On Theory-Fiction

What does theory-fiction bring to theory? What does it add to it (if anything)? This essay attempts to answer these questions and is organised around ten sections, each of which makes a different set of claims, while also identifying some precursors, certain scenes of writing and other key examples of this genre. The ten sections are as follows: (1) Dramatisation and Deterritorialisation. In which I attend to theory-fiction’s dramatisation of concepts, its non-philosophical character (following François Laruelle) and its operation as a kind of ‘minor’ writing (following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari). (2) Cybernetic Theory-Fictions. Here I attend to a key scene of theory-fiction that involves Science Fiction and cybernetics. (3) Hyperstitions and Other Nestings. Following directly on from 2., this section concerns the idea of fictions making themselves real via feedback loops. (4) From Ethnopoetics to Ecopoetics. In this section, I look to other kinds of theoretical writing that also involve fiction as method. (5) Science Fictions and Sympoiesis. Here I address those theory-fictions that present non-human and inter-species perspectives. (6) Outside Perspectives and Critical Fabulations. In which I explore how theory-fiction operates as an optic to an outside or onto historical trauma. (7) Different Registers. Here I look at the way in which theory-fiction also uses other forms of representation. (8) Formal Devices. In which I turn back to writing and explore some of the more formal devices of theory-fiction. (9) Performing Texts. In this section I attend to the idea of texts that perform their content and that also call to be performed. (10) Sites of Production and Modes of Existence. My last section explores the idea that theory-fiction is situated away from the mainstream and thus can express other subject positions and modes of existence. In a coda to this first essay, I briefly lay out my own determining encounter with a certain scene of theory-fiction and attend briefly to the idea that a scene might itself be a theory-fiction too.