Books by Reno Lauro
Kent State University Press, 2024
Darkly Bright Press, 2024
Published Writings by Reno Lauro
A Critical Companion to Terrence Malick, 2020
This article seeks to illuminate ways in which interality studies provides unique philosophical w... more This article seeks to illuminate ways in which interality studies provides unique philosophical ways to engage Artificial Intelligence research and its implications. Rather than rejecting AI methodologies wholesale as replications of classic Cartesian dualism or embracing them via rationalist philosophical models, the article forwards an interological illumination of " machines " , " learning " , and human being-in-the-world in order to make sense of the " human-like " in AI. Although the algorithmic models of machine learning are computational, the intelligibility of their outcomes—like human knowing-how—cannot always be articulated by AI researchers. Rather than a problem to be overcome, the article suggests that herein lies the trace to be followed in future interalogical work done in forging a third, synergistic, way forward in human machine relations. [Reno Lauro. AI and the Posthuman (Mental) Ecology: Interological Illuminations. China Media Research 2017; 13(4): 70-76]. 8
Online Publications by Reno Lauro
Fifteen years into the 21st century, the once definitive line between screen and world, both topo... more Fifteen years into the 21st century, the once definitive line between screen and world, both topographically and ontologically, is rapidly diffusing. Legitimate virtual realitysomething out of the set of the 1983 film Brainstorm-has arrived, blurring the line between our private imaginings and our lived experience. The advent and practical application of augmented reality now means that the threshold of the cyber and physical worlds has been permanently breached. The aesthetics of drone warfare has quickly become part of our everyday visual vernacular, expanding the scope of total war in the West to now rob us of an experience once reserved for the lucid flying dream. The ubiquity of the phone camera now means that we are quickly beginning to both remember the past and experience the present as movies and pictures. Welcome to the age of the screen.
The recently released, 2011 Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life is nothing short of an ambitious c... more The recently released, 2011 Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life is nothing short of an ambitious cosmic epic and a hymn to life in which we recall the life of a small town family, from innocence to lostness, through the fractured memories of suffering and the life of the universe. The film stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, and is Malick's second collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Y Tu Mamá También, Ali, The New World, Children of Men).
Book Reviews by Reno Lauro
In the final pages of Cinema 2: The Time-Image, published in 1985, Gilles Deleuze concludes by sa... more In the final pages of Cinema 2: The Time-Image, published in 1985, Gilles Deleuze concludes by saying, "The [philosophical] theory of cinema does not bear on the cinema, but on the concepts of the cinema, which are no less practical, effective or existent than cinema itself. [...] Cinema's concepts are not given in cinema. And yet they are cinema's concepts, not [philosophical] theories about cinema. So that there is always a time, midday-midnight, when we must no longer ask ourselves, 'What is cinema?' but 'What is philosophy?' (1) After 700 pages of sui generis analysis on the history and nature of cinema, and what cinema says about bodies and world, Deleuze unexpectedly alights at precisely the point at which his final work What is Philosophy? (written with Félix Guattari in 1991) picks up. How is it that questioning the nature of cinema necessarily leads to questioning the nature of philosophy?
New Review of FIlm and Television Studies, Jul 25, 2015
Religious Studies Review, 2009
Religious Studies Review, 2006
by Reno Lauro Problems in Theology volume one is a skillfully crafted meditation on the topic of ... more by Reno Lauro Problems in Theology volume one is a skillfully crafted meditation on the topic of creation. A collection of essay excerpts (there isn't a complete essay in the volume), Problems is a primer designed to foster creative dialogue for entry--level divinity students. The particular strength of this volume is the trajectory dictated by the editing choices of Astley, Brown, and Loades. It is a bold and refreshing statement to begin the first ten pages of a theology text with scripture. Grounded firmly in the narrative metaphors of the "unique relationship between creature and Creator," Problems is concerned with guiding theological discourse beyond "just a bringing--into--being" and into the imaginative landscape of "a care--full preserving of the universe in being." In order to accomplish this movement, Problems explores the liminal possibilities in the theology of creation (chapter 2 discusses Process Theology and chapter 3 is entitled "God or Gaia? The environmental challenge") and at times reads more like a primer on the Doctrine of God rather than Creation.
Religious Studies Review, 2006
Religious Studies Review, 2009
sophical questions of evidence, the individuation of persons, and idolatry. Throughout these anal... more sophical questions of evidence, the individuation of persons, and idolatry. Throughout these analyses there is also a tenor of cultural critique as Steinbock criticises the modern conception of the self and diagnoses the rejection of vertical relations, which he calls idolatry, as the root of much evil in late capitalist societies. So while the book displays academic rigor it is at the same time a plea for a restored cultural sense of the vertical. Phenomenology and Mysticism stands out as an original work in a genre too often reduced to commentaries on classical figures. Steinbock is an acute phenomenologist in his own right, and this work sets a new standard for the interaction between phenomenology and theology/religious studies. While free of obscurantist jargon, the book nonetheless requires some background in philosophy and religious studies. Still, its fresh approach and its original analyses should make it the necessary point of reference for postgraduate students and established scholars alike. Press, 2007. Pp. vii +146. $26.99. In this text, which appears in SCM Press's Controversies in Contextual Theology Series, the authors insist that controversy demonstrates the inherently democratic nature of feminist theology and continually pushes it toward new ways of transgressing and transforming oppressive structures. Each chapter examines various feminist positions with regard to a particular methodological or doctrinal issue: gender and sexuality, feminist theological hermeneutics, the Virgin Mary, Christology, life after death, and the future of feminist theologies. While providing an overview of significant feminist theological positions, the authors emphasize approaches, like postcolonial and queer theologies, that more radically challenge the sexual, metaphysical, and capitalist assumptions of Western theology. Both authors have written extensively elsewhere on the need for Christian theology to take seriously transgressive sexualities, and this is the freshest insight that they bring to the discussions in this text (see especially the chapters on gender and sexuality and on Christology). It remains unclear, however, what audience is best served by this text. There is little new here for the reader who is well acquainted with feminist theologies, yet the discussions of various thinkers assume this acquaintance, and are too brief to serve well as introductory summaries. Moreover, the text would have embodied its argument more fully, and demonstrated the stated aims of the series more successfully, if the authors' voices were more distinct, thus performing the dialogically constructive nature of controversy.
Uploads
Books by Reno Lauro
Published Writings by Reno Lauro
Online Publications by Reno Lauro
Book Reviews by Reno Lauro