Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1972–) [ES, EN, IT]

“What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to themselves. The consequence of their investigations and of their living systems as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that the two questions have a common answer: living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. The result of their investigations is a completely new perspective of biological (human) phenomena. During the investigations, it was found that a complete linguistic description pertaining to the ‘organization of the living’ was lacking and, in fact, was hampering the reporting of results. Hence, the authors have coined the word ‘autopoiesis’ to replace the expression ‘circular organization’. Autopoiesis conveys, by itself, the central feature of the organization of the living, which is autonomy.”

Spanish edition
Translated by Carmen Cienfuegos
Publisher Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, 1972

English edition
With a preface by Stafford Beer
Publisher D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1980
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 42
ISBN 9027710163
147 pages

Autopoiesis on Wikipedia (EN)

De máquinas y seres vivos: Una teoría sobre la organización biológica (Spanish, trans. Carmen Cienfuegos, 4th ed., 1972/1998, updated on 2020-4-17)
Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (English, 1980, updated on 2012-7-18)
Autopoiesi e cognizione: la realizzazione del vivente (Italian, trans. Alessandra Stragapede, 1985, added on 2020-4-17)

See also Varela, Maturana, Uribe, Autopoiesis, 1974. (added on 2014-6-2)

Margaret Lock, Judith Farquhar (eds.): Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life (2007)

“Over the past several decades, scholars in both the social sciences and humanities have moved beyond the idea that there is a “body proper”: a singular, discrete biological organism with an individual psyche. They have begun to perceive embodiment as dynamic rather than static, as experiences that vary over time and across the world as they are shaped by discourses, institutions, practices, technologies, and ideologies. What has emerged is a multiplicity of bodies, inviting a great many disciplinary points of view and modes of interpretation. The forty-seven readings presented in this volume range from classic works of social theory, history, and ethnography to more recent investigations into historical and contemporary modes of embodiment.

Beyond the Body Proper includes nine sections conceptually organized around themes such as everyday life, sex and gender, and science. Each section is preceded by interpretive commentary by the volume’s editors. Within the collection are articles and book excerpts focused on bodies using tools and participating in rituals, on bodies walking and eating, and on the female circumcision controversy, as well as pieces on medical classifications, spirit possession, the commodification of body parts, in vitro fertilization, and an artist/anatomist’s “plastination” of cadavers for display. Materialist, phenomenological, and feminist perspectives on embodiment appear along with writings on interpretations of pain and the changing meanings of sexual intercourse. Essays on these topics and many others challenge Eurocentric assumptions about the body as they speak to each other and to the most influential contemporary trends in the human sciences.”

With contributions by Henry Abelove, Walter Benjamin, Janice Boddy, John Boswell, Judith Butler, Caroline Walker Bynum, Stuart Cosgrove, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Alice Domurat Dreger, Barbara Duden, Friedrich Engels, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Judith Farquhar, Marcel Granet, Felix Guattari, Ian Hacking, Robert Hertz, Patricia Leyland Kaufert, Arthur Kleinman, Shigehisa Kuriyama, Jean Langford, Bruno Latour, Margaret Lock, Emily Martin, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nancy K. Miller, Lisa Jean Moore, John D. O’Neil, Aihwa Ong, Mariella Pandolfi, Susan Pedersen, Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Rayna Rapp, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Kristofer Schipper, Matthew Schmidt, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig, Charis Thompson, E.P. Thompson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Victor Turner, Terence Turner, Jose van Dijck, Keith Wailoo, Brad Weiss, Allon White

Publisher Duke University Press, 2007
Body, Commodity, Text: Studies of Objectifying Practice series
ISBN 0822338459, 9780822338451
688 pages

publisher

PDF (119 MB, updated on 2019-8-16)

Mary Bittner Wiseman, Liu Yuedi (eds.): Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art (2011)

What is art and what is its role in a China that is changing at a dizzying speed? These questions lie at the heart of Chinese contemporary art. Subversive Strategies paves the way for the rebirth of a Chinese aesthetics adequate to the art whose sheer energy and imaginative power is subverting the ideas through which western and Chinese critics think about art. The first collection of essays by American and Chinese philosophers and art historians, Subversive Strategies begins by showing how the art reflects current crises and is working them out through bodies gendered and political. The essays raise the question of Chinese identity in a global world and note a blurring of the boundary between art and everyday life.

Publisher Brill Academic Pub, 2011
Volume 31 of Philosophy of History and Culture
ISBN 9004187952, 9789004187955
417 pages

Publisher
Google books

PDF, PDF (updated on 2014-12-22)