The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance
by Anna Watkins Fisher
Duke University Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-1-4780-0884-2 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-1232-0 | Paper: 978-1-4780-0970-2 Library of Congress Classification NX180.P64F57 2020
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK What does artistic resistance look like in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent have been co-opted and commodified in ways that reinforce dominant systems? In The Play in the System Anna Watkins Fisher locates the possibility for resistance in artists who embrace parasitism—tactics of complicity that effect subversion from within hegemonic structures. Fisher tracks the ways in which artists on the margins—from hacker collectives like Ubermorgen to feminist writers and performers like Chris Kraus—have willfully abandoned the radical scripts of opposition and refusal long identified with anticapitalism and feminism. Space for resistance is found instead in the mutually, if unevenly, exploitative relations between dominant hosts giving only as much as required to appear generous and parasitical actors taking only as much as they can get away with. The irreverent and often troubling works that result raise necessary and difficult questions about the conditions for resistance and critique under neoliberalism today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Anna Watkins Fisher is Assistant Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and coeditor of the second edition of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader.
REVIEWS
“Anna Watkins Fisher's figure of the parasite offers us insight into the contemporary condition in which, due to ubiquitous appropriation and financialization, every oppositional gesture seems to have already been co-opted in advance. Her explorations illuminate the space in which artists and others are forced to operate today and outline ways in which it may still be possible, albeit quite ambiguously, to maneuver, resist, and express opposition.”
-- Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism
“Brilliant and provocative, The Play in the System explores the question: what subversive possibilities might a complicit subject—the parasite—hold? In the era of constant co-optation and coercive hospitality, the citizen is increasingly framed as a parasite. Rather than simply condemn this situation, Anna Watkins Fisher bridges new media and performance studies to understand how parasitical tactics, from hacking Amazon previews to harassing patriarchy, operate as subliminal dissent. This book, however, does not glorify the parasite: it profoundly deals with its limitations and possibilities—its dangerous voraciousness and its refusal to respect boundaries.”
-- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media
“Fisher’s book reminds us unequivocally that insidious structures of racist, patriarchal, and exploitive neoliberal and corporate systems in which we are enmeshed (and even now, are laboring to uphold to survive within them) are porous and also potentially indestructible....”
-- Nora Almeida College and Research Libraries
“The Play in the System...is highly recommended for academic libraries supporting curricula engaged with critical visual studies, culture and media studies, performance studies, gender and women’s studies, and contemporary art.”
-- Andrew Wang ARLIS/NA Reviews
“The first half of [The Play in the System] is easy to love. It builds portable theories and applies them to a wide range of materials. . . . In the book’s second half, . . . [Fielder] deals frankly with her own shifting judgements and feelings—never more so than in the book’s bravura chapter on intergenerational conflict in feminist performance art.”
-- Christopher Grobe Performance Research
“The Play in the System is an expertly crafted and widely accessible publication that bridges disciplines with masterful detail and precision. . . . The Play in the System differs from related literature by centering the practitioners as parasites to their respective institutions, and by privileging individual and collective acts of resistance over more generalized institutional critique.”
-- Camille Intson TDR: The Drama Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations Introduction. Toward a Theory of Parasitical Resistance Interlude. Thresholds of Accommodation Part I. Redistribution: Institutional Interventions 1. User Be Used: Leveraging the Coercive Hospitality of Corporate Platforms 2. An Opening Structure: Núria Güell and Kenneth Pietrobono's Legal Loopholes Part II. Imposition: Intimate Interventions 3. Hangers-On: Chris Kraus's Parasitical Feminism 4. A Seat at the Table: Feminist Performance Art's Institutional Absorption and Parasitical Legacies Coda. It's Not You, It's Me: Roisin Byrne and the Parasite's Shifting Ethics and Politics Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance
by Anna Watkins Fisher
Duke University Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-1-4780-0884-2 eISBN: 978-1-4780-1232-0 Paper: 978-1-4780-0970-2
What does artistic resistance look like in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent have been co-opted and commodified in ways that reinforce dominant systems? In The Play in the System Anna Watkins Fisher locates the possibility for resistance in artists who embrace parasitism—tactics of complicity that effect subversion from within hegemonic structures. Fisher tracks the ways in which artists on the margins—from hacker collectives like Ubermorgen to feminist writers and performers like Chris Kraus—have willfully abandoned the radical scripts of opposition and refusal long identified with anticapitalism and feminism. Space for resistance is found instead in the mutually, if unevenly, exploitative relations between dominant hosts giving only as much as required to appear generous and parasitical actors taking only as much as they can get away with. The irreverent and often troubling works that result raise necessary and difficult questions about the conditions for resistance and critique under neoliberalism today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Anna Watkins Fisher is Assistant Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and coeditor of the second edition of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader.
REVIEWS
“Anna Watkins Fisher's figure of the parasite offers us insight into the contemporary condition in which, due to ubiquitous appropriation and financialization, every oppositional gesture seems to have already been co-opted in advance. Her explorations illuminate the space in which artists and others are forced to operate today and outline ways in which it may still be possible, albeit quite ambiguously, to maneuver, resist, and express opposition.”
-- Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism
“Brilliant and provocative, The Play in the System explores the question: what subversive possibilities might a complicit subject—the parasite—hold? In the era of constant co-optation and coercive hospitality, the citizen is increasingly framed as a parasite. Rather than simply condemn this situation, Anna Watkins Fisher bridges new media and performance studies to understand how parasitical tactics, from hacking Amazon previews to harassing patriarchy, operate as subliminal dissent. This book, however, does not glorify the parasite: it profoundly deals with its limitations and possibilities—its dangerous voraciousness and its refusal to respect boundaries.”
-- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media
“Fisher’s book reminds us unequivocally that insidious structures of racist, patriarchal, and exploitive neoliberal and corporate systems in which we are enmeshed (and even now, are laboring to uphold to survive within them) are porous and also potentially indestructible....”
-- Nora Almeida College and Research Libraries
“The Play in the System...is highly recommended for academic libraries supporting curricula engaged with critical visual studies, culture and media studies, performance studies, gender and women’s studies, and contemporary art.”
-- Andrew Wang ARLIS/NA Reviews
“The first half of [The Play in the System] is easy to love. It builds portable theories and applies them to a wide range of materials. . . . In the book’s second half, . . . [Fielder] deals frankly with her own shifting judgements and feelings—never more so than in the book’s bravura chapter on intergenerational conflict in feminist performance art.”
-- Christopher Grobe Performance Research
“The Play in the System is an expertly crafted and widely accessible publication that bridges disciplines with masterful detail and precision. . . . The Play in the System differs from related literature by centering the practitioners as parasites to their respective institutions, and by privileging individual and collective acts of resistance over more generalized institutional critique.”
-- Camille Intson TDR: The Drama Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations Introduction. Toward a Theory of Parasitical Resistance Interlude. Thresholds of Accommodation Part I. Redistribution: Institutional Interventions 1. User Be Used: Leveraging the Coercive Hospitality of Corporate Platforms 2. An Opening Structure: Núria Güell and Kenneth Pietrobono's Legal Loopholes Part II. Imposition: Intimate Interventions 3. Hangers-On: Chris Kraus's Parasitical Feminism 4. A Seat at the Table: Feminist Performance Art's Institutional Absorption and Parasitical Legacies Coda. It's Not You, It's Me: Roisin Byrne and the Parasite's Shifting Ethics and Politics Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE