Unconscious/Television

The book Unconscious/Television is not conventional, it is written with a certain poetic fluidity, undulating like ocean waves, delivering the message through a rhythm that is both gentle and rampant; you must walk into the ocean, and let the water engulf your oceanic body. There are a dozen axiomata, but they swerve into a spiral formation, becoming a field of molten relations. Comprised of six texts, the work folds in on itself through an experimental weaving of these parts. The six texts have then been cut up into parts, and these parts have been shuffled together to form a long, cinematic sequence of scenes that resembles a complex TV drama. Furthermore, we have cut a series of “intersections” into this sequence which, at first, appear like TV commercials interrupting the flow of the book; yet the idea goes beyond this. This experimental arrangement produces a number of interesting affects that add something significant to the overall experience of reading the book.

The book deals with things that are buried deep within the unconscious, things we barely saw or haven’t seen for years, cartoons that we watched as kids but never understood, ghostly characters that swim in the ether, people who we thought we knew. TV shows and anime references are woven into the theoretical work of Lacan, Freud, Deleuze & Guattari, as well as Thomas Lamarre, to whom the book is dedicated. This experimental, cinematic text is the most exciting book Becoming has been a part of to date, a white whale that was birthed in the Sea of Tethys (Η θάλασσα της Τηθύος).