Hannes Charen, Identity and Terror: Approaching an Aesthetics of Hysteria.
This work is an attempt to investigate hysteria, its relation to creativity and ideology and its unique exposure and prevalence as a condition in an age of ubiquitous media. The ambivalent logic of hysteria and the 'role' it plays in shaping processes of identification is key in understanding the subject in current affectations of individual and global expression in a space in which both fear and pleasure are accessed almost exclusively via mediums of technology. Far from accepting a pessimistic outlook on the state of the subject this paper puts forth the thesis that the space opened up in this milieu is one of radical creativity, of a self-creation that can be both revolutionary and active.