On Spiders, Cyborgs, and Being Scared

On Spiders, Cyborgs, and Being Scared
Author: Joanna Zylinska
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2001
Genre: Feminist theory
ISBN: 9780719058233

This book deals with the institutional framework in post-socialist, after-empire spaces. It consists of nine case studies and two contributions of a more theoretical nature. Each of these analytical narratives sheds some light on the micro-politics of organised violence. After 1990, Serbs and Croats were competing over access to the resources needed for institution building and state building. Fear in turn triggered ethnic mobilisation. An 'unprofessional' riot of Serbs in the Krajina region developed into a professional war between Serbs and Croats in Croatia, in which several thousand died and several hundred thousand people were forcefully expelled from their homes. The Herceg-Bosnian style of resistance can be surprisingly effective. It is known that most of the heroin transported along the Balkans route passes through the hands of Albanian mafia groups; that this traffic has taken off since summer 1999. The concept of Staatnation is based on the doctrine according to which each 'nation' must have its own territorial State and each State must consist of one 'nation' only. The slow decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet and the Yugoslav empires was partly triggered, partly accompanied by the quest for national sovereignty. Dagestan is notable for its ethnic diversity and, even by post-Soviet standards, its dramatic economic deprivation. The integrative potential of cooperative movements at the republican, the regional and the inter-state level for the Caucasus is analyzed. The book also offers insights into the economics of ending violence. Finally, it addresses the question of reconciliation after ethnic cleansing.

The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference

The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference
Author: Christine Battersby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134753799

Christine Battersby is a leading thinker in the field of philosophy, gender studies and visual and literary aesthetics. In this important new work, she undertakes an exploration of the nature of the sublime, one of the most important topics in contemporary debates about modernity, politics and art. Through a compelling examination of terror, transcendence and the ‘other’ in key European philosophers and writers, Battersby articulates a radical ‘female sublime’. A central feature of The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is its engagement with recent debates around ‘9/11’, race and Islam. Battersby shows how, since the eighteenth century, the pleasures of the sublime have been described in terms of the transcendence of terror. Linked to the ‘feminine’, the sublime was closed off to flesh-and-blood women, to ‘Orientals’ and to other supposedly ‘inferior’ human types. Engaging with Kant, Burke, the German Romantics, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray and Arendt, as well as with women writers and artists, Battersby traces the history of these exclusions, while finding resources within the history of western culture for thinking human differences afresh The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is essential reading for students of continental philosophy, gender studies, aesthetics, literary theory, visual culture, and race and social theory.

Deleuze and Law

Deleuze and Law
Author: Rosi Braidotti
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2009-08-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230244777

Drawing upon and extending the theoretical insights of Deleuze, Foucault and Agamben, this volume considers the concept of life as it operates in law, politics and contemporary culture. It focuses on key legal cases (such as the Terri Schiavo case in the US), political events (such as the post 9/11 internment camp) and new cultural phenomena.

The Ethics of Cultural Studies

The Ethics of Cultural Studies
Author: Joanna Zylinska
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2005-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780826475237

Ethical questions feature prominently on today's cultural andpolitical agendas. The Ethics of Cultural Studies presents an ethicalmanifesto for Cultural Studies, an exploration of its current ethicaland political concerns, and of its future challenges.The book is concerned with ethics in the material world, and drawson examples as diverse as cloning and genetics, asylum andimmigration, experiments in plastic surgery and in electronic anddigital art, memories of the Holocaust, September 11th, and mediarepresentations of violence and crime.The Ethics of Cultural Studies is a groundbreaking intervention thatsets the debate on ethics in cultural study, and offers an invaluablesource of ideas for students of contemporary culture.

New Cultural Studies

New Cultural Studies
Author: Clare Birchall
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780820329598

New Cultural Studies is both an introductory reference work and an original study which explores new directions and territories for cultural studies. A new generation has begun to emerge from the shadow of the Birmingham School. It is a generation whose whole education has been shaped by theory, and who frequently turn to it as a means to think through some of the issues and current problems in contemporary culture and cultural studies. In a period when departments which were once hotbeds of "high theory" are returning to more sociological and social science oriented modes of research, and 9/11 and the war in Iraq especially have helped create a sense of "post-theoretical" political urgency which leaves little time for the "elitist," "Eurocentric," "textual" concerns of "Theory," theoretical approaches to the study of culture have, for many of this generation, never seemed so important or so vital. New Cultural Studies explores theory's past, present, and most especially future role in cultural studies. It does so by providing an authoritative and accessible guide, for students and teachers alike, to: the most innovative members of this "new generation" the thinkers and theories currently influencing new work in cultural studies: Agamben, Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida, Hardt and Negri, Kittler, Laclau, Levinas, and iek the new territories currently being mapped out across the intersections of cultural studies and cultural theory: anti-capitalism, ethics, the posthumanities, post-Marxism, and the transnational

The Ecology of Wonder in Romantic and Postmodern Literature

The Ecology of Wonder in Romantic and Postmodern Literature
Author: Louise Economides
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2016-05-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137477504

This book traces the aesthetic of wonder from the romantic period through contemporary philosophy and literature, arguing for its relevance to ecological consciousness. Most ecocritical scholarship tends to overshadow discussions of wonder with the sublime, failing to treat these two aesthetic categories as distinct. As a result, contemporary scholarship has conflated wonder and the sublime and ultimately lost the nuances that these two concepts conjure for readers and thinkers. Economides illuminates important differences between these aesthetics, particularly their negotiation of issues relevant to gender-based and environmental politics. In turn, readers can utilize the concept of wonder as an open-ended, non-violent framework in contrast to the ethos of domination that often surrounds the sublime.

Making it Personal

Making it Personal
Author: Tanya Kant
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0190905107

Targeted advertisements, tailored information feeds, and recommended content are now common and somewhat inescapable components of our everyday lives. With the help of searches, browsing history, purchases, likes, and other digital interactions, technological experiences are now routinely "personalized." Companies with access to this information often downplay the fact that users' personal data serves as a key form of monetization, and their privacy policies tend to use the terms "personalization" and "customization" to legitimize the practice of tracking and algorithmically anticipating users' daily movements. In Making it Personal, Tanya Kant sheds light on the dilemmas of algorithmic personalization, exploring such key contemporary questions as: What do users really know about the algorithms that guide their online experiences and social media presence? And if personalization practices seek to act on our behalf, then how can users constitute, retain, or relinquish their autonomy and sense of self? At the heart of the book are new interviews and focus groups with web users who-through a myriad of resistant, tactical, resigned or trusting engagements-encounter algorithmic personalization as part of their lived experience on the web. Tanya Kant proposes that for those who encounter it, algorithmic personalization creates epistemic uncertainties that can emerge as trust or anxiety, produces an ongoing struggle for autonomy between user and system, and even has the power to intervene in identity constitution. In doing so, algorithmic personalization does not just generate "filter bubbles" for individuals' worldviews, but also creates new implications for knowledge production, the deployment of cultural capital as an algorithmic tactic, and, above all, formations of identity itself.

Fashion Communication in the Digital Age

Fashion Communication in the Digital Age
Author: Nadzeya Sabatini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2023-08-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3031385411

This is an open access book. FACTUM Conference proceedings are the output of one of the few academic events of its nature happening globally, researching fashion communication from different angles and perspectives. It includes contributions from scholars studying communication and marketing, management, digital transformation, and cultural heritage, among other disciplines. This book presents papers from the third bi-annual Conference, which aims to become the major reference point in the field. These proceedings seek to promote theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary work on how various communication practices impact both the fashion industry and societal fashion-related practices and values. With these proceedings, several objectives are aimed to be achieved, namely: - to establish and consolidate an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars in the field of fashion communication; - to share methodological approaches; - to expand the dialogue between communications studies and fashion-related disciplines; - to encourage junior researchers to pursue their scientific interests in this field. Finally, the book can be used by professionals in the field of fashion communication and marketing, who are eager to access sound research in a field that is developing very fast due to its digital transformation.

Insect Media

Insect Media
Author: Jussi Parikka
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2010
Genre: Science
ISBN: 081666739X

Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization-swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence-have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology. Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an insect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects. Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture.