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A number of writers have recently challenged the notion of the demonic as mere superstition, arguing for a need to understand the demonic in terms of the often-obscured ways in which it operates in relation to contemporary thought and critique. Building on this, this paper offers an analysis of the demonic as a rhetorical concept. Moving beyond the notion of the demonic as simply a trope at the disposal of a speaker or writer, the paper explores how the expression of the demonic performs a more foundational, repetitive, and indeed, deceptively banal role in shaping the discourses it inhabits. This precedes and frames the ethico-political discourses on evil commonly associated with demonology today.

This paper draws on Ian Bogost’s argument that video games constitute a form of ‘procedural rhetoric’, in order to re-examine the representation of heroic madness First-Person-Shooter games. Rejecting the idea that games attempt to recreate the experience of madness to the player through linear representation, the paper instead identifies two persistent commonplace figures which appear within the genre: the monstrous double, and the reaching tentacle. While Bogost’s notion of procedural rhetoric allows analysis to move away from the more facile interpretations of gameplay, the paper argues that these figures also demand an account of the commonplace itself – the rhetorical ‘topic’ – which links the technical structure of gaming procedures with the tropes and figures that enable them to make sense within their wider cultural context and tradition. While the figures of the double and the tentacle purposefully draw on existing tropes and processes associated with the cultural meanings of mental health, a rhetorical analysis of their use of commonplaces suggests that they are not simply recycling older clichés, but constitute a creative ‘reobjectification’ of madness.

There is no shortage of 19th, 20th and 21st century literature condemning the generic, the formulaic, and the banal as not simply bad writing, but as a broader symptom of cultural stagnation; a topic which has recently re-ignited in debates over ‘anti-critique’ or ‘post-criticism’. But is it possible to write a history of the cliché, which the cliché itself is not automatically excluded from? Is it possible to critically think through that which expresses the absence of critical thought? This paper pursues this question by exploring what is meant by the ‘time’ of clichés. It builds on Boris Groys’ concept of ‘anti-philosophy’ to suggest that a straightforward ‘history’ risks privileging a particular critical viewpoint that mistakenly insists on the cliché as a mark of difference, rather than a peculiar and perturbing sameness which is both superfluous and tyrannical in equal measure. Instead, the paper suggests that, the time of clichés should be viewed through particular sites where the boundaries between philosophical meaning and non-meaning – and, in turn, technological and human, archival and visible, intellectual and everyday – are contested and underdetermined. The paper explores the concept of the rhetorical ‘commonplace’ as one such site where the marking of cliché exposes a range of specific material and contextual configurations that shape the conditions for the suspicion of cliché as tyrannical, stupid or stagnant.

This paper explores how the poetic speaks to philosophical treatments of post-truth. In doing so, it reconsiders the relationship between poetry and philosophy, and the aspects of the poetic that are pertinent to the performance of rumour. It examines classic performances of rumour in both philosophy and poetry, through the lens of Nietzsche’s account of poetry as a rhythm that creates an economy of memory. In doing so, it suggests that the poetic can alert us to the ways in which different dimensions of rhythm and memory are at work in the ‘post-truth age.’

A term deriving from the sound of the mechanical printing process able to provide cheap and fast reproductions of literary works, the cliché is at once both a foundation of modern culture, and its constant adversary. Denoting a lack of originality, thought or effort, clichés appear to be the very opposite of literature’s aspirations, and there is no end to the warnings for writers to avoid them at all costs. However, few theorists have spent sustained time detailing the workings of the cliché, outside of criticising their use. Indeed, the cliché seems to resist being thought about too much. At the same time, this resistance to theory can also obscure a range of issues that the cliché raises as a problem for literature. Unpacking these problems suggests that the cliché is not simply an issue of unoriginal thought, but arises from, and is perpetuated by, a number of tensions within the production and circulation of writing itself. These include tensions between artistic worth and literary ownership; between organic creation and technologies of reproduction; between localised communications and universal truth; and concerning the status of the intellectual in relation to the masses, and the place of authenticity in late-modern culture.