On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience

by Abou Farman Narrated by Neil Shah

Overview

An ethnographic exploration of technoscientific immortality



On Not Dying is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities¿those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means¿and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless.



As secularism denies a soul, an afterlife, and a cosmic purpose, conflicts arise around the relationship of mind and body, individual finitude and the infinity of time and the cosmos, and the purpose of life. Immortalism today, Farman argues, is shaped by these historical and culturally situated tensions. Immortalist projects go beyond extending life, confronting dualism and cosmic alienation by imagining (and producing) informatic selves separate from the biological body but connected to a cosmic unfolding.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Unmissable and vital reading."—Neural

"This is no celebration of cryonic ‘immortalism’ but rather a fascinating appraisal of certain existential binds into which we secularists have gotten ourselves and of immortalists’ exploitation of those binds to advance a techno‐utopian vision of a very particular posthuman future."—American Anthropologist

"On Not Dying is a wonderfully crafted ethnography which will appeal to a wide array of audiences including, but not restricted to, those interested in STS, anthropology and the history of science."—Somatosphere 

"The absence of characterological complexity opens a space for both an intensive history of secularist perspectives on mortality, and a cornucopia of philosophical provocations on humanism, temporality, cosmos, and more."—Medical Anthropology Quarterly 

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176178241
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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