ALIENATED LIFE

Abstract

German Idealism still dominates most approaches in theoretical biology. This has led to a conception of organisms as tightly regulated self-forming systems where the demands of the whole organism dominate how the parts are coordinated. This article troubles this approach by presenting aspects of biology that refuse to be synthesized into a specific whole. I call this approach “goth biology” as it recognizes the murkiness of systems of knowledge, the loosely composite nature of most living things, and the continual haunting of life by death. Methodologically, I use insights gleaned from the history of post-punk goth music to explore the role of aesthetics, timbres, and forms as elements of lives that bound disparate times and spaces without providing a unified synthesis. A form of biological experience, and a theory of how the body works, goth biology demands that one lose a conception of “self” in order to embrace the complexity of biological interactions. As the goth performance artist Anna-Varney Cantodea recently confessed in an interview: “I have long given up on any goals I might have had,” but this doesn’t keep me from being inspired by everything around me.

Keywords:

• goth
• gothic
• biology
• cancer
• time
• space
• timbre
• bodies
• death

acknowledgment

Parts of the discussion of Kant are from Phillip Thurtle, Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2018) 41–43.

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.