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NEWS FROM THE GLOBAL POSTHUMAN NETWORK
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REMINDER: A WAY FOR PROMOTING YOUR EVENTS / CFPs / NEWS: We have create an online form that you can use for promoting your events through the Newsletter of the Global Posthuman Network, which currently counts with around 1100 international members. There is no fee to submit. All submissions will be reviewed and, if found in tune with the posthuman turn, will be published in our next Newsletter. Please, keep in mind that the Newsletter is bimonthly, so if you send an event that expires by the time we send the Newsletter, we will not be able to publish it. Thanks for your interest.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "HERMENEUTICS - NEW PERSPECTIVES" - SEPTEMBER 16
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The University of Turin is happy to host the International Seminar on the future of hermeneutic philosophy, organized by CIM. The Seminar will be held in a mixed form (online and in person).
The last section will be a reflection on Poshtuman Hermeneutics in the dialogue between Francesca Ferrando, Federico Vercellone and Alessandro Bertinetto.
The speakers include: Federico Vercellone (Università degli Studi di Torino), Jeff Malpas (University of Tasmania), Johann Michel (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Carla Canullo (Università degli Studi di Macerata), Nino Chiurazzi (Università degli Studi di Torino), Georg Bertram (Freie Universität Berlin), Paolo Furia (Università degli Studi di Torino), Francesca Ferrando (New York University), Alessandro Bertinetto (Università degli Studi di Torino).
The Seminar will take place in Aula 39, Palazzo Nuovo, Via Sant'Ottavio 20, Torino, and on Webex at this link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=md325147e8b3f41a452d46d05cdc94d1e
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BOOK LAUNCH: "THE PHILOSOPHY OF MATTER: A MEDITATION" with RICK DOLPHIJN - SEPTEMBER 19
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Veem House invites professor Rick Dolphijn for the book launch of “The Philosophy of Matter: A Meditation”. Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy, subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living in order to conceive of another earth for another people. A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope.
This book launch takes place after ROTOR’s performance Erosion. As the artists engage with similar themes, Rick Dolphijn will share his philosophy of matter and engage in conversation with ROTOR. We recommend combining the book launch of ”The Philosophy of Matter: A Meditation” with ROTOR’s performance Erosion.
For further info, check our thew following link
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WORKSHOP: POSTHUMANISM AND WORLDBUILDING with F. FERRANDO - OCTOBER 9
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In the first series of workshops Francesca Ferrando discussed with us, 'The Art of Posthuman Existence', consisting of "The Composite Landscape of the Posthuman", "From the Anthropocene to Human Enhancement", and "Posthuman Healing".
In the upcoming workshop, She is looking into Posthumanism and Worldbuilding.
Francesca will also open up a dialogue around topics such as:
- ethical food
- climate change-aware ways of living
- self-sustainability
- post-consumerism
The workshop participants are welcome to write a short response to these topics.
Link to Francesca Ferrando's previous workshops:
https://www.foreignobjekt.com/.../francesca-ferrando-the...
This Workshop and Conversation is part of the Symposium:
Posthumanism and Worldbuilding
Link to the symposium blog page, which includes more information:
https://www.foreignobjekt.com/.../symposium-and-workshop...
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INAUGURAL LECTURE: "EDUCATION IN POSTHUMAN TIMES" with KAY SIDEBOTTOM - NOVEMBER 17
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Education in Posthuman Times: An inaugural lecture, introducing the philosophy, work and research of fellow Gramscian Dr Kay Sidebottom
The Antonio Gramsci Society UK is thrilled to introduce Dr Kay Sidebottom, presenting 'Education in Posthuman Times'.
In this lecture Kay will share what explorations into posthuman thinking revealed (explorations which ultimately took the form of a PhD, but are in fact much more than that).
"After spending a few years exploring posthuman and new materialist philosophies, the question - but what might all of this mean for education? kept returning to me.
The theories are dense and complex; often exclusionary in their language; and yet joyful, liberating and affirmative. These are times that call for new approaches and a move away from the binary thinking that separates humans from the natural world, and denies our status as embodied and relational beings on a damaged planet.
Accompanying me along the way will be the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the non-human objects and technologies which entangled with and shaped the project, and of course the participants themselves who cannot be separated from the ideas and words on the pages of the thesis".
Kay Sidebottom is a Lecturer in Education and Childhood (Leeds Beckett University). Her current research explores how teachers can work with posthuman ideas to facilitate meaningful and disruptive education spaces for our complex times. With a background in community and adult education, her pedagogical specialisms include radical and anarchist education, arts-based practice and community philosophy. Kay also leads an interdisciplinary degree in Social Change which is aimed specifically at activists and community workers; the first of its kind in the UK.
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NEW BOOK! HUMAN VIRTUALITY AND DIGITAL LIFE by RICHARD FRANKEL, VICTOR J. KREBSNEW BOOK! HUMAN VIRTUALITY AND DIGITAL LIFE by RICHARD FRANKEL, VICTOR J. KREBS
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Human Virtuality and Digital Life By Richard Frankel, Victor J. Krebs, is out now!
This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves.
Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is only the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to human being. It illuminates what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our present technologies both enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors claim that technology is a pharmakon - at the same time both a remedy and a poison - and in their writing exemplify a method that overcomes the polarization that compels us to regard it either as a liberating force or a dangerous threat in human life. The digital revolution challenges us to reckon with the implications of what is being called our posthuman condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by atemporal essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book’s postscript considers the sudden plunge into the virtual effected by the 2020 global pandemic.
Accessible and wide-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but anyone interested in the ways virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives.
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NEW BOOK! POSTHUMANISM IN ART AND SCIENCE: A READER by GIOVANNI ALOI and SUSAN MCHUGH
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We are glad to announce the publication of Posthumanism in Art and Science
A Reader, edited by Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh
Posthumanism synthesizes philosophical, literary, and artistic responses to technological advancements, globalization, and mass extinction in the Anthropocene. It asks what it can mean to be human in an increasingly more-than-human world that has lost faith in the ideal of humanism, the autonomous, rational subject, and it models generative alternatives cognizant of the demands of social and ecological justice. Amid rising social justice movements, collapsing economic structures, and the dwindling power of cultural institutions, posthumanism advances thinking on new and previously unenvisionable challenges.
Posthumanism in Art and Science is an anthology of indispensable statements and artworks that provide an unprecedented mapping of this intellectual and aesthetic development in a global context. It features groundbreaking theorists including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Mel Y. Chen, Michael Marder, Alexander Weheliye, Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton, N. Katherine Hayles, Bruno Latour, Francesca Ferrando, and Cary Wolfe, as well as innovative, influential artists and curators such as Yvonne Rainer, Skawennati, Chus Martínez, William Wegman, Nandipha Mntambo, Cassils, Pauline Oliveros, and Doo-sung Yoo. These provocative and compelling works, including previously unpublished interviews and essays, speak to the ongoing conceptual and political challenge of posthumanist thinking in a time of unprecedented cultural and environmental crises.
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NEW BOOK! BEING IN FLUX A POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC ONTOLOGY OF THE SELF by REIN RAUD
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We are happy to announce that Being in Flux by Rein Raud is now available. Reality exists independently of human observers, but does the same apply to its structure? Realist ontologies usually assume so: according to them, the world consists of objects, these have properties and enter into relations with each other, more or less as we are accustomed to think of them.
Against this view, Rein Raud develops a radical process ontology that does not credit any vantage point, any scale or speed of being, any range of cognitive faculties with the privilege to judge how the world ‘really’ is. In his view, what we think of as objects are recast as fields of constitutive tensions, cross-sections of processes, never in complete balance but always striving for it and always reconfiguring themselves accordingly. The human self is also understood as a fluctuating field, not limited to the mind but distributed all over the body and reaching out into its environment, with different constituents of the process constantly vying for control.
The need for such a process philosophy has often been voiced, but rarely has there been an effort to develop it in a systematic and rigourous manner that leads to original accounts of identity, continuity, time, change, causality, agency and other topics. Throughout his new book, Raud engages with an unusually broad range of philosophical schools and debates, from New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology to both phenomenological and analytical philosophy of mind, from feminist philosophy of science to neurophilosophy and social ontology.
Being in Flux will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities generally and to anyone interested in current debates about realism, materialism and ontology.
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NEW BOOK! CREATIVE AGENCY by ANNE HARRIS
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Creative Agency by Anne Harris is now available.
This book offers a socio-cultural examination of contemporary creativity studies. Drawing heavily on posthumanist, new materialist and affective theoretics, the author argues in favour of an expansive and sustainable approach to creativity which contributes to an emergent ‘creativity studies’ inter-discipline. It seeks to establish a broader consideration of creativity in socio-culture, that extends beyond, or indeed refutes, the narrowing aperture of entrepreneurship and innovation as synonyms for creativity in economic, cultural and educational contexts and discourses. Drawing on multiple case studies of creative relational and creative ecological empirical research, this book integrates a concern for personal, planetary and geo-political collaboration, as an antidote for ‘innovation for innovation’s sake’.
Dan Harris (formerly published as Anne Harris) is Professor, Associate Dean, and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. They are an international expert in creativity education and creative methodologies through a combination of creative arts practice and creativity scholarship. Dan’s texts Creativity and Education (2016) and The Creative Turn (2014) are widely-cited texts in the study of the commodification of creativity, its conflation with innovation and creative industries, and in lifespan creative education as a core component of a creative ecologies model.
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NEW BOOK! NAVIGATING THE POSTQUALITATIVE, NEW MATERIALIST AND CRITICAL POSTHUMANIST TERRAIN ACROSS DISCIPLINES edited by KARIN MURRIS
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Navigating the Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Terrain Across Disciplines is an accessible introductory guide to theories, paradigm shifts and key concepts in postqualitative, new materialist and critical posthumanist research.
Disrupting the theory/practice divide, the book offers a postqualitative reimagining of traditional research processes. In doing so, it guides readers through the contestation of binaries, innovative concepts, and the practical provocations that make up the postqualitative terrain. It orients the researcher in the ontological re-turn, also by considering Indigenous knowledges, African, Eastern and young children’s philosophies. The style itself is postqualitative through diffractive engagements by the authors and the website includes some examples of the practical provocations described in the book that give an imaginary of how postqualitative research can be taught and enacted.
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NEW BOOK! WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CYBORGS by STEFAN LORENZ SORGNER
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"An eye-opening, wide-ranging and all-inclusive study of transhumanism. Sorgner’s account avoids both the utopian trap and the bogeyman spectre. He makes a compelling case for placing ourselves on the transhuman spectrum. How we continue to use technologies is in our hands. Sorgner’s book is both a comprehensive introduction to transhumanist thought and a clear-sighted vision for its future realisation." Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford
The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and has influenced discussions around AI, brain-computer interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. Despite its enduring influence in the public imagination, a fully developed philosophy of transhumanism has not been presented yet.
In this new book, leading philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalisation, gene technologies and ethics. He examines the history and meaning of transhumanism and asks bold questions about human perfection, cyborgs, genetically enhanced entities, and uploaded minds.
Offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia, this will be an important guide for readers interested in contemporary digital culture, gene ethics and policy making.
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is Chair of the Department of History and Humanities at John Cabot University in Rome, and Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the Journal of Posthuman Studies.
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NEW BOOK! POSTHUMANIST PERSPECTIVES ON LITERARY AND CULTURAL ANIMALS, edited by KRISHANU MAITI
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Check out the new book edited by Krishanu Maiti, titled Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals.
This book offers Posthumanist readings of animal-centric literary and cultural texts. The contributors put the precepts and premises of humanism into question by seriously considering the animal presence in texts. The essays collected here focus primarily on literary and cultural texts from varied theoretically informed interdisciplinary perspectives advanced by critical approaches such as Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism.
Contributors select texts that cut across geographical and period boundaries and demonstrate how practices of close reading give rise to new ways of thinking about animals. By implicating the “animal turn” in the field of literary and cultural studies, this book urges us to problematize the separation of the human from other animals and rethink the hierarchical order of beings through close readings of select texts. It offers fresh perspectives on Posthumanist theory, inviting readers to revisit those criteria that created species’ difference from the early ages of human civilization. This book constitutes a rich and thorough scholarly resource on the politics of representation of animals in literature and culture. The essays in this book are empirically and theoretically informed and explore a range of dynamic, captivating, and highly relevant topics.
Comprising over 15 chapters by a team of international contributors, this book is divided into four parts:
Contestation over Species Hierarchy and Categorization
Animal (Re)constructions
Interspecies Relationalities
Intersectionality- Animal and Gender
This book will be essential reading for students and researchers of Critical Animal Studies and Environmental Studies.
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CFP: Estudios Postumanos - EXTINCIÓN
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The newly released journal "Estudios Postumanos" is launching its first CFP dedicated to the theme "EXTINCIÓN".
Les enviamos este mail para anunciarles que hemos lanzado la primera convocatoria de nuestra revista, cuya temática es la Extinción. Les adjuntamos en este mail el flyer.
En primavera estaremos lanzando el sitio web de la revista, por lo que haremos un evento de inauguración de la misma, y en el otoño de 2022 planeamos publicar el primer número.
De parte del Comité Académico, queremos agradecerles por su confianza y apoyo a nuestro proyecto. Estamxs muy contentxs de este camino que hemos iniciado.
Lxs mantendremos informados de los eventos por venir. También pueden seguirnos en las redes:
TW: @posthumanos
IG: estudiosposhumanos
FB: Estudios Posthumanos
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CFP: (NEO)CYBERNETIC PATHS FOR AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF DIGITAL CULTURES
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Open Philosophy invites submissions for the topical issue “(Neo)Cybernetic Paths for an Epistemology of Digital Cultures”.
The cybernetic programme of operational control and regulation policy is today a raw reality, predominantly as a dystopia. Planetary governmentality can be micropolitically controlled by autonomous regulatory technologies, making the principles of cybernetics ubiquitous. The absoluteness of the presence of cybernetic technologies to regulate socio-political spheres has contributed decisively to the crisis of the social-democratic and humanist worldview. Overall, socio-cybernetic traces and concepts (artificial intelligence, big data, deep learning, complex systems and so forth) are more relevant today than ever. They do not exactly suggest the end of cybernetics, but rather its successful completion as an interdisciplinary methodological and practical set of concepts. Accordingly, we are happy to take up the challenge of reflecting on the syncretic style of thinking cybernetics that has led to today's post-digital constellation of the human condition and to rethink its traces and reception. To this end, we do not want to revoke or praise the cybernetic approaches, but rather take the path of the excluded third: pointing out perspectives, revisiting lost paths, pointing to new directions of analysis.
This volume aims to draw a line between the classical cybernetic schools and sub-disciplines on the one hand and their implications in cultural theories and the contemporary positions influenced by them on the other. We want to refer complexity back to its genealogical roots and in this respect critically trace the realisation of operationally closed systems and self-organising processes.
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If you are interested in joining the community, and / or volunteering, and/ or forming regional posthuman networks in your area, please email us at: NYposthuman[at]gmail.com
Thanks for connecting and sharing your insights and visions!
Peace, Health and Much Appreciation,
The Global Posthuman Network
www.posthumans.org |
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