Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene

by S. E. Wilmer (Editor), Audrone Zukauskaite (Editor)

Overview

This edited volume 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.
The contributors, who include prominent contemporary philosophers and theorists ask a wide range of questions including: what new forms of subjection can we see with the return of the 'Anthropos'?, what can animals teach us in the Anthropocene?, can we reconstruct the perceptual world of animals and take a look into their 'subjectivity'?, what happens to inorganic matter (waste or digital objects) when no longer used by any subject and can we think about inorganic matter in terms of subjective self-awareness?
The first section, Life Beyond the Anthropocene, critically questions Anthropocene theory and outlines alternative scenarios, such as Gaia theory or post-Anthropocene forms of life on Earth and other planets, as well as new forms of subjectivity. The second part, Human and Non-Human Interactions, investigates the obscure boundary, between life and non-life, and between human and non-human animal life forms. The third part, Forms of Life and New Ontologies, concentrates on new ontologies and discusses life in terms of vitalism, new materialism, movement, form-taking activity and plasticity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399505277
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

S. E. Wilmer is Professor Emeritus of Drama at Trinity College, Dublin. He is the author of Performing Statelessness in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities (Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002); The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre (Like Press, 2006). His edited and co-edited books include Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism (Oxford UniversityPress, 2010); Deleuze and Beckett (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies (Routledge 2016).

Audronė Žukauskaitė is Chief Researcher in the Department of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. Her publications include From Biopolitics to Biophilosophy (2016, in Lithuanian) and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Philosophy: The Logic of Multiplicity (2011, in Lithuanian). She co-edited Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2023), Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, (Oxford UniversityPress, 2010), Deleuze and Beckett, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies, (Routledge, 2016).

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

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.

Duke University Elizabeth Grosz

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.

Leonardo - Jacob Thompson-Bell