Issue 2, 2012
This second issue of Desearch continues the journal's mission to provide a platform able to encompass and support a wide range of postgraduate research interests. Thus, the articles included span the disparate fields of Continental Philosophy, Performance Art, Archive Studies, and Drawing.
Ben Trubody’s An Aesthetics of Capitalism: A Nietzschean Analysis of Baudrillard’s Theory of Consumption analyses from a socio-economic perspective Nietzsche’s ‘aesthetic of existence’ from the perspective of modes of reasoning as applied to Baudrillard’s ‘theory of consumption’ from The Consumer Society. In doing so, Trubody draws on the substitution of religion by the capitalist economic order as the absolute regulator of values.
Alexander Williams’ Going With The Flow: A Comparison of The Themes Within Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and Joris-Karl Huysmans’ With the Flow offers an interesting epistemological connection between philosophy and literature by comparing the two texts in an attempt to show that they can both offer similar insights into the meaning of Being.
Antje Hildebrandt’s Writing on Others: Towards an Experiential Methodology For The Critical Encounter With Performance Practice explores the ways by which new forms of participation in performance art allow spectators to become active collaborators on a cognitive level, by contributing to the production of the work’s meaning.
James C. Cameron Silva’s The Journey, The Makers, The Book provides a critical reflection on the status of the codex (printed book) after the e-book. By problematizing the role of nostalgia in relation to materiality over a number of popular media formats (vinyl records, newspapers, etc.) and taking into account the writer’s approach to various forms of publication, Silva proposes a non-conflictual relationship between the two formats.
Robert Luzar’s A Trace From A Point Without Reference examines the potential influence of the reductive and restrictive notational properties of ‘period’ and ‘ellipsis’ in drawing, in connection to the ontology of ‘trace’ and the mechanics of gestural body movement.
Once again, the editors of Desearch would like to thank the contributors of the second issue for presenting us with their highly interesting and original articles, which allow our readers to engage with current debates in Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Culture.
The Editors