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Ana-Materialism and the Pineal Eye

Ana-materialism & the Pineal Eye provides a landmark interpretation of materialism, representation and the image using the Cartesian conceit of a pineal gland and its voracious sexually embedded appetites. Developing the argument via Georges Bataille’s re-invention of the pineal gland as an all seeing, all devouring, (pineal) eye, Professor Golding borrows this move to envision a different analytic approach to digital forms of ‘matter’ and artificial forms of ‘life’. From her critical engagement with Bataille, Deleuze and Butler, Golding shows why the tools provided by these modern, contemporary and postmodern approaches cannot fully explore or develop these new forms of reality/ies except by retreating into traditional binary divides between male and female, good and evil, mother/child and so forth. Ana-materialism and the Pineal Eye introduces a much needed understanding to oddly cathected sensualities, multiversal realities, digital imaginaries with no weight, no volume, no spatiality, but ‘somehow’ make sense, and with it, create matter, ethics, art. Originally commissioned for P. Baler (Ed), The Next Thing: Art in the 21st Century, (NY: Rowan & Littlefield, 2013), pp. 105-120, Golding’s contribution has met with critical acclaim, helping to “restart the conversation in the visual and performing arts that has been for too long silenced by the noise of instantaneity on the internet and functionalism in the creative arts. It is to be hoped that this book is a sign that the halcyon days of art and art makers lie ahead.” Professor Dorotea Olkowski, (Philosopher, Univ Colorado) and from Matias Viegener (artist and theorist, CALarts, LA): “In search of a paradigm shift that takes art beyond modernism, structuralism, post-modernism and post-historical ideologies, these writers grapple with new possibilities as artists take their searches into scientific laboratories of biotechnology and challenge previous assumptions concerning the meaning of body, self, nature, and culture.”