Transpoietics and the End of Meaning
A first essay, by way of introduction, from Rhea on Transpoietics and the hegemony of Meaning. Inspired by such authors as Émilie Carrière, Rhea begins to test their voice as a writer with this piece on wokeness, transness, and art.—A!kira

Amongst the endless conjectures the philosopher brings forth, one of great relevance is surely the question of ideas; ideas as object of true knowledge, say the Platonists, or perhaps ideas as product of intellectual labor, as marxists think. There exist numerous hypotheses on the matter, and they are everything other than simple fruits of a meaningless brainstorming aimed at solving a "stupid problem"; it is precisely in light of this multiplicity that I see a major highlight on a doubt I had in relation to Plato's reminiscence:

Is the genealogy of ideas a thing? If so, how can we acknowledge or deduce such a problem?
           If we are to take for granted that the genealogy of ideas (which I will call forms, for the sake of translation accuracy) is effectively a problem, i.e., something more than a simple sophism, then we can take two distinct paths: that of dialectics and that of production.
           In order to follow the dialectical train of thought we consider the Aristotelian οὐσία (substance) which, seen as a synthesis of form and matter, presupposes the form as thesis and matter as antithesis. Such presupposition, though, doesn't seem to take into account the synthetic nature of each thesis; that is, each thesis, being in turn a synthesis, presupposes an anterior process of dialectic labor.
           In view of this relation of seemingly infinite anteriority, we fall in the exact same paradox that was solved by Aristotle through his deduction of the Immovable Mover; summed up, it is impossible to think of a dialectic genealogy without oxymoronically supposing non-being as a thesis to be negated (that is of course, if we are not to fall in metaphysical absurdities.)
           It is at this point that we follow the path of production, production that is although not machinic but, on the contrary, emanative.
           Ideas are not produced, they descend, possessing thought and bringing us back to contemplation, just as the melody of a siren brings us back to the sea: the subject-object distinction ceases to function, it is annihilated, leaving room for wokeness.
           Here, art loses every adjective, language loses all meaning, every museum collapses; the glass shatters, the body becomes the canvas.
           Take the téchne of make-up into examination; the coding of this art by the tendrils of capital would be total and evident as ever, its liberation from heterosexist logics, impossible; were it not for wokeness.
           Wokemake-up becomes an act of total devaluation of the body and the commodity, which is put through a process of entasis, de-alienating itself from the reactionary practice of "masking" / "performing" that is so loved yet so hated by fascism.
           Art becomes a poiesis of transsexuality, going beyond schizophrenia, towards a desubjectivization that is physical, other than structural, that moves Spinoza from the transcendent to an immanent virtuality (i.e. implying a reciprocal necessity between Spinoza and Plotinus, Deleuze flowing spontaneously through it); relationships become relations, effects become intensities, bodies become undetermined.

Like this, a body becomes a canvas; wokeness destroys the mind, body and soul.

With a quick look at the history of cosmetics, one can individuate three different "phases" characterising this téchne: A first phase that I would call communal, a second one that I defined bourgeois, and finally, a third woke phase.
           Despite their diversity, the first two phases share their essence, for we're talking not so much about make-up but rather about cosmesis (κοσμητική); such art necessarily executes an identity, what differentiates communal cosmesis from its bourgeois counterpart is the identity that gets executed.
           When we speak of communal cosmesis, we speak of a cosmetic reality of multiplicity, of relativism, of absolute absence of universals; we speak of a téchne of metaphysics, that executes a being-greek / being-egyptian as a territorialization of the body: art is totally subjective: the subject is a priori and I execute it on me, through a contingent object, to identify myself in my community; object that could be cultural (i.e. the strive for perfection, when it comes to classic Greece) or that could be religious (i.e. rituality, when it comes to ancient Egypt or to the ancient Normans).
           Within such a landscape, the body has absolutely no potency, it is simply a vessel for a contingent identity. (It is in virtue of this that medieval catholic prohibitionism will emerge; the subject will simply execute its lack / damnation.)
           The vanishing point of this relativist painting falls, although, on Sappho, who went beyond cosmesis through her being the architect of a stylistic model that is blooming, plunged in an eternal becoming-woman, that held on to its joyous palette and saw what came after the death of the gods.
           With the sunset of the Middle Ages (and the affirming of the renaissance-esque artistic reaction) the cosmetic technique didn't undergo any major changes, were it not for, as stated previously, the execution of a new identity; here, the subject moves to the transcendental and the bourgeois woman, as object, tends to subject itself in the image of "the perfect and pure woman"; the object, i.e. the body, invests the role of cultural synthesis. attempting its best at making its deresponsibilization from social problems as evident as possible.
           The classist ontology of the Renaissance shows itself not just through cosmesis but within every other artistic field as well. (to picture this, it is simply enough to think about the selling of indulgences to fund the construction of what will eventually be today's St. Peter's basilica.)
           This téchne of subjectivization will go on living until the capitalistic coding of reality, which of course doesn't exclude it. It is here that we observe the transition from cosmesis to make-up: [ed.: Trucco, in Italian, in turn derived from the french word troque, which means deceit] the form of the perfect woman gets so far from our material reality to the point of making its execution impossible; it consequently became an object of desire. The téchne of make-up is simply born with the aim of hiding this lack, putting on the image of a false fulfilment.
           It is before this false fulfilment that the space occupied by woke make-up has opened: there is nothing left to execute outside the act of makeup in and of itself; the universals of "man" and "woman" lose their utility (not that they ever had any.)
           This we intend, speaking of transpoietics: the deconstruction of what was before, the vandalism of what is now, the violent and incommunicable actualisation of what will be.
           Such practice, i.e. transpoietics, is observable not just in the make-up field but in each of the numerous and diverse faces of art in our times, the times of capital's total colonialism of our lives. The living proof of this vibe shift takes the form of a non-binary Irish artist and poet (as well as a long-distance friend of mine for quite a while): Jamie Cahill (@jamiecahillart on Instagram), who's been kind enough to offer their words on the matter.
       As follows, I typed a couple paragraphs they let me extract from a dialogue we had in the past on their dreams of creating a universal language of transness through their art.
            “I'm thinking the way I like, "change my form" through painting, as a form of transness too, like make-up, or dressing up and performing that femininity; or i.e., playing a different role/identity. And like, when I paint myself in different scenes, my one body is taking on these different “forms” of you know, Dionysus or Leucippus or even Hermaphroditus-Salmacis (etc.). It's like making my body undergo a transition to a new identity in each painting.”

They then go on, about their works:

“If, as an artist, you have to make a language to truly create, then I want to make a language of transness, a language that not only I speak & feel, but one which, hopefully, many people can speak and feel of too. A communal language, to create a culture of trans art & literature, as there is currently within music (SOPHIE, Dorian Electra, etc.), that is more permanent and emotive than just the style of a painting or use of language of a text. If Derrida spoke of language as the universal signifier, then I want to create a language in which trans people can engage in, and be outside of, simultaneously; not as an individual trans person, but as a collective body of intensity.
           This schizo creation of a new mythos, decoding boundaries and claiming ancient history and art as our own, (the Rebis, the Hermaphrodite, Janus) and embedding it on our skin in paint, a cannibalistic act of becoming-trans which will set the entire world into a state of flux - in this language, that anyone who can recognise the heart within it can speak, and create from it, imbuing the anonymity and structure & order to the art as in Greek antiquity, but also dealing with the democratisation of art after impressionism. This is not the impression of transness, but a very language of transness itself.”
            It's from Jamie's words that this text has emerged, words that highlight not a need, but a desire, an active process that we are seeing in our streets, in our classrooms, in our lives. To speak of transsexuality is to speak of a deconstructive téchne that is absolute, that exists in itself: it is a new sapphic art.

The hegemony of meaning is long overdue, there is nothing left that cannot crumble.