Download or read book Prophets of the Posthuman written by Christina Bieber Lake and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophets of the Posthuman provides a fresh and original reading of fictional narratives that raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of rapidly developing bioenhancement technologies. Christina Bieber Lake argues that works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, James Tiptree, Jr., and Margaret Atwood must be reevaluated in light of their contributions to larger ethical questions. Drawing on a wide range of sources in philosophical and theological ethics, Lake claims that these writers share a commitment to maintaining a category of personhood more meaningful than that allowed by utilitarian ethics. Prophets of the Posthuman insists that because technology can never ask whether we should do something that we have the power to do, literature must step into that role. Each of the chapters of this interdisciplinary study sets up a typical ethical scenario regarding human enhancement technology and then illustrates how a work of fiction uniquely speaks to that scenario, exposing a realm of human motivations that might otherwise be overlooked or simplified. Through the vision of the writers she discusses, Lake uncovers a deep critique of the ascendancy of personal autonomy as America’s most cherished value. This ascendancy, coupled with technology’s glamorous promises of happiness, helps to shape a utilitarian view of persons that makes responsible ethical behavior toward one another almost impossible. Prophets of the Posthuman charts the essential role that literature must play in the continuing conversation of what it means to be human in a posthuman world.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman written by Bruce Clarke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gathers diverse critical treatments from fifteen scholars of the posthuman and posthumanism together in a single volume.
Download or read book Monstrous Textualities written by Anya Heise-von der Lippe and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monstrous textuality emerges when Gothic narratives like Frankenstein reflect the monstrous in their narrative structure to create narratives of resistance. It allows writers to meta-narratively reflect their own poetics and textual production, and reclaim authority over their work under circumstances of systemic cultural oppression and Othering. This book traces the representation of other Others through Black feminist hauntology in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Love (2003); it explores fat freak embodiment as a feminist resistance strategy in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) and Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976); and it reads Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003–13) and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) within a framework of critical posthumanist and cyborg theory. The result is a comprehensive argument about how these texts can be read within a framework of critical posthumanist questioning of knowledge production, and of epistemological exploration, beyond the exclusionary humanist paradigm.
Download or read book Beyond the Sea written by Felan Parker and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-11-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bioshock series looms large in the industry and culture of video games for its ambitious incorporation of high-minded philosophical questions and retro-futuristic aesthetics into the ultraviolent first-person shooter genre. Beyond the Sea marks ten years since the release of the original game with an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite. Simultaneously lauded as landmarks in the artistic growth of the medium and criticized for their compromised vision and politics, the Bioshock games have been the subject of significant scholarly and critical discussion. Moving past well-trodden debates, Beyond the Sea broadens the conversation by putting video games in dialogue with a diverse range of other disciplines and cultural forms, from parenting psychology to post-humanism, from Thomas Pynchon to German expressionist cinema. Offering bold new perspectives on a canonical series, Beyond the Sea is a timely contribution to our understanding of the aesthetics, the industry, and the culture of video games. Contributors include Daniel Ante-Contreras (Miracosta), Luke Arnott (Western Ontario), Betsy Brey (Waterloo), Patrick Brown (Iowa), Michael Fuchs (Graz), Jamie Henthorn (Catawba), Brendan Keogh (Queensland), Cameron Kunzelman (Georgia), Cody Mejeur (Michigan State), Matthew Thomas Payne (Notre Dame), Gareth Schott (Waikato), Karen Schrier (Marist), Sarah Stang (York/Ryerson), Sarah Thorne (Carleton), John Vanderhoef (California State, Dominguez Hills), Matthew Wysocki (Flagler), Jordan R. Youngblood (Eastern Connecticut State), and Sarah Zaidan (Emerson).
Download or read book The Posthuman written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book War on the Human written by Konstantinos Blatanis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection explore the question of the human, both as a contested concept and as it relates to, and functions within, the wider global conjuncture. The authors explore the theoretical underpinnings of the term “human,” inviting the reader to reflect upon the contemporary human condition, to identify opportunities and threats in the changes ahead, and to determine what aspects of our species we should abandon or strive to maintain. The volume approaches these ideas from a myriad of perspectives, but the authors are united in their abstention from rejecting humanism outright or, indeed, fully endorsing posthumanism‘s teleological narrative of accelerated progress and perfectability. Instead, the authors argue that the term “human” itself is better understood as a concept perpetually undergoing revision, and is necessarily subject to scrutiny. The contributors here are thus concerned with investigating the following questions: What does it mean to be human, or to have a self? What is the current place or status of the human in the contemporary world? As technology is increasingly used to modify our bodies and minds, to what extent should we alter – and how can we improve – our very understanding of human nature? The authors contend that literature is the art form best placed to answer these questions. In its dynamism and discursiveness, literature has the capacity to both reflect dominant discourses and ideologies, as well as to generate and even anticipate social change; to critique and refine conventional ideas and existing cultural modes, and to envision new possibilities for the future. The human and its literary representation, in other words, are inherently intertwined.
Download or read book Posthumanity in the Anthropocene written by Esther Muñoz-González and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels—The Handmaid’s Tale, the MaddAddam trilogy, The Heart Goes Last, and The Testaments—are analyzed from the perspective provided by the combined views of the construction of the posthuman subject in its interactions with science and technology, and the Anthropocene as a cultural field of enquiry. Posthumanist critical concerns try to dismantle anthropocentric notions of the human and defend the need for a closer relationship between humanity and the environment. Supported by the exemplification of the generic characteristics of the cli-fi genre, this book discusses the effects of climate change, at the individual level, and as a collective threat that can lead to a "world without us." Moreover, Margaret Atwood is herself the constant object of extensive academic interest and Posthuman theory is widely taught, researched, and explored in almost every intellectual field. This book is aimed at worldwide readers, not only those interested in Margaret Atwood’s oeuvre, but also those interested in the debate between critical posthumanism and transhumanism, together with the ethical implications of living in the Anthropocene era regarding our daily lives and practices. It will be especially attractive for academics: university teachers, postgraduates, researchers, and college students in general.
Download or read book Transforming Work written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transforming Work offers a radical re-orientation of the nature and future of work and implications for mission. In conversation with David Bosch’s Transforming Mission and other global and ecumenical voices, 21 leaders offer their vision for transforming the world of work and revisioning work to offer a transforming gift to the world. Writing from biblical and historical perspectives, with case studies and cultural exegesis, they explore work and leisure, ethics and economics, technologies and Artificial Intelligence. It is time to discern where God is transforming work in our cities and farms, shops and classrooms, politics and agencies.
Download or read book Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty First Century Narrative written by Sonia Baelo-Allué and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative brings together fifteen scholars from five different countries to explore the different ways in which the posthuman has been addressed in contemporary culture and more specifically in key narratives, written in the second decade of the 21st century, by Dave Eggers, William Gibson, John Shirley, Tom McCarthy, Jeff Vandermeer, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Cixin Liu and Helen Marshall. Some of these works engage in the premises and perils of transhumanism, while others explore the qualities of the (post)human in a variety of dystopian futures marked by the planetary influence of human action. From a critical posthumanist perspective that questions anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and the centrality of the ‘human’ subject in the era of the Anthropocene, the scholars in this collection analyse the aesthetic choices these authors make to depict the posthuman and its aftereffects.
Download or read book The Age of Dystopia written by Louisa MacKay Demerjian and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the recent popularity of the dystopian genre in literature and film, as well as connecting contemporary manifestations of dystopia to cultural trends and the implications of technological and social changes on the individual and society as a whole. Dystopia, as a genre, reflects our greatest fears of what the future might bring, based on analysis of the present. This book connects traditional dystopian works with their contexts and compares these with contemporary versions. It centers around two main questions: Why is dystopia so popular now? And, why is dystopia so popular with young adult audiences? Since dystopia reflects the fears of society as a whole, this book will have broad appeal for any reader, and will be particularly useful to teachers in a variety of settings, such as in a high school or college-level classroom to teach dystopian literature, or in a comparative literature classroom to show how the genre has appeared in multiple locales at different times. Indeed, the book’s interdisciplinary nature allows it to be of use in classes focussing on politics, bioethics, privacy issues, women’s studies, and any number of additional topics.
Download or read book Biohacking Bodies and Do It Yourself written by Mirjam Grewe-Salfeld and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From self-help books and nootropics, to self-tracking and home health tests, to the tinkering with technology and biological particles - biohacking brings biology, medicine, and the material foundation of life into the sphere of »do-it-yourself«. This trend has the potential to fundamentally change people's relationship with their bodies and biology but it also creates new cultural narratives of responsibility, authority, and differentiation. Covering a broad range of examples, this book explores practices and representations of biohacking in popular culture, discussing their ambiguous position between empowerment and requirement, promise and prescription.
Download or read book Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty First Centuries written by Timo Müller and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-01-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing specialization within the discipline of English and American Studies has shifted the focus of scholarly discussion toward theoretical reflection and cultural contexts. These developments have benefitted the discipline in more ways than one, but they have also resulted in a certain neglect of close reading. As a result, students and researchers interested in such material are forced to turn to scholarship from the 1960s and 1970s, much of which relies on dated methodological and ideological presuppositions. The handbook aims to fill this gap by providing new readings of texts that figure prominently in the literature classroom and in scholarly debate − from James’s The Ambassadors to McCarthy’s The Road. These readings do not revert naively to a time “before theory.” Instead, they distil the insights of literary and cultural theory into concise introductions to the historical background, the themes, the formal strategies, and the reception of influential literary texts, and they do so in a jargon-free language accessible to readers on all levels of qualification.
Download or read book The Robot Will See You Now written by John Wyatt and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen dramatic advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology, raising tough questions that need to be addressed. The Robot Will See You Now considers how Christians can respond to these issues - and flourish - in the years ahead. Contributions from a number of international experts, including editors John Wyatt and Stephen Williams, explore a range of social and ethical issues raised by recent advances in AI and robotics. Considering the role of artificial intelligence in areas such as medicine, employment and security, the book looks at how AI is perceived as well as its actual impact on human interactions and relationships. Alongside are theological responses from an orthodox Christian perspective. Looking at how artificial intelligence and robotics may be considered in the light of Christian doctrine, The Robot Will See You Now offers a measured, thoughtful view on how Christians can understand and prepare for the challenges posted by the development of AI. This is a book for anyone who is interested in learning more about how AI and robots have advanced in recent years, and anyone who has wondered how Christian teaching relates to artificial intelligence. Whatever your level of technical knowledge, The Robot Will See You Now will give you a thorough understanding of AI and equip you to respond to the challenges it poses with confidence and faith.
Download or read book The Politics of Perfection written by Kimberly Hurd Hale and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film provides an exploration of the relationship between modern technological progress and classical liberalism. Each chapter provides a detailed analysis of a film or novel, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. These works of fiction are examined through the lens of political thinkers ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt. The compatibility of classical liberalism and technology is questioned, using fiction as a window into Western society’s views on politics, economics, religion, technology, and the family. This project explores the intersection between human nature and creation, particularly artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, using works of literature and film to access cultural concerns. Each of the works featured asks a question about the relationship between technology and creation. Technology also allows humanity to create new types of life in the forms of artificial intelligence and genetically engineered beings. This book studies works of literature and film as evidence of the contemporary unease with the progress of technology and its effect on the political realm.
Download or read book How the World Swung to the Right written by Francois Cusset and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the reactionary, individualist, cynical, and belligerent shift in global politics to the right, implemented both by the right and the establishment left. Systemic, euphemized, insidious and structural violence has increased. It is now objectively measurable by the gulf in revenues, by subjective malaise, or by the menace of ecological apocalypse, and also by their constant exacerbation. —from How the World Swung to the Right Despite a few zones of active resistance—the alter-globalization movement, the Chiapas uprisings, the Arab springs, and the recent resistance to racialized police brutality and environmental and genocidal warfare in the United States—the last half-century has been witness to an undeniable global shift to the right. How the World Swung to the Right provides a comprehensive overview of this reactionary, individualist, cynical, and belligerent shift, which often has been cloaked in the guise of entertainment and good intentions. The counterrevolutions began with a first phase of deregulation and ideological counter-attacks, and the fall of the so-called “real” communisms. The 1990s inaugurated a global biopolitical turn and the financialization of the economy; the 2000s hammered in neoliberal gains through the alliance of ultraliberalism with neoconservatism. These policies were implemented, surprisingly, not only by the right but often by the establishment left. Cusset argues that in the face of this betrayal, conflict is the one thing we can still salvage from the notion of the “left.” What we need today, he contends, are new sites of conflict that multiply the causes of struggle and the sites of mobilization, linking socioeconomic struggle with questions of identity and the urgency of ecology.
Download or read book Religion and Transhumanism written by Calvin Mercer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements—especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life—become widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history. This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might pharmaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest.
Download or read book Are Cyborgs Persons written by Aleksandra Łukaszewicz Alcaraz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents argumentation for an evolutionary continuity between human persons and cyborg persons, based on the thought of Joseph Margolis. Relying on concepts of cultural realism and post-Darwinism, Aleksandra Łukaszewicz Alcaraz redefines the notion of the person, rather than a human, and discusses the various issues of human body enhancement and online implants transforming modes of perception, cognition, and communication. She argues that new kinds of embodiment should not make acquiring the status of the person impossible, and different kinds of embodiments may be accepted socially and culturally. She proposes we consider ethical problems of agency and responsibility, critically approaching vitalist posthuman ethics, and rethinking the metaphysical standing of normativity, to create space for possible cyborgean ethics that may be executed in an Extended Republic of Humanity.
