| For a Pragmatics of the Useless Contributor(s): Manning, Erin (Author) |
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ISBN: 1478011076 ISBN-13: 9781478011071 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $29.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Black Studies (global) - Social Science | People With Disabilities - Philosophy |
| Dewey: 155.82 |
| LCCN: 2020014223 |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 9" (1.13 lbs) 384 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: What has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In For a Pragmatics of the Useless Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter two that a central refrain echoes: "All black life is neurodiverse life." This is not an equation, but an "approximation of proximity." Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity "schizz" around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with F lix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition's accounts of black life and the aesthetics of black sociality, proposes a "schizoanalysis" of the more-than, charting a panoply of techniques for other ways of living and learning. |