We Are Already Dead. Long May We Live! Death as Event in Koos Prinsloo’s Metropolis

Summary: In this article, I think about death as “event” by reading Koos Prinsloo through the three syntheses of time–Habit, Mnemosyne and Thanatos–as explicated by philosopher Gilles Deleuze in Difference and Repetition, as well as work done with his sometimes co-author, Félix Guattari. I argue that Prinsloo’s oeuvre provides a critical and clinical function that can provide methods for releasing jouissance so that the death drive can be re-directed. Thus, whereas the critical function engages literary figures, styles and ways of being, as well as Kant’s understanding of critique, the clinical provides a symptomatology of life potentiality in a given work. Together, these function to identify the genesis of life as a creative force and, in so doing, restores healthy living.