Thomas Dekeyser
I am a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Southampton.
I am a cultural-digital geographer whose work examines digital technologies, negative affects, and the politics of refusal. More specifically, I examine how a politics of refusal shifts in relation to changing technological and urban conditions, and how, in turn, such negative politics push us to rethink geographical understandings of power, affect, and the human. My work, while grounded in cultural and digital geography, is inspired by critical theory and pessimist philosophies
I am also a film maker who, most recently, produced MACHINES IN FLAMES, an experimental documentary about a group of French computer workers who bombed computer firms in the early 1980s, and BREACHED, a diary chronicle of modern-day cargo looting.
More at thomasdekeyser.com
My current research digs into the long, and often forgotten histories of anti-technologism, and my doctoral thesis was an ethnographic study with 'subvertisers' (also referred to as adbusters or adhackers - those conducting illicit interventions into advertising spaces) that explored contemporary advertising power. The thesis built on my past working in advertising.
I am a cultural-digital geographer whose work examines digital technologies, negative affects, and the politics of refusal. More specifically, I examine how a politics of refusal shifts in relation to changing technological and urban conditions, and how, in turn, such negative politics push us to rethink geographical understandings of power, affect, and the human. My work, while grounded in cultural and digital geography, is inspired by critical theory and pessimist philosophies
I am also a film maker who, most recently, produced MACHINES IN FLAMES, an experimental documentary about a group of French computer workers who bombed computer firms in the early 1980s, and BREACHED, a diary chronicle of modern-day cargo looting.
More at thomasdekeyser.com
My current research digs into the long, and often forgotten histories of anti-technologism, and my doctoral thesis was an ethnographic study with 'subvertisers' (also referred to as adbusters or adhackers - those conducting illicit interventions into advertising spaces) that explored contemporary advertising power. The thesis built on my past working in advertising.
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Papers by Thomas Dekeyser
This paper poses questions on the possibility of styles of working besides "affirmationism." The paper begins by defining negativity as a force or status of dis-unification, and traces how it remains closely associated with dialectics within Geography. The paper goes on to explore how the renunciation of dialectics has meant that negativity more generally has been rendered outside thought, with a concomitant uptake of an affirmationist ethos. Despite the promise of such work, there remains disquiet. What is omitted or elided in the uptake of affirmationism? Critiques, largely from outside the discipline, highlight how affirmationism privileges the lively and Life, novelty and experimentation, and the generous and generative in conjunction with a suspicion of negativity. We home in on and reflect on three ostensible limits of affirmationism: affirmationist vitalism, affirmationist politics, and affirmationist critique. We argue that renouncing dialectics does not entail, necessarily so, a concomitant abandonment of negativity. Indeed, we need to embrace attempts to think and act that elude, or dispense with, the propensity to affirm, making space for affects that are far from hopeful, for those becomings-otherwise that do not increase capacities to act, or for modes of critique that refuse; in other words, for that which is besides affirmationism or simply "unaffirmable." Crucially, however, we point towards the dangers of a simple (re)turn to negativity, preferring a steadfast refusal to settle these tensions.
once the building, along with the art, has been demolished. These place-making events perform a kind of audio/visual memento mori, reminding us not only of the perpetual transitoriness of
urban existence but also of the potential for participation in such processes. In this article, words, still images and videographic footage are blended to explore and imagine what sorts of affective
capacities the project might afford through its creative interventions and mediations.
Interviews by Thomas Dekeyser
In this interview with Thomas Dekeyser, Eugene Thacker elaborates on the central themes of his work. Addressing themes including extinction, futility, human univer-salism, network euphoria, political indecision and scientific nihilism, the interview positions Thacker's work within the contemporary theoretical conjuncture, specifically through its relation to genres of thought his work is often grouped with or cast against: vitalism, speculative realism and accelerationism. More broadly, however, the interview offers a unique insight into Thacker's approach to the thinking, doing and writing of 'philosophy'.
PhD thesis by Thomas Dekeyser
Three-year ethnographic study into the politics, subjects and practices of subvertising and adbusting. Refusing to simply celebrate the potential of antagonistic practice, it brings into view the intricate relations between advertising and subvertising, shedding unforeseen light on the peculiar ways lifewords at odds with capitalism end up serving its market interests, and the role of the advertising industry therein. To do so, the study offers a conceptualisation of ‘recuperative capitalism’, and reflects on paths of escape from its overwhelming reach.
Book reviews by Thomas Dekeyser
Conference Presentations by Thomas Dekeyser
What I am interested in here is less in picking a side, and more in asking how one concept of his – that of refusal – was remarkably able to bind his pre and post 1940 periods together, and which shifting orientation towards that concept marks his transition. I do so with the aim of contributing to questions of affirmation and negation in contemporary geographical thought. My aim is ultimately not to deny the concept's (dangerous) significance, but to explore what it might tell us about the possibility of refusal as an ethical responsibility.
To adequately approach the collective feeling of overexposure, we need to understand it as a paradox. The feeling of overexposure is composed of the desire to expose, on the one hand, and the anxiety of exposure, on the other hand. I start by digging into this paradox, drawing on empirical examples (including Cambridge Analytica), before examining how it emerges from the unthinkability of the algorithm and the algorithm as a force of desubjectivisation. Finally, I critically examine the calls for privacy and transparency the feeling of overexposure commonly gives rise to.
This paper poses questions on the possibility of styles of working besides "affirmationism." The paper begins by defining negativity as a force or status of dis-unification, and traces how it remains closely associated with dialectics within Geography. The paper goes on to explore how the renunciation of dialectics has meant that negativity more generally has been rendered outside thought, with a concomitant uptake of an affirmationist ethos. Despite the promise of such work, there remains disquiet. What is omitted or elided in the uptake of affirmationism? Critiques, largely from outside the discipline, highlight how affirmationism privileges the lively and Life, novelty and experimentation, and the generous and generative in conjunction with a suspicion of negativity. We home in on and reflect on three ostensible limits of affirmationism: affirmationist vitalism, affirmationist politics, and affirmationist critique. We argue that renouncing dialectics does not entail, necessarily so, a concomitant abandonment of negativity. Indeed, we need to embrace attempts to think and act that elude, or dispense with, the propensity to affirm, making space for affects that are far from hopeful, for those becomings-otherwise that do not increase capacities to act, or for modes of critique that refuse; in other words, for that which is besides affirmationism or simply "unaffirmable." Crucially, however, we point towards the dangers of a simple (re)turn to negativity, preferring a steadfast refusal to settle these tensions.
once the building, along with the art, has been demolished. These place-making events perform a kind of audio/visual memento mori, reminding us not only of the perpetual transitoriness of
urban existence but also of the potential for participation in such processes. In this article, words, still images and videographic footage are blended to explore and imagine what sorts of affective
capacities the project might afford through its creative interventions and mediations.
In this interview with Thomas Dekeyser, Eugene Thacker elaborates on the central themes of his work. Addressing themes including extinction, futility, human univer-salism, network euphoria, political indecision and scientific nihilism, the interview positions Thacker's work within the contemporary theoretical conjuncture, specifically through its relation to genres of thought his work is often grouped with or cast against: vitalism, speculative realism and accelerationism. More broadly, however, the interview offers a unique insight into Thacker's approach to the thinking, doing and writing of 'philosophy'.
Three-year ethnographic study into the politics, subjects and practices of subvertising and adbusting. Refusing to simply celebrate the potential of antagonistic practice, it brings into view the intricate relations between advertising and subvertising, shedding unforeseen light on the peculiar ways lifewords at odds with capitalism end up serving its market interests, and the role of the advertising industry therein. To do so, the study offers a conceptualisation of ‘recuperative capitalism’, and reflects on paths of escape from its overwhelming reach.
What I am interested in here is less in picking a side, and more in asking how one concept of his – that of refusal – was remarkably able to bind his pre and post 1940 periods together, and which shifting orientation towards that concept marks his transition. I do so with the aim of contributing to questions of affirmation and negation in contemporary geographical thought. My aim is ultimately not to deny the concept's (dangerous) significance, but to explore what it might tell us about the possibility of refusal as an ethical responsibility.
To adequately approach the collective feeling of overexposure, we need to understand it as a paradox. The feeling of overexposure is composed of the desire to expose, on the one hand, and the anxiety of exposure, on the other hand. I start by digging into this paradox, drawing on empirical examples (including Cambridge Analytica), before examining how it emerges from the unthinkability of the algorithm and the algorithm as a force of desubjectivisation. Finally, I critically examine the calls for privacy and transparency the feeling of overexposure commonly gives rise to.
What might it mean, Andrew Culp asks in Dark Deleuze, to “give up on all the reasons given for saving this world” (Culp, 2016b: 66)? In response, this interview explores the pathways offered by a “dark” Deleuze, a politics of cruelty, Afro-Pessimism, partisan knowledges, destituent power, and tactics of escape.
*"#1 Most Read Piece from 2018": http://societyandspace.org/2019/01/02/most-read-pieces-from-2018/