These are my PhD books I have sorted them out and given them their own shelf. I am already not sure about the new materialist section. I'm tempted to move these books up a shelf with the Isaak Walton and the Sartre. The slightly out of reach PhD section for the not quite making the bottom shelf books. I think I have probably read most of these books now and I am not sure if this is something I'm proud of. I was always impressed by people who could do card tricks but also carried a slight worry that they may have spent a lot of their lives practicing something that in the final analysis is quite light and a little naff. My reading of some of these texts feels a bit like this, in some ways impressive in others pathetic.
The books are organized in a taxonomy that is very definitely not the Dewey decimal system or alphabetical this is an attempt to order things. I start off with Deleuze and then Deleuze and his mate Guattari. I did not put my broken copy of 1000 Plateaus here because of the weight of it has broken its spine and could mess up the neatnes of things. We then have Manning and Massumi and a copy of Thought in the Act which I originally ironically thought was called caught in the act. However uncomfortable these texts feel in there throbbing difficulty it has to be said that the more time passe, the more these texts become a fluid molten core of my work. The books then slip into the books about and the stuff that comes after; Massumi's guide and another guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia both of which let you down or lead you wrong. There are a few books about assemblage theory that I've struggled with leading into the philosophy of play a rather dead end bit. On the shelf below I have Engels and Dewey and a few Ruskin books John Humes Speculations and a chunk of Colin Ward plus all my Whitechapel art gallery readers guides, which are nice to read. A chunk about play and adventure play that I never know what to do with, the horrid Hicky-sticky Moody new materialist bit and then a final section filling the shelf up which are some of my older art theory books. Kesters Conversation Pieces, Bourriauds, Relational Aesthetics and Clare Bishops, Artificial Hells. I am not sure if these need to go upstairs or not but they can live here a while.
The book that is out next to me today is Erin Mannings a Minor Gesture. I keep wondering if this is the most important book in my PhD. It is hard to read I've just started chapter 4 which is about autism and movement it is crazy dense in places. I keep saying its like Deleuze and Guattari without the jokes. This is true there are not many jokes in it. I don't think Manning is a new materialist although she does try and theorise the the more -than human of the world. Perhaps this is why I keep getting pulled back into research-creation as an idea. Put simply Manning draws on Bergson and Whitehead to argue for the forward unfolding creative moments that constitute the world that are not reliant on a singular bounded human mind/body. At the end of this line of thinking you can end up sharing lots of thoughts from a new materialist orientation but you end up more with a Deluezian configuration of a life which I am afraid cannot live without its italics here.
And then we have the playground and then we have the playing and the people and then we have the building and the making and then we have the me and the others and all these things are in excess and more-than. I am going to stop writing this bitty blog now and go back to reading Manning and taking notes. Writing on my blog now feels less necessary though perhaps it is more important. I may come back and tidy this post up or I may leave it. For now it finishes here.
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