Author: Francesca Ferrando Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1509548971 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 164
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive reflection on the existential condition of the 21st century. A visionary introduction to existential posthumanism, it takes the form of eight meditations. This posthuman journey of self-inquiry engages with a wide range of knowledge and wisdom: from the Paleolithic times to the futures of radical life extension, from multi-species evolutions to the rights of Nature, the Anthropocene and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The book declutters the habit of being human. Letting go of the need for anthropocentric mastery and species-specific ambitions, the reader emerges regenerated. The manifold paths of posthuman self-realization reveal that we are all co-creators in the existential unfolding: our lives are our ultimate works of art. The Art of Being Posthuman is a self-help guide to navigate our brave new world. You can listen to Dr. Ferrando talk about the book’s key themes in these videos: 1. Introduction and 2. Conclusion
Author: Francesca Ferrando Publisher: Polity ISBN: 9781509548958 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive reflection on the existential condition of the 21st century. A visionary introduction to existential posthumanism, it takes the form of eight meditations of posthuman self-inquiry. Existential posthumanism embraces the question ‘Who am I?’ in relation to: 'Where, When, and Why are We?'. This journey of self-discovery engages with a wide range of knowledge and expertise – from ancient paths of wisdom to the latest developments in science and biotechnologies; from Paleolithic times to the futures of radical life extension. The book declutters the habit of being human: as individuals, as societies, as a species. Letting go of the need for anthropocentric mastery and species-specific ambitions, the reader emerges regenerated. Being posthuman, in the 21st century, entails awareness of inter-being: from our symbiotic co-evolutions to the rights of Nature; from the geological time of the Anthropocene to the rise of Big Data and artificial intelligence. In ecology, biology, technology and ontology, the manifold paths of posthuman self-realization will reveal that we are all co-creators in the existential unfolding: our lives are our ultimate works of art. The Art of Being Posthuman is a self-help guide to navigate our brave new world.
Author: Francesca Ferrando Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350059498 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
The notion of 'the human' is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term 'posthuman' provides an alternative. The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human. Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.
Author: Cary Wolfe Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 1452966567 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
A sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world How do contemporary art and theory contemplate the problem of the “bio” of biopolitics and bioart? How do they understand the question of “life” that binds human and nonhuman worlds in their shared travail? In Art and Posthumanism, Cary Wolfe argues for the reconceptualization of nature in art and theory to turn the idea of the relationship between the human and the planet upside down. Wolfe explores a wide range of contemporary artworks—from Sue Coe’s illustrations of animals in factory farms and Eduardo Kac’s bioart to the famous performance pieces of Joseph Bueys and the video installations of Eija-Liisa Ahtila, among others—examining how posthumanist theory can illuminate, and be illuminated by, artists’ engagement with the more-than-human world. Looking at biological and social systems, the question of the animal, and biopolitics, Art and Posthumanism explores how contemporary art rivets our attention on the empirically thick, emotionally charged questions of “life” and the “living” amid ecological catastrophe. One of the foremost theorists of posthumanism, Wolfe pushes that philosophy out of the realm of the purely theoretical to show how a posthumanist engagement with particular works and their conceptual underpinnings help to develop more potent ethical and political commitments.
Author: Rosi Braidotti Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745669964 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 202
Book Description
The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.
Author: N. Katherine Hayles Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226321398 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems. Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.
Author: Susan Mchugh Publisher: ISBN: 9780231196673 Category : Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks featuring a diverse sampling of major thinkers as well as acclaimed artists and curators. Their provocative and compelling works speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthuman theories in a time of cultural and environmental crises.
Author: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 1479890049 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 329
Book Description
Argues that blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the human Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the Enlightenment. In so doing, Becoming Human demonstrates that the history of racialized gender and maternity, specifically antiblackness, is indispensable to future thought on matter, materiality, animality, and posthumanism. Jackson argues that African diasporic cultural production alters the meaning of being human and engages in imaginative practices of world-building against a history of the bestialization and thingification of blackness—the process of imagining the black person as an empty vessel, a non-being, an ontological zero—and the violent imposition of colonial myths of racial hierarchy. She creatively responds to the animalization of blackness by generating alternative frameworks of thought and relationality that not only disrupt the racialization of the human/animal distinction found in Western science and philosophy but also challenge the epistemic and material terms under which the specter of animal life acquires its authority. What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of "the human."
Author: Pramod K. Nayar Publisher: Polity ISBN: 0745662404 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and ‘speciesist’ politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism’s roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of ‘normalcy’ in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.
Author: Christel Stalpaert Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303074745X Category : Actors Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Recent technological and scientific developments have demonstrated a condition that has already long been upon us. We have entered a posthuman era, an assertion shared by an increasing number of thinkers such as N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Richard Grusin, and Bernard Stiegler. The performing arts have reacted to these developments by increasingly opening up their traditionally human domain to non-human others. Both philosophy and performing arts thus question what it means to be human from a posthumanist point of view and how the agency of non-humans be they technology, objects, animals, or other forms of being works on both an ontological and performative level. The contributions in this volume brings together scholars, dramaturgs, and artists, uniting their reflections on the consequences of the posthuman condition for creative practices, spectatorship, and knowledge.
Author: Francesca Ferrando
Author: Francesca Ferrando
Author: Francesca Ferrando
Author: Cary Wolfe
Author: Rosi Braidotti
Author: N. Katherine Hayles
Author: Susan Mchugh
Author: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
Author: Pramod K. Nayar
Author: Christel Stalpaert