ABSTRACT
I will try mapping (and not tracing) The Weeknd's discography and the trope of the Californian (coded reterritorialized American Dream) Dream and try to understand how the desiring subject's desire is morphed into singularized multiples (and not multiplicities). We will move from his earlier lyrical compositions assembled on the streets of Toronto and indie releases observed in his album Trilogy to his hyper-aesthetic visuals under a “Record Label” in Starboy and After Hours. The shift from “represent” to “re-present” that will be seen in House of Balloons to Starboy will be used to posit Byung Chul-Han's notion of auto-exploitation and a return will be seen to a “vertreten,” as we see in the quoted lyric from Snowchild. But in the absence of an epoch, we see a presence of absence; an “intention to return” masquerading as a “possibility of a perceived return,” i.e., to a new spatiality haunted by the saxophone of Kenny G as our subject is affect-ed in “In Your Eyes” and finally the becoming/unbecoming of Abel Tesfaye's headless Haunting.
