Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Wark: Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation (2013)

“Always connect—that is the imperative of today’s media. But what about those moments when media cease to function properly, when messages go beyond the sender and receiver to become excluded from the world of communication itself—those messages that state: “There will be no more messages”? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark argue that these moments reveal the ways the impossibility of communication is integral to communication itself—instances they call excommunication.

In three linked essays, Excommunication pursues this elusive topic by looking at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. First, Galloway proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation today—mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. Then, Thacker goes beyond Galloway’s classification scheme by examining the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Charting a trajectory of examples from H. P. Lovecraft to Meister Eckhart, Thacker explores those instances when one communicates or connects with the inaccessible, dubbing such modes of mediation “haunted” or “weird” to underscore their inaccessibility. Finally, Wark evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left. He posits a critical theory that celebrates heresy and that is distinct from those that now venerate Saint Paul.

Reexamining commonplace definitions of media, mediation, and communication, Excommunication offers a glimpse into the realm of the nonhuman to find a theory of mediation adequate to our present condition.”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2013
TRIOS series
ISBN 0226925226, 9780226925226
210 pages

Reviews: Daniel Colucciello Barber (Parrhesia, 2014), Jay Murphy (Afterimage, 2014), Geert Lovink (e-flux, 2014, Wark’s response), Aleksandra Kaminska (Reviews in Cultural Theory, 2015), Marco Deseriis (Culture Machine, 2015).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2019-11-20)

Ada 5: Queer Feminist Media Praxis (2014)

“Alexandra Juhasz’s work on feminist media praxis together with Aristea Fotopoulou’s work on contemporary digital media, feminism and queer studies structured the theme of this issue. We were interested in exploring what the concept of praxis could offer in our thinking about the intersections of gender, digital media, and technology. Praxis in both Marxist and in Arendtian political thought brings together theory, philosophy and political action into the realm of the everyday. Inspired from this premise, and continuing the conversations that started during the workshop, we focus here on the conditions for a queer feminist digital media praxis.” (from the Introduction)

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Issue 5
Edited by Aristea Fotopoulou, Kate O’Riordan, and Alexandra Juhasz
Publisher University of Oregon Libraries
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
ISSN 2325-0496

HTML
HTML (at Fembotcollective.org)

Beatriz Preciado: Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2008–) [ES, EN, BR-PT]

“What constitutes a ‘real’ man or woman in the twenty-first century? Since birth control pills, erectile dysfunction remedies, and factory-made testosterone and estrogen were developed, biology is definitely no longer destiny.

In this analysis of gender, Beatriz Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado’s diaristic account of her own use of testosterone every day for one year, and it’s impact on her body as well as her imagination.”

Spanish edition
Publisher Espasa Calpe, Madrid, 2008
ISBN 8467026936, 9788467026931
324 pages

English edition
Translated from the French by Bruce Benderson
Publisher The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2013
ISBN 1558618376, 9781558618374
427 pages

Reviews: Marcie Bianco (Lambda, 2013), Johanna Fateman (BookForum, 2013), Deborah Harris-Moore (Make, 2014), Karmele Mendoza Pérez (Nordic Journal of STS, 2015).
Commentary: McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2013).
Interview (Ricky Tucker, The Paris Review, 2013).
Wikipedia-FR

Publisher (ES)
Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (ES), (EN)

Testo Yonqui (Spanish, 2008, 3 MB, updated on 2019-6-6)
Testo Junkie (English, trans. Bruce Benderson, 2013, updated on 2019-6-6)
Testo Junkie (BR-Portuguese, trans. Maria Paula Gurgel Ribeiro with Verônica Daminelli Fernandes, 2018, added on 2019-6-6)