Cody Rooney

Toronto Metropolitan University, Communication and Culture, Alumnus

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Cody Rooney is a cultural critic and multimedia artist whose visual work in film and photography explores themes of digital dysphoria, memory, nostalgia and surrealism. He is a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University. He earned his B.A at York University in Theatre Studies and holds an M.A in Communication and Culture from Ryerson University.
Supervisors: Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and Shannon Bell

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Galen Strawson

The University of Texas at Austin

Steven Pinker

Harvard University

Andreas Umland

National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy"

Serpil Oppermann

Kapadokya Üniversitesi

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Myria Georgiou

London School of Economics and Political Science

Simon Springer

The University of Newcastle

Olga Palagia

National & Kapodistrian University of Athens

Christiane Gruber

University of Michigan

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Papers by Cody Rooney

The Post-Digital Pensive Image: Reclamation of Subjectivity within Communicative Capitalism

This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian P... more This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian Perspectivalism and the “Post-Digital” and how these influence conceptions of reality, identity, and subjectivity. Through an analysis of the progression of perspectivalism from the 15th century to the digital image, the photograph is theorized as operating concomitantly with realism and positivism, and through digital mediation, as having been commodified and weaponized by capitalism for the purposes of subjugating its subject. This subjugation is theorized as producing a pervasive dysphoria, as the simulacrum of reality engendered by digital visuality causes the semiology of reality to dissolve. The “post-digital,” then, serves as a negation of this subjugation through a reflexive and hyper-mediated visuality that employs surrealist strategies to ground the spectator in their own subjectivity. The photographic component is an inquiry into how I, as a digital subject, utilize aesthetic strategies in order to ground my own subjectivity within this paradigm.

Deliberative Democracy and Identity Politics The Pitfalls Of Neo Liberal Anti Racism

This paper aims to analyze the concept of Manichean liberal identity politics, the hierarchy of... more This paper aims to analyze the concept of Manichean liberal identity politics, the hierarchy of oppression and privilege, and cultural policing to argue that contemporary liberal democratic sentiment, colloquially referred to as "social justice warrior" culture, is a pseudo-aggressive authoritarianism that operates under a deliberative democratic model of neo-liberal hegemony. The paper situates this argument within the Habermas-Mouffe debate on deliberative democracy versus agonistic pluralism, taking issue with the social justice warrior rhetoric within the confines of the deliberative democracy model. The paper argues that liberal identity politics is embedded with philosophical dualism, and the multiplicity of subaltern counter publics in contemporary society increases antagonism towards one another, which is antithetical to the purpose of counter discourse. Lastly, the paper examines the cultural policing inherent in liberal identity politics as having distinctly authoritarian connotations that are anti-democratic. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about liberal identity politics and its role in contemporary society.

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The Aesthetics of Nostalgia Cultural Dysphoria and Remediation

The remediation of analogue aesthetics exists presently at a conjunction between two media-induce... more The remediation of analogue aesthetics exists presently at a conjunction between two media-induced environments, a moment hypothesized by McLuhan as a “break-boundary,” wherein two medial paradigms meet and become visible. The break boundary that we are witnessing first begins with the medial paradigm of “immediacy” which follows a history through Western art and literature as intrinsically erasing the evidence of the medium itself. This paradigm has converged with that of “hypermediacy” in the form of the digital analogue emulation. The confluence of these two environments entails a “refashioning within the medium” where within the context of digital photography and aesthetics there is a “dialectic with earlier media.” This dialectic entails a remediation which seeks to hyper mediate the inherently immediate nature of high definition digital aesthetics. In doing so, this remediation brings to the fore an awareness of the medium itself through a resurgence in analogue aesthetics. The new medial paradigm that then exists at the precipice of this break boundary is the age of the “aesthetics of nostalgia.” Analyzing the transition into the convergence of these two paradigms it becomes clear that the “scopic regime” of immediacy having dominated prior to this break boundary has been superseded by the “aesthetics of nostalgia” or of “remediated hypermediacy.” This paradigm then begins to act as a dissident scopic regime, which attempts to subvert and overturn the sensibilities of transparent immediacy.

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Promethean Shame Machinic Divinity, Digital Performativity, and the Sublimation of Mortality

In the context of digital technology, the user of digital media feels shame in their inadequacy v... more In the context of digital technology, the user of digital media feels shame in their inadequacy vis a vis the perfection of digital aesthetics; the working computing machine in essence displaying a semblance of reality back to them that feels wholly unattainable. Here, a diametrical opposition to shame, I hypothesize, manifests itself in a machinic performativity, through a variety of different modalities. My research question is thus, how does performativity within social media act as a manifestation of Promethean Shame and moreover as a site through which to quell the inherent fear of mortality. Firstly, through the imitation and the performativity of the efficiencies of capitalism and of machinic technologies on TikTok and Instagram. Secondly, through the imitation of the human as seen through the lens of digital technology, namely body modification and the performative digital cosplay of fictional digital avatars. Lastly, through the willful caricaturization and hypersexualization of the individual within digital spaces for anthropomorphized technology, which in the perpetual quest for not only social capital within digital spaces, incentivizes the quest for approval and acceptance of oneself and the content they produce by the very machinic technology in and of itself.

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THE POST-DIGITAL PENSIVE IMAGE: RECLAMATION OF SUBJECTIVITY WITHIN COMMUNICATIVE CAPITALISM

This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian P... more This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian Perspectivalism and the “Post-Digital” and how these influence conceptions of reality, identity, and subjectivity. Through an analysis of the progression of perspectivalism from the 15th
century to the digital image, the photograph is theorized as operating concomitantly with realism and positivism, and through digital mediation, as having been commodified and weaponized by capitalism for the purposes of subjugating its subject. This subjugation is theorized as producing a pervasive dysphoria, as the simulacrum of reality engendered by digital visuality causes the semiology of reality to dissolve. The “post-digital,” then, serves as a negation of this subjugation through a reflexive and hyper-mediated visuality that employs surrealist strategies to ground the spectator in their own subjectivity. The photographic component is an inquiry into how I, as a digital subject, utilize aesthetic strategies in order to ground my own subjectivity within this paradigm.

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The Post-Digital Pensive Image: Reclamation of Subjectivity within Communicative Capitalism

Deliberative Democracy and Identity Politics The Pitfalls Of Neo Liberal Anti Racism

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The Aesthetics of Nostalgia Cultural Dysphoria and Remediation

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Promethean Shame Machinic Divinity, Digital Performativity, and the Sublimation of Mortality

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THE POST-DIGITAL PENSIVE IMAGE: RECLAMATION OF SUBJECTIVITY WITHIN COMMUNICATIVE CAPITALISM

This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian P... more This paper/project theorizes an epistemological rupture between the scopic regimes of Cartesian Perspectivalism and the “Post-Digital” and how these influence conceptions of reality, identity, and subjectivity. Through an analysis of the progression of perspectivalism from the 15th
century to the digital image, the photograph is theorized as operating concomitantly with realism and positivism, and through digital mediation, as having been commodified and weaponized by capitalism for the purposes of subjugating its subject. This subjugation is theorized as producing a pervasive dysphoria, as the simulacrum of reality engendered by digital visuality causes the semiology of reality to dissolve. The “post-digital,” then, serves as a negation of this subjugation through a reflexive and hyper-mediated visuality that employs surrealist strategies to ground the spectator in their own subjectivity. The photographic component is an inquiry into how I, as a digital subject, utilize aesthetic strategies in order to ground my own subjectivity within this paradigm.

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