Anti-Electra: The Radical Totem of the Girl
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Anti-Electra: The Radical Totem of the Girl
By (Author) Elisabeth von Samsonow
Translated by Anita Fricek
Translated by Stephen Zepke
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
17th September 2019
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Feminism and feminist theory
305.4201
Physical Properties
Paperback
216
Width 127mm, Height 203mm, Spine 25mm
Description
A close examination of the relationship between media, art, and the Electra complex
The feminist counterpart to Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus, Anti-Electra is a philosophy of the girl as a model of contemporary transgressive subjectivity. Elisabeth von Samsonow asserts that focusing on the girls escape from the Oedipus complex leads to a fundamental shift in our most common views on media and art.
Presenting an interpretation of contemporary technics, Anti-Electra argues that technology today encompasses Electras gadgets and toys. According to von Samsonow, satellite drive technologies such as wireless telephones, WLAN, and GPS echo the preoedipal constellation that the girl specializes in. And with the help of the girl, the cartography of overlapping zones between humankind and animals, as well as between humankind and apparatuses, is redesigned through what the book holds as a radical totemism. Anti-Electra ultimately offers a new view on gender, the contemporary world dyed by symbolic girlism, and the (universal) girl in critical dialogue with media, ecology, and society.
Reviews
"Anti-Electra constitutes an occasionally uncanny and always fascinating work, which advocates a constellational, schizogamous relationality. This intellectually engaging and witty book will be of interest to art historians, scholars with interests in media studies, and those who are open to be challenged by an exciting feminist revaluation of ancient myths and their relation to the present."Identities
Author Bio
Elisabeth von Samsonow is an artist, writer, curator, and professor of philosophical and historical anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Two of her books have been translated into English: Transplants and Epidemic SubjectsRadical Ontology.
Anita Fricek is an Australian artist based in Vienna.
Stephen Zepke is an independent researcher and author of Sublime Art: Towards an Aesthetics of the Future.
