Here comes trouble

Imagine the infinitely tiny size of an atom. Focus on the size of this microscopic particle in relation to your own human body. Now scale up to the size of the planets, galaxies, to the solar system as a whole. The weight of your body exists between these vastly different scales. Here Comes Trouble, An Inquiry into Art, Magic and Madness as Deviant Knowledge, is not about thermodynamics, negative feedback or refrigerators. Neither have I written a book about geology, black holes or migration, yet each of these material systems offer insights into the slippery topic of deviancy. So what is deviancy? What forms does it take historically and what, as it were, does it do? As a model, I will assert that deviancy can be shown to occupy a certain ‘morphological arena’ between state changes within thermodynamic, social and cultural systems. Deviancy can therefore be conceptualised in terms of a transformation (from one stable state to another) as well as in relationship to stability (as that which deviates from the stable norm). If ‘attachment breeds suffering’ as Buddhists teach, perhaps we can understand the xenophobic nervousness associated with ‘alien cultural practices’ as inherently bound up with the very alienability of what passes for contemporary culture. Logically enough, in other words, if I can belong anywhere, I belong nowhere. Through displacement, suspicion, and the fight for survival, fear would seem to be irrevocably tied to deviancy in social terms. It is the pursuit of Here Comes Trouble to make the term more ambiguous and to highlight deviancy as kind of analytical tool in itself.