Asher Seidel: Inhuman Thoughts: Philosophical Explorations of Posthumanity (2008)

Inhuman Thoughts is a philosophical exploration of the possibility of increasing the physiological and psychological capacities of humans to the point that they are no longer biologically, psychologically, or socially human. The movement is from the human through the trans-human, to the post-human. The tone is optimistic; Seidel argues that such an evolution would be of positive value on the whole.

Seidel’s initial argument supports the need for a comprehensive ethical theory, the success of which would parallel that of a large-scale scientific revolution, such as Newtonian mechanics. He elaborates the movement from the improved-but-still-human to the post-human, and philosophically examines speculated examples of post-human forms of life, including indefinitely extended life-span, parallel consciousness, altered perception, a-sociality, and a-sexuality.

Inhuman Thoughts is directed at those interested in philosophical questions on human nature and the best life given the possibilities of that nature. Seidel’s overall argument is that the most satisfactory answer to the latter question involves a transcendence of the present confines of human nature.

Publisher Lexington Books, 2008
ISBN 0739123289, 9780739123287
130 pages

publisher
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PDF (updated on 2012-3-9)

Nicole Shukin: Animal Capital. Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times (2009)

Illuminates the profound contingency of market life on animal figures and flesh

The juxtaposition of biopolitical critique and animal studies—two subjects seldom theorized together—signals the double-edged intervention of Animal Capital. Nicole Shukin pursues a resolutely materialist engagement with the “question of the animal,” challenging the philosophical idealism that has dogged the question by tracing how the politics of capital and of animal life impinge on one another in market cultures of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Shukin argues that an analysis of capital’s incarnations in animal figures and flesh is pivotal to extending the examination of biopower beyond its effects on humans. “Rendering” refers simultaneously to cultural technologies and economies of mimesis and to the carnal business of boiling down and recycling animal remains. Rendering’s accommodation of these discrepant logics, she contends, suggests a rubric for the critical task of tracking the biopolitical conditions and contradictions of animal capital across the spaces of culture and economy.

From the animal capital of abattoirs and automobiles, films and mobile phones, to pandemic fear of species-leaping diseases such as avian influenza and mad cow, Shukin makes startling linkages between visceral and virtual currencies in animal life, illuminating entanglements of species, race, and labor in the conditions of capitalism. In reckoning with the violent histories and intensifying contradictions of animal rendering, Animal Capital raises provocative and pressing questions about the cultural politics of nature.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 0816653429, 9780816653423
288 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-8-1)

Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life, 2 vols. (1980–) [EN, PT, ES, CR]

Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology–to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

This social history of “making do” is based on microhistories that move from the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking, and homemaking) to the public (the experience of living in a neighborhood). The second volume of this magnum opus delves even deeper than did the first into the subtle tactics of resistance and private practices that make living a subversive art.

French edition
L’invention du quotidien, I, arts de faire, Gallimard, 1980
L’invention du quotidien, II, habiter, cuisiner, Gallimard, 1994

English edition
Translated by Steven Rendall
Publisher University of California Press, 1984
ISBN 0520236998, 9780520236998
229 pages

English edition, Volume 2: Living & Cooking
With Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol
Translated by Timothy J. Tomasik
University of Minnesota Press, 1998
ISBN 0816628777, 9780816628773
292 pages

Wikipedia (EN)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 1)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 2)
Google books (EN, Vol. 1)

The Practice of Everyday Life (English, trans. Steven Rendall, 1984, updated on 2013-9-28)
The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2: Living and Cooking (English, trans. Timothy J. Tomasik, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
A invenção do cotidiano (Portuguese, trans. Ephraim Ferreira Alves, Third edition, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 1 Artes de hacer (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 2000, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 2 Habitar, cocinar (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 1999, added on 2013-9-28)
Invencija svakodnevnice (Croatian, trans. Gordana Popovic, 2002, added on 2013-9-28)