[-empyre-] Relational Aesthetics: Late-Comer and Parasite

[Robert Summers]

I agree with what Simon Biggs wrote; paraphrased, Derrida, Kisteva,
and others have articulated a *relational aesthetics* avant la lettre
-- and they have done so more profoundly and in ways that reach across
the humanities, but Bourriaud*s theory is stuck in the art market.
And, I think that what Johannes Birringer wrote is interesting.  To
quote, *you just stopped short of saying that *relational aesthetics*
is parasitic.*
I want to think Bourriaud*s *relational aesthetics* parasitically, or
as a *parasitic theory* _and_ exploit the parasite -- put it to work,
otherwise.  Further, I want to think it through *the parasite* that is
*queer theory* ... I mean, I see *queer theory* as a *parasite,* but
_not_ in they way Birringer means it toward Bourriaud*s theory.  So,
what happens in the meeting of these different *parasites*?  What can
be created?  Of course we can *forget Bourriaud,* but I want to keep
*him* (really *his* theory, which is and is not his own) in order to
rethink-redeploy *his* theory in art, art productions and practices,
art history / criticism, the art market, etc. in order to *queer*
these various practices, disciplines, and institutions -- and
parasitically so.  Hence, I wonder what a *parasitic practice* would
produce; I wonder what a *parasitic relational aesthetic* would look
like -- or do (possibly in its undoing).  Are these of interest?  Is
there a *line of flight* we can take here?  Mentioning that
DeleuoGuattarian phrase, reminds me of what Deleuze states in
_Negotiations_, *I saw myself as taking an author from behind and
giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous*
(6).  So what monstrosity (or parasite or both) can be produced by
taking Bourriaud from behind?  What *meta-parasite* can be produced in
a *perverse* union?  Indeed, I want to think the parasite and all of
these back ways, these dorsal turns, these undoings, these *perverse*
entrances, these remappings in order to find *new* territory, a *new*
theory.  Indeed, just wondering ....

-Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD