For a Pragmatics of the Useless, or the Value of the Infrathin
Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy
Published online on February 15, 2016
Abstract
Marcel Duchamp describes the infrathin as "the most minute of intervals, or the slightest of differences." Working through Duchamp’s proposition, and taking him at his work that the infrathin cannot be defined as such—"One can only give examples of it"—this article explores how the infrathin comes to expression and asks what a politics of the infrathin might look like. Key to the exploration is the question of how else value can be defined and how this rethinking of the concept of value might compose with the concept of a pragmatics of the useless.