Re-treating the office empire

In this study I discuss one of Henri Michaux's last works Par des Traits, paying close attention to the way an overtly political critique informs the adventurous graphic experiments involved in the work. Contextually, I situate Michaux's utopian discourse about a new bio-historical ‘function’ created by a new sign within the larger plan of his earlier preoccupations with physiologically provoked anomalies and techniques of contemplation, tracing his move from individual forms of semiotic apprenticeship to more collective concerns like the environmental degradations and catastrophes caused by the human species in the last quarter of the 20th century. In arguing for the relevance of the concept of ‘real subsumption’ to the litany of grievances Michaux addresses in his text, I situate Michaux's Par Des Traits in a field of discourse shared by historical materialism's own deep historical currents (Kluge and Negt) as well as other semiotically minded critiques of capitalism, as found in Félix Guattari's work

Aesthetics · Barbarism · Epistemology · Materialism · Politics · Semiotics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Cultural Insights and Digital Impacts · Law · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis · Philosophy · Semiotics and Representation Studies