Eric C. H. de Bruyn, Sven Lütticken (eds.): Futurity Report (2020)

“Not long ago, a melancholic left and a manic neoliberalism seemed to arrive at an awkward consensus: the foreclosure of futurity. Whereas the former mourned the failure of its utopian project, the latter celebrated the triumph of a global marketplace. The radical hope of realizing a singularly different, more equitable future displaced by a belief that the future had already come to pass, limiting post-historical society to an uneventful life of endless accumulation. Today, amidst an abundance of neofuturisms, posthumanisms, futurologies, speculative philosophies and accelerationist scenarios, there is as well an expanding awareness of a looming planetary catastrophe driven by the extractionist logic of capitalism. Despite this return to the future, the temporal horizon of our present moment is perhaps more aptly characterized by the “shrinking future” of just-in-time production, risk management, high-frequency trading, and the futures market. In Futurity Report, theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future itself.”

Published in conjunction with the symposium “Future Caucus”, held at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, on 20 May 2017.

With contributions by T. J. Demos, Diedrich Diederichsen, Haytham El-Wardany, Kodwo Eshun, Sven Lütticken, Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, Achille Mbembe, Doreen Mende, China Miéville, Pedro Neves Marques, Johannes Paul Raether, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Felicity D. Scott, Kerstin Stakemeier, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Marina Vishmidt, and McKenzie Wark.

Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2020
Counter-Histories series, 1
ISBN 9783956794230
288 pages
via textz

Publisher

PDF (124 MB)

Helen Hester: Xenofeminism (2018–) [EN, ES]

“In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?

These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.

Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.”

Publisher Polity Press, 2018
Theory Redux series
ISBN 1509520627, 9781509520626
v+169 pages
via calamitousannunciation

Reviews: Emma Rees (Times Higher Education, 2018), Rhian E. Jones (New Humanist, 2018), Mareile Pfannebecker (LSE Review of Books, 2018), Peter Heft (The Mantle, 2018), Diana Young (Kontradikce, 2019), Dharmender Dhillon (Philosophy Now, 2020), Alison MacKenzie (Postdigital Science and Education, 2021).

Publisher
WorldCat

English: HTML (added on 2018-6-1), PDF (4 MB)
Spanish: PDF (trans. Hugo Salas, 2018, added on 2021-1-22)