Cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han’s Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (2017) provides a pessimistic view of the status of freedom in modern society. He argues, neoliberal politics coupled with technological innovations have resulted in the age of psychopolitics: the subjugation of the mind. A spectre is haunting Byung-Chul Han – the spectre of Foucault.… Keep Reading
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy is not Kafkaesque as the recent review by Dr. Macon Holt suggests. To illustrate why, the following essay will attempt two things: First, a brief look at what Kafkaesque actually means. The argument here is that Kafka’s literature centers on the (Lacanian) big Other and thus the dictionary definition of the Kafkaesque… Keep Reading
(An edited translation of this text has been published in the Danish publication Atlas.) This month on the Ark Review, taking inspiration from Mark Grief’s recent book “Against Everything”, we are going to try and write against everything. Collectively though, and one subject at a time. So really more like Against ________. As in, fill… Keep Reading
“In declining, the novelist said it felt too much like rooting around in someone’s underwear drawer.” So says the editor, Matias Viegener, of the person he and McKenzie Wark initially approached to write the preface for “I’m very into you”, in its introduction. This is an entirely accurate description of my reading experience but, unlike… Keep Reading
I want to talk about theory-fiction, an obscure practice that has been around for a while but has recently reared itself back into view. While we could take this to mean theory heavy pieces of auto-fiction such as I Love Dick or, according to the unflattering assessment of the critic James Woods, the hysterical realists1 (works… Keep Reading
A few months ago, I became incredibly drunk while catching up with a friend of mine, the writer of strange and sadly funny stories of social commentary, Luke Hilton, when I hit upon a way to articulate something that had been playing on my mind for a while. Of course owing to the effects alcohol… Keep Reading
I am taking a look at a photograph of her, taken presumably in her fifties or sixties. The first thing I see is her hand holding a cigarette. It is only after a while that I actually see her, but my sight rests neither on her face nor on her eyes nor on the necklace.… Keep Reading