- Table View
- List View
Posthuman Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Thought: Becoming Angels and Demons
by M. David LitwaThere is not just a desire but a profound human need for enhancement - the irrepressible yearning to become better than ourselves. Today, enhancement is often conceived of in terms of biotechnical intervention: genetic modification, prostheses, implants, drug therapy - even mind uploading. The theme of this book is an ancient form of enhancement: a physical upgrade that involves ethical practices of self-realization. It has been called 'angelification' - a transformation by which people become angels. The parallel process is 'daimonification', or becoming daimones. Ranging in time from Hesiod and Empedocles through Plato and Origen to Plotinus and Christian gnostics, this book explores not only how these two forms of posthuman transformation are related, but also how they connect and chasten modern visions of transhumanist enhancement which generally lack a robust account of moral improvement.
Posthumanism In Art And Science: A Reader
by Giovanni Aloi Susan McHughPosthumanism synthesizes philosophical, literary, and artistic responses to technological advancements, globalization, and mass extinction in the Anthropocene. It asks what it can mean to be human in an increasingly more-than-human world that has lost faith in the ideal of humanism, the autonomous, rational subject, and it models generative alternatives cognizant of the demands of social and ecological justice. Amid rising social justice movements, collapsing economic structures, and the dwindling power of cultural institutions, posthumanism advances thinking on new and previously unenvisionable challenges. Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks that provide an unprecedented mapping of this intellectual and aesthetic development in a global context. It features groundbreaking theorists including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Mel Y. Chen, Michael Marder, Alexander Weheliye, Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton, N. Katherine Hayles, Bruno Latour, Francesca Ferrando, and Cary Wolfe, as well as innovative, influential artists and curators such as Yvonne Rainer, Skawennati, Chus Martínez, William Wegman, Nandipha Mntambo, Cassils, Pauline Oliveros, and Doo-sung Yoo. These provocative and compelling works, including previously unpublished interviews and essays, speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthumanist thinking in a time of unprecedented cultural and environmental crises. An essential primer and reference for educators, students, artists, and art enthusiasts, this volume offers a powerful framework for rethinking anthropocentric certitudes and reenvisioning equitable and sustainable futures.
Posthumanism Meets Surveillance Capitalism: How to Delete the Manifest Image (Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors)
by Patrick GamezThe core contention of this book is that, when viewed through the lens of contemporary posthuman theory, contemporary uses of AI under platform capitalism not only undermine our sense of the &“human&” but also our frameworks for conceptualizing ourselves as &“subjects&” or &“selves&” at all. This radical conclusion raises issues forces us to reckon with a new, disorienting horizon for critical thought at the intersection of technology and politics. This book demonstrates that two major streams of posthuman thought—namely, accelerationism and Prometheanism—can be interpreted as attempts to liberate our desires from our reason or our rationality from our all-too-human desire, each through the offloading of various tasks to emerging technologies. But, Patrick Gamez argues, the rise of opaque, unexplainable machine learning algorithms to predict and shape our behaviour undermines the common-sense models of mind through which we ultimately make sense of both the human and the posthuman.
Posthumanism and Educational Research (Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education)
by John Weaver Nathan SnazaFocusing on the interdependence between human, animal, and machine, posthumanism redefines the meaning of the human being previously assumed in knowledge production. This movement challenges some of the most foundational concepts in educational theory and has implications within educational research, curriculum design and pedagogical interactions. In this volume, a group of international contributors use posthumanist theory to present new modes of institutional collaboration and pedagogical practice. They position posthumanism as a comprehensive theoretical project with connections to philosophy, animal studies, environmentalism, feminism, biology, queer theory and cognition. Researchers and scholars in curriculum studies and philosophy of education will benefit from the new research agendas presented by posthumanism.
Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/Becoming/Doing Literacies (Expanding Literacies in Education)
by Candace R. Kuby Karen Spector Jaye Johnson ThielCovering key terms and concepts in the emerging field of posthumanism and literacy education, this volume investigates posthumanism, not as a lofty theory, but as a materialized way of knowing/becoming/doing the world. The contributors explore the ways that posthumanism helps educators better understand how students, families, and communities come to know/become/do literacies with other humans and nonhumans. Illustrative examples show how posthumanist theories are put to work in and out of school spaces as pedagogies and methodologies in literacy education. With contributions from a range of scholars, from emerging to established, and from both U.S. and international settings, the volume covers literacy practices from pre-K to adult literacy across various contexts. Chapter authors not only wrestle with methodological tensions in doing posthumanist research, but also situate it within pedagogies of teaching literacies. Inviting readers to pause, slow down, and consider posthumanist ways of thinking about agency, intra-activity, subjectivity, and affect, this book explores and experiments with new ways of seeing, understanding, and defining literacies, and allows readers to experience and intra-act with the book in ways more traditional (re)presentations do not.
Posthumanism and Phenomenology: The Focus on the Modern Condition of Boredom, Solitude, Loneliness and Isolation (Analecta Husserliana #125)
by William S. Smith Jadwiga S. Smith Calley A. HornbuckleThis volume investigates the intersection of phenomenology and posthumanism by rethinking the human and nonhuman specifically with regard to boredom, isolation, loneliness, and solitude. By closely examining these concepts from phenomenological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, this diverse collection of essays offers insights into the human and nonhuman in the absence of the Other and within the postapocalyptic. Topics of interest include modalities of presence and absence with regard to body, time, beast, and things; the phenomenology of corporeity; ontopoiesis and the sublime; alienation, absurdity, and phenomenology of existence; memory, posthistoricity, posthuman nihilism, and posthumanity; speculative cosmology, cosmic holism, and consciousness; ecophenomenology; and the philosophy of the aesthetic. These essays parse and probe distinct aspects of the posthuman condition and what it means to exist in a posthuman world, thereby furthering the vast, rich scope of phenomenological research and study. This text appeals to students and researchers working in these topics and fields.
Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader
by Aloi, Giovanni; McHugh, SusanPosthumanism synthesizes philosophical, literary, and artistic responses to technological advancements, globalization, and mass extinction in the Anthropocene. It asks what it can mean to be human in an increasingly more-than-human world that has lost faith in the ideal of humanism, the autonomous, rational subject, and it models generative alternatives cognizant of the demands of social and ecological justice. Amid rising social justice movements, collapsing economic structures, and the dwindling power of cultural institutions, posthumanism advances thinking on new and previously unenvisionable challenges.Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks that provide an unprecedented mapping of this intellectual and aesthetic development in a global context. It features groundbreaking theorists including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Mel Y. Chen, Michael Marder, Alexander Weheliye, Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton, N. Katherine Hayles, Bruno Latour, Francesca Ferrando, and Cary Wolfe, as well as innovative, influential artists and curators such as Yvonne Rainer, Skawennati, Chus Martínez, William Wegman, Nandipha Mntambo, Cassils, Pauline Oliveros, and Doo-sung Yoo. These provocative and compelling works, including previously unpublished interviews and essays, speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthumanist thinking in a time of unprecedented cultural and environmental crises.An essential primer and reference for educators, students, artists, and art enthusiasts, this volume offers a powerful framework for rethinking anthropocentric certitudes and reenvisioning equitable and sustainable futures.
Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So (Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture)
by Andrew HicksPosthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So re-examines the prevailing critical consensus that Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist writer. While more difficult elements of his work have often been the subject of scholarly attention, the tendency amongst critics writing on Vonnegut is to disavow them, or to subsume them within a liberal humanist framework. When Vonnegut’s work is read from a posthumanist perspective, however, the productive paradoxes of his work are more fully realised. Drawing on New Materialist, Eco-Critical and Systems Theory methodologies, this book highlights posthumanist themes in six of Vonnegut’s most famous novels, and emphasises the ways in which Vonnegut troubles human/non-human, natural/artificial, and material/discursive hierarchical binaries
Posthumanism: Anthropological Insights (G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects)
by Alan Smart Josephine SmartDesigned to explain posthumanism to those outside of academia, this brief and accessible book makes an original argument about anthropology's legacy as a study of "more than human." Smart and Smart return to the holism of classic ethnographies where cattle, pigs, yams, and sorcerers were central to the lives that were narrated by anthropologists, but they extend the discussion to include contemporary issues like microbiomes, the Anthropocene, and nano-machines, which take holism beyond locally bounded spaces. They outline what a holism without boundaries could look like, and what anthropology could offer to the knowledge of more-than-human nature in the past, present, and future.
Posthumanist and New Materialist Methodologies: Research After the Child (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)
by Claudia Diaz-Diaz Paulina SemenecThis book features interviews with 19 scholars who do research with children in a variety of contexts. It examines how these key scholars address research 'after the child’ by exploring the opportunities and challenges of drawing on posthumanist and materialist methodologies that unsettle humanist research practices.The book reflects on how posthumanist and materialist approaches have informed research in relation to de-centering the child, re-thinking methodological concepts of voice, agency, data, analysis and representation. It also explores what the future of research after the child might entail and offers suggestions to new and emerging scholars involved in research with children. Reviewing how posthumanist and materialist approaches have informed authors’ thinking about children, research and knowledge production, the book will appeal to graduate students and emerging scholars in the field of childhood studies who wish to experiment with posthumanist methodologies and materialist approaches.
Posthumous Life: Theorizing Beyond the Posthuman (Critical Life Studies)
by Claire Colebrook Jami WeinsteinPosthumous Life launches critical life studies: a mode of inquiry that neither endorses nor dismisses a wave of recent "turns" toward life, matter, vitality, inhumanity, animality, and the real. Questioning the nature and limits of life in the natural sciences, the essays in this volume examine the boundaries and significance of the human and the humanities in the wake of various redefinitions of what counts as life. They explore the possibility of theorizing life without assuming it to be either a simple substrate or an always-mediated effect of culture and difference. Posthumous Life provides new ways of thinking about animals, plants, humans, difference, sexuality, race, gender, identity, the earth, and the future.
Postkoloniale Literaturen in globalen Kontexten: Zur Übersetzung afrikanischer Romane ins Deutsche (Globalisierte Literaturen. Theorie und Geschichte transnationaler Buchkultur / Globalized Literatures. Theory and History of Transnational Book Culture #7)
by Hypolite KembeuFragen des Kulturtransfers und insbesondere des ideologischen Einflusses auf Übersetzungen bilden das Untersuchungsfeld des vorliegenden Buches. Es widmet sich der Rezeption afrikanischer Literaturen während und in der Folge des Kalten Krieges in Deutschland. Ausgehend von literatursoziologischen und postkolonialen Übersetzungstheorien und damit verbundenen analytischen Ansätzen geht der Autor anhand von Rezeptionsprozessen und Übersetzungen den konkreten Strategien der Rekontextualisierung von postkolonialen afrikanischen Literaturen nach. Dabei werden auch die unterschiedlichen sozialhistorischen und -politischen Faktoren in der BRD und DDR sowie nach der Wiedervereinigung betrachtet. Diese kontextualisierte Untersuchung der Literaturrezeption erfolgt anhand der Werke vieler afrikanischer Autoren, insbesondere des Kameruners Ferdinand Oyono, des Kenianers Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, des Nigerianers Chinua Achebe und des Ivorers Ahmadou Kourouma. Die Analyse zeigt, dass das Idealbild vom ideologiefreien Kulturtransfer der Realität nicht standhält, da die Übersetzung, sei es bei der Auswahl der zu übersetzenden Texte oder auch bei den Übersetzungsstrategien der ausnahmslos europäischen Übersetzer, sich als ein gesellschaftsbezogenes und ideologisch geprägtes Konstrukt herausstellt. Die für das Übersetzen oft postulierte interkulturelle Kommunikation und internationale Partnerschaft weist demnach ein bedeutendes asymmetrisches Machtverhältnis zwischen Zivilisationen auf, dessen Ursache nicht sprachlicher, literarischer oder künstlerischer, sondern eher geopolitischer Natur ist.
Postkommunistische Regime: Akteure, Institutionen und Dynamiken (Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft)
by Bálint Magyar Bálint MadlovicsIn 120 Thesen entwickelt das Buch einen konzeptionellen Rahmen mit einer Typologie post-kommunistischer Regime und einer detaillierten Darstellung von idealtypischen Akteuren und den politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Phänomenen in diesen Regimen. Befreit von den impliziten Annahmen der Mainstream-Demokratisierungstheorie liefert die neue Terminologie ein leicht verwendbares Instrumentarium eindeutiger Ausdrucksmittel, um über den Postkommunismus zu sprechen.
Postletale Landwirtschaft: Zur anstehenden Reform unseres Agrarsystems
by Stefan MannEs gibt viele Bücher auf dem Markt, die uns erklären, warum wir aufhören sollten, Fleisch zu produzieren und zu essen. Dieses Buch dagegen erklärt, warum wir aufhören werden, Fleisch zu produzieren und zu essen. Und was sich dadurch in der Landwirtschaft verändern wird.Tierrechtler verweisen gerne auf die Abschaffung der Sklavenhaltung und zeigen, worin die vielen Parallelen zur Befreiung landwirtschaftlicher Nutztiere liegen. Leider erklären sie nicht, warum die Sklavenhaltung zwischen 1833 und 1987 in jedem Land der Welt, die Tierproduktion aber in keinem Land der Welt abgeschafft wurde, sondern der globale Fleischkonsum weiter wächst. Es gilt also einerseits zu erklären, warum das Unbehagen immer mehr Konsumenten mit dem, was die einen Wertschöpfungskette, die anderen Tötungsmaschinerie nennen, nicht zu einem Paradigmenwechsel geführt hat. Und warum derzeit die Voraussetzungen dafür geschaffen werden, damit sich dies ändert.So füllt «Postletale Landwirtschaft» die Lücke zwischen tierethischen Abhandlungen und der Fülle «wertfreier» agrar- und umweltwissenschaftlicher Literatur zur Dynamik und den Auswirkungen des Fleischkonsums. Das Buch stellt dar, welche ethischen und welche ökologischen Probleme zwangsläufig zu einer Transformation der Landwirtschaft führen werden. Höchstwahrscheinlich einer Landwirtschaft, zu der das Töten von Tieren nicht mehr gehören wird.
Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal
by Adrian PabstHyper-capitalism and extreme identity politics are driving us to distraction. Both destroy the basis of a common life shared across ages and classes. The COVID-19 crisis could accelerate these tendencies further, or it could herald something more hopeful: a post-liberal moment. Adrian Pabst argues that now is the time for an alternative – postliberalism – that is centred around trust, dignity, and human relationships. Instead of reverting to the mutual suspicion and destabilising inhumanity of 'just-in-time' free-market globalisation, we could build a politics upon the sense of localism and community spirit, the valuing of family, place and belonging, which was a real theme of lockdown. We are not obliged to put up with the restoration of a broken status quo that erodes trust, undermines institutions and trashes our precious natural environment. We could build a pluralist democracy, decentralise the state, and promote mutualist markets embedded in the everyday economy.This bold book shows that only a politics which fuses economic justice with social solidarity and ecological balance can overcome our deep divisions and save us from authoritarian backlash.
Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays
by Jürgen HabermasThis collection of Habermas's recent essays on philosophical topics continues the analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In a short introductory essay, he outlines the sources of twentieth-century philosophizing, its major themes, and the range of current debates. The remainder of the essays can be seen as his contribution to these debates. Habermas's essay on George Herbert Mead is a focal point of the book. In it he sketches a postmetaphysical, intersubjective approach to questions of individuation and subjectivity. In other essays, he develops his distinctive, communications-theoretic approach to questions of meaning and validity. The book as a whole expands on his earlier efforts to define a middle ground between nostalgic revivals of metaphysical conceptions of reason and radical deconstructions of reason. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Essays: The Horizon of Modernity is Shifting. Metaphysics after Kant. Themes in Postmetaphysical Thinking. Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning. Peirce and Communication. The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices. Individuation through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead's Theory of Subjectivity. Philosophy and Science as Literature? Translated into English by Williammark Hohengarten.
Postmodern Debates (Readers in Cultural Criticism)
by Simon MalpasThis book introduces modernity, postmodernism and postmodernity through a series of debates between prominent thinkers in literary theory, philosophy and cultural studies. The book explores this topic through thinkers who are at odds and encourages readers to consider the wide implications of postmodern thought in several areas.
Postmodern Philosophy and the Scientific Turn
by Dorothea E. OlkowskiA groundbreaking, interdisciplinary approach to the study of consciousness: &“Beautifully written, engaging throughout, and captivating&” (Claire Colebrook, The Pennsylvania State University). What can come of a scientific engagement with postmodern philosophy? Some scientists have claimed that the social sciences and humanities have nothing to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Dorothea E. Olkowski shows that mathematics itself—the historic link between science and philosophy—plays a fundamental role in the development of the worldviews that drive both fields. Focusing on language, its usage and expression of worldview, she develops a phenomenological account of human thought and action to explicate the role of philosophy in the sciences. Olkowski proposes a model of phenomenology, both scientific and philosophical, that helps make sense of reality and composes an ethics for dealing with unpredictability in our world.
Postmodern Revisionings of the Political (Thinking Gender)
by Anna YeatmanFirst published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Postmodern Theory and Progressive Politics: Toward a New Humanism (Political Philosophy and Public Purpose)
by Thomas De ZengotitaThis book examines the lasting influence of the academic culture wars of the late 20th century on the humanities and progressive politics, and what to make now of those furious debates over postmodernism, multiculturalism, relativism, critical theory, deconstruction, post-structuralism, and so on. In an effort to arrive at a fair judgment on that question, the book reaches for an understanding of postmodern theorists by way of two genres they despised; and hopes, for that reason, to do them justice. The story, in its telling, justifies two basic claims: first, that the phenomenological/hermeneutical tradition is the most suitable source of theory for a humanism that aspires to be truly universal; and, second, that the ethical and political aspect of the human condition is authentically accessible only through narrative. In conclusion, it argues that the postmodern moment was a necessary one, or will have been if we rise to the occasion—and that that is its historical significance.
Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict (Critical Perspectives Ser.)
by Chris Hables GrayFirst published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Postmodernism and China
by Arif Dirlik Xudong ZhangFew countries have been so transformed in recent decades as China. With a dynamically growing economy and a rapidly changing social structure, China challenges the West to understand the nature of its modernization. Using postmodernism as both a global frame of periodization and a way to break free from the rigid ideology of westernization as modernity, this volume's diverse group of contributors argues that the Chinese experience is crucial for understanding postmodernism. Collectively, these essays question the implications of specific phenomena, like literature, architecture, rock music, and film, in a postsocialist society. Some essays address China's complicity in--as well as its resistance to--the culture of global capitalism. Others evaluate the impact of efforts to redefine national culture in terms of enhanced freedoms and expressions of the imagination in everyday life. Still others discuss the general relaxation of political society in post-Mao China, the emergence of the market and its consumer mass culture, and the fashion and discourse of nostalgia. The contributors make a clear case for both the historical uniqueness of Chinese postmodernism and the need to understand its specificity in order to fully grasp the condition of postmodernity worldwide. Although the focus is on mainland China, the volume also includes important observations on social and cultural realities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, whose postmodernity has so far been confined--in both Chinese and English-speaking worlds--to their economic and consumer activities instead of their political and cultural dynamism. First published as a special issue of boundary 2, Postmodernism and China includes seven new essays. By juxtaposing postmodernism with postsocialism and by analyzing China as a producer and not merely a consumer of the culture of the postmodern, it will contribute to critical discourses on globalism, modernity, and political economics, as well as to cultural and Asian studies. Contributors. Evans Chan, Arif Dirlik, Dai Jinhua, Liu Kang, Anthony D. King, Jeroen de Kloet, Abidin Kusno, Wendy Larson, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Wang Ning, Xiaobing Tang, Xiaoying Wang, Chen Xiaoming, Xiaobin Yang, Zhang Yiwu, Xudong Zhang
Postmodernism and History
by Willie ThompsonIn this clear, jargon-free guide, Willie Thompson provides a concise introduction to postmodernist theory and its significant impact on the study of history. Although this is a hotly-debated topic, with much of the current literature being both polemical and inaccessible to the beginner, Thompson offers straightforward explanations of complex concepts and shows how the debates are relevant to students' own work. Postmodernism and History: - considers the origins of postmodernism in both the ideas of poststructuralist thinkers, particularly Michel Foucault, and the political and cultural developments of the late 20th century - explores themes such as the treatment of historical evidence, problems of historical representation, feminist history, ethical judgements on past events, and the validity of metanarrative or long-term historical explanation - discusses critically the work of a number of current and recent practicing historians - including Joan Scott, Roy Porter, Patrick Joyce and James Vernon - who have used postmodernist ideas in their writing - enquires how far postmodern thought has been absorbed into mainstream historiography
Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis
by Arran GarePostmodernism and the Environmental Crisis is the only book to combine cultural theory and environmental philosophy. In it, Arran Gare analyses the conjunction between the environmental crisis, the globalisation of capitalism and the disintegration of the culture of modernity. It explains the paradox of growing concern for the environment and the paltry achievements of environmental movements. Through a critique of the philosophies underlying approaches to the environmental crisis, Arran Gare puts forward his own, controversial theory of a new postmodern world view. This would be the foundation for the environmental movement to succeed. Arran Gare's work will be a vital reading for advanced students of environmental studies, as well as for environmental philosophers and cultural theorists.
Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Late Socialism
by Ales ErjavecThis book, with in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, captures a singular period in the history of world art, and a critical moment in the cultural and political transition from the last century to our own.