Cabinet 34: Testing

Cabinet #34

by Mark Dery (Contributor), Brian Dillon, Emily Thompson

Cabinet 34 puts our culture of constant examination, and self-examination itself, to the test, scrutinizing the historical conventions that have produced our contemporary obsession with quantifying and judging everything from aptitude and health to personality and durability. The thematic section of this issue includes Mark Dery on the history of the IQ test; Mats Bigert on the pitch drop experiment (the world's longest continuously running laboratory experiment, which began in 1927); Charlotte Delbanco on animal testing; and Christopher Turner on projective personality tests. The unthemed section boasts a brief visual history of the AK-47 as the quintessential symbol of political resistance; Allen S. Weiss on the sense and no-sense theory of proper names; Emily Thompson on early silent films; and Brian Dillon on Antonin Artaud's strange sojourn to Ireland. Cabinet always surprises with a host of artists' projects; this issue's is by Trish Morrissey.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

From http://markdery.com/?page_id=130

Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and book author who has taught at NYU and Yale. He coined the term “Afrofuturism,” popularized the concept of “culture jamming,” and has published widely on American mythologies and pathologies. His books include Flame Wars (1994), a seminal anthology of writings on digital culture; Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996), which has been translated into eight languages; The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999), a study of cultural chaos in millennial America; and the essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (2012). His is the author, most recently, of a biography, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, published by Little, Brown in 2018.