the early Christian era. Particularly relevant to the Russian nineteenth century, but resurrected in the twentieth century by scholars as diverse as Benjamin, Camus, Cacciari, and Agamben. Arguably, an end run on anarchism, and the actual throwing of bombs, and inclusive of a decidedly curious ethical and moral remainder that eschews violence. Possibly a case of the embarrassment of riches associated with being an aristocrat (of the Spirit or otherwise).

Ontological reduction – A return to ground in the philosophical tradition that also often engenders a renunciation of former principles in search of new (higher) ground. Most likely an outcome of a former ethical agenda having been corrupted and/or a former crypto-religious agenda and/or regime having been exposed.

Onto-theological – A very curious linguistic construction connoting what is almost antithetical to progressive politics and progressive aesthetics, even as it often swerves into contested grounds concerning the unholy admixture of politics and religion. Dangerous territory and only for the more courageous souls in the Arts and Letters, insofar as it often ends up traversing negative theology, a-theology, and political theology, plus the unavoidable figures of “Heidegger” and “Schmitt.”

Post-contemporary – A type of last-ditch attempt to categorize early twentieth-century cultural production after the exhaustion of the teleologically inflected buzz terms generated across the twentieth century by art historians to define modern art. Similar in spirit to post-modernism, except that “contemporary” has no history per se. Connotes many other terms, inclusive of meta-modernism, etc., all the while meaning next to nothing. Often replaced by Super-contemporary, which means that the artist cannot be dead.

Prior Art – All that is embedded in Art and all that underwrites existence per se. Most likely the dagger through the dark heart of Capital, if ever truly acknowledged, just before Capital is finally pushed off the cliff, to never be seen or heard from again. The foundation stone for all utopias.

Proof of Concept – A ridiculous term associated with product development and somehow redolent with the bombast of the culture industry, plus “innovation,” “disruption,” etc.

GK