In the context of Michel Serres'and posthumanism's proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of universal co-belonging,silence(of the human word)assumes the function of a catalyst for the...In the context of Michel Serres'and posthumanism's proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of universal co-belonging,silence(of the human word)assumes the function of a catalyst for the recognition of the human body in its aesthetic,cognitive,relational,and hybrid dimensionality,and of the world in its agency(including artistic).Within this framework,the contribution proposes a reading of art as a relation and catalyzer of relations,that is,as a(re)activation of positive relations of the human with a world that reveals itself to be increasingly hyper-complex.Taking Serresian ideas on artistic practices as not(only)human forms of expression and some posthumanist"isomorphic"positions on non-human agency as tools,the research then highlights the more-than-human scope of art.展开更多
Faced with the challenge of arguments about the relation of post-,and trans-humanism,putting forth questions on their“antagonism”,or“convergence”,I propose to(re-)evaluate/highlight the relevance of the thinking o...Faced with the challenge of arguments about the relation of post-,and trans-humanism,putting forth questions on their“antagonism”,or“convergence”,I propose to(re-)evaluate/highlight the relevance of the thinking of Michel Serres for posthuman debates.It specifically seems to me that Serresian idea of bodily hominescence can be read as a suggestion of“convergence”of post-and trans-humanism.Starting from the assumption that the body is a crucial node of both of them in that its consideration by one and the other marks a major front of their divergence(tool body according to transhumanism,dimensional body according to posthumanism),I seem to grasp,within the Serresian theme of the hominescent body as totipotent/virtual,the idea of bodily virtuality as a point of their convergence.Following Serres’s argument that,due to its virtuality/potentiality(intended as the totality of the possibilities),the body,though always involved in(technological)hybridization processes,is difficult to be artificially reproduced and to be reduced to information,I assume virtuality as an“operational concept”capable of“producing”convergence of post-and trans-humanism.Such a concept allows me,in fact,to read the body(re-)invested,by technology as an infiltrative agent,of a dimensional role as hybridizer(and in this sense normalized).Through virtuality,therefore,I think to be able to understand the body as a meeting ground between trans-and post-component,in the sense that technological“intervention”no longer constitutes an enhancement of the body,but a hybridizing event not implying dis-incarnation but rather normalization of body’s dimensional value;precisely such,due eminently to hybridization with otherness within a process of technological infiltration.The body normalized by such a technology is therefore a trans-posthuman body,in the sense of being contaminated by technological processes keeping it in its dimensionality.In order to better illustrate this idea,I propose to examine Serresian metaphor of the body as a trunk without branches with cultural cut twigs,which seems to me to effectively express the theme of the body as a ground/condition of hybridization,i.e.,as an anthropo-techno-poietic dimension.I aim so at showing the relevance of Serres’s thought to conceive,in a convergent perspective,a body,not to be strengthened,but to be normalized in its dimensionality,namely,a trans/posthuman body in a trans/posthumanist context.展开更多
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,a tripartite blanket of disease/containment/return to normality has crystallized around the virus.But is it possible to grasp the frayed shirt of this blanket and gradually...Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,a tripartite blanket of disease/containment/return to normality has crystallized around the virus.But is it possible to grasp the frayed shirt of this blanket and gradually try to undo it?This is the attempt that this contribution makes.And that,drawing on a toolbox made up of the reflections,in this case converging between them,of Michel Serres and the posthuman on the dynamics inventive of new homination horizons,which the virus,beyond the contingency of its pathogenicity,as a hopeful monster parasite,can trigger.展开更多
Faced with a socio-political-mediatic arena that continues to return the ballet of pandemic,climate change,fourth industrial revolution,sixth mass extinction,war etc.,the reflection of Michel Serres and Posthumanism p...Faced with a socio-political-mediatic arena that continues to return the ballet of pandemic,climate change,fourth industrial revolution,sixth mass extinction,war etc.,the reflection of Michel Serres and Posthumanism put forth instances for silencing of the anthropocentric logos,and for recognition of the multiplicity,variety,possibility of things and of the human in co-belonging with them,as well as instances for working on these same multiplicities,varieties,possibilities,that are often absences,black holes,repressed of philosophical thought.展开更多
The idea of Cyborg initiates the blurring of frontiers between traditional gender roles in the post-modem era, transforming itself into a politicized entity. William Gibson＇s Neuromancer as an early introducer of the...The idea of Cyborg initiates the blurring of frontiers between traditional gender roles in the post-modem era, transforming itself into a politicized entity. William Gibson＇s Neuromancer as an early introducer of the Cyborg characters tries to dissolve the boundaries through his female characters by balancing the power quota with the help of the non-gendered entity of the Cyborg. According to Donna Haraway, there will be a dawn of new cyborg era causing a gender role reversal. The objective of this paper is to find whether such role reversal is at all possible.展开更多
The literary background of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go sets in a highly developed scientific and technological world where clones are created by human and“educated”in the Hailsham School for the sake of...The literary background of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go sets in a highly developed scientific and technological world where clones are created by human and“educated”in the Hailsham School for the sake of“donating”their vital organs to human three or four times before death.By depicting miserable fate of clones,the novel conveys deep concerns on the consequences of abusing technology in modern society.Ever since the burgeoning development of life science and artificial intelligence in the 1990s,the trend of posthumanism/transhumanism has emerged.Posthumanism promotes approaches to enhancing human body condition and organism,and extending human lifespan to augment human capacity and well-being by the advancement of technology.In literary field,contemplation on the relationship between human beings and technology has become a major concern of posthumanism.Putting Never Let Me Go in the context of posthumanism,this essay probes into the significant themes of the novel from three aspects:(1)clones’torments in the existential predicaments imposed by human;(2)human’s violation to the principles of bioethics causing the existential predicaments of alienated clones;(3)appealing to human to ruminate on the relationship between scientific technology and ethics.展开更多
Faced with the challenges of emerging technologies and impossibility of thinking human beings in the humanistic sense,I propose a convergent philosophical approach to posthumanism(s)and transhumanism(s).So,by means of...Faced with the challenges of emerging technologies and impossibility of thinking human beings in the humanistic sense,I propose a convergent philosophical approach to posthumanism(s)and transhumanism(s).So,by means of ideas drawn from(medieval and contemporary)philosophy,my contribution is informed by conceiving a non-anthropocentric and posthumanist transhumanism.My focus is the body as a crucial node of both transhumanism(s)and posthumanism(s),in that its consideration by one and the other seems to mark a major front of divergence between them(tool body according to transhumanism(s),dimensional body according to posthumanism(s)).My reflection is carried out,by drawing two theoretical reservoirs:the thought of Roger Bacon(13th century)and of Michel Serres.I take the former as a reference for transhumanist front and the latter as a reference for posthumanist one.I thus hypothesize that Bacon’s doctrine of the prolongation of life can be considered as an anticipation of the transhumanist research of earthly human immortality.So,I examine Bacon’s idea that the adhesion of human activity(alchemy and medicine)with the course of nature can produce,through the preparation of a long life drug,the aequalitas terrena,which is an operation of restoration/conservation of the state of bodily natural balance(health),with the connected prolongation of life within the limits allowed by nature.I therefore dwell on the Baconian idea of a body in whose wholeness of person the solution of continuity between the biological and the spiritual is attenuated,and on the connected idea,not of transcending the earthly man,but of the restoration of his fullness of person.In my thesis,Baconian ideas,anticipating transhumanism(s),can induce positions in it of care of body,without transpassing in the empowerment;of body normalization,without going beyond it;of consideration of the body as a dimension of the human and not as an instrument or burden;of the consideration of man as a natural form and not as a center.These positions can also find convergences with posthumanism(s)and Serres,that carry forward the idea of informational irreducibility of the body as well as that of its irreproducibility,and therefore of its dimensionality for man(in hybridization with nature and technology).I assume that these convergences can lead to an idea of the body as a meeting ground between transhumanism(s)and posthumanism(s):a trans-post-humanist body.展开更多
What we witness is that Oshii＇s narrative and patriarchal technology creates the female cyborgs, who simply mirror male heterosexual desire and who are denied agency in their role. Oshii does not imagine any possibil...What we witness is that Oshii＇s narrative and patriarchal technology creates the female cyborgs, who simply mirror male heterosexual desire and who are denied agency in their role. Oshii does not imagine any possibility that might destabilize his newly-imagined order, such as a cyborg that might upset heterosexuality. The absence of any female agency or desire in his cyber fantasy questions its subversive potential. Oshii seems to be immune to feminist theories on posthuman existence that conceptualizes subjectivity outside the gender polarities. Oshii describes a society where high technology only reinforces gender polarities. The representations of women＇s relationship to technology in Oshii＇s film, therefore, are quite problematic; the transgression of boundaries does not work out to reduce or annihilate domination by patriarchal needs and desires. Despite the fact that Oshii denies his female cyborgs a subject position other than that based exclusively in patriarchal fear and desire, his representations mark an ambivalence inherent in cyborg resistance, and feminist politics need to pay attention to such ambivalence.展开更多
Starting from the question of whether there is still a space for religious experience in posthumanist reflection,and if so,how this space can be configured,the contribution first examines nerve nodes/junctions,such as...Starting from the question of whether there is still a space for religious experience in posthumanist reflection,and if so,how this space can be configured,the contribution first examines nerve nodes/junctions,such as body/nudity,bonds/intersections,Biogea/Sciences of Life and Earth,in which the thought of Michel Serres,at the same time,is intertwined,so to speak,with the posthumanist one,and develops its Franciscanism.Through this analysis,the contribution opens itself the possibility of identifying/proposing,in an idea of religion(religio)as etymologically understood by Serres in the sense of bond/relationship/universal binder of livings(religare),humans and things,the space/justification of religious experience in and for the posthumanism.Mysticism of immanence within the Posthumanism?Maybe…But even further:the way is in fact that of bonding,inclusion,synthesis.展开更多
In the Apocalypse,the chiliastic-eschatological meaning has been superimposed on the original literal meaning of dis-velation.A phenomenon,this one,seems to have favored the formation of neuralgic force fields between...In the Apocalypse,the chiliastic-eschatological meaning has been superimposed on the original literal meaning of dis-velation.A phenomenon,this one,seems to have favored the formation of neuralgic force fields between the end,the beginning,which in some way refer to each other,and precisely dis-velation.If the whole of history seems to be disseminated and sometimes informed by these fields,the Anthropocene temperament certainly does not seem to be an exception.The apocalyptic Anthropocene interstitial spaces are particularly crowded and lively and,among the many voices animating them,those of Serres,Latour,and the posthumanist perspective,to which the one and the other,so to speak,wink,are of particular interest.What the Serresian-Latourian posthuman apocalyptic Anthropocene force-field seems to be reviving is,so to speak,a new recognition of the already-since-ever-been,i.e.the recognition that the human has always been inchoative in and with the world in becoming in relationship,that the post has always been an engine,resistant to repetitiveness,obviousness and habit,that the new is this very recognition,and that the recognition of the already-since-ever-been is precisely action,dynamism,a process of construction(of human in and with the world).展开更多
The essay presents a reflection on the current human condition,the novelty of which reveals itself to be an-already-always-been that continually begins and renews itself in the space of generative and inventive relati...The essay presents a reflection on the current human condition,the novelty of which reveals itself to be an-already-always-been that continually begins and renews itself in the space of generative and inventive relationality,expressed,in its toti-potentiality,by Posthumanism and by Michel Serres.In this horn of abundance,pre-existing and passing beyond form a single body,seeking their expression in an inchoative composed neologism as postranshominescent.展开更多
The contribution reflects on the crucial role that the body assumes in the context of the posthuman need/process of integral redefinition of the notion of the human.And,dialoguing,so to speak,even with positions from ...The contribution reflects on the crucial role that the body assumes in the context of the posthuman need/process of integral redefinition of the notion of the human.And,dialoguing,so to speak,even with positions from contemporary philosophical thought,such as those of Michel Serres,it specifically comes to highlight body characteristics of excess,unavoidability,reverberation.So:excess,in the sense that the body intentionally comes out of itself,hybridizing with the world and thus becoming a dimension of ontological,ethical,and cognitive construction of the human.Unavoidability,in the sense of the substantial irreproducibility-even in the context of technological hybridization-of the body,precisely by virtue of its anthropological dimensionality.Reverberation,in the sense that the body,as a dimensional space of redefinition/reconstruction of the human within the relationality with alterities,emerges as a reverberating mirror and catalyst of the posthumanist work of building a hybrid thought of(human)hybridization.展开更多
Michel Serres’s and Posthumanism’s reciprocally isomorphic reflections may offer not mainstream suggestions of an overall human repositioning,now,in times of war,pandemic/post-pandemic,environmental crisis,political...Michel Serres’s and Posthumanism’s reciprocally isomorphic reflections may offer not mainstream suggestions of an overall human repositioning,now,in times of war,pandemic/post-pandemic,environmental crisis,political,economic,and cultural problems,more mandatory than ever.If in fact,as it seems,it is question of de-anthropocentering/de-anthropomorphizing the world,to allow common principles and interrelationships between entities to emerge from within,Serresian and Posthumanist variations on the theme of the parasite/virus and the recognition of the world would provide profitable ideas on this way.展开更多
The contribution aims to examine the co-implications between Serres’work and posthumanist ideas of body and subjectivity.This scope is pursued primarily through the methodological choice of a gerund,such as silencing...The contribution aims to examine the co-implications between Serres’work and posthumanist ideas of body and subjectivity.This scope is pursued primarily through the methodological choice of a gerund,such as silencing,and the harnessing of its performative,processual,and relational value.Building on Serres’conception of silence as a dilation of the me the paper will follow Serresian anti-Cartesian reflections on the interchangeability of subject and object,his conception of the pre-positional body,and his thematization of the soul-body relationship.In close inter-implication with the employment of silencing is then the choice,again as a methodological device,of the preposition trans,made to act in order to explore the affinities/overlaps/assonances between Serres’theorization of the body,dimension of the human,and posthumanist conceptions of body/subjectivity.展开更多
The contribution moves from highlighting how,in the context of Michel Serres’and posthumanism’s proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of inter-implication and universal co-belonging,silence...The contribution moves from highlighting how,in the context of Michel Serres’and posthumanism’s proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of inter-implication and universal co-belonging,silence(of the human word)assumes the function of a catalyst for the recognition/re-aestheticization of the human body in its sensory-aesthetic-cognitive-relational-hybrid dimensionality,and,with and for it,of the world in its agency(including artistic).Within the framework of this perspective,the investigation thus proposes a reading of art as a relation/catalyzer of relations,that is,as a(re)activation of positive relations of the human with and for a world that reveals itself to be increasingly hyper-complex,that is,more-than-human,in the continuity/inseparability of nature and culture.Taking Serresian ideas on artistic practices as non(only)human forms of expression and posthumanist“isomorphic”positions on non-human agency as tools,the research then highlights the“more-than-human”scope of art and the fact that artistic practices are responsive actions.So much so that,the human being emerges as co-agent and,of course,co-owner.展开更多
Ricardo Piglia(1940–2017),the Argentine writer,sets his novel The Absent City(1992)against the backdrop of Argentina's dictatorship.Through the suspense framework of detective fiction and the posthuman imaginatio...Ricardo Piglia(1940–2017),the Argentine writer,sets his novel The Absent City(1992)against the backdrop of Argentina's dictatorship.Through the suspense framework of detective fiction and the posthuman imagination of science fiction,the novel constructs a profound political allegory.The central figure in the novel—the cyborg Elena—achieves a triple revolutionary transcendence of traditional human identity through the practices of the posthuman body:the fluid construction of gender identity,the resistant inscription of memory politics,and the generative force of narrative reality.Elena's cyborg body deconstructs singular authority across the layers of story,narration,and reality,driving the novel toward a hybrid,fluid,and heterogeneous New Baroque aesthetic.This demonstrates Piglia's forward-looking exploration of the constructive potential of narrative in the posthuman era.展开更多
This paper explores how survival is imagined in speculative fiction through the concept of relational knotting—a structure of suspended tension rather than resolution.Reading Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Ursula K.L...This paper explores how survival is imagined in speculative fiction through the concept of relational knotting—a structure of suspended tension rather than resolution.Reading Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Ursula K.Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest,the essay argues that survival under the pressures of historical trauma,ecological collapse,and colonial violence requires the redistribution of pain across collective,more-than-human networks.Centralized suffering leads to fragmentation;only when memory and grief are shared—through community,ecology,and interspecies entanglement—can a durable form of survival emerge.Drawing on theoretical insights from Donna Haraway,Bruno Latour,and Dipesh Chakrabarty,this paper proposes a Knot Theory of Relational Survival,where knots signify the ethical practice of staying knotted—with others,with place,and with histories that resist resolution.These texts imagine survivance as ecological co-dwelling in a world that insists on unfinishedness.展开更多
This article examines Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People through the intersecting frameworks of grotesque realism and unnatural narrativity to explore how form and language mediate subaltern experience.Set in the afterma...This article examines Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People through the intersecting frameworks of grotesque realism and unnatural narrativity to explore how form and language mediate subaltern experience.Set in the aftermath of a fictionalized Bhopal disaster,the novel defies conventional narrative structures through a posthuman narrator,Animal,whose grotesque hybrid identity challenges anthropocentric and neoliberal paradigms.The analysis foregrounds how Sinha employs bodily imagery,obscenity,and narrative fragmentation to critique dominant institutions such as law,medicine,and global capitalism.Particular emphasis is placed on scenes of defecation,self-cannibalism,and grotesque sexuality,which serve as symbolic acts of resistance and protest.Drawing on theorists such as Bakhtin,Fludernik,and Richardson,among several others,the article interrogates the novel’s narrative inconsistencies,polyphonic structure,and the limits of representability for marginalized subjects.It argues that Animal’s People redefines narrative voice by merging the abject with the comic,the human with the animal,and the real with the unnatural.Ultimately,the study contributes to broader scholarly conversations in posthumanism,ecocriticism,and subaltern studies by illustrating how grotesque and unnatural elements challenge established boundaries of genre,voice,and power.展开更多
This paper examines how generative artificial intelligence transforms music creation,music mapping,and conceptionsof musical space within a posthuman paradigm.As systems such as Suno dissolve the boundary between huma...This paper examines how generative artificial intelligence transforms music creation,music mapping,and conceptionsof musical space within a posthuman paradigm.As systems such as Suno dissolve the boundary between human and machinecreativity,the traditional human-centered model of musical authorship becomes destabilized.Generative AI not only lowers thetechnical threshold for musical production but also introduces a probabilistic,non-linear mode of generation in which symbolicnotation,performer mediation,and stable structural anchoring are no longer required.This shift produces a new form ofsubjectivity—distributed across humans,algorithms,and data—and redefines the pathways through which musical meaning isconstructed.The paper further argues that AI-based music mapping constitutes a new epistemic turn.Human perceptualcomplexity is reduced into textual prompts,forming anchor points that the algorithm expands,reorganizes,or collapses throughstochastic processes.Drawing on quantum concepts such as superposition and collapse,the study conceptualizes AI-generatedmusical space as a dynamic,multi-dimensional system moving through pre-generation,input,and generative phases.Each phasereflects shifting states of possibility and constraint,resulting in musical outcomes that are both unique and situated within abroader field of latent potential.This framework reveals how generative AI reshapes not only musical space but also thecognitive and phenomenological foundations of music creation.展开更多
The intent of this article is to analyse the interconnectedness between urban transformation and eco-heritage value over time in Tianjin from a river-city perspective.The focus is on the Hai River’s(海河)contribution...The intent of this article is to analyse the interconnectedness between urban transformation and eco-heritage value over time in Tianjin from a river-city perspective.The focus is on the Hai River’s(海河)contribution to the mechanisms of space and power in imperial,hyper-colonial,and globalising Tianjin.After an analytical excursus of the Haihe’s historical-political-economic roles,attention is given to the Haihe as the fulcrum of Tianjin’s creation as a spectacle city in present times.The objectives are to elucidate the Tianjin Municipal Government-led urban‘beautification’strategy and analyse the aims and objectives of the 2002‘Comprehensive Reconstruction and Redevelopment Plan of the Haihe’s Riversides’while also considering the actual experience of this transformation.The premise of this article is that the Haihe River has helped determine Tianjin’s politics of design via heritagisation:the historical processes through which cultural heritage is adapted to strategically promote favourable imagery of the river-city for political management purposes.展开更多
文摘In the context of Michel Serres'and posthumanism's proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of universal co-belonging,silence(of the human word)assumes the function of a catalyst for the recognition of the human body in its aesthetic,cognitive,relational,and hybrid dimensionality,and of the world in its agency(including artistic).Within this framework,the contribution proposes a reading of art as a relation and catalyzer of relations,that is,as a(re)activation of positive relations of the human with a world that reveals itself to be increasingly hyper-complex.Taking Serresian ideas on artistic practices as not(only)human forms of expression and some posthumanist"isomorphic"positions on non-human agency as tools,the research then highlights the more-than-human scope of art.
文摘Faced with the challenge of arguments about the relation of post-,and trans-humanism,putting forth questions on their“antagonism”,or“convergence”,I propose to(re-)evaluate/highlight the relevance of the thinking of Michel Serres for posthuman debates.It specifically seems to me that Serresian idea of bodily hominescence can be read as a suggestion of“convergence”of post-and trans-humanism.Starting from the assumption that the body is a crucial node of both of them in that its consideration by one and the other marks a major front of their divergence(tool body according to transhumanism,dimensional body according to posthumanism),I seem to grasp,within the Serresian theme of the hominescent body as totipotent/virtual,the idea of bodily virtuality as a point of their convergence.Following Serres’s argument that,due to its virtuality/potentiality(intended as the totality of the possibilities),the body,though always involved in(technological)hybridization processes,is difficult to be artificially reproduced and to be reduced to information,I assume virtuality as an“operational concept”capable of“producing”convergence of post-and trans-humanism.Such a concept allows me,in fact,to read the body(re-)invested,by technology as an infiltrative agent,of a dimensional role as hybridizer(and in this sense normalized).Through virtuality,therefore,I think to be able to understand the body as a meeting ground between trans-and post-component,in the sense that technological“intervention”no longer constitutes an enhancement of the body,but a hybridizing event not implying dis-incarnation but rather normalization of body’s dimensional value;precisely such,due eminently to hybridization with otherness within a process of technological infiltration.The body normalized by such a technology is therefore a trans-posthuman body,in the sense of being contaminated by technological processes keeping it in its dimensionality.In order to better illustrate this idea,I propose to examine Serresian metaphor of the body as a trunk without branches with cultural cut twigs,which seems to me to effectively express the theme of the body as a ground/condition of hybridization,i.e.,as an anthropo-techno-poietic dimension.I aim so at showing the relevance of Serres’s thought to conceive,in a convergent perspective,a body,not to be strengthened,but to be normalized in its dimensionality,namely,a trans/posthuman body in a trans/posthumanist context.
文摘Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,a tripartite blanket of disease/containment/return to normality has crystallized around the virus.But is it possible to grasp the frayed shirt of this blanket and gradually try to undo it?This is the attempt that this contribution makes.And that,drawing on a toolbox made up of the reflections,in this case converging between them,of Michel Serres and the posthuman on the dynamics inventive of new homination horizons,which the virus,beyond the contingency of its pathogenicity,as a hopeful monster parasite,can trigger.
文摘Faced with a socio-political-mediatic arena that continues to return the ballet of pandemic,climate change,fourth industrial revolution,sixth mass extinction,war etc.,the reflection of Michel Serres and Posthumanism put forth instances for silencing of the anthropocentric logos,and for recognition of the multiplicity,variety,possibility of things and of the human in co-belonging with them,as well as instances for working on these same multiplicities,varieties,possibilities,that are often absences,black holes,repressed of philosophical thought.
文摘The idea of Cyborg initiates the blurring of frontiers between traditional gender roles in the post-modem era, transforming itself into a politicized entity. William Gibson＇s Neuromancer as an early introducer of the Cyborg characters tries to dissolve the boundaries through his female characters by balancing the power quota with the help of the non-gendered entity of the Cyborg. According to Donna Haraway, there will be a dawn of new cyborg era causing a gender role reversal. The objective of this paper is to find whether such role reversal is at all possible.
文摘The literary background of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go sets in a highly developed scientific and technological world where clones are created by human and“educated”in the Hailsham School for the sake of“donating”their vital organs to human three or four times before death.By depicting miserable fate of clones,the novel conveys deep concerns on the consequences of abusing technology in modern society.Ever since the burgeoning development of life science and artificial intelligence in the 1990s,the trend of posthumanism/transhumanism has emerged.Posthumanism promotes approaches to enhancing human body condition and organism,and extending human lifespan to augment human capacity and well-being by the advancement of technology.In literary field,contemplation on the relationship between human beings and technology has become a major concern of posthumanism.Putting Never Let Me Go in the context of posthumanism,this essay probes into the significant themes of the novel from three aspects:(1)clones’torments in the existential predicaments imposed by human;(2)human’s violation to the principles of bioethics causing the existential predicaments of alienated clones;(3)appealing to human to ruminate on the relationship between scientific technology and ethics.
文摘Faced with the challenges of emerging technologies and impossibility of thinking human beings in the humanistic sense,I propose a convergent philosophical approach to posthumanism(s)and transhumanism(s).So,by means of ideas drawn from(medieval and contemporary)philosophy,my contribution is informed by conceiving a non-anthropocentric and posthumanist transhumanism.My focus is the body as a crucial node of both transhumanism(s)and posthumanism(s),in that its consideration by one and the other seems to mark a major front of divergence between them(tool body according to transhumanism(s),dimensional body according to posthumanism(s)).My reflection is carried out,by drawing two theoretical reservoirs:the thought of Roger Bacon(13th century)and of Michel Serres.I take the former as a reference for transhumanist front and the latter as a reference for posthumanist one.I thus hypothesize that Bacon’s doctrine of the prolongation of life can be considered as an anticipation of the transhumanist research of earthly human immortality.So,I examine Bacon’s idea that the adhesion of human activity(alchemy and medicine)with the course of nature can produce,through the preparation of a long life drug,the aequalitas terrena,which is an operation of restoration/conservation of the state of bodily natural balance(health),with the connected prolongation of life within the limits allowed by nature.I therefore dwell on the Baconian idea of a body in whose wholeness of person the solution of continuity between the biological and the spiritual is attenuated,and on the connected idea,not of transcending the earthly man,but of the restoration of his fullness of person.In my thesis,Baconian ideas,anticipating transhumanism(s),can induce positions in it of care of body,without transpassing in the empowerment;of body normalization,without going beyond it;of consideration of the body as a dimension of the human and not as an instrument or burden;of the consideration of man as a natural form and not as a center.These positions can also find convergences with posthumanism(s)and Serres,that carry forward the idea of informational irreducibility of the body as well as that of its irreproducibility,and therefore of its dimensionality for man(in hybridization with nature and technology).I assume that these convergences can lead to an idea of the body as a meeting ground between transhumanism(s)and posthumanism(s):a trans-post-humanist body.
文摘What we witness is that Oshii＇s narrative and patriarchal technology creates the female cyborgs, who simply mirror male heterosexual desire and who are denied agency in their role. Oshii does not imagine any possibility that might destabilize his newly-imagined order, such as a cyborg that might upset heterosexuality. The absence of any female agency or desire in his cyber fantasy questions its subversive potential. Oshii seems to be immune to feminist theories on posthuman existence that conceptualizes subjectivity outside the gender polarities. Oshii describes a society where high technology only reinforces gender polarities. The representations of women＇s relationship to technology in Oshii＇s film, therefore, are quite problematic; the transgression of boundaries does not work out to reduce or annihilate domination by patriarchal needs and desires. Despite the fact that Oshii denies his female cyborgs a subject position other than that based exclusively in patriarchal fear and desire, his representations mark an ambivalence inherent in cyborg resistance, and feminist politics need to pay attention to such ambivalence.
文摘Starting from the question of whether there is still a space for religious experience in posthumanist reflection,and if so,how this space can be configured,the contribution first examines nerve nodes/junctions,such as body/nudity,bonds/intersections,Biogea/Sciences of Life and Earth,in which the thought of Michel Serres,at the same time,is intertwined,so to speak,with the posthumanist one,and develops its Franciscanism.Through this analysis,the contribution opens itself the possibility of identifying/proposing,in an idea of religion(religio)as etymologically understood by Serres in the sense of bond/relationship/universal binder of livings(religare),humans and things,the space/justification of religious experience in and for the posthumanism.Mysticism of immanence within the Posthumanism?Maybe…But even further:the way is in fact that of bonding,inclusion,synthesis.
文摘In the Apocalypse,the chiliastic-eschatological meaning has been superimposed on the original literal meaning of dis-velation.A phenomenon,this one,seems to have favored the formation of neuralgic force fields between the end,the beginning,which in some way refer to each other,and precisely dis-velation.If the whole of history seems to be disseminated and sometimes informed by these fields,the Anthropocene temperament certainly does not seem to be an exception.The apocalyptic Anthropocene interstitial spaces are particularly crowded and lively and,among the many voices animating them,those of Serres,Latour,and the posthumanist perspective,to which the one and the other,so to speak,wink,are of particular interest.What the Serresian-Latourian posthuman apocalyptic Anthropocene force-field seems to be reviving is,so to speak,a new recognition of the already-since-ever-been,i.e.the recognition that the human has always been inchoative in and with the world in becoming in relationship,that the post has always been an engine,resistant to repetitiveness,obviousness and habit,that the new is this very recognition,and that the recognition of the already-since-ever-been is precisely action,dynamism,a process of construction(of human in and with the world).
文摘The essay presents a reflection on the current human condition,the novelty of which reveals itself to be an-already-always-been that continually begins and renews itself in the space of generative and inventive relationality,expressed,in its toti-potentiality,by Posthumanism and by Michel Serres.In this horn of abundance,pre-existing and passing beyond form a single body,seeking their expression in an inchoative composed neologism as postranshominescent.
文摘The contribution reflects on the crucial role that the body assumes in the context of the posthuman need/process of integral redefinition of the notion of the human.And,dialoguing,so to speak,even with positions from contemporary philosophical thought,such as those of Michel Serres,it specifically comes to highlight body characteristics of excess,unavoidability,reverberation.So:excess,in the sense that the body intentionally comes out of itself,hybridizing with the world and thus becoming a dimension of ontological,ethical,and cognitive construction of the human.Unavoidability,in the sense of the substantial irreproducibility-even in the context of technological hybridization-of the body,precisely by virtue of its anthropological dimensionality.Reverberation,in the sense that the body,as a dimensional space of redefinition/reconstruction of the human within the relationality with alterities,emerges as a reverberating mirror and catalyst of the posthumanist work of building a hybrid thought of(human)hybridization.
文摘Michel Serres’s and Posthumanism’s reciprocally isomorphic reflections may offer not mainstream suggestions of an overall human repositioning,now,in times of war,pandemic/post-pandemic,environmental crisis,political,economic,and cultural problems,more mandatory than ever.If in fact,as it seems,it is question of de-anthropocentering/de-anthropomorphizing the world,to allow common principles and interrelationships between entities to emerge from within,Serresian and Posthumanist variations on the theme of the parasite/virus and the recognition of the world would provide profitable ideas on this way.
文摘The contribution aims to examine the co-implications between Serres’work and posthumanist ideas of body and subjectivity.This scope is pursued primarily through the methodological choice of a gerund,such as silencing,and the harnessing of its performative,processual,and relational value.Building on Serres’conception of silence as a dilation of the me the paper will follow Serresian anti-Cartesian reflections on the interchangeability of subject and object,his conception of the pre-positional body,and his thematization of the soul-body relationship.In close inter-implication with the employment of silencing is then the choice,again as a methodological device,of the preposition trans,made to act in order to explore the affinities/overlaps/assonances between Serres’theorization of the body,dimension of the human,and posthumanist conceptions of body/subjectivity.
文摘The contribution moves from highlighting how,in the context of Michel Serres’and posthumanism’s proposal of rethinking the human and the world in a perspective of inter-implication and universal co-belonging,silence(of the human word)assumes the function of a catalyst for the recognition/re-aestheticization of the human body in its sensory-aesthetic-cognitive-relational-hybrid dimensionality,and,with and for it,of the world in its agency(including artistic).Within the framework of this perspective,the investigation thus proposes a reading of art as a relation/catalyzer of relations,that is,as a(re)activation of positive relations of the human with and for a world that reveals itself to be increasingly hyper-complex,that is,more-than-human,in the continuity/inseparability of nature and culture.Taking Serresian ideas on artistic practices as non(only)human forms of expression and posthumanist“isomorphic”positions on non-human agency as tools,the research then highlights the“more-than-human”scope of art and the fact that artistic practices are responsive actions.So much so that,the human being emerges as co-agent and,of course,co-owner.
文摘Ricardo Piglia(1940–2017),the Argentine writer,sets his novel The Absent City(1992)against the backdrop of Argentina's dictatorship.Through the suspense framework of detective fiction and the posthuman imagination of science fiction,the novel constructs a profound political allegory.The central figure in the novel—the cyborg Elena—achieves a triple revolutionary transcendence of traditional human identity through the practices of the posthuman body:the fluid construction of gender identity,the resistant inscription of memory politics,and the generative force of narrative reality.Elena's cyborg body deconstructs singular authority across the layers of story,narration,and reality,driving the novel toward a hybrid,fluid,and heterogeneous New Baroque aesthetic.This demonstrates Piglia's forward-looking exploration of the constructive potential of narrative in the posthuman era.
文摘This paper explores how survival is imagined in speculative fiction through the concept of relational knotting—a structure of suspended tension rather than resolution.Reading Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Ursula K.Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest,the essay argues that survival under the pressures of historical trauma,ecological collapse,and colonial violence requires the redistribution of pain across collective,more-than-human networks.Centralized suffering leads to fragmentation;only when memory and grief are shared—through community,ecology,and interspecies entanglement—can a durable form of survival emerge.Drawing on theoretical insights from Donna Haraway,Bruno Latour,and Dipesh Chakrabarty,this paper proposes a Knot Theory of Relational Survival,where knots signify the ethical practice of staying knotted—with others,with place,and with histories that resist resolution.These texts imagine survivance as ecological co-dwelling in a world that insists on unfinishedness.
文摘This article examines Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People through the intersecting frameworks of grotesque realism and unnatural narrativity to explore how form and language mediate subaltern experience.Set in the aftermath of a fictionalized Bhopal disaster,the novel defies conventional narrative structures through a posthuman narrator,Animal,whose grotesque hybrid identity challenges anthropocentric and neoliberal paradigms.The analysis foregrounds how Sinha employs bodily imagery,obscenity,and narrative fragmentation to critique dominant institutions such as law,medicine,and global capitalism.Particular emphasis is placed on scenes of defecation,self-cannibalism,and grotesque sexuality,which serve as symbolic acts of resistance and protest.Drawing on theorists such as Bakhtin,Fludernik,and Richardson,among several others,the article interrogates the novel’s narrative inconsistencies,polyphonic structure,and the limits of representability for marginalized subjects.It argues that Animal’s People redefines narrative voice by merging the abject with the comic,the human with the animal,and the real with the unnatural.Ultimately,the study contributes to broader scholarly conversations in posthumanism,ecocriticism,and subaltern studies by illustrating how grotesque and unnatural elements challenge established boundaries of genre,voice,and power.
文摘This paper examines how generative artificial intelligence transforms music creation,music mapping,and conceptionsof musical space within a posthuman paradigm.As systems such as Suno dissolve the boundary between human and machinecreativity,the traditional human-centered model of musical authorship becomes destabilized.Generative AI not only lowers thetechnical threshold for musical production but also introduces a probabilistic,non-linear mode of generation in which symbolicnotation,performer mediation,and stable structural anchoring are no longer required.This shift produces a new form ofsubjectivity—distributed across humans,algorithms,and data—and redefines the pathways through which musical meaning isconstructed.The paper further argues that AI-based music mapping constitutes a new epistemic turn.Human perceptualcomplexity is reduced into textual prompts,forming anchor points that the algorithm expands,reorganizes,or collapses throughstochastic processes.Drawing on quantum concepts such as superposition and collapse,the study conceptualizes AI-generatedmusical space as a dynamic,multi-dimensional system moving through pre-generation,input,and generative phases.Each phasereflects shifting states of possibility and constraint,resulting in musical outcomes that are both unique and situated within abroader field of latent potential.This framework reveals how generative AI reshapes not only musical space but also thecognitive and phenomenological foundations of music creation.
文摘The intent of this article is to analyse the interconnectedness between urban transformation and eco-heritage value over time in Tianjin from a river-city perspective.The focus is on the Hai River’s(海河)contribution to the mechanisms of space and power in imperial,hyper-colonial,and globalising Tianjin.After an analytical excursus of the Haihe’s historical-political-economic roles,attention is given to the Haihe as the fulcrum of Tianjin’s creation as a spectacle city in present times.The objectives are to elucidate the Tianjin Municipal Government-led urban‘beautification’strategy and analyse the aims and objectives of the 2002‘Comprehensive Reconstruction and Redevelopment Plan of the Haihe’s Riversides’while also considering the actual experience of this transformation.The premise of this article is that the Haihe River has helped determine Tianjin’s politics of design via heritagisation:the historical processes through which cultural heritage is adapted to strategically promote favourable imagery of the river-city for political management purposes.
