Reading more than writing today, I planned to get down notes on another run
through Porter, Sullivan, et. al.’s "Institutional Critique," (re: my own little
life raft in postmodern geography) the same for Richards’ short piece on "The
Resourcefulness of Words," from Speculative Instruments (re: wandering
resourcefulness, another spatial, and I would say networked,
consideration) , and the same, yet again, for Miller’s latest (Spring
2007) RSQ essay on automation, agency, and assessment, "What Can
Automation Tell Us about Agency?"–not for the diss., this last one, but because
I need to know more about it before responding to an email marked urgent.
Only, rather than note-making, the day turned to night, and my efforts grew more
digressive when I sought out one of Miller’s references to Latour, an article I
hadn’t heard of called, "Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of
a Door-Closer" (Social Problems 35.3). Here is Latour, er, "Jim
Johnson," at his most playful. Terrific. Coincidentally, I also have an
special place in my heart for compression
door-closers.
Tag: posthumanism
Kittler, Discourse Networks
Kittler,
Friedrich. Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Trans. Michael Metteer.
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 1990.
Twinning and Human Chimerism
Earlier today I was in the office reading for 651 (Afrofuturism), and I came
across a short story by Linda Addison called "Twice, At Once, Separated."
We’re reading all 34 pieces in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction
from the African Diaspora, then discussing those 400+ pages during next
Wednesday’s class session. Addison’s piece is difficult to sum up.
It involves Xotama, the protagonist, who refuses to go along with her arranged
marriage despite cultural pressures and custom. Persuaded by anxious dreams,
Xotama senses inhibition, and it turns out that the interference is coming an
alter ego of sorts, a haunting figment of near self. Xotama pursues the
source of knowledge about the dream; she goes on a journey to visit the
all-knowing Ship, the vessel carrying her and others like her who can morph
themselves into various creatures (eels, etc.). The Ship, using a cast of
Watchers, functions as a kind of comprehensive cultural memory-machine,
aggregating all of the activities and knowledge of its inhabitants.
Hansen – New Philosophy for New Media (2004)
The foreword by Tim Lenoir, "Haptic Vision: Computation, Media, and
Embodiment in Mark Hansen’s New Phenomenology," lays out groundwork on the "deterritorialization
of the human subject" in terms of digital media, detachment and problems of
reference. Lenoir touches on Hayles’ account of post-humanism (also Bill
Joy’s "Why The Future
Doesn’t Need Us"), Shannon & Weaver’s signal-based model of information, and
Donald McKay’s alternative communication model. Overall, it’s more than a
worthwhile thumbnail of Hansen’s project in the context of other works only
semi-familiar to me: Kittler’s Gramophone, Deleuze’s Cinema 1 & 2:,
and Henri Bergson on the body as image: