Suchergebnisse

An examination of science fiction narratives and the light they shed on human life, the unknowable future, and the vagaries of unforeseeable change. With this book, Steven Shaviro offers a thought experiment. He discusses a number of science fiction narratives: three novels, one novella, three short stories, and one musical concept album. Shaviro not only analyzes these works in detail but also uses them to ask questions about human, and more generally, biological life: about its stubborn insistence and yet fragility; about the possibilities and perils of seeking to control it; about the aesthetic and social dimensions of human existence, in relation to the nonhuman; and about the ethical value of human life under conditions of extreme oppression and devastation. Shaviro pursues these questions through the medium of science fiction because this form of storytelling offers us a unique way of grappling with issues that deeply and unavoidably concern us but that are intractable to rational argumentation or to empirical verification. The future is unavoidably vague and multifarious; it stubbornly resists our efforts to know it in advance, let alone to guide it or circumscribe it. But science fiction takes up this very vagueness and indeterminacy and renders it into the form of a self-consciously fictional narrative. It gives us characters who experience, and respond to, the vagaries of unforeseeable change.

"From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead's work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature and existence. Now Steven Shaviro maps this quickly emerging speculative realism, which is already dramatically influencing how we interpret reality and our place in a universe in which humans are not the measure of all things. The Universe of Things explores the common insistence of speculative realism on a noncorrelationist thought: that things or objects exist apart from how our own human minds relate to and comprehend them." "Bringing together a wide array of contemporary thought, The Universe of Things is an invaluable guide to the evolution of speculative realism and the provocation of Alfred North Whitehead's pathbreaking work."--Publisher's description

Without criteria -- Actual entities and eternal objects -- Pulses of emotion -- Interstitial life -- God, or the body without organs -- Consequences

Annotation "Connected is made up of a series of mini-essays - on cyberpunk, hip-hop, film noir, Web surfing, greed, electronic surveillance, pervasive multimedia, psychedelic drugs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and the architecture of Frank Gehry, among other things. Shaviro argues that our strange new world is increasingly being transformed in ways, and by devices, that seem to come out of the pages of science fiction, even while the world itself is becoming a futuristic landscape. The result is that science fiction provides the most useful social theory, the only form that manages to be as radical as reality itself." "Connected looks at how our networked environment has manifested itself in the work of J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, K.W. Jeter, and others. Shaviro focuses on science fiction not only as a form of cultural commentary but also as a prescient forum in which to explore the forces that are morphing our world into a sort of virtual reality game. Original and compelling, Connected shows how the continual experimentation of science fiction, like science and technology themselves, conjures the invisible social and economic forces that surround us."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Nas últimas décadas, algo aconteceu à forma como temos nos relacionado com os sons e as imagens. Houve uma mudança na mídia audiovisual. Tecnologias eletrônicas tem substituído tecnologias mecânicas. Formas analógicas de codificação, armazenamento e transmissão cederam espaço às formas digitais. Estes desenvolvimentos se correlacionam com novas formas de ver e ouvir, bem como com novas combinações entre o ver e o ouvir. Adquirimos assim novos hábitos e estabelecemos novas expectativas. Uma nova estética audiovisual emerge agora. No texto a seguir, eu busco descrever esta nova estética, ao mesmo tempo em que especulo sobre suas possíveis causas e potenciais implicações.

Résumé Nous vivons au sein de multiples formes de vies intriquées entre elles. Végétaux, animaux, humains, nous passons notre temps à devoir traduire ces formes de vies entre elles, ce qui nous oblige à inventer des équivalents pour ce qui n'a pas d'équivalent, à forcer un échange entre des incommensurables. C'est au sein de ce travail vital de traduction que doivent être envisagés les médias.

In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes us to explore a philosophical fantasy: to imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? While Heidegger asks: "Why is there something and not rather nothing?", Whitehead asks: "How is it that there is always something new?" Shaviro argues that, in a world where virtually everything - from popular music to DNA - is being sampled and recombined, Whitehead's question is arguably the most pressing. - En Sin Criterios, Steven Shaviro nos propone explorar una fantasía filosófica: imaginar un mundo en el que Alfred North Whitehead toma el lugar de Martin Heidegger. ¿Qué habría pasado si Whitehead, en vez de Heidegger, hubiese fijado la agenda del pensamiento posmoderno? Mientras que Heidegger pregunta: "¿Por qué hay algo y no más bien nada?", Whitehead pregunta: "¿Cómo es que siempre hay algo nuevo?" Shaviro argumenta que, en un mundo donde prácticamente todo –desde la música popular al ADN– está siendo sampleado y recombinado, la pregunta de Whitehead es sin duda la más urgente.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Critique of Pure Madness -- The Undamaged and the Contagious -- Saturated Immanence and Transcendence ≈ x -- Socratic Divergence -- Being-Outside -- Coalitions -- Ab-solved Freedom -- Language and Disjoining -- On the Subject of Animals -- The Transgression of the Principle of the Excluded Middle -- The Leap and the Loop -- The Unlocatable -- The Madwoman of the Out-of-Place -- Science(s), Art, Politics -- What Cries Out -- Notes -- Index