For a Pragmatics of the Useless Thought in the Act

For a Pragmatics of the Useless Thought in the Act

Drawing on the radical black tradition, process philosophy, and Felix Guattari's schizoanalysis, Erin Manning explores the links between neurotypicality, whiteness, and black life.



What has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In For a Pragmatics of the Useless Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter two that a central refrain echoes: "All black life is neurodiverse life." This is not an equation, but an "approximation of proximity." Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity "schizz" around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with FĂ©lix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition's accounts of black life and the aesthetics of black sociality, proposes a "schizoanalysis" of the more-than, charting a panoply of techniques for other ways of living and learning.

Auteur | Erin Manning
Taal | Engels
Type | Paperback
Categorie | Mens & Maatschappij

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