Virtual Presents, Future Strangers: The Art of Recategorization in the Work of Leo Bersani and Juan Pablo Echeverri

Abstract:This essay argues that Bersani's attempts to articulate a non-Cartesian form of knowledge production spur him to speculate anew about epistemology and ontology. Specifically, Bersani's late theory and practice of recategorization, a recursive engagement with thinkers and concepts that reveals thought's virtual potential, affords him the opportunity to conceive of a cognitive temporal unity and an immanentist conception of being. After exploring Bersani's theory of recategorization and his textual recategorizing practice, I turn to the work of multimedia artist Juan Pablo Echeverri to offer a dialogic example of recategorization as aesthetic practice.