Abstract
Marcel Duchamp describes the infrathin as “the most minute of intervals, or the slightest of differences” (DUCHAMP apud PERLOFF, 2002PERLOFF, Marjorie. 21st-century modernism: the "new" poetics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002., p. 101). Working through Duchamp’s proposition, and taking him at his work that the infrathin cannot be defined as such – “One can only give examples of it” (DUCHAMP apud DE DUVE, 1991DE DUVE, Thierry. The definitely unfinished Marcel Duchamp. Massachusets: MIT Press, 1991., p. 160) – this paper explores how the infrathin comes to expression and asks what a politics of the infrathin might look like. Key to the exploration is the question of how else value can be defined and how this rethinking of the concept of value might compose with the concept of a pragmatics of the useless.
Keywords
Infrathin; Marcel Duchamp; Alfred North Whitehead; speculative pragmatics; value/ valuation; art/artfulness; Politics/The Political; Time/Duration