Posthuman Plants

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 Posthuman Plants written by John Ryan, Fca and published by Common Ground Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our interdependence with plants entails symbiosis that is not only biological but also cultural, social, and linguistic. Posthuman Plants addresses our diverse entanglements with plants in everyday life through the prisms of posthumanist, multispecies, ecocritical, and ecocultural theory. This volume asks: how does the reconfiguration of human "being" as inherently permeable affect our perceptions of and relationships to plants-those "others" that have been regarded historically as passive elements of the landscape and constructed as the mute foils of animality? This book contributes to the ever-increasing debate about how we perceive plants and their influence on what it means to be human, more-than-human, and other-than-human. It argues that reconceptualizing the botanical world requires seeing, feeling, and understanding plants as intelligent, active, and sentient agents. Posthuman Plants is divided into five sections: Affect and Reciprocity, Heritage and Digitality, Art and Vegetality, Poetry and Vegetality, and Plants and the Senses. Although some of its content is strongly focused on the vegetal life of the southwest of Australia where the author resides, other countries, bioregions, places, and contexts figure into the analysis. The chapters are presented as essays on diverse subjects, all organized around the common strand of rethinking plants through culture, art, and poetry. In re-imagining the vegetal, Posthuman Plants draws from ethnographic, auto-ethnographic, historical, and literary sources and develops plant-based theoretical models that blur disciplinary boundaries. This broadly-ranging work will be of interest to international audiences, especially researchers in the fields of environmental studies and ecological humanities.

Download or read book Posthumanism in Practice written by Christine Daigle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problematic assumptions which see humans as special and easily defined as standing apart from animals, plants, and microbiota, both consciously and unconsciously underpin scientific investigation, arts practice, curation, education, and research across the social sciences and humanities. This is the case particularly in those traditions emerging from European and Enlightenment philosophies. Posthumanism disrupts these traditional humanist outlooks and interrogates their profound shaping of how we see ourselves, our place in the world, and our role in its protection. In Posthumanism in Practice, artists, researchers, educators, and curators set out how they have developed and responded to posthumanist ideas across their work in the arts, sciences, and humanities, and provide examples and insights to support the exploration of posthumanism in how we can think, create, and live. In capturing these ideas, Posthumanism in Practice shows how posthumanist thought can move beyond theory, inform action, and produce new artefacts, effects, and methods that are more relevant and more useful for the incoming realities for all life in the 21st century.

Download or read book Encounters with the Posthuman and the Environment written by Inci Bilgin Tekin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-10-29 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the advent of posthumanism, many scholars in the humanities have started to explore a transforming conception of the “human,” recognizing the limits of “anthropocentricism” both within and between disciplines. Posthumanism may be defined in various ways but the emphasis in this volume is on the idea of constitutive alterity, not simply in the relationship between human beings and other human beings, but in that between human beings and other species and life forms, and between human beings, nature and technology. As a result, Encounters with the Posthuman and the Environment is located at a crossover between posthumanism and environmental humanities. Between them they move not only between disciplines but also between levels of abstraction, from the most general reflection to the most everyday empirical detail. At the same time, all the chapters are case studies, whether they address particular aspects of philosophical or scientific posthumanism, analyze particular pieces of film, theatre, art, literature, or recall for us instructive episodes from social history. The aim at any rate is to give a feel for the range and depth of the posthumanist problematic within the wider context of environmental humanities.

Download or read book Representing (Post)Human Enhancement Technologies in Twenty-First Century US Fiction written by Carmen Laguarta-Bueno and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work studies three twenty-first century novels by Richard Powers, Dave Eggers and Don DeLillo as representative of a new trend of US fiction concerned with the topic of the technological augmentation of the human condition. The different chapters provide, from the double perspective of the optimistic transhumanist philosophy and the more balanced approach of critical posthumanism, an overview of the narrative strategies used by the writers to explore the possibilities that biotechnology, digital technologies and cryonics open up to transcend our human limitations, while also warning their readers of their most nefarious consequences. Ultimately, the book puts forward the claim that even if the writers approach the subject from a variety of perspectives and using different narrative styles and techniques, they all share a critical posthumanist fear that an unrestrained and unquestioned use of technology for enhancement purposes may bring about disembodiment and dehumanization.

Download or read book Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism written by Stefan Herbrechter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 1233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an on-going historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism’s impact across disciplines and areas of study.

Download or read book Plants in Science Fiction written by Katherine E. Bishop and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume of its kind Plants in Science Fiction shows how considerations of plant-life in SF can transform our understanding of institutions and boundaries, erecting – and dismantling – new visions of utopian and dystopian futures. Its original essays argue that plant-life in SF is transforming our attitudes toward morality, politics, economics, and cultural life.