Losing my Religion: Bodily Confessions of an Organism Trying to Make a Body without Organs

Abstract

This article is a script of a performance at the 2018 PhEmaterialism conference in London, UK. In this script, I offer a series of bodily confessions, experimental tales of making a Body without Organs (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) on the neoliberal academic stratum.  Each tale moves between the stratifying forces of the neoliberal academy that seek to organize my organism and experimentations that seek to produce different and more freeing organizations for my organs.  Each tale talks back to the priests of the neoliberal academy by telling what happens to an organism, my organism-my body, as I try to make a Body without Organs.

To situate the script, I provide a lengthy appendix that details narrative reflexivity (Spry, 2011) decisions about the script and performance.  Like any performance piece, the piece is to be viewed, heard, and experienced, rather than read.  Performance pieces are not and should not be read as typical journal articles. They are their own genre of writing that eschews traditional notions of writing.  With this in mind, this appendix provides narrative reflexivity about the performance (Spry, 2011) for readers who may need it.