For many philosophers, the rational cognitive (Cartesian) subject defines the human, or at least defines what humans should be. Yet some recent cognitive science, as well as the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, has called into question such individuality and rationality and emphasized social and emotional subjectivity. Understanding such embodied and embedded subjectivity, John Protevi argues, demands the notion of bodies politic.
In Political Affect, Protevi investigates the relationship between the social and the somatic: how our bodies, minds, and social settings are...
For many philosophers, the rational cognitive (Cartesian) subject defines the human, or at least defines what humans should be. Yet some recent cog...
Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexkull embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexkull "a high point of modern antihumanism." A key...
Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexkull e...
Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization-swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence-have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology. Through close engagement with the pioneering...
Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technologica...
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, he explores the idea that most of culture and nature, including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as "junk." Bardini unravels the presence of junk at the interface between science fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular biology and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the same culture-cyberculture-which is essentially a culture of junk. He draws on a...
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, he exp...
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, he explores the idea that most of culture and nature, including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as "junk." Bardini unravels the presence of junk at the interface between science fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular biology and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the same culture-cyberculture-which is essentially a culture of junk. He draws on a...
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, he exp...
What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind--like art, empathy, or technology--fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive "human error" may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions. In Human Error, Pettman describes the three sides of the cybernetic triangle--human, animal, and machine--as a rubric for understanding key figures,...
What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind--like art, empathy, or...
What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind--like art, empathy, or technology--fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive "human error" may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions. In Human Error, Pettman describes the three sides of the cybernetic triangle--human, animal, and machine--as a rubric for understanding key figures,...
What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind--like art, empathy, or...
Beginning with a historical account of why animal stories pose endemic critical challenges to literary and cultural theory, Animal Stories argues that key creative developments in narrative form became inseparable from shifts in animal politics and science in the past century. Susan McHugh traces representational patterns specific to modern and contemporary fictions of cross-species companionship through a variety of media--including novels, films, fine art, television shows, and digital games--to show how nothing less than the futures of all species life is at stake in narrative...
Beginning with a historical account of why animal stories pose endemic critical challenges to literary and cultural theory, Animal Stories argu...
Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and challenges their claims to objectivity, rationality, and truth. Cosmopolitics II includes the first English-language translations of the last four books: Quantum Mechanics: The End of the Dream, In the Name of the Arrow of Time: Prigogine's Challenge, Life and Artifice: The Faces of Emergence, and The Curse of Tolerance.
Arguing for an "ecology of practices" in the sciences, Isabelle Stengers explores the discordant...
Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and c...
Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and challenges their claims to objectivity, rationality, and truth. Cosmopolitics II includes the first English-language translations of the last four books: Quantum Mechanics: The End of the Dream, In the Name of the Arrow of Time: Prigogine's Challenge, Life and Artifice: The Faces of Emergence, and The Curse of Tolerance.
Arguing for an "ecology of practices" in the sciences, Isabelle Stengers explores the discordant...
Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and c...
