Poetics of futurism: Zaum, shiftology, nonsense -- Poetics of Deleuze: structure, stoicism, univocity -- The materialist manifesto -- Shiftology #1: from performativity to dramatisation -- Shiftology #2: from metaphor to metamorphosis -- The see-sawing frontier: linguistic spatiotemporalities -- Concllusion: Suffixing, prefixing.

This paper charts the story of Karst, a sea cave which is exploited by the human sex hormone industry for the secretions that emerge upon its walls, whilst adumbrating some of the ways in which caves have been perceived in the history of philosophy, from Plato to Irigaray to the Xenofeminist Manifesto and beyond. The etymology of the “endocrine” produces some surprising overtones: the Proto-Indo-European root *krei- meaning “to sieve” and thus “discriminate, distinguish,” is hypothetically derived from the Greek krinein (...) (to separate/decide/judge), krinesthai (to explain), Latin cribrum (sieve), crimen (judgement, crime), cernere (to sift, distinguish, separate), Old Irish criathar, Old Welsh cruitr (sieve), Middle Irish crich (border, boundary), Old English hriddel (sieve). Rather than prisoners eternally fixed in one position, what if we were to imagine a meeting of two or several mercurial characters inside a sea cave conceived not only as the hystera as in Luce Irigaray’s formulation, but as the swirling of a thousand chemical entities orchestrating the “hundred sexes” that bloom from Laboria Cuboniks’ Xenofeminist Manifesto? What would the spatial quality of this sea cave be like? We know that the synthetic procuration of certain hormonal levels to procure certain physiological states is fundamental not only to processes of gender modification (both sanctioned and unsanctioned by legal and medical professions) but the entire “pharmacopornographic regime,” in the words of Paul Preciado. The machinations of the hormone industry and the symbolic overdetermination of the cave as the maternal feminine point to the possibility of what I suggest here could be called “endocrine feminism.” The connection between endocrinology as the study of hormones as chemical messengers in the body and a process of separation, decision or discretion leads us to a new conception of the “staging” of the cave. Through several stages of karst development, this paper dramatizes the cavern of the “endo-crine” and the internal rumble of discussion perceptible within its depths. (shrink)

Why might alternative taxonomies be needed in contemporary life, and how might the notion of categorisation or anti-categorisation be thought speculatively? This essay considers some of the ways that life and matter have been historically divided and segmented and asks how this might be rendered mobile, offering new divisions and definitions for those who exist outside hegemonic segments or scales.

This special issue of Angelaki sets out to curate a range of literary and philosophical perspectives on how the sea is currently thought, felt and theorized across the theoretical humanities. Drawi...

Tee-ar-r-r! Tee-ar-r-r! rattled the tern1There is nothing more important on this planet than the sea. Nothing, that is, more important for our species at this juncture in our development as a speci...