Advisor/tutor: Bassam El Baroni
Arnhem, August 2017

Abstract

This thesis takes the form of a long essay without chapters. It attempts to define a concept of a health drive or health instinct as opposed to the Freudian concept of the death drive. In order to construct this concept the author starts out with a definition of the Freudian concepts of the ‘uncanny’ and the ‘death drive.’ After that she attempts to convert them into speculative notions of what she terms the canny and the health drive. What follows is a section that speculates on how these notions relate to modern and contemporary art and how these relate to normative propriety and contemporary consumer goals and motives. Ultimately concluding that an increasingly programmatic culture is leading to stagnation in cultural production.