Playful Intelligence
Digitizing Tradition
Published on 23. October 2014
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-1-4725-6882-3 (ISBN)
Description
This is a guide, in theory and in practice, to how current technological changes have impacted our interaction with texts and with each other. Henry Sussman rereads pivotal moments in literary, philosophical and cultural modernity as anticipating the cybernetic discourse that has increasingly defined theory since the computer revolution. Cognitive science, psychoanalysis and systems theory are paralleled to current trends in literary and philosophical theory.
Chapters alternate between theory and readings of literary texts, resulting in a broad but rigorously grounded framework for the relation between literature and computer science. This book is a refreshing perspective on the analog-orientated tradition of theory in the humanities - and offers the first literary-textual genealogy of the digital.
Chapters alternate between theory and readings of literary texts, resulting in a broad but rigorously grounded framework for the relation between literature and computer science. This book is a refreshing perspective on the analog-orientated tradition of theory in the humanities - and offers the first literary-textual genealogy of the digital.
Reviews / Votes
There is, I think, nothing out there truly comparable to Playful Intelligence in terms of focus, insight, scope, cross-disciplinary applicability, theoretical urgency, and learning. -- Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, USA * American Book Review * From Kandinsky to Kafka to systems theory to psychoanalysis to digital feedback loops to Roberto Bolano to Zen... A sprawling, maddening, jet-lagged, and eminently stunning trip through the ruinous Arcades of the 21st century. * Justin Read, University at Buffalo (SUNY), USA * Sussman rises to the task with a book that is as breathtaking in its scope as it is trenchant in its insights. From cybernetics to literature to philosophy and back again, Sussman's ignition of his inexhaustible erudition with a promethean spark of creativity powers a riveting and relentless interrogation of intelligence, a notion that engulfs those of us in the academic domain so closely that it seldom occurs to ask ourselves what, exactly, it is, how its conceptualization affects us, and how we came to think of it the way we do today. * William Egginton, The Johns Hopkins University, USA * Who knew high theory could still be this much fun? Sussman's Playful Intelligence stages a mass wedding (or is it a group grope?) in which Dostoevsky, Kafka, Derrida, and Lacan pair off with the unexpected likes of Douglas Hofstadter, Anthony Wilden, Gregory Bateson, and D. W. Winnicott. His delightful critical dances are enlivened with rhetorical flights of uninhibited and erudite wordplay. Swinging cybernetics across literary landscapes, Sussman takes systems discourses on joyrides that both disrupt their scientific pretensions and refresh their relevance to the philosophical humanities. Never dull, utterly sincere, sublimely good-natured, and blithely beyond mundane academic cares, Playful Intelligence performs its theme to perfection. * Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University, USA * Playful Intelligence exemplifies the encouragement that interdisciplinary thinking can provide to critics who still believe in the salutary potential of humanistic endeavors. * Journal of Modern Literature *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
25 illus
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
787 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4725-6882-3 (9781472568823)
DOI
CBID183574
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
Person
Henry Sussman is Visiting Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, USA.
Content
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Reading Kandinsky
2. From The Brothers K. to Joseph K.: The Digitization of Literature
3. The Calculable, the Incalculable and the Rest: Kafka's Virtual Environment
4. Urban Introjections: Berlin Alexanderplatz
5. Theory on the Fly: Critical Synthesis under Conditions of Material Pirating and Borrowed Time
6. Playful Healing: The Transitions of D. W. Winnicott
7. The Figure in the Network: Douglas Hofstadter and the Ethics of Intelligence
8. The Phenomenology of Jetlag
Afterword: Healing, Systematically
Notes and References
Index
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Reading Kandinsky
2. From The Brothers K. to Joseph K.: The Digitization of Literature
3. The Calculable, the Incalculable and the Rest: Kafka's Virtual Environment
4. Urban Introjections: Berlin Alexanderplatz
5. Theory on the Fly: Critical Synthesis under Conditions of Material Pirating and Borrowed Time
6. Playful Healing: The Transitions of D. W. Winnicott
7. The Figure in the Network: Douglas Hofstadter and the Ethics of Intelligence
8. The Phenomenology of Jetlag
Afterword: Healing, Systematically
Notes and References
Index