Rosi Braidotti, Maria Hlavajova (eds.): Posthuman Glossary (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, algorithm, anthropocene, art, body, capitalism, capitalocene, cybernetics, ecology, feminism, human, inhuman, new materialism, philosophy, posthuman, posthumanism, theory
“If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments–such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems–with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations.
The Posthuman Glossary> is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the ‘posthuman condition’, and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.”
Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, 2018
Theory series
ISBN 1350030252, 9781350030251
xxxii+538 pages
Nathan Brown: The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, fabrication, literary criticism, literary theory, literature, materialism, materials science, nanotechnology, ontology, philosophy, poetics, poetry, technē
“Poetry, or poiēsis, has long been understood as a practice of making. But how are experiments in the making of poetic forms related to formal making in science and engineering? The Limits of Fabrication takes up this question in the context of recent developments in nanoscale materials science, investigating concepts and ideologies of form at stake in new approaches to material construction. Tracing the direct pertinence of fields crucial to the new materials science (nanotechnology, biotechnology, crystallography, and geodesic design) in the work of Shanxing Wang, Caroline Bergvall, Christian Bök, and Ronald Johnson back to the midcentury development of Charles Olson’s ‘objectist’ poetics, Nathan Brown carves out a tradition of constructivist, nonorganic poetics that has developed in conversation with science and engineering.
While proposing a new approach to the relation of technē (craft, skill) and poiēsis (making, forming), this book also intervenes in philosophical debates concerning the concept of the object, the distinction between organic and inorganic matter, theories of self-organization, and the relation between ‘design’ and ‘nature’. Engaging with Heidegger, Agamben, Whitehead, Stiegler, and Nancy, Brown shows that materials science and materialist poetics offer crucial resources for thinking through the direction of contemporary materialist philosophy.”
Publisher Fordham University Press, New York, 2017
ISBN 9780823272990, 0823272990
xi+296 pages
via Memory of the World
Review: Tom Eyers (boundary2, 2017).
PDF (26 MB)
Comment (0)Katrin Pahl: Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · affect, emotion, feeling, love, phenomenology, philosophy
“Intervening in the multidisciplinary debate on emotion, Tropes of Transport offers a fresh analysis of Hegel’s work that becomes an important resource for Pahl’s cutting-edge theory of emotionality. If it is usually assumed that the sincerity of emotions and the force of affects depend on their immediacy, Pahl explores to what extent mediation—and therefore a certain degree of manipulation but also of sympathy—is constitutive of emotionality. Hegel serves as a particularly helpful interlocutor not only because he offers a sophisticated analysis of mediation, but also because, rather than locating emotion in the heart, he introduces impersonal tropes of transport, such as trembling, release, and shattering. ”
Publisher Northwestern University Press, 2012
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0
ISBN 0810127857, 9780810127852
ix+282 pages
Reviews: Emilia Angelova (Parrhesia, 2014), David H. Kim (Parrhesia, 2014), John McCumber (Parrhesia, 2014), Jason J. Howard (Parrhesia, 2014), Katrin Pahl (response to the 4 reviews, Parrhesia, 2014).
Interview with author (Rorotoko, 2012)
Comment (0)