Art in Service of Anti-anthropy: The Work of Yazan Halwani
Filip Ryba
f.ryba@doctoral.uj.edu.plJagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1624-7257
Abstract
This article attempts a critical reflection on anthropy and anti-anthropy–philosophical categories proposed by Bernard Stiegler. This reflection is set in the context of a critique of capitalism and its alliance with neoliberalism. The author analyses said categories by referring to the work of one of the best-known Lebanese artists of the younger generation, Yazan Halwani. His selected works are discussed in a performative perspective, as examples of technologies that foster anti-anthropy. The author analyses Stiegler’s categories in the Lebanese context to show contemporary Lebanon as a prime example of a state operating in accordance with business ontology–the ontological project identified by Mark Fisher with regard to capitalist realism. In all examples of his work, Halwani emphasizes the theme of forced migration understood as practices that generates chaos and further anthropy. The author of the article argues that the anti-anthropic dimension of the Lebanese artist’s work consists in using the issue of migration to reflect on the possibilities of conceiving new worlds and communities that would effectively resist anthropy.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
anthropy, capitalist realism, entropy, Entropocene, Lebanese art, Yazan HalwaniReferences
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Authors
Filip Rybaf.ryba@doctoral.uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University in Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1624-7257
Filip Ryba – researcher and activist, PhD student at the School of Humanities and associate at the Chair of Performatics at the Jagiellonian University. Graduate in cultural studies, Asian studies (specialisation in the Middle East) and the scientific association Collegium Invisibile. In his doctoral project deals with the problem of being-with-crisis in contemporary Beirut and what this being can say about the future in the climate crisis. Associate of of the Researchers on the Border group dealing with the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. In his spare time, he writes for the (pop)cultural magazine Popmoderna.
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