Thursday 14 December 2023 | 6:30pm GMT
Fredric Jameson argued that the postmodern singularity effect is not limited to art or the art market but is also derived from the trajectories of contemporary financial capitalism (2015). Today, the main effect of the political mobilization of singularity as “a pure present without a past or a future” can be found in the creation of abstract dehistoricized spaces, accessible to capital investment and bio- or necropolitical population management. Space and the technologies of spatial control do not simply decontextualize places; they aim at undoing history. They rely on a singularity effect that severs current struggles from history and the negativity of unredeemed struggles. This talk aims at unpacking this singularity effect in light of the attacks of Oct 7, 2023, and Israel’s war on Gaza, examining techniques by which the negativity of history as a site of struggle is substituted by a necropolitical management of space.
Tickets: **SOLD OUT**
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sami-khatib-singularity-effects-undoing-history-from-above-tickets-771793052797
Senate House, University of London,
Room 104 Malet St London WC1E 7HU United Kingdom
For any inquiries or to book (in the event tickets sell out here), please email: Lilly.Markaki@rhul.ac.uk
Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research 