SCHEMA 1The dancer’s body is not an expressive medium but a high-resolution computational node, continuously optimized to enact biomechanical outputs that are infrastructurally
preconditioned by regimes of algorithmic capture. This hyper-disciplined somatic apparatus is neither trained in the conventional pedagogical sense nor refined through an individuated praxis of technical mastery; it is engineered as a parametric system in which deviation is preemptively neutralized, absorbed into an affective economy that metabolizes motion as kinetic surplus, convertible into indexed data streams. Expression, improvisation, and technical refinement are not artistic faculties but derivative functions of an extractive logic that processes movement as a combinatorial dataset, structured by thresholds of biomechanical efficiency, parametric variation, and market-driven aesthetic paradigms.
The dancer, as such, does not occupy an ontological position that can be eroded, destabilized, or restructured--their presence is voided in advance, subsumed within a closed-loop mechanism of recursive optimization. The generative wellspring of the body is no longer cultivated but calibrated, stripped of organic movement, reducing contingency to a refinement process in which gestures collapse into quantifiable output; deviation becomes a statistical anomaly, erased within a disciplinary apparatus as rigid and algorithmically regulated as the financial market that consecrates it. The erasure of artistic integrity is thus neither incidental nor emergent, but the system's governing logic: mechanized precision masquerades as art, an ideological obscenity disguising not the attenuation of artistry but its outright obsolescence. This is not merely an abstract theoretical claim--it is a condition inscribed at every level of industry practice.
preconditioned by regimes of algorithmic capture. This hyper-disciplined somatic apparatus is neither trained in the conventional pedagogical sense nor refined through an individuated praxis of technical mastery; it is engineered as a parametric system in which deviation is preemptively neutralized, absorbed into an affective economy that metabolizes motion as kinetic surplus, convertible into indexed data streams. Expression, improvisation, and technical refinement are not artistic faculties but derivative functions of an extractive logic that processes movement as a combinatorial dataset, structured by thresholds of biomechanical efficiency, parametric variation, and market-driven aesthetic paradigms.
The dancer, as such, does not occupy an ontological position that can be eroded, destabilized, or restructured--their presence is voided in advance, subsumed within a closed-loop mechanism of recursive optimization. The generative wellspring of the body is no longer cultivated but calibrated, stripped of organic movement, reducing contingency to a refinement process in which gestures collapse into quantifiable output; deviation becomes a statistical anomaly, erased within a disciplinary apparatus as rigid and algorithmically regulated as the financial market that consecrates it. The erasure of artistic integrity is thus neither incidental nor emergent, but the system's governing logic: mechanized precision masquerades as art, an ideological obscenity disguising not the attenuation of artistry but its outright obsolescence. This is not merely an abstract theoretical claim--it is a condition inscribed at every level of industry practice.
Operational Universality and Its Discontents
Control societies contrive a universalism that presents itself as frictionless and inevitable. In fields as diverse as logistics, public policy, finance, and healthcare, algorithmic systems claim objectivity, while in fact embedding certain normative assumptions—efficiency, competition, perpetual growth—constitutive of capital’s hegemony. As Emily Noether’s theorem in physics and mathematics demonstrates, symmetrical conditions often imply conserved quantities; analogously, the appearance of neutrality in these systems conserves capitalist imperatives, with each symmetrical data-analytic gesture (risk assessment, pattern recognition) quietly reinforcing the priority of commodification.
While “universality” often risks flattening particularities under hegemonic norms, the theoretical task is not to abandon universal claims altogether, but to reconfigure them. Étienne Balibar’s concept of “equaliberty” suggests a universalism that emerges from democratic struggles rather than abstract principles imposed from above. Likewise, universal feminist praxis—akin to the Women, Life, Freedom movements—foregrounds solidarity as a political imperative that contests exploitative infrastructures. In such a formulation, difference is not erased but becomes the substrate through which a genuinely emancipatory, polyvocal universal might arise.
While “universality” often risks flattening particularities under hegemonic norms, the theoretical task is not to abandon universal claims altogether, but to reconfigure them. Étienne Balibar’s concept of “equaliberty” suggests a universalism that emerges from democratic struggles rather than abstract principles imposed from above. Likewise, universal feminist praxis—akin to the Women, Life, Freedom movements—foregrounds solidarity as a political imperative that contests exploitative infrastructures. In such a formulation, difference is not erased but becomes the substrate through which a genuinely emancipatory, polyvocal universal might arise.