Tag: Philosophy

Patricia Ticineto Clough: Why the cyborg can no longer be a figure of either politics or ontology.

July 19, 2018

BY PATRICIA TICINETO CLOUGHProfessor of sociology and women’s studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York Following the publication of The User Unconscious, I had the occasion to revisit Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and found myself challenged to articulate the relevant differences between what is proposed in The User Unconscious … More Patricia Ticineto Clough: Why the cyborg can no longer be a figure of either politics or ontology.

Children are collateral damage in Trump’s border war.

June 19, 2018

BY KELLY OLIVERVanderbilt University Most of us in the US remember the horror of seeing pictures of the tiny body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi laying face down on a Turkish beach. Or the small, ash-covered face of Omran Daqneesh as he was placed in an ambulance in Aleppo. Alan and Omran became tragic “poster children” … More Children are collateral damage in Trump’s border war.

From Amazon’s Dash Button to Google Glass: Is there no limit to the capabilities of today’s radical neurotechnologies?

June 6, 2018

“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.” —Aldous Huxley, Brave New World *** BY MICHAEL HAWORTH In 2016 Amazon introduced a new range of products called Dash Buttons. These are pocket-sized internet-enabled interfaces consisting simply of one button mapped to … More From Amazon’s Dash Button to Google Glass: Is there no limit to the capabilities of today’s radical neurotechnologies?

Sergei Eisenstein and the Ecstasies of the Book.

March 1, 2018

BY LUKA ARSENJUKUniversity of Maryland, College Park “It certainly seems that all art forms in their extreme manifestations, i.e. where they attempt to expand the limits of their potential and their material, invariably end up by trying to appropriate the rudiments of the art of the future: the art of cinema.” In Sergei Eisenstein’s conception, … More Sergei Eisenstein and the Ecstasies of the Book.

Foucault in the Contemporary Archive

December 19, 2017

CATHERINE M. SOUSSLOFFProfessor of art history, visual art, and theory at the University of British Columbia Last spring, I was in Paris as a Visiting Researcher at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, with a beautiful office just steps from the “old” Bibliotèque Nationale de France (BnF), newly renovated and now containing virtually the entire … More Foucault in the Contemporary Archive

On Being and algorithmic clouds.

October 16, 2017

BY MARK JARZOMBEKMassachusetts Institute of Technology BEFORE BUDDHA INVENTED RENUNCIATION; before Christians invented martyrdom; before Mohammed invented the jihad, before the Hebrews invented monotheism, before Plato invented the dreaded cave in which we supposedly live, blind to the presence of all that is Good, people talked to each other in freer ways. They talked to … More On Being and algorithmic clouds.

What’s the deal with Elon Musk? A transhumanist’s perspective.

September 14, 2017

BY ANDREW PILSCHAssistant professor of English, Texas A&M UniversityIn my timeline on Twitter, I get a lot of updates about Elon Musk. Maybe you do too, especially if you follow as many data scientists, technologist, and futurists as I do. Seemingly every week, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, Solar City, and Tesla is making headlines … More What’s the deal with Elon Musk? A transhumanist’s perspective.

Our New Sovereign

August 23, 2017

BY GREGG LAMBERTSyracuse University In the light of the recent violence and sovereign personages, I have been reflecting on the conclusion of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which should be read as an introduction to our century, and not as a summary judgment on the past one. As Arendt forecast, “it may even be that the … More Our New Sovereign