
Jim Shaw/Benjamin Weissman
A self-reflexive, 45-panel, comic-strip-style narrative, Horror A Vacui, 1992, Jim Shaw and Benjamin Weissman’s recent collaboration, explores Western materialist culture’s fear and exploitation of the vacuum or void. Despite the best efforts of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, et al. to deconstruct Cartesian binaries built on presence and absence, capitalism, through the compensatory commodity form, has an intrinsic stake in perpetuating libidinal desires predicated on fulfilling a primal lack. Desire’s constant deferral, reinforced by the Freudian death drive and Oedipus complex