Researching a Posthuman World

Researching a Posthuman World PDF

Author: Catherine Adams

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-16

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1137571624

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This book provides a practical approach for applying posthumanist insights to qualitative research inquiry. Adams and Thompson invite readers to embrace their inner – and outer – cyborg as they consider how today’s professional practices and everyday ways of being are increasingly intertwined with digital technologies. Drawing on posthuman scholarship, the authors offer eight heuristics for “interviewing objects” in an effort to reveal the unique – and sometimes contradictory – contributions the digital is making to work, learning and living. The heuristics are drawn from Actor Network Theory, phenomenology, postphenomenology, critical media studies and related sociomaterial approaches. This text offers a theoretically informed yet practical approach for asking critical questions of digital and non-digital things in professional and personal spaces, and ultimately, for considering the ethical and political implications of a technology mediated world. A thought-provoking and innovative study, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of technology studies, digital learning, and sociology.

Posthuman Research Practices in Education

Posthuman Research Practices in Education PDF

Author: Carol Taylor

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1137453087

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How do we include and develop understandings of those beyond-the-human aspects of the world in social research? Through fifteen contributions from leading international thinkers, this book provides original approaches to posthumanist research practices in education. It responds to questions which consider the effect and reach of posthuman research.

Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction

Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction PDF

Author: Anita Tarr

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1496816706

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Contributions by Torsten Caeners, Phoebe Chen, Mathieu Donner, Shannon Hervey, Angela S. Insenga, Patricia Kennon, Maryna Matlock, Ferne Merrylees, Lars Schmeink, Anita Tarr, Tony M. Vinci, and Donna R. White For centuries, humanism has provided a paradigm for what it means to be human: a rational, unique, unified, universal, autonomous being. Recently, however, a new philosophical approach, posthumanism, has questioned these assumptions, asserting that being human is not a fixed state but one always dynamic and evolving. Restrictive boundaries are no longer in play, and we do not define who we are by delineating what we are not (animal, machine, monster). There is no one aspect that makes a being human--self-awareness, emotion, artistic expression, or problem-solving--since human characteristics reside in other species along with shared DNA. Instead, posthumanism looks at the ways our bodies, intelligence, and behavior connect and interact with the environment, technology, and other species. In Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World, editors Anita Tarr and Donna R. White collect twelve essays that explore this new discipline's relevance in young adult literature. Adolescents often tangle with many issues raised by posthumanist theory, such as body issues. The in-betweenness of adolescence makes stories for young adults ripe for posthumanist study. Contributors to the volume explore ideas of posthumanism, including democratization of power, body enhancements, hybridity, multiplicity/plurality, and the environment, by analyzing recent works for young adults, including award-winners like Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, as well as the works of Octavia Butler and China Miéville.

Animal Subjects 2.0

Animal Subjects 2.0 PDF

Author: Jodey Castricano

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2016-12-10

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1771122129

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Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World (WLU Press, 2008) challenged cultural studies to include nonhuman animals within its purview. While the “question of the animal” ricochets across the academy and reverberates within the public sphere, Animal Subjects 2.0 builds on the previous book and takes stock of this explosive turn. It focuses on both critical animal studies and posthumanism, two intertwining conversations that ask us to reconsider common sense understandings of other animals and what it means to be human. This collection demonstrates that many pressing contemporary social problems—how and why the oppression and exploitation of our species persist—are entangled with our treatment of other animals and the environment. Decades into the interrogation of our ethical and political responsibilities toward other animals, fissures within the academy deepen as the interest in animal ethics and politics proliferates. Although ideological fault lines have inspired important debates about how to address the very material concerns informing these theoretical discussions, Animal Subjects 2.0 brings together divergent voices to suggest how to foster richer human–animal relations, and to cultivate new ways of thinking and being with the rest of animalkind. This collection demonstrates that appreciation of difference, not just similarity, is necessary for a more inclusive and compassionate world. Linking issues of gender, disability, culture, race, and sexuality into species, Animal Subjects 2.0 maps vibrant developments in the emergent fields of critical animal studies and posthumanist thought.

Abandoned Futures

Abandoned Futures PDF

Author: Tong Lam

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781908211132

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Photographer Tong Lam explores answers to the question what would the end of the world look like? From Hashima Island off the coast of Japan to the despair of a crumbling industrial Detroit, his photographs deliver myriad answers. It's not all bad news though, and the photographs are far more inspiring than one might expect. As human industry fails and decay takes over, nature starts to move in. Trees miraculously thrive amidst the rubble as various flora springs from industrial waste. Yes, the ghostly asylums and decaying sanatoriums will delight post-apocalyptic impulses, but entropy's low ebb often has an upshot in Lam s bright open photographs. Nothing is spared from ruin, as the military industrial complexes and medieval castles are given the same treatment by the indomitable, grinding forces of the universe.

Pirate Philosophy

Pirate Philosophy PDF

Author: Gary Hall

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0262332221

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How philosophers and theorists can find new models for the creation, publication, and dissemination of knowledge, challenging the received ideas of originality, authorship, and the book. In Pirate Philosophy, Gary Hall considers whether the fight against the neoliberal corporatization of higher education in fact requires scholars to transform their own lives and labor. Is there a way for philosophers and theorists to act not just for or with the antiausterity and student protestors—“graduates without a future”—but in terms of their political struggles? Drawing on such phenomena as peer-to-peer file sharing and anticopyright/pro-piracy movements, Hall explores how those in academia can move beyond finding new ways of thinking about the world to find instead new ways of being theorists and philosophers in the world. Hall describes the politics of online sharing, the battles against the current intellectual property regime, and the actions of Anonymous, LulzSec, Aaron Swartz, and others, and he explains Creative Commons and the open access, open source, and free software movements. But in the heart of the book he considers how, when it comes to scholarly ways of creating, performing, and sharing knowledge, philosophers and theorists can challenge not just the neoliberal model of the entrepreneurial academic but also the traditional humanist model with its received ideas of proprietorial authorship, the book, originality, fixity, and the finished object. In other words, can scholars and students today become something like pirate philosophers?

Human Rights in a Posthuman World

Human Rights in a Posthuman World PDF

Author: Upendra Baxi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-04-29

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0199088101

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This major work, a sequel to the acclaimed The Future of Human Rights, brings together reflections on human rights theory in the contemporary human condition delineated by the discourses concerning 'development', 'terror', and the emergent 'posthuman'. While acknowledging the precarious place of human rights today, the author points to the emancipatory potential of the 'posthuman', contending that human rights norms and standards remain constitutive conditions of the emergence of the posthuman. This thought-provoking volume will interest scholars and students of human rights, political philosophy, development economics, and international law, as well as activists and policymakers in the fields of law and development.

Posthuman Knowledge

Posthuman Knowledge PDF

Author: Rosi Braidotti

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2019-08-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781509535262

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The question of what defines the human, and of what is human about the humanities, have been shaken up by the radical critiques of humanism and the displacement of anthropomorphism that have gained currency in recent years, propelled in part by rapid advances in our knowledge of living systems and of their genetic and algorithmic codes coupled with the global expansion of a knowledge-intensive capitalism. In Posthuman Knowledge, Rosi Braidotti takes a closer look at the impact of these developments on three major areas: the constitution of our subjectivity, the general production of knowledge and the practice of the academic humanities. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial and anti-racist theory, she argues that the human was never a neutral category but one always linked to power and privilege. Hence we must move beyond the old dualities in which Man defined himself, beyond the sexualized and racialized others that were excluded from humanity. Posthuman knowledge, as Braidotti understands it, is not so much an alternative form of knowledge as a critical call: a call to build a multi-layered and multi-directional project that displaces anthropocentrism while pursuing the analysis of the discriminatory and violent aspects of human activity and interaction wherever they occur. Situated between the exhilaration of scientific and technological advances on the one hand and the threat of climate change devastation on the other, the posthuman convergence encourages us to think hard and creatively about what we are in the process of becoming.

The Posthuman

The Posthuman PDF

Author: Rosi Braidotti

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0745669964

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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.

Philosophical Posthumanism

Philosophical Posthumanism PDF

Author: Francesca Ferrando

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-06-27

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1350059498

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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.