|
So, you think Tyler Durden is merely a bad-boy hipster rebelling against IKEA lifestyles as he heroically resists the corporate imperatives of the consumer society? Think again. Tyler Durden is waging a war against civilization, yearning for a rebirth of premodern culture amidst the ruins of the modern and postmodern worlds. Drawing from Jean-Paul Sartre and Marshall McLuhan, Barry Vacker shows how Fight Club expresses philosophical angst toward the postmillennial and technological futures, where zero and nothingness reflect the existential conditions of a culture that has crashed into its vanishing points, the vanishing points of mediation, hyperreality, and fundamentalism. Slugging Nothing boots Tyler Durden back to his jungle of space monkeys, the noble savages of the non-information age, the next humans of the non-future.
teaches media, cultural, and utopian theory at Temple University, Philadelphia. The author of many articles and book chapters, his recent publications include the text for Peter Granser's photography book Signs (Hatje Cantz 2008). Vacker's recent work with experimental media includes the first three volumes of the "Theory Zero" book series (Zero Conditions, Crashing Into the Vanishing Points, and Starry Skies Moving Away), as well as the documentary film Space Times Square (2007), which he wrote and directed.
|
