Ana-Materialism & the Pineal Eye: Becoming Mouth-Breast Visual Arts in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction

Abstract

Ana-materialism & the Pineal Eye provides a landmark interpretation of materialism, representation and the image using the Cartesian conceit of a pineal gland and its voracious sexually embedded appetites. Developing the argument via Georges Bataille’s re-invention of the pineal gland as an all-seeing, all devouring, (pineal) eye, Johnny Golding borrows this move to envision a different analytic approach to digital forms of ”˜matter’ and artificial forms of ”˜life.’ From her critical engagement with Bataille, Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler, Golding shows why the tools provided by these modern, contemporary and postmodern approaches to philosophy, image, the body, indeed representation cannot fully explore, let alone develop these new forms of reality/ies except by retreating into traditional binary divides between male and female, good and evil, mother/child and so forth. Ana-materialism and the Pineal Eye introduces a much needed understanding to oddly cathected sensualities, multiversal realities, digital imaginaries with no weight, no volume, no spatiality, but ”˜somehow’ making sense, and with it, creating matter, ethics, art.