ARTICLES
The Neotenous Image: On the Technical Adaptation of Alienation
Xindi Li
Pages 109–144| Published online:
Li, Xindi. 2025. “The Neotenous Image: On the Technical Adaptation of Alienation.” Marxism & Sciences 4(1): 109–144.
https://doi.org/10.56063/MS.2301.04107
ABSTRACT
There is an animus that comes with the animatronic sparkle of cute things. When an animated character is described as cute, it also becomes carved out as a receptacle for violence and disposability. This article tracks the simultaneous alienation and intimacy that is produced through the animated image, in the context of how it generates a vital force that also marks its life as a commodity. I argue that cinematic animation uniquely captures its own technical develop-ment, in which the image retains and reworks its prior forms. This is what I term the neotenous image. It is through this image that technical and economic alienation are not only captured but magnified, in its shared dimension with the conditions of commodity production. Using the film Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (dir. t.o.L, 2002) as a parable for this type of image and mode of produc-tion, I show how cuteness functions not only as an aesthetic category, but a channel for the reproductive force of animated image-commodities. It is in these commodities that intimacy and alienation are able to reproduce each other dia-lectically, in their contradiction. Using Bataille, Marx, and Simondon, I show how the cute image-commodity’s perpetual sacrifice and rebirth models a visual economy that exploits and expands the temporality of crisis, rather than simply being a result or representation of it. In this way, the neotenous image names the developmental logic of the technical object in, and as, the historical condition of a capitalism that incessantly thrives on the novel, cute thing.
KEYWORDS: animation, alienation, commodity fetish, media studies, technical development.
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