Papers
Oxford Literary Review
This article explores the relationship between textuality and materiality through a reading of th... more This article explores the relationship between textuality and materiality through a reading of the work of Derrida alongside that of the experimental poet Christian Bök. Bök’s poetry exemplifies how a playful manipulation of the materiality of a text can differentially enact what might be thought of as a textuality of matter, and, in doing so, it enacts an eco-deconstructive reading of itself that draws attention to the wider eco-deconstructive nature of language. In its self-reflexive absorption with the materiality of its own form, this poetry fixes its gaze inwards, revelling in the difficulty of its linguistic structures and the proliferation and frustration of meaning that they make possible. But it is precisely at the points of these inward turns that this poetry also reveals itself to be most intimately connected with other material realities. It is at the moments in which language appears most singularly itself—where the differentiality of its structures appears most particu...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The notion of the Anthropocene is founded on the premise that traces of human activity on the ear... more The notion of the Anthropocene is founded on the premise that traces of human activity on the earth will remain legible in the geological strata for millions of years to come, showing evidence of an anthropogenic ‘signature’ inscribed in the rock by the human species. Spectrality and Survivance shows how embedded in this understanding of the Anthropocene is a speculative and specular gesture that transforms the notion of the future into an anthropocentric reflection of the present, prohibiting any true engagement with the possibility of a non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocenic world. In this volume, Marija Grech develops an alternative conceptual paradigm from which to think the Anthropocene beyond any limited notion of human language, human systems of meaning, or even a human world. Grech considers how the geological trace of the Anthropocene might be said to ‘survive’ outside of the possibility of any human readership, and how the very survival of the human in and beyond the Anthropocene might necessitate such thought.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Modern Literature, 2021
Journal article for JML 44.3 (free to download)
<https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.3.10>
... more Journal article for JML 44.3 (free to download)
<https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.3.10>
The work of the experimental writer Christine Brooke-Rose is often described as constituting a joyous celebration of language that opens up the space for new structures of meaning, new subjectivities, and new futures. But in their unrelenting playfulness and their obsessive revision and restyling of language, novels such as Amalgamemnon and Textermination also betray a certain vulnerability. Hidden within their rhetoric is an awareness of a fragility that lies at the heart of language, literature, and life. What appears as a joyous excess both conceals and enacts what Derrida describes as the “radical precariousness” of literature—a literature that “survives” through the simultaneous rehearsal and denial of its own end.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
CounterText:, 2019
Review article of Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor (eds), Anthropocene Reading: Literary Histor... more Review article of Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor (eds), Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times, for CounterText 5.2 (2019): 253–268
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
New Formations, 2018
Journal article for New Formations 95: 'Spaces and Stories' (2018)
The imagining of a post-anth... more Journal article for New Formations 95: 'Spaces and Stories' (2018)
The imagining of a post-anthropocene future can be dizzying: it requires that we think of the present as an already-past and project ourselves into a world in which the human and the possibility of human thought might no longer exist. Such a future might be beyond the bounds of human perception, but it is nevertheless that which we must attempt to think: it is only by imagining a world without the human that we might be able to create a world that is no longer shaped by the human. This article examines the (im)possibility and necessity of imagining a nonhuman world through a reading of Stephen Baxter’s science fiction novel Evolution (2002). It explores the possible value of anthropomorphism in confronting the limits of human imagination and argues that despite the narrowness of its vision, the spectrality of anthropomorphic thought can offer a glimpse into that which lies beyond the human.
https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/new-formations/95/where-%E2%80%98nothing-ever-was%27
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Word and Text , 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This thesis invites a re-examination of our understanding of the human and its relationship with ... more This thesis invites a re-examination of our understanding of the human and its relationship with the external world. To this end, it develops the paradigm of appendicology as a way of going beyond traditional conceptions of the human, nature and technology. Appendicology is a study of appendages and appendixes – bodily organs and parts that seem to be merely attached to the body proper and that appear peripheral, external or non-essential to the human form despite being internal or integral to it. At once internal and external, natural and alien to the body, the appendage and the appendix defy any absolute boundary between the inside and the outside, revealing the integral exteriority and natural foreignness of the human. This thesis engages with the contradictions and ambiguities posed by these organs of corporeal otherness to argue that the relationship between the human, technics and the natural world is one of becoming in which the human and the nonhuman, the natural and the art...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Word and Text, 2013
Journal article for Word and Text 3:2 (2013)
Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel Robopocalypse revolve... more Journal article for Word and Text 3:2 (2013)
Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel Robopocalypse revolves around the trope of the robot uprising and depicts a world in which human beings must fight growing armies of ever-evolving machines in order to survive. The human-robot battles described in this text engage with traditional definitions of technology as a prosthetic tool or supplement of the human and present the possibility of overturning the hierarchical relationship between man and machine. This article outlines how through the use of the motifs of prosthesis and the appendage, Wilson’s text explores such traditional interpretations of technics and offers a different understanding of man’s relationship with technology based on the notions of originary technicity or a cyborgian becoming that is inherent to the human.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2013.html
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal article for Word and Text 1:2 (2011)
This essay explores the experimental nature of Chri... more Journal article for Word and Text 1:2 (2011)
This essay explores the experimental nature of Christine Brooke-Rose's narrative Thru and its attempts to break down the conventions of the genre of the novel. Reflecting on the singularity of this text that refuses to obey the laws of its genre but at the same time insists on forming part of it, the article discusses how this text should be approached and how it may be read. Through a close reading of the first few pages of Thru it links the question of genre with that of gender, and demonstrates how Brooke-Rose's text exposes and deconstructs the gender hierarchy through its play with language, narrative structures and print conventions. This play creates a multiplicity of meaning that resists any attempt to reduce the novel to one single authoritative reading. Instead, it constantly supplements the many readings it makes possible, always allowing for an 'other' meaning, another interpretation.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2011.html
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference organisation and CFPs
What exactly is ‘the posthuman’? What are the nonhuman and the inhuman? What, for that matter is ... more What exactly is ‘the posthuman’? What are the nonhuman and the inhuman? What, for that matter is the human? How have these ideas been conceptualised, historicised, framed and reframed in philosophy, literature, critical thought, the sciences and the arts? How can they be critiqued and rethought?
These are some of the questions addressed in the Genealogy of the Posthuman, a growing peer-reviewed, online and multi-authored resource that traces the prefigurations, currency and evolving potential of contemporary thought on the posthuman.
We invite contributions by academics, researchers and doctoral students from all disciplines that explore posthumanist questions, issues, tensions in the work of a given author or thinker, or in a particular theme or motif. The Genealogy features entries informed by the re-examination and critique of posthumanism’s acknowledged, unsuspected and evolving dimensions.
Entries should be informative and should seek to make a critical intervention in the field. Submissions may consist of a standalone entry or one that is linked to and engages with existing contributions. Prospective contributors are invited to browse the entries already published on the site (http://criticalposthumanism.net/genealogy/) to familiarise themselves with the Genealogy’s form and rationale and to identify potential areas of interest.
Submissions should be around 1000 words in length and should include up to 8 keywords. Images and video clips may also be included with submissions. Contributors are requested to follow the MHRA style sheet (www.mhra.org.uk/index.php/series/MSG) and all references should appear as footnotes. Articles are to be submitted as a Word document, in the form of an email attachment. All entries are peer-reviewed and authors can expect attentive and helpful feedback.
For more information about Critical Posthumanism and the Genealogy project go to http://criticalposthumanism.net/about/. Email info@criticalposthumanism.net for further details or enquires.
Submissions are to be sent to submissions@criticalposthumanism.net.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Call for participation
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Edited books and journals
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022
Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the cha... more Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an ongoing historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism's impact across disciplines and areas of study.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews
Share, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
<https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.3.10>
The work of the experimental writer Christine Brooke-Rose is often described as constituting a joyous celebration of language that opens up the space for new structures of meaning, new subjectivities, and new futures. But in their unrelenting playfulness and their obsessive revision and restyling of language, novels such as Amalgamemnon and Textermination also betray a certain vulnerability. Hidden within their rhetoric is an awareness of a fragility that lies at the heart of language, literature, and life. What appears as a joyous excess both conceals and enacts what Derrida describes as the “radical precariousness” of literature—a literature that “survives” through the simultaneous rehearsal and denial of its own end.
The imagining of a post-anthropocene future can be dizzying: it requires that we think of the present as an already-past and project ourselves into a world in which the human and the possibility of human thought might no longer exist. Such a future might be beyond the bounds of human perception, but it is nevertheless that which we must attempt to think: it is only by imagining a world without the human that we might be able to create a world that is no longer shaped by the human. This article examines the (im)possibility and necessity of imagining a nonhuman world through a reading of Stephen Baxter’s science fiction novel Evolution (2002). It explores the possible value of anthropomorphism in confronting the limits of human imagination and argues that despite the narrowness of its vision, the spectrality of anthropomorphic thought can offer a glimpse into that which lies beyond the human.
https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/new-formations/95/where-%E2%80%98nothing-ever-was%27
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_1_2016.html
Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel Robopocalypse revolves around the trope of the robot uprising and depicts a world in which human beings must fight growing armies of ever-evolving machines in order to survive. The human-robot battles described in this text engage with traditional definitions of technology as a prosthetic tool or supplement of the human and present the possibility of overturning the hierarchical relationship between man and machine. This article outlines how through the use of the motifs of prosthesis and the appendage, Wilson’s text explores such traditional interpretations of technics and offers a different understanding of man’s relationship with technology based on the notions of originary technicity or a cyborgian becoming that is inherent to the human.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2013.html
This essay explores the experimental nature of Christine Brooke-Rose's narrative Thru and its attempts to break down the conventions of the genre of the novel. Reflecting on the singularity of this text that refuses to obey the laws of its genre but at the same time insists on forming part of it, the article discusses how this text should be approached and how it may be read. Through a close reading of the first few pages of Thru it links the question of genre with that of gender, and demonstrates how Brooke-Rose's text exposes and deconstructs the gender hierarchy through its play with language, narrative structures and print conventions. This play creates a multiplicity of meaning that resists any attempt to reduce the novel to one single authoritative reading. Instead, it constantly supplements the many readings it makes possible, always allowing for an 'other' meaning, another interpretation.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2011.html
These are some of the questions addressed in the Genealogy of the Posthuman, a growing peer-reviewed, online and multi-authored resource that traces the prefigurations, currency and evolving potential of contemporary thought on the posthuman.
We invite contributions by academics, researchers and doctoral students from all disciplines that explore posthumanist questions, issues, tensions in the work of a given author or thinker, or in a particular theme or motif. The Genealogy features entries informed by the re-examination and critique of posthumanism’s acknowledged, unsuspected and evolving dimensions.
Entries should be informative and should seek to make a critical intervention in the field. Submissions may consist of a standalone entry or one that is linked to and engages with existing contributions. Prospective contributors are invited to browse the entries already published on the site (http://criticalposthumanism.net/genealogy/) to familiarise themselves with the Genealogy’s form and rationale and to identify potential areas of interest.
Submissions should be around 1000 words in length and should include up to 8 keywords. Images and video clips may also be included with submissions. Contributors are requested to follow the MHRA style sheet (www.mhra.org.uk/index.php/series/MSG) and all references should appear as footnotes. Articles are to be submitted as a Word document, in the form of an email attachment. All entries are peer-reviewed and authors can expect attentive and helpful feedback.
For more information about Critical Posthumanism and the Genealogy project go to http://criticalposthumanism.net/about/. Email info@criticalposthumanism.net for further details or enquires.
Submissions are to be sent to submissions@criticalposthumanism.net.
<https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.44.3.10>
The work of the experimental writer Christine Brooke-Rose is often described as constituting a joyous celebration of language that opens up the space for new structures of meaning, new subjectivities, and new futures. But in their unrelenting playfulness and their obsessive revision and restyling of language, novels such as Amalgamemnon and Textermination also betray a certain vulnerability. Hidden within their rhetoric is an awareness of a fragility that lies at the heart of language, literature, and life. What appears as a joyous excess both conceals and enacts what Derrida describes as the “radical precariousness” of literature—a literature that “survives” through the simultaneous rehearsal and denial of its own end.
The imagining of a post-anthropocene future can be dizzying: it requires that we think of the present as an already-past and project ourselves into a world in which the human and the possibility of human thought might no longer exist. Such a future might be beyond the bounds of human perception, but it is nevertheless that which we must attempt to think: it is only by imagining a world without the human that we might be able to create a world that is no longer shaped by the human. This article examines the (im)possibility and necessity of imagining a nonhuman world through a reading of Stephen Baxter’s science fiction novel Evolution (2002). It explores the possible value of anthropomorphism in confronting the limits of human imagination and argues that despite the narrowness of its vision, the spectrality of anthropomorphic thought can offer a glimpse into that which lies beyond the human.
https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/new-formations/95/where-%E2%80%98nothing-ever-was%27
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_1_2016.html
Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel Robopocalypse revolves around the trope of the robot uprising and depicts a world in which human beings must fight growing armies of ever-evolving machines in order to survive. The human-robot battles described in this text engage with traditional definitions of technology as a prosthetic tool or supplement of the human and present the possibility of overturning the hierarchical relationship between man and machine. This article outlines how through the use of the motifs of prosthesis and the appendage, Wilson’s text explores such traditional interpretations of technics and offers a different understanding of man’s relationship with technology based on the notions of originary technicity or a cyborgian becoming that is inherent to the human.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2013.html
This essay explores the experimental nature of Christine Brooke-Rose's narrative Thru and its attempts to break down the conventions of the genre of the novel. Reflecting on the singularity of this text that refuses to obey the laws of its genre but at the same time insists on forming part of it, the article discusses how this text should be approached and how it may be read. Through a close reading of the first few pages of Thru it links the question of genre with that of gender, and demonstrates how Brooke-Rose's text exposes and deconstructs the gender hierarchy through its play with language, narrative structures and print conventions. This play creates a multiplicity of meaning that resists any attempt to reduce the novel to one single authoritative reading. Instead, it constantly supplements the many readings it makes possible, always allowing for an 'other' meaning, another interpretation.
http://jlsl.upg-ploiesti.ro/No_2_2011.html
These are some of the questions addressed in the Genealogy of the Posthuman, a growing peer-reviewed, online and multi-authored resource that traces the prefigurations, currency and evolving potential of contemporary thought on the posthuman.
We invite contributions by academics, researchers and doctoral students from all disciplines that explore posthumanist questions, issues, tensions in the work of a given author or thinker, or in a particular theme or motif. The Genealogy features entries informed by the re-examination and critique of posthumanism’s acknowledged, unsuspected and evolving dimensions.
Entries should be informative and should seek to make a critical intervention in the field. Submissions may consist of a standalone entry or one that is linked to and engages with existing contributions. Prospective contributors are invited to browse the entries already published on the site (http://criticalposthumanism.net/genealogy/) to familiarise themselves with the Genealogy’s form and rationale and to identify potential areas of interest.
Submissions should be around 1000 words in length and should include up to 8 keywords. Images and video clips may also be included with submissions. Contributors are requested to follow the MHRA style sheet (www.mhra.org.uk/index.php/series/MSG) and all references should appear as footnotes. Articles are to be submitted as a Word document, in the form of an email attachment. All entries are peer-reviewed and authors can expect attentive and helpful feedback.
For more information about Critical Posthumanism and the Genealogy project go to http://criticalposthumanism.net/about/. Email info@criticalposthumanism.net for further details or enquires.
Submissions are to be sent to submissions@criticalposthumanism.net.