Beyond Human
From Animality to Transhumanism
Published on 10. May 2012
Book
Hardback
312 pages
978-1-4411-0742-8 (ISBN)
Description
This title explores the implications of our animal origins and posthuman futures for our understanding of our humanity and our relations with other species. "Beyond Human" investigates what it means to call ourselves human beings in relation to both our distant past and our possible futures as a species, and the questions this might raise for our relationship with the myriad species with which we share the planet. Drawing on insights from zoology, theology, cultural studies and aesthetics, an international line-up of contributors explore such topics as our origins as reflected in early cave art in the upper Palaeolithic through to our prospects at the forefront of contemporary biotechnology. In the process, the book positions 'the human' in readiness for what many have characterized as our transhuman or posthuman future. For if our status as rational animals or 'animals that think' has traditionally distinguished us as apparently superior to other species, this distinction has become increasingly problematic. It has come to be seen as based on skills and technologies that do not distinguish us so much as position us as transitional animals.
It is the direction and consequences of this transition that is the central concern of "Beyond Human".
It is the direction and consequences of this transition that is the central concern of "Beyond Human".
Reviews / Votes
This fascinating collection of essays is often challenging and always engaging.Drawing on an astonishing breadth of approaches this book offers a stimulating exploration of what it means to be both embodied human and animal in an increasingly post-human world. From the opening chapter with its provocative idea of handing animals tools for their own, much needed, revolution through to the final chapter which unsettlingly forces the reader to consider human-technological melding, this book will force to you see - and think about the world - differently. -- Nik Taylor, Senior Lecturer, Sociology, Flinders University, Australia The chapters in this incisive collection offer important challenges to anthropocentric prejudices - just as the title promises, readers are taken "beyond human." Vivid, passionate, ethically-charged critical writing embodies resistance to fixed ideas that diminish other animals. Boundaries are contested and conventions are transgressed as these writers celebrate a consciousness that displaces man as the measure of all things. This memorable and important compilation of scholarship creatively advances the agenda of human-animal studies. -- Randy Malamud, Professor and Associate Chair, Modern Literature, Ecocriticism, and Cultural Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA This is a fascinating collection of thoughtfully subversive essays, which range over art and philosophy, science and literature, evolution and ethics, the sacred and the divine. Bringing into creative contact the pressing questions of, on the one hand, animals and animality and, on the other, technology and transhumanism, they urge the reader to move beyond humanist hang-ups, beyond anthroponormative assumptions, indeed, beyond the human. -- Tom Tyler, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University, UKMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
573 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4411-0742-8 (9781441107428)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2012
1st Edition
Continuum Publishing Corporation
€39.99
Available for download
Persons
Claire Molloy is Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at University of Brighton, UK and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She has published on anthropomorphism, representations of animals in videogames and literature and dangerous dogs, media and risk. She is the author of Memento (EUP 2010) and Popular Media and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and co-editor of American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Content
Preface Sean Cubitt; Introduction Charlie Blake, Claire Molloy and Steven Shakespeare; Part I: Animality - Boundaries and Definitions; 1. Incidents toward an Animal Revolution Ron Broglio; 2. Being a Known Animal Claire Molloy; 3. Beyond the Pain Principle Giovanni Aloi; Part II: Representing Animality; 4. What We Can Do: Art Methodologies and Parities in Meeting Mark Wilson and Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir; 5. New Tricks Tom Tyler; 6. Writing Relations: the Crab, the Lobster, the Orchid, the Primrose, You, Me, Chaos and Literature Lucile Desblache; Part III: Thinking Beyond the Divide; 7. Degrees of Freedom: Humans as Primates: in Dialogue with Hans urs von Balthasar Celia Deane-Drummond; 8. Levinas, Bataille and the Theology of Animal Life Donald Turner; 9. Art in the Age of Animality: Telepathy, Constellation, Polis Frederick Young; Part IV: Animal - Human - Machine; 10. Inhuman Geometries: Aurochs & Angels and the Refuge of Art Charlie Blake; 11. The Mechanical Image of an Animal God Steven Shakespeare; 12. Transforming the Human Body Gareth Jones; Bibliography; Index.