This book examines the desire for, and intoxication with, destruction as it appears in cultural objects and representation, arguing that all cultural and aesthetic value is fundamentally predicated on its own fragility, as well as the living transience of those who make and encounter it. Beginning with a philosophy of expenditure after Georges Bataille, each chapter maps different operations of destruction in media and culture. These operations are expressed and located in representations of human extinction and explosive architecture, in the body and in sexuality, and in media and digital archives, which constitute a further destabilisation of the notion of destruction in the dynamic between aspirational immortality and material volatility embedded in the archival systems of digital cultures.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Intoxication of Destruction
- Introduction: Destruction and Immortality
- The Origins of Destruction, Immortality
- Expenditure and Destruction in Media Cultures
- Works Cited
- Destruction I: Energy
- Part 1: The General Economy
- Part 2: Sovereignty and Heterogeneity
- Works Cited
- Destruction II: World
- Part 1: Exploding Monuments (The Destruction Of Architecture)
- Part 2: Extinction (The Destruction of Everyone Else)
- Works Cited
- Destruction III: Body
- Part 1: Spectacular Expenditure (from Sacrifice to Execution)
- Part 2: Eroticism (The Destruction of Sexuality)
- Works Cited
- Destruction IV: Matter
- Part 1: Accelerating Destruction (The Material of Media)
- Part 2: The Material of the Digital (Computational Immortality)
- Works Cited
- Conclusion: The Destroyers
- Bibliography
- Index
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