Life in the Posthuman Condition
Critical Responses to the Anthropocene
Edited by S. E. Wilmer, Audronė Žukauskaitė
- Engages in recent debates on posthumanism and the Anthropocene
- Reconsiders different forms of life, such as post-Anthropocene life, animal life, and life of inorganic objects
- Introduces an interdisciplinary approach which brings together contemporary philosophy, cultural and visual studies, posthumanism, media and technology studies, environmental studies and indigenous cosmologies
- Outlines new ontologies and engages with new materialism
- Features contributions by prominent contemporary philosophers and theorists, including Catherine Malabou, T. J. Demos, Graham Harman, Jussi Parikka and Cary Wolfe
This collection reconsiders the notion of life and conceptualizes those forms of life which have been excluded from modern philosophy, such as post-Anthropocene life, the life of non-human animals and the life of inorganic objects.
Forms of Life in the Posthuman Condition: An Introduction, Audronė Žukauskaitė and S. E. Wilmer
Part I: Life Beyond the Anthropocene
1. Anthropocene Desperation in Gaian Context, Bruce Clarke
2. Making Worlds Beyond Human Scale and Perspective, Małgorzata Sugiera
3. For Whom is Apocalypse a New Idea?: Thoughts on Staging the End, Patricia Ybarra
4. Phenomenology of Waste in the Anthropocene, Mintautas Gutauskas
5. Climate Control: From Emergency to Emergence, T.J. Demos
Part II: Human and Non-Human Interactions
6. On the Punctuation of Organisms: The Case of Helmuth Plessner, Graham Harman
7. Eco-Translation and Inter-Species Communication in the Anthropocene, by Anna Barcz and Michael Cronin
8. On Zoe and Spider Life: Studio Tomás Saraceno’s Working Objects in the Critical Posthumanities, Jussi Parikka
9. The Beaver, a Partisan Fighting for the Survival of the Planet, Agnė Narušytė
Part III: Forms of Life and New Ontologies
10. Jagged Ontologies in The Anthropocene, or, The Five C’s, Cary Wolfe
11. Materialism, the Spiritual, and the Scalar, John Ó Maoilearca
12. What’s the Matter with Life?, Thomas Nail
13. Forms of Life: Simondon, Ruyer, Malabou, Audronė Žukauskaitė
14. Epigenetic Mimesis: Natural Brains and Synaptic Chips, Catherine Malabou
The disciplinary breadth of this new collection should be abundantly clear (...) the volume also acts as a useful reader for those looking for an introduction to posthumanist scholarly themes, and challenges even those readers with expertise or experience in one or several of the areas represented to engage with adjacent disciplinary perspectives.
This is an exciting and innovative collection, composed of both well-known and younger scholars, that explores from various perspectives how life in its complexities and differences, lives in the shadow of climate catastrophe. Both illuminating and alarming, this anthology elaborates a number of strategies for living with, and perhaps alleviating, what is to come on global and local levels. An impressive contribution to an increasingly urgent question.
