Circuitries of Subjectivity:
​Fragmented Bodies and (In)finite Selves in Infinity Pool (2023)

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023)

Marcus Prasad
​Monday 24 April 2023, 7-10pm

​
Groupe Intervention Video (GIV)
4001, rue Berri, # 105
Métro Mont-Royal

This lecture will centralize Duchamp’s representation of the fragmented body in Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) to conceive of a formal constitution of the self in Infinity Pool, which unbinds by its own duplication and subsequent death. Motion here is repetition, a cyclical logic of the death drive in which the body literally replicates and kills itself in the pursuit of a tensionless state. Throughout this circular movement, Symbolic legibility is broken down as James, Gabi, and their friends pursue further pleasure or jouissance from experiencing the murder of their doubles, further relegating themselves from the social normativity of the resort compound, the “ulterior” social behaviours of the Li Tolqa, and ultimately, the law. Their regular lives are no longer of any importance as they engage in multiple limit experiences that bring them convincingly close to the Real—not with the aim to master the self in the Symbolic, but to fully decompose subjectivity and remain in fragments held together by a jouissance of rage and pleasure.

 — ​​This event is free and open to the public. — ​​

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MARCUS PRASAD is a doctoral student in Communication Studies working under the supervision of Dr. Bobby Benedicto. His research uses film philosophy and psychoanalysis to explore queerness, horror, and their intersections. Prior to his doctoral studies, Marcus completed his MA in Art History at the University of British Columbia, which was funded by the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master's (CGS-M). He recently received the SCMS Horror SIG Graduate Essay Prize for his work on Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and is contributing a chapter on horror and fine art to the upcoming Routledge Companion to Horror.