Download or read book Shadowing the Anthropocene written by Adrian Ivakhiv and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spectre is haunting humanity: the spectre of a reality that will outwit and, in the end, bury us. "The Anthropocene," or The Human Era, is an attempt to name our geological fate - that we will one day disappear into the layer-cake of Earth's geology - while highlighting humanity in the starring role of today's Earthly drama. In Shadowing the Anthropocene, Adrian Ivakhiv proposes an ecological realism that takes as its starting point humanity's eventual demise. The only question for a realist today, he suggests, is what to do now and what quality of compost to leave behind with our burial. The book engages with the challenges of the Anthropocene and with a series of philosophical efforts to address them, including those of Slavoj Zizek and Charles Taylor, Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, and William Connolly and Jane Bennett. Along the way, there are volcanic eruptions and revolutions, ant cities and dog parks, data clouds and space junk, pagan gods and sacrificial altars, dark flow, souls (of things), and jazz. Ivakhiv draws from centuries old process-relational thinking that hearkens back to Daoist and Buddhist sages, but gains incisive re-invigoration in the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. He translates those insights into practices of "engaged Anthropocenic bodymindfulness" - aesthetic, ethical, and ecological practices for living in the shadow of the Anthropocene.

Download or read book Shadowing the Anthropocene Eco Realism for Turbulent Times written by Adrian Ivakhiv and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spectre is haunting humanity: the spectre of a reality that will outwit and, in the end, bury us. "The Anthropocene," or The Human Era, is an attempt to name our geological fate - that we will one day disappear into the layer-cake of Earth's geology - while highlighting humanity in the starring role of today's Earthly drama. In Shadowing the Anthropocene, Adrian Ivakhiv proposes an ecological realism that takes as its starting point humanity's eventual demise. The only question for a realist today, he suggests, is what to do now and what quality of compost to leave behind with our burial. The book engages with the challenges of the Anthropocene and with a series of philosophical efforts to address them, including those of Slavoj Žižek and Charles Taylor, Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, and William Connolly and Jane Bennett. Along the way, there are volcanic eruptions and revolutions, ant cities and dog parks, data clouds and space junk, pagan gods and sacrificial altars, dark flow, souls (of things), and jazz. Ivakhiv draws from centuries old process-relational thinking that hearkens back to Daoist and Buddhist sages, but gains incisive re-invigoration in the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. He translates those insights into practices of "engaged Anthropocenic bodymindfulness" - aesthetic, ethical, and ecological practices for living in the shadow of the Anthropocene.

Download or read book Faith after the Anthropocene written by Matthew Wickman and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have brought to light the staggering ubiquity of human activity upon Earth and the startling fragility of our planet and its life systems. This is so momentous that many scientists and scholars now argue that we have left the relative climactic stability of the Holocene and have entered a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. This emerging epoch may prompt us not only to reconsider our understanding of Earth systems, but also to reimagine ourselves and what it means to be human. How does the Earth’s precarious state reveal our own? How does this vulnerable condition prompt new ways of thinking and being? The essays that are part of this collection consider how the transformative thinking demanded by our vulnerability inspires us to reconceive our place in the cosmos, alongside each other and, potentially, before God. Who are we “after” (the concept of) the Anthropocene? What forms of thought and structures of feeling might attend us in this state? How might we determine our values and to what do we orient our hopes? Faith, a conceptual apparatus for engaging the unseen, helps us weigh the implications of this massive, but in some ways, mysterious, force on the lives we lead; faith helps us visualize what it means to exist in this new and still emergent reality.

Download or read book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene written by Roy Scranton and published by City Lights Publishers. This book was released on 2015-09-07 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change. The result is a fierce and provocative book."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History "Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene presents, without extraneous bullshit, what we must do to survive on Earth. It's a powerful, useful, and ultimately hopeful book that more than any other I've read has the ability to change people's minds and create change. For me, it crystallizes and expresses what I've been thinking about and trying to get a grasp on. The economical way it does so, with such clarity, sets the book apart from most others on the subject."--Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy "Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A critical intervention."--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "Concise, elegant, erudite, heartfelt & wise."--Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire "War veteran and journalist Roy Scranton combines memoir, philosophy, and science writing to craft one of the definitive documents of the modern era."--The Believer Best Books of 2015 Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself . . . and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life. In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality. Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that’s true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age--for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble now is that we must learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization. Roy Scranton has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.

Download or read book The Fold written by Laura U. Marks and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-02 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Fold, Laura U. Marks offers a practical philosophy and aesthetic theory for living in an infinitely connected cosmos. Drawing on the theories of Leibniz, Glissant, Deleuze, and theoretical physicist David Bohm—who each conceive of the universe as being folded in on itself in myriad ways—Marks contends that the folds of the cosmos are entirely constituted of living beings. From humans to sandwiches to software to stars, every entity is alive and occupies its own private enclosure inside the cosmos. Through analyses of fiction, documentary, and experimental movies, interactive media, and everyday situations, Marks outlines embodied methods for detecting and augmenting the connections between each living entity and the cosmos. She shows that by affectively mediating with the ever-shifting folded relations within the cosmos, it is possible to build “soul-assemblages” that challenge information capitalism, colonialism, and other power structures and develop new connections with the infinite. With this guide for living within the enfolded and unfolding cosmos, Marks teaches readers to richly apprehend the world and to trace the processes of becoming that are immanent within the fold.

Download or read book Anthropocene Rag written by Alex Irvine and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropocene Rag is "a rare distillation of nanotech, apocalypse, and mythic Americana into a heady psychedelic brew."—Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning author Jeffrey Ford In the future United States, our own history has faded into myth and traveling across the country means navigating wastelands and ever-changing landscapes. The country teems with monsters and artificial intelligences try to unpack their own becoming by recreating myths and legends of their human creators. Prospector Ed, an emergent AI who wants to understand the people who made him, assembles a ragtag team to reach the mythical Monument City. In this nanotech Western, Alex Irvine infuses American mythmaking with terrifying questions about the future and who we will become. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Film Theory The Basics written by Kevin McDonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully updated and expanded throughout, this second edition of Film Theory: The Basics provides an accessible introduction to the key theorists, concepts, and debates that have shaped the study of moving images. The book examines film theory from its emergence in the early twentieth century to its study in the present day, and explores why film has drawn special attention as a medium, as a form of representation, and as a focal point in the rise of modern visual culture. It also emphasizes how film theory has developed as a historically contingent discourse, one that has evolved and changed in conjunction with different social, political, and intellectual factors. This second edition offers a detailed account of new theoretical directions at the forefront of film studies in the twenty-first century, and draws additional attention to how theory engages with today’s most pressing questions about digital technologies, the environment, and racial justice. Complete with questions for discussion and a glossary of both key terms and key theorists, this book in an invaluable resource for those new to film theory and for anyone else interested in the history and significance of critical thinking in relation to the moving image.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Media and Risk written by Bishnupriya Ghosh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection presents new work in risk media studies from critical humanities perspectives. Defining, historicizing, and consolidating current scholarship, the volume seeks to shape an emerging field, signposting its generative insights while examining its implicit assumptions. When and under what conditions does risk emerge? How is risk mediated? Who are the targets of risk media? Who manages risk? Who lives with it? Who are most in danger? Such questions—the what, how, who, when, and why of risk media—inform the scope of this volume. With roots in critical media studies and science and technology studies, it hopes to inspire new questions, perspectives, frameworks, and analytical tools not only for risk, media, and communication studies, but also for social and cultural theories. Editors Bishnupriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar bring together contributors who elucidate and interrogate risk media’s varied histories and futures. This book is meant for students and scholars of media and communication studies, science and technology studies, and the interdisciplinary humanities, looking either to deepen their engagement with risk media or to broaden their knowledge of this emerging field.

Download or read book Ecocinema Theory and Practice 2 written by Stephen Rust and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research. Featuring fourteen new essays organized into three sections around the themes of cinematic materialities, discourses, and communities, the volume explores a variety of topics within ecocinema studies from examining specific national and indigenous film contexts to discussing ecojustice, environmental production studies, film festivals, and political ecology. The breadth of the contributions exemplifies how ecocinema scholars worldwide have sought to overcome the historical legacy of binary thinking and intellectual norms and are working to champion new ecocritical, intersectional, decolonial, queer, feminist, Indigenous, vitalist, and other emergent theories and cinematic practices. The collection also demonstrates the unique ways that cinema studies scholarship is actively addressing environmental injustice and the climate crisis. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of ecocritical film and media studies, production studies, cultural studies, and environmental studies.

Download or read book The Dao of Complexity written by Jean Boulton and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-09-23 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pandemic, climate change, rising populism, geo-political unrest – just a few of the issues causing turbulence in today’s world. We are living and working in times that are complex and fast changing. The Dao of Complexity is a book about challenging and deepening worldviews. It explores the remarkable resonance between complexity and Daoism, engaging with the processual, contextual and emergent nature both of ourselves and of the world of which we are a part. It connects to ideas from such diverse fields as quantum physics, brain science, political theory and economics. Jean asks what ‘making sense’ of the world means in these turbulent times and how that can galvanise action for those of us trying to make a difference, trying to ‘make waves’ in a world of increasing connectivity, polarisation and fragility. Taking its lead from Daoist texts, the design encourages readers to open at any page and use the short, stand-alone, yet networked pieces as reflective starting points. This book will be of interest to scholars and those striving for social change, as well as managers and policy makers looking for inspiration. The general reader interested in science, philosophy and ancient wisdom will find relatable material to explore how to engage effectively in this complex world.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies written by Antonio López and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-23 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies gathers leading work by critical scholars in this burgeoning field. Redressing the lack of environmental perspectives in the study of media, ecomedia studies asserts that media are in and about the environment, and environments are socially and materially mediated. The book gives form to this new area of study and brings together diverse scholarly contributions to explore and give definition to the field. The Handbook highlights five critical areas of ecomedia scholarship: ecomedia theory, ecomateriality, political ecology, ecocultures, and eco-affects. Within these areas, authors navigate a range of different topics including infrastructures, supply and manufacturing chains, energy, e-waste, labor, ecofeminism, African and Indigenous ecomedia, environmental justice, environmental media governance, ecopolitical satire, and digital ecologies. The result is a holistic volume that provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of the current state of the field, as well as future developments. This volume will be an essential resource for students, educators, and scholars of media studies, cultural studies, film, environmental communication, political ecology, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities.

Download or read book Kafkaesque Cinema written by Angelos Koutsourakis and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all its familiarity as a widely used term, "e;Kafkaesque cinema"e; remains an often-baffling concept that is poorly understood by film scholars. Taking a cue from Jorge Luis Borges' point that Kafka has modified our conception of past and future artists, and Andre Bazin's suggestion that literary concepts and styles can exceed authors and "e;novels from which they emanate"e;, this monograph proposes a comprehensive examination of Kafkaesque Cinema in order to understand it as part of a transnational cinematic tradition rooted in Kafka's critique of modernity, which, however, extends beyond the Bohemian author's work and his historical experiences. Drawing on a range of disciplines in the Humanities including film, literary, and theatre studies, critical theory, and history, Kafkaesque Cinema will be the first full-length study of the subject and will be a useful resource for scholars and students interested in film theory, World Cinema, World Literature, and politics and representation.

Download or read book Siting Futurity written by Susan Ingram and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It also shows how work with a connection to Vienna by international stars like David Bowie, Wes Anderson, and Christoph Schlingensief has absorbed the same principles.While the overwhelming scale of technological development and the ensuing problems and crises may not have been deliberately designed to induce resignation, passivity, and despair, those who benefit from the related hyperobjects of financialization and climate change must find it convenient that they do, as demoralization reduces resistance to their profit-making machinations. It is in this context that Red Vienna's proud tradition of social engagement and long tradition of resistance and radicality deserves to be better known. Susan Ingram is Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where she coordinates the Graduate Diploma for Comparative Literature and is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies and the Research Group on Language and Culture Contact. .

Download or read book Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene written by Manuel Arias-Maldonado and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'—an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. Coming from both well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings.

Download or read book Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene written by Katherine Gibson and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The recent 10,000 year history of climatic stability on Earth that enabled the rise of agriculture and domestication, the growth of cities, numerous technological revolutions, and the emergence of modernity is now over. We accept that in the latest phase of this era, modernity is unmaking the stability that enabled its emergence. Over the 21st century severe and numerous weather disasters, scarcity of key resources, major changes in environments, enormous rates of extinction, and other forces that threaten life are set to increase. But we are deeply worried that current responses to these challenges are focused on market-driven solutions and thus have the potential to further endanger our collective commons. Today public debate is polarized. On one hand we are confronted with the immobilizing effects of knowing "the facts" about climate change. On the other we see a powerful will to ignorance and the effects of a pernicious collaboration between climate change skeptics and industry stakeholders. Clearly, to us, the current crisis calls for new ways of thinking and producing knowledge. Our collective inclination has been to go on in an experimental and exploratory mode, in which we refuse to foreclose on options or jump too quickly to "solutions." In this spirit we feel the need to acknowledge the tragedy of anthropogenic climate change. It is important to tap into the emotional richness of grief about extinction and loss without getting stuck on the "blame game." Our research must allow for the expression of grief and mourning for what has been and is daily being lost. But it is important to adopt a reparative rather than a purely critical stance toward knowing. Might it be possible to welcome the pain of "knowing" if it led to different ways of working with non-human others, recognizing a confluence of desire across the human/non-human divide and the vital rhythms that animate the world? Our discussions have focused on new types of ecological economic thinking and ethical practices of living. We are interested in: Resituating humans within ecological systems Resituating non-humans in ethical terms Systems of survival that are resilient in the face of change Diversity and dynamism in ecologies and economies Ethical responsibility across space and time, between places and in the future Creating new ecological economic narratives. Starting from the recognition that there is no "one size fits all" response to climate change, we are concerned to develop an ethics of place that appreciates the specificity and richness of loss and potentiality. While connection to earth others might be an overarching goal, it will be to certain ecologies, species, atmospheres and materialities that we actually connect. We could see ourselves as part of country, accepting the responsibility not forgotten by Indigenous people all over the world, of "singing" country into health. This might mean cultivating the capacity for deep listening to each other, to the land, to other species and thereby learning to be affected and transformed by the body-world we are part of; seeing the body as a center of animation but not the ground of a separate self; renouncing the narcissistic defense of omnipotence and an equally narcissistic descent into despair. We think that we can work against singular and global representations of "the problem" in the face of which any small, multiple, place-based action is rendered hopeless. We can choose to read for difference rather than dominance; think connectivity rather than hyper-separation; look for multiplicity - multiple climate changes, multiple ways of living with earth others. We can find ways forward in what is already being done in the here and now; attend to the performative effects of any analysis; tell stories in a hopeful and open way - allowing for the possibility that life is dormant rather than dead. We can use our critical capacities to recover our rich traditions of counter-culture and theorize them outside the mainstream/alternative binary. All these ways of thinking and researching give rise to new strategies for going forward. Think of the chapters of this book as tentative hoverings, as the fluttering of butterfly wings, scattering germs of ideas that can take root and grow."--Publisher's website.

Download or read book Geoengineering the Anthropocene and the End of Nature written by Jeremy Baskin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a critical look at solar geoengineering as an acceptable means for addressing climate change. Baskin explores the assumptions and imaginaries which animate ‘engineering the climate’ and discusses why this climate solution is so controversial. The book explains geoengineering’s past, its revival in the mid-2000s, and its future prospects including its shadow presence in the Paris climate accord. The main focus however is on dissecting solar geoengineering today – its rationales, underpinning knowledge, relationship to power, and the stance towards nature which accompanies it. Baskin explores three competing imaginaries associated with geoengineering: an Imperial imaginary, an oppositional Un-Natural imaginary, and a conspiratorial Chemtrail imaginary. He seeks to explain why solar geoengineering has struggled to gain approval and why resistance to it persists, despite the support of several powerful actors. He provocatively suggests that reconceptualising our present as the Anthropocene might unwittingly facilitate the normalisation of geoengineering by providing a sustaining socio-technical imaginary. This book is essential reading for those interested in climate policy, political ecology, and science & technology studies.

Download or read book The Cosmic Spirit written by Roland Faber and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we more than stardust? Is the appearance of the fragile Earth in the vast universe more than an accident? Are we not children of a Spirit that pervades the dust, rejuvenates life, and embraces the ever-evolving universe? Is there a cosmic Spirit that wants us to awaken to a consciousness of universal meaning, sacred purpose, and mutual friendship with all beings? This book answers these questions with a spirituality of the numinous in our relation to the elements of the Earth in the matrix of the multiverse by taking you on a journey through nine paths and nineteen meditations of awakening. Not bound by any religion, but in deep appreciation of the religious and spiritual heritage of human encounters with the divine depth of existence in our selves and in nature, they invite you to become sojourners by engaging the most profound embodiments of the intangible Spirit by which it facilitates its own materialization in the cosmos and our spiritualization of the cosmos. Use—says this Spirit—the stardust that you are to become a spirit-faring species in an eternal journey of the cosmos to realize its ultimate motive of existence—the attraction of love!