Object Oriented Subjectivity: Capitalism and Desire in Blade Runner 2049

The Dark Posthuman

“…Taylor makes the case for the Victorians being the first to have "grappled with the yawing gulf of geologic time. " 72 Similarly, "the 'mists' of deep time that had become a prevalent image in the scientific imagination" of that era are present everywhere in the novel. 73 Under a record of progress, there is a darker truth buried beneath the mud and the bone, which, when it rises, periodically affects a kind of detemporalization of what the modern world appears to be.…”

“…Herein, "human agents become part and parcel of the dynamic and metastable biological, physical, and technological systems with which they constantly interact. " 72 England's third empire would be an economic one fully integrated with its previous imperial biosphere and would function as a logical outgrowth of its previous methods for exploitation of colonial resources. This time, however, the focus would be on the creativity of their refinement through ever-expanding webs of market diversification and the introduction of complex systems into their management.…”

“…It required that Africans be introduced "simultaneously to biological, social, and political mean[s] of control capable of retooling domestic slavery into colonial domination and keeping Blacks apart from those avenues of mobility that might result in autonomous being. " 72 As Germany became a colonial power in the late nineteenth century in Africa, the training and discipline of the African body under American slavery served as the foundation of the German administrative model. The concern for the economic efficiency of Africans was much the same, as was a social the dark posthuman conservatism around issues of disciplining racialized populations.…”

“…71 with encoding in this ritual of white self-squaring, carrying within itself a discreet form of non-linguistic expression as "the internal Other -the irrational animal, the missing link, " whose denied "access to the means of constructing logos as the fabric of human being" compels it not to disappear but to go back to "the zero degree of social conceptualisation. " 72 In does in order to occupy the position of the unthought, acting as a deferred category reserved for those are only potentially human.…”

“…71 "The Declaration of Independence, authored largely by Jefferson, constituted the democratic future for those endowed with inalienable rights as not only to threats from the despotic powers of the British King but also to dangers the crown was accused of inciting: "domestic insurrections" (a code for slave revolts) and alliances with "inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions" of whiteness. 72 Such seditious activity on the part of "Indian Savages" warranted the ultimate penalty: captivity followed by enslavement. Denuded of their sovereignty, Native Americans were stripped of their humanity and devalued to the chattel status of the African slave, henceforth obliterating their relational capacity to the white world.…”