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In this dissertation I establish the possibility of social and ethical relationships with non-human natural (and in particular inanimate) beings. I do so based on the work of 20th century French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In chapter 1 I discuss the relatively sparse secondary literature that addresses the intersection between Derrida's work and environmental philosophy. I also go over some textual indications that show that Derrida has been concerned with non-human beings throughout his career. In chapters 2 and 3 I establish the impossibility of conclusively excluding any kind of being from the purview of ethical responsibility. While chapter 2 develops the nature of Derrida's ethics, chapter 3 ties this conception of ethics back to more theoretical considerations that we find in Derrida's texts. Chapters 4 to 6 serve to illustrate in a more positive fashion how Derrida might help us to understand the possibility of social and ethical relationships with inanimate beings. Chapter 4 focuses on the notion of the trace in order to show that the presence qua absence that characterizes our experience of human persons can be discerned in our relationships to inanimate beings as well. Chapter 5 focuses on Derrida's discussion of a human corpse as neither simply alive nor simply dead. I argue that this experience of life/death is possible with regard to non-human inanimate beings as well. Finally, in chapter 6 I argue for the possibility of sharing a common world with non-human (including inanimate) beings based on Derrida's conception of habitat and of the world as fractured and constructed.

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction: Embracing Non-Human Nature in World Politics -- Introduction -- References -- Theoretical Investigations -- The End of Normal Politics: Assemblages, Non-Humans and International Relations -- Introduction -- Autogeddon: The Price of Automobility -- Brexit -- Climate Crisis -- Conclusion: An Assemblage Politics -- References -- Across Species and Borders: Political Representation, Ecological Democracy and the Non-Human -- Introduction -- Just One Political Animal? Modes of Exclusion -- Ecological Citizens? Visions of Non-Human Inclusion -- Posthuman Representation: A Materialism of Shared Worlds -- Visions of Transnational Ecological Democracy: Governing with the Non-Human -- References -- A Quantum Anthropocene? International Relations Between Rupture and Entanglement -- Introduction -- The Anthropocene as Rupture -- The Anthropocene as Entanglement -- Conclusion -- References -- Ecologies of Globalization: Mountain Governance and Multinatural Planetary Politics -- Introduction -- Mountains in Environmental Governance -- What are Mountains? -- The Greater Kailash Transboundary Region: A Case Study -- Routes -- Conclusion -- References -- Conflicting Temporalities and the Ecomodernist Vision of Rewilding -- Introduction -- The Terms of the Debate -- Love Your Monsters -- Learning in the Anthropocene -- Ever Higher Stakes -- Conclusion -- References -- Elias in the Anthropocene: Human Nature, Evolution and the Politics of the Great Acceleration -- Introduction -- The Sociology of Knowledge, Evolutionary Sequence and Big History -- Elias on Human Nature, 'Second Nature' and Non-Human Nature -- The Great Evolution -- Human Nature, 'Second Nature' and the Rest of Nature -- The Society of Individuals, Survival Units and the Interiorization of the Self: Elias, Lévy-Bruhl and Ong.

In this presentation, I will address the possibility of an imminent mass extinction of all living beings from planet Earth, and the implications of such a catastrophic event for games studies. The Anthropocene, a term popularized by the end of the 20th century to refer to the geological impact of human beings on planet Earth, assumes a temporal development, a 'before' and 'after' the appearance of humankind. The 'after' period, known as the Post-Anthropocene, is repeatedly claimed by scientists to be approaching within the next few decades, as over-consumption is destroying vital resources of the planet. Allegedly, the sixth mass extinction in the history of our planet is already unfolding, and might determine the disappearance of life from Earth and, as far as we know, from the Universe and beyond (Zylinska 2014; Wark 2015; Haraway 2016; Thacker 2010). Video games have been responding to the arrival of the Post-Anthropocene. In recent years, an increasing number of games appear to capture the fascination and creepiness of a world with no humans. This impending future is not just imagined in fictional settings (e.g. The Legenda of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Nintendo, 2000; Horizon: Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games, 2017), but within game design. In the last decade an increasing number of video games requiring limited human intervention has been released. Idle games such as Cookie Clicker (Julien Thiennot, 2013) and AdVenture Capitalist (Hyper Hippo Productions, 2014) require an initial input from the player to start, and then keep playing themselves in the background operations of a laptop or smartphone. Virtual environments can be entirely designed by algorithms, as experimented by Hello Games for No Man's Sky (2016). Artificial Intelligence is also used to play games. Screeps, a massive-multiplayer online game, requires players to program an AI that will play the game in their place, and which will 'live within the game even while you are offline' (Screeps Team, 2014). Ghost cars in racing games replace the human actor with a representation of their performance. The same concept is further explored by the Drivatar of the Forza Motorsport series (Microsoft Studios, 2005-2017), which simulates the driving style of the player and competes online against other AI-controlled cars (Bittanti 2015). These are only some of the example that suggest that human beings are becoming peripheral in the act of playing games. The video installation Emissaries, at MoMA PS1, by Ian Cheng (2017), and Twitch streaming of computer-controlled avatars in Grand Theft Auto by Ben Watanabe (San Andreas Deer Cam, 2016; San Andreas Community Cam, 2017) are further investigations in how games could play themselves even after the disappearance of human beings. Drawing on Sonia Fizek's analysis of the concept of interpassivity in digital games (via the work of Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Zizek), and on studies on gamification and self-tracking, I argue that Non-Human Gaming is not necessarily an exception to oppose to 'standard' video games, or a (con)temporary trend (Fizek 2018; Ruffino 2016). The non-human has always been haunting the medium, and studies on interactivity, agency, and player's skills and competences have been providing, so far, a comforting perspective that places the human at the center, or at an equal hierarchical importance than the machine (Giddings 2005; Björk and Juul 2012). Alexander Galloway imagined how machines could take the lead in the process of enacting a video game, creating 'ambience acts' where the game plays itself with no need for the human being to be present (Galloway 2006). Galloway was concerned with the allegories that computer games provide, and the ways in which games mimic the social reality in which we live in. Since 2006, fears of economic, political, social, and geological crises at global level have been prominent. Non-Human gaming can be interpreted as a response to those fears, and put in relation to the rise of self-driving cars, algorithmic trade exchange, and remote warfare, which similarly operate by replacing human beings. In fact, Non-Human Gaming is an adequate response to the disappearance of life from Earth – as it has been imagined, feared, and prophesized by scientists in recent years, and even more insistently since the time of Galloway's contribution. In this talk I will attempt to map the broad category of Non-Human gaming. Roger Caillois, in his early work on mimicry and mythology, was already describing how living beings develop forms of dispersal and waste of energy that cannot be explained through a rationalistic view on evolution and preservation, and which bring the organism closer to its own disappearance and assimilation in the surrounding environment, but are nonetheless defining characteristics of life (Caillois 1934; 1935). My concern is to highlight the weirdness and creepiness, the irony and spoofs, the paradoxes and contradictions of video games made by no one and/or for no one. As Haraway's vision of the cyborg did with cybernetics, Non-Human gaming confuses and complicates the ontologies of digital texts, and could be used to shed light on the situatedness, temporality, and partiality of our knowledge, of both humans and games (Haraway 1991; Kember 2018). Life might be disappearing from Earth at some point, but we are not there yet. We are in-between birth and death, the beginning and the end, and we have always been. Non-Human gaming helps us articulating this space and time in-between, and has the potential to re-route gaming (and game studies) from false myths of agency, interactivity, and instrumentalism (the 'games for' health, education, self-improvement, and so on). Non-human games are companions for earthly survival. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bittanti, M. (2015) Orizzonti di Forza: Fenomenologia della Guida Videoludica, Edizioni Unicopli Björk, S. and Juul, J. (2012) 'Zero-Player Games, or: What We Talk About When We Talk About Players', presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Madrid 2012 Caillois, R. (1934) [2014] 'The Praying Mantis: from Biology to Psychoanalysis', in The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader, Durkham: Duke University Press Caillois, R. (1935) [1984] 'Mimicry and Legendary Psychastenia', in October (31), Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press Fizek, S. (2018) 'Interpassivity and the Joy of Delegated Play'. ToDiGRA Journal (to be published). Galloway, A. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Giddings, S. (2005) Playing with non-humans: digital games as technocultural form. In: Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views - Worlds in Play, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 16-20 June 2005. Haraway, D. J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press Kember, S. (2017) 'After the Anthropocene: the photographic for earthly survival?' in Digital Creativity, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 348-353 Ruffino, P. (2016) 'Games to Live With: Speculations Regarding NikeFuel' in Digital Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 153-`159 Thacker, E. (2010) After Life, London and Chicago: Chicago University Press Wark, M. (2015) Molecular Red. Theory for the Anthropocence. London: Verso. Zylinska, J. (2014) Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Michigan (MA): Open Humanities Press

Cover -- Halftitle page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Contributors -- Foreword Memories of Greybeard Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- PRELUDE I Frogs Simon Rich -- Beginning with Dignity Melanie Challenger -- References -- PART ONE Defining the Concept: What is Dignity? -- Summary -- PRELUDE II 33,000 Birds Jonathan Safran Foer -- Chapter 1 A Place for Animals? Rethinking the History of Human Dignity Remy Debes -- From the present to the past -- Four origin stories of dignity -- The imago Dei platitude -- Human dignity as human distinctiveness: Finding a place for all animals -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2 Philosophical Approaches to Dignity, and their Applicability to Non-Human Animals Suzy Killmister -- The Kantian approach -- Capabilities approaches -- Dignity as conferred -- Notes -- References -- PART TWO Approaches to Dignity: What are the Grounds for Animal Dignity? -- Summary -- Reference -- PRELUDE III Ways of Seeing an Octopus Sy Montgomery -- References -- Chapter 3 On Standing Harriet Ritvo -- References -- Chapter 4 Wild Dignity Lori Gruen -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5 Dignity in Dogs Alexandra Horowitz -- Note -- References -- Chapter 6 The Heart of the Scorpion Kathleen Dean Moore -- Chapter 7 'An Old Joy': Ways of Attending to Dignity Deborah Slicer -- Horses: Lu and Noah -- Bears -- Wasps -- Note -- References -- Chapter 8 Dignity in Their World Danielle Celermajer -- Introduction: Is dignity worth it? -- Grief -- The dignity of pigs -- References -- PART THREE Forms of Dignity: Are There Separate Cultural Conceptions of Animal Dignity? -- Summary -- PRELUDE IV Lead Me into Thy Nest Nelson Bukamba -- References -- Chapter 9 Killing Dogs in Zambia: Prospects for Ubuntu Julius Kapembwa -- Notes -- References.

The article shows the retrospective of such modern philosophical movement as posthumanism, one of the basic ideas of which is the "posthuman". The posthu­man in posthumanism is understood not as a being who has overcome his biol­ogy (as in transhumanism), but as a point of assembly of mythical, chimerical, technological, social, biological; as a further deconstruction of humanistic "vitru­vian man". This aspect reveals the exceptional features of the new anthropology of posthumanism, which makes it possible to show the difference between tran­shumanism and posthumanism. The evolution of humanism, through anti-hu­manism and transhumanism (which is understood as "hyperhumanism") leads to posthumanism. Its main features, according to R. Braidotti and Fr. Ferrando, are post-anthropocentrism, post-dualism and post-humanism. The article analyses each of these concepts, which allows us to delve deeper into the contexts of con­temporary philosophical anthropology. The analysis of the posthuman turn to­wards non-human agents and, as a consequence, the general trend of tendency of contemporary philosophy to the de-anthropologization is being carried out. The genealogy of this phenomenon includes fatigue from the hierarchy of hu­manism ideals, which, as M. Foucault showed back in the middle of the twenti­eth century, were conditioned by historical prerequisites of cultural development. Inheriting ideas of postmodern philosophy, gender theory, post-colonial studies, animal studies, unable studies, actor-network theory, and even quantum physics, posthumanism opens up a space for being in terms of subjectivity for all others previously oppressed in the era of humanism (animals, women, and all those whom Aristotle, as opposed to bios, referred to zoe). To illustrate this thesis, the article introduces a new term "post(non)human", which reveals the concept of posthumanist discourse. The use of this term allows us to express more compre­hensively the results and consequences of the posthumanist turn in the philo­sophical anthropology of the twenty-first century.

In the given article the author broadens humanistic dimension of world politics and civilizational dialogue. The comprehension of the unity of ecosystem of our planet, international cooperation in protection of nature must overcome corrupted logic of political realism, global capitalism and utilitarianism and become the corner stone of civilizational dialogue in the modern post-crisis world.