Scandalous Times: Contemporary Creativity and the Rise of State-Sanctioned Controversy

Description

We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and, ultimately, our judgment. Many of these routine transgressions will be understood in 'revelatory' terms, as peeling back the multiple layers of artifice and spin to reveal an underlying, and oftentimes disturbing, 'truth'. Otherswill be recognized as calculated marketing exercises that simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism. Yet these 'ordinary' scandals can themselves be seen to be largely derivative of another, altogether more fundamental-and fundamentally rare-form of disruption. Such is the real scandal that accompanies instances of authentic creation. Building on the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Scandalous Times not only argues the case for such 'real scandal', but also shows how it is today being abrogated and substituted through the increasing production of novel forms of state-sanctioned controversy. From Duchamp to Donald Trump, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas from art and advertising to politics and social media have come to actively contribute to this 'static' fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creativity as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Notes on a Scandal Sovereign Public Subjects Real Subjective Creation Modus Operandi Part 1 Scandals 1 The Big Reveal Anagnorisis and Peripeteia From Revelation to Dissimulation Blurred Lines Different Perspectives 2 Chaos and Novelty Nothing Comes from Nothing Creating Controversy The Blind Man A Convenient Truth Part 2 Foundations 3 Grounds for Annulment System Failure Encircling the Real Impossible Nonsense The Scandal of Being 4 Making Sense of Everything A Stumbling Block The State of Things The Mathematical Turn On the New Part 3 Creation 5 A Terrible Beauty The Return of the Real The Clamor of Being Reflexivity, Revelation, Resonance The Real of the Real 6 Wresting with the Impossible The Fabrication of Truth Overcoming the Impasse The Subject of Scandal A New Way of Thinking Part 4 Controversy 7 Brave New World The Other Big Brother Mond’s Monde To Overturn the World A New Metaphor? 8 The Real Problem A Neighborhood of Strangers Are You Not Entertained? Simulacra and Stimulation Matters of Consequence Notes Bibliography Index