Blake, Deleuzian Aesthetics, and the Digital

201 Pages·2012·0.87 MB·English

by  Claire Colebrook

Blake, Deleuzian Aesthetics, and the Digital
Continuum Literary Studies Series
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Blake, Deleuzian Aesthetics,
and the Digital
Claire Colebrook
Continuum Literary Studies
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Claire Colebrook 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
Claire Colebrook has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-1677-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Colebrook, Claire.
Blake, Deleuzian aesthetics and the digital/Claire Colebrook.
p. cm. -- (Continuum literary studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-5533-7 (hardcover)
1. Blake, William, 1757-1827–Aesthetics. 2. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995–Aesthetics.
3. Literature and technology. 4. Digital media. I. Title.
PR4148.A35C65 2012
821’.7--dc23 2011040985
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
This book is dedicated to Andrea Gregg.

Contents
List of Abbreviations viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxxix
Chapter 1: Media, Mediation, and Materiality 1
Chapter 2: Art and Life: Analog Language 17
Chapter 3: Incarnation 45
Chapter 4: Force and Form 59
Chapter 5: The Body of Work Beyond Good and Evil 87
Chapter 6: Life 99
Conclusion 127
Notes 149
Works Cited 153
Index 159
List of Abbreviations
Blake: Complete Writings. Ed Geoffrey Keynes
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. K
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. 2nd ed.
Ed. David Erdman, with Harold Bloom
University of California Press, 2008. E
There is No Natural Religion NNR
Milton M
Jerusalem J
Songs Of Experience SOE
The First Book of Urizen U
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell MHH
Visions of the Daughters of Albion VDA
The Book of Los BL
The Four Zoas FZ
All Religions Are One ARO
A Vision of the Last Judgment VLJ
Preface
Blake and Digital Aesthetics
If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character, the Philosophic and
Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things and stand still, un-
able to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.
(NNR[b], E: 3; K: 97)
The problem of aesthetics has always been intertwined with the problem of
the digital (both the digit as the counting/organizing human hand, and the
digit as that which allows forms to be repeated and circulated). All problems
of aesthetics are problems of the digital, or the relation between what is intu-
ited (aesthesis) and the formalized systems that allow for intuitions to be given
form and repeatability.1 How is it that what is received or given to the senses
is experienced as this or that identifiable form? How does sensation in its
temporal complexity and openness take on a body that can be repeated,
circulated, copied, and simulated? How is the fluidity and temporal richness
of intuition organized into distinction? How does the flux of sensation
become a world of determined, repeatable, ordered, and synthesized objects?
The passage from aesthesis to synthesis, from sensation to sense, becomes
a problem for ‘aesthetics’ (or a problem of art and visual pleasure) in
modernity. The great gesture of the enlightenment is to refuse any already-
given synthesizing system and instead to question the genesis of system.
Kant explicitly set the project of critique against the Platonic ‘flight’ into
some higher world of already present forms and instead asked about the
emergence of forms (Kant 1998, 395 [CPR A313/B370]). It is also in Kant
that the problem of the aesthetic, or the synthesizing of forms, becomes
apparent in the experience of beauty. Encountering a world that is not yet
conceptualized but appears as if it were offering itself to be formed, the
ordering subject feels himself to be a synthesizing power. Art is not itself
ethical, but its capacity to draw the subject back to the feeling of giving the