Georg Dickmann
Dissertation Project
The Pharmacology of Science Fiction:
Knowledge and Politics of Precarious Substances
Through an analysis of contemporary science fiction by Niel Bloomkamp, Dietmar Dath, Vladimir Sorokin, Leif Randt, and others, this dissertation examines the interrelationship of fiction and biopolitics in the context of current debates about posthumanism.
The examination first follows the ambiguous logics of the “pharmakon” to analyze, from the perspectives of biopolitics and pharmacology as orders of knowledge, the mechanisms of action, effects, and side-effects of poisons and cures in contemporary science fiction. The ambivalence of the pharmakon is characterized by the fact that it can be both a healing remedy and a lethal poison. Pharmaka thus act at the threshold between life and death, paralysis and stimulation, nature and culture. By examining selected works of fiction, the dissertation aims to trace these thresholds and work out the ways in which they operate. From Philip K. Dick’s “Substance D” to the pills and truth-serums in the Matrix and Leif Randt’s collective drug “Magnon,” science fiction teems with precarious materials and peculiar substances occupying a hidden but strategically important position. They infiltrate, penetrate, exercise control, and produce individual and collective bodies, inevitably introducing themes of biopolitics. A pharmacology of science fiction thus opens new perspectives on cinematic and literary treatments of subjectification and desubjectification effected by healing, poisonous, stimulating, or sedating substances.
The research project follows the thesis that the production and destruction of subjectivity in these selected works of fiction occurs not (or no longer only) through external architectural forms but rather through inner-corporeal mechanisms of action. My project thus first traces the miniaturization or internalization of technologies of power in drugs, nanoparticles, molecules, hormones, and other precarious substances. It then reveals the pharmacological dimensions of science fiction and associated practices of power and government. It focuses on utopian or rather dystopian fiction as a poetic testing ground for visions of the future and as an implicit space of articulation for experimental knowledge. The selected works of fiction accordingly function in the analysis as an epistemic-aesthetic medium of reflection in which chemical, biological, and philosophical-political knowledge is put into discourse and transformed through specific poetic procedures. On the one hand, my research aims to develop a poetics of precarious materials and substances that includes and further develops socio-political, epistemological, and fictional elements, and on the other hand the examination is meant to expand current discussions about topoi in contemporary science fiction.
Biography
From 2007–2014, Georg Dickmann studied philosophy and German philology at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the Freie Universität Berlin. From 2012–2014, he was an undergraduate assistant at the Collaborative Research Center 626, “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits" at the Freie Universität Berlin. In addition to his academic research, Georg Dickmann works as a freelance curator and journalist
Publications
Please note that these listings appear in the language they were originally published.
„Zur Ästhetik des Monströsen in Franz Kafkas ‚Eine Kreuzung’“, in: Bolschakowa / Tulkibajewa (Hrsg.): Probleme der Didaktik und pädagogischer Praxis, Sankt-Petersburg 2012. (auf Russisch)
„Oszillationen der Wahrheit: Eine kurze Untersuchung zu Friedrich Nietzsches ‚Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne’“, in: Bolschakowa / Tulkibajewa (Hrsg.): Aktuelle Untersuchungen und Perspektiven der Didaktik, Tscheljabinsk 2012. (auf Russisch)
„Gibt es das Nichts?“ in: The Germans. Das Politik und Zeitgeist Magazin (4), Berlin 2013, S. 14–16.
„So tun, als ob. Ein Theorieschnipsel zum Spekulativen Realismus“, in: Die Epilog. Zeitschrift zur Gegenwartskultur (5), April 2016, S. 98–101.
„Zeitkomplex, Postcontemporary“, 25.05.2016.
„Zurück nach Miami“, Onlinerezension zu Armen Avanessian: Miamification, Berlin: Merve Verlag, 2017.
„Stuttering Images“, in: Mika Schwarz (Hrsg.): Rechnender Raum (What isn’t broken may never be fixed), angekündigt für 2019.
„Von anderen Zukünften zeugen“, in: Katinka Schuett: Cosmic Drive, Berlin 2018.
Lectures
„‚RHIZOMATIK = RATTENMEUTE = REVOLUTION’. Kleine Kulturgeschichte eines Parasiten", Galerie Sprechsaal Berlin, am 06.07.2015.
„Politische Figurationen der Europäischen Union“, Panelgespräch zu Jacques Derridas „Das andere Kap“ mit Dennis Pohl und Gerrit Wegener, Vortragsreihe „un-stable.eu“, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin, am 23.10.2016
„Was ist Pharmakofiction?“, Ausstellung und Veranstaltungsreihe „Pharmakos/n. Ein Apparat“ in den Uferstudios Berlin, am 01.09.2017.
„Cyberjunk-Science-Fiction. Pharmaka, Drogen und prekäre Substanzen gegenwärtiger Zukunftsfiktionen“, Jahrestagung „Wirklichkeiten und Weltenbau“ der Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung an der Universität Wien, am 23.09.2017.
„Narcopolis 2049. Was bleibt nach dem pharmakopolitischen Regime?“, Pre-enactment der fiktiven Konferenz „Das kommende Verschwinden“ organisiert von Sebastian Blasius im „Schwere Reiter-Theater“ in München, am 07.10.2017.
„Mit dem Körper spekulieren. Paul B. Preciados molekulares Aufbegehren“, Workshop: „Feminist speculations with strange bedfellows“ von Marie-Luise Angerer und Naomie Gramlich, im Brandenburgischen Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM), Potsdam, am 28.06.2018.
„The Shimmer out of Space. Zwei verwandte Spekulationen in H.P. Lovecrafts ‚Die Farbe aus dem All’ und Alex Garlands ‚Auslöschung’, Jahrestagung: „Techniken der Fantastik“ der Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung an der Universität Freiburg (Schweiz), am 06.09.2018.