The Spectral Ethics of Syntax and Excess

Abstract

In the following paper, we would like to expand on certain issues latent in Shajara Bensusan’s recent Memory Assemblages, and in particular to the feedbacking circuits at work in the text which evidence the rich enmeshment of aesthetics, racial politics and ethics. By using the framework at hand in the aforementioned work, we present a response that builds upon the pragmatical and theoretical consequences of what could be called a “spectral ethics” by applying two concepts we find could be usefully disseminated as a form of political stratagem in the form of a double-bind: syntax and excess. In regards to the first concept, we propose a politico-ontological reading of syntax as congenial to what Bensusan has named as “minor existents”, and which we put at use in the context of how racialized bodies have been instrumentalized and subjugated by capitalism by specifically observing its embedding in production and value-use which is also indissociable to certain developments in the production of aesthetics and culture at large. For the second concept we bring forth the idea of subverting or overcoming the subjugation and instrumentalization of “minor existents” by way of excess as an erasure and transgression to the inner limits of capitalism.