The Posthuman Pandemic

Description

With the COVID-19 crisis forcing us to reflect in a dramatic way on the limits of the human and the implications of the Anthropocene Age, this timely volume addresses these concerns through an exploration of post-humanism as represented in philosophy, politics and aesthetics. Global pandemics bring into sharp focus the bankruptcy of the neoliberal economic paradigm, the future of the arts sector in society, and our dependence upon political forces outside our control. In response to the recent state of emergency, The Posthuman Pandemic highlights the urgent need to rethink our anthropocentrism and develop new political models, aesthetic practices and ways of living. Central to these discussions is the idea of post-humanism, a philosophy that can help us grapple with the crisis, as it takes seriously the unstable ecosystems on which we depend and the precarious nature of our long-cherished notions of agency and sovereignty. Bringing together international philosophers, political theorists and media and art theorists, all of whom engage with the posthuman, this volume explores a range of vital subjects, from the inequality revealed by COVID-19 survival rates to museums' role in spreading human-centric understandings of a world struck by human fragility. Facing up to the realities that the coronavirus outbreak has uncovered, The Posthuman Pandemic combines both breadth and depth of analysis to take on the posthuman challenges confronting us today. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Contributors Editors Contributors (in order of appearance) Introduction: The posthuman pandemic Posthumanism and philosophy Posthumanism and politics Posthumanism and art Structure of the book Philosophy Politics Art Part I: Philosophy Chapter 1: The (post)human and the (post)pandemic: Rediscovering our selves Chapter 2: ‘Life is obviously not easy to define’: Viral politics and dynamic patterning in Susanne K. Langer’s philosophies of art and life Chapter 3: Dead, alive: Deconstruction, biopolitics and life death The virus is all the rage Bios: Biopo​litic​s/bio​philo​sophy​/bioh​umani​ties/​biome​dia/b​ioart​ Biodeconstruction Survival and the originary technicity of life Anim(al)ism – Derrida, Cixous and the ‘side’ of life Part II: Politics Chapter 4: Contagious politics: Posthuman anarchism Postanarchism Deconstruction and reconstruction Voluntary (in)servitude14 Singularities Insurrection Prefigurative politics Ecological entanglement Ontological anarchy, or ‘anarchaeology’ Conclusion Chapter 5: Spectatorial splitting and transcultural seeing in the age of pandemics Stepping to the side of the picture Universal man and viral backchat Unbound and doubled vision Acknowledgements Chapter 6: Posthuman vectors and the production of a common flesh Posthuman perspective, or the theatricality of masculinist modernism Sue Coe’s realism: The inscription of dead animals onto human ‘life’ Virus dumping into the common flesh Consuming coronavirus Chapter 7: While you were at home, confined: Control and technology after the city To not resist The end of an era Societies of control, the panopticon inverted 1. The panopticon inverted – is no longer in need of the systems of confinement 2. The panopticon inverted – is no longer in need of the human (language) 3. The panopticon inverted – is no longer in need of the city The inverted panopticon still depends on capitalism, but in a different way To Rome, again Closing remarks Part III: Art Chapter 8: Is human to posthuman as Earth is to post-earth?: Notes on terraforming and (trans)forming I II III IV V VI VII Chapter 9: Quarantine in waiting: Plant clocks and the asynchronies of viral time Quarantine Interlude I: Foxgloves Snail cinema Quarantine Interlude II: Birch Trees Plant clocks Quarantine Interlude III: Douglas Firs/Blackberries/Wildfire Smoke Chapter 10: Thinking and/over/in the pandemic: From contact points towards contact zones potentially reconciling us with the ultramicroscopic sub-layers of life Introduction A viral imposition: The doorknob as a contact point with the more-than-human Pre(dis)positions: Oscillating thought figures of a pandemic A daring proposition: The virus as a work of art and an evolutionary companion Juxtapositions: The posthuman museum as a potential contact zone with the sub-layers of life Chapter 11: Viral agencies and curating worldly life differently in museum spaces Introduction Viral inhabitations and digital transformations Collecting social contagion Complicity Viral inhabitations From dis-embeddedness to sympoietic design in museums Index