Introduction

schizoanalytic ventures

pp. 1-26

in: Jan Jagodzinski, Schizoanalytic ventures at the end of the world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

The title, Schizoanalytic Ventures At the End of the World: Film, Video, Art, and Pedagogy, addresses the state of affairs in what is a precarious condition for our species living on the Earth, in terms of both an ecological crisis and a political crisis that shape contemporary global dynamics. While "end of the world" sounds very dramatic, it is a call from the future that casts its shadow on us today. This call is a warning as to a final end that is projected if and when the Earth no longer becomes habitable; at the same time, it is also a call to the growing and overwhelming conditions that are giving rise to neo-fascism and its consequent dictatorships that are springing around the globe in various degrees of force, held together by populist politics that have enabled such a condition to emerge. As many have noted, democracies that shaped modernist thinking are failing, as a very small percent of the population is able to manipulate the political scene, supported by wealthy business interests. In both these senses, a suicidal course has been charted.