Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility (Volume 53)

by Matthew Fuller, Olga Goriunova

A philosophical and cultural distillation of the bleak joys in today’s ambivalent ecologies and patterns of life
Bleak Joys develops an understanding of complex entities and processes—from plant roots to forests to ecological damage and its calculation—as aesthetic. It is also a book about “bad” things, such as anguish and devastation, which relate to the ecological and technical but are also constitutive of politics, the ethical, and the formation of subjects. Avidly interdisciplinary, Bleak Joys draws on scientific work in plant sciences, computing, and cybernetics, as well as mathematics, literature, and art in ways that are not merely illustrative of but foundational to our understanding of ecological aesthetics and the condition in which the posthumanities are being forged. It places the sensory world of plants next to the generalized and nonlinear infrastructure of irresolvability—the economics of indifference up against the question of how to make a home on Planet Earth in a condition of damaged ecologies. Crosscutting chapters on devastation, anguish, irresolvability, luck, plant, and home create a vivid and multifaceted approach that is as remarkable for its humor as for its scholarly complexity. Engaging with Deleuze, Guattari, and Bakhtin, among others, Bleak Joys captures the modes of crises that constitute our present ecological and political condition, and reckons with the means by which they are not simply aesthetically known but aesthetically manifest.

Genres: Theory, Ecology

232 pages, Hardcover

Published October 29, 2019

About the author

Matthew Fuller is an author and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is known for his writings in media theory, software studies, critical theory and cultural studies, and contemporary fiction.

Reviews

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is phenomenal. It provides an immense scope of contending with contemporary dilemmas and discourses between philosophy, luck, plant theory, and the enviromental-aesthetic.

The chapters on irresolvability and luck were of immense value to me.

I would highly recommend individual chapters or the whole book to others, and cannot wait to teach more from this.