In this paper I provide a description and preliminary analysis of the current 'technological unconscious'. Because of the potential vastness of the topic, I concentrate on just one form of positioning and juxtapositioning, namely the construction of repetition. The paper is in three parts. The first part provides a capsule history of how a very few templates of position and juxtaposition have become powered up into a capacious and effective background. In the second part of the paper I argue that in recent years the practice of these templates has been changing as a full-blown standardisation of space has taken hold. This standardisation is gradually leading to the crystallisation of a new kind of technological unconscious. In the third part of the paper I argue that the traces of this new kind of unconscious are taking hold in social theory as well, leading to the assumption of a quite different event horizon which can be thought of as a different kind of materiality.
In this introductory paper—which follows the course of the papers included in this special issue—we argue that there are currently four main apprehensions of performance. The first of those apprehensions is provided by the work of Judith Butler on performativity. We then move to a second apprehension—the rather more general notion of performance found in nonrepresentational theory, using as an example the work of Gilles Deleuze. The third apprehension of performance is that taken from work found in the discipline of performance itself. Then, the fourth apprehension concerns the reworking of academic practices as performative.