Paolo Plotegher, Manuela Zechner, Bue Rübner Hansen (eds.): Nanopolitics Handbook (2013)

The invention of new modes of sensibility is vital to enriching and sustaining political engagements, labours and lives in the situated contexts of urban collectivity. The nanopolitics handbook investigates the neoliberal city and workplace, the politics of crisis and austerity, precarious lives and modes of collaboration – through bodies and their encounters. Starting from the exploration of what bodies can do – with curiosity, courage and care – nanopolitics is a proposal for producing new collective subjectivations.

Based on the experiments and experiences of the nanopolitics group, this book proposes exercises, concepts and ideas as little maps and machines for action. Drawing on social movements, grassroots organizing, dance, theatre and bodywork, the reflections and practices here present strategies for navigating and reconfiguring the playing field of ‘nanopolitics’, activating its entanglement with the major politics of our time.

Texts and exercises by: the nanopolitics group, esquizo-barcelona, David Vercauteren, Camila Mello and Fabiane Borges, Nelly Alfandari, Jorge Goia, Lottie Child, Carla Bottiglieri, Gabriella Alberti, Paolo Plotegher, Davyd Bodoun, Emma Dowling, Mara Ferreri, Manuela Zechner, Bue Rübner Hansen, Amit Rai, Anja Kanngieser, Lisa Burger, Irina Burger and Signe Lupnov.

Publisher Minor Compositions, 2013
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
ISBN 9781570272684
280 pages

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Matthew K. Gold (ed.): Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012)

“Encompassing new technologies, research methods, and opportunities for collaborative scholarship and open-source peer review, as well as innovative ways of sharing knowledge and teaching, the digital humanities promises to transform the liberal arts—and perhaps the university itself. Indeed, at a time when many academic institutions are facing austerity budgets, digital humanities programs have been able to hire new faculty, establish new centers and initiatives, and attract multimillion-dollar grants.

Clearly the digital humanities has reached a significant moment in its brief history. But what sort of moment is it? Debates in the Digital Humanities brings together leading figures in the field to explore its theories, methods, and practices and to clarify its multiple possibilities and tensions. From defining what a digital humanist is and determining whether the field has (or needs) theoretical grounding, to discussions of coding as scholarship and trends in data-driven research, this cutting-edge volume delineates the current state of the digital humanities and envisions potential futures and challenges. At the same time, several essays aim pointed critiques at the field for its lack of attention to race, gender, class, and sexuality; the inadequate level of diversity among its practitioners; its absence of political commitment; and its preference for research over teaching.”

Contributors: Bryan Alexander, Rafael Alvarado, Jamie “Skye” Bianco, Ian Bogost, Stephen Brier, Daniel J. Cohen, Cathy N. Davidson, Rebecca Frost Davis, Johanna Drucker, Amy E. Earhart, Charlie Edwards, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Julia Flanders, Neil Fraistat, Paul Fyfe, Michael Gavin, David Greetham, Jim Groom, Gary Hall, Mills Kelly, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Alan Liu, Elizabeth Losh, Lev Manovich, Willard McCarty, Tara McPherson, Bethany Nowviskie, Trevor Owens, William Pannapacker, Dave Parry, Stephen Ramsay, Alexander Reid, Geoffrey Rockwell, Mark L. Sample, Tom Scheinfeldt, Kathleen Marie Smith, Lisa Spiro, Patrik Svensson, Luke Waltzer, Matthew Wilkens, George H. Williams, Michael Witmore.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2012
Open Access
ISBN 0816677956, 9780816677955
516 pages

Reviews: Dene Grigar (Leonardo Reviews), Jennifer Howard (Times Literary Supplement), Craig Bellamy (Digital Culture & Education).

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Tony D. Sampson: Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (2012)

“In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates.

Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way of the rhetoric of fear in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over too much connectivity, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview.

According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2012
ISBN 0816670056, 9780816670055
235 pages

Review: Jussi Parikka (Theory, Culture & Society)
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