This groundbreaking study of Gadda's narrative form identifies Gadda's complex 'baroque' style as not merely an aesthetic conceit, but an expression of modern alienation and of loss, grief, and the need for solitude in the face of a fragmented reality.
How do artistic experiments with artificial intelligence problematize human-centered notions of creative agency, authorship, and ownership? Offering a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary digital art practices, philosophical and technical considerations of AI, posthumanist thought, and emerging issues of intellectual property and the commons, this book is firmly positioned against the anthropomorphic spectacle of "creative AI." It proposes instead the concept of the posthumanist agential assemblage, and invites readers to consider what new types of creative practice, what reconfigurations of the author function, and what critical interventions become possible when AI art provokes tactical entanglements between aesthetics, law, and capital.
In this hyperconnected, dynamic world we live in, permeated by profound challenges and transformations, the awareness of complexity is unequivocally on the rise. This monograph argues that it is high time that our educational institutions and pedagogical approaches come to mirror this growing awareness, to assist and inspire humanity to embrace complexity, to learn to move within it with increasing sensitivity and wisdom. Doing so is necessary, for if there is one thing that the years behind us bear witness of, it is that the tendency and attempt to simplify, separate, control, and indeed exploit has – as the dark side of the advancements of modern life – brought upon us unprecedented ecological and humanitarian crises. Schools, notably, are not closed spaces separated from society but open places within society, and as such they are inevitably complicit in the (re)shaping of our shared world. This book, therefore, proposes an ambitious pedagogical agenda. Specifically, it explores the relational ontological premise of entanglement in the context of pedagogical theory, raising the question of how, as teachers, we might meaningfully and responsibly engage with the myriad ways in which students are simultaneously shaped-by and shapers-of contemporary societal challenges. In close collaboration with twelve teachers as co-researchers, the book offers six ''helpful perspectives'' for teachers seeking to embrace such complexity in their own practices, referred to as: (1) entanglement-orientedness, (2) entanglement-awareness, (3) hopeful action, (4) inquiry within entangled phenomena, (5) practicing perceptiveness, and (6) practicing integrity.
Offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory of material entanglement and entrapment, enriched with vivid examples from everyday life Entangled explores how archaeological evidence can help provide a better understanding of the direction of human social and technological change, demonstrating how the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture. Using examples drawn from both the early farming settlements of the Middle East and daily life in the modern world, Ian Hodder highlights the complex co-dependencies of humans and things—arguing that the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds are the unseen drivers of human development. Updated and expanded, Entangled offers new perspectives on the study of the relationality between things and humans. In this edition, the author reframes relationality in terms of various forms of dependence to better explore inequality, injustice, and the ways people get entrapped in detrimental social and economic situations. An entirely new chapter focuses on human dependence on other humans, such as between colonial powers and colonized people. Increased focus is placed on object-oriented ontologies and assemblages, symmetrical archaeology, and indigenous and radical approaches in archaeology that critique relationality and posthumanism. A wide range of new examples, references, and literature are presented throughout the book. Argues that dependence on things forces humans down particular evolutionary pathways and social trends Demonstrates how long-standing entanglements can be irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates archaeology, natural and biological sciences, and the social sciences Presents a critical review of key contemporary perspectives, including material culture studies, phenomenology, evolutionary theory, cognitive archaeology, human ecology, and complexity theory Entangled: A New Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, Second Edition is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, researchers, and scholars in the fields of archeology, anthropology, material culture studies, and related fields across the social sciences and humanities.
Entanglement theory posits that the interrelationship of humans and objects is a delimiting characteristic of human history and culture. This edited volume of original studies by leading archaeological theorists applies this concept to a broad range of topics, including archaeological science, heritage, and theory itself. In the theoretical explications and ten case studies, the editors and contributing authors: • build on the intersections between science, humanities and ecology to provide a more fine-grained, multi-scalar treatment emanating from the long-term perspective that characterizes archaeological research; • bring to light the subtle and unacknowledged paths that configure historical circumstances and bind human intentionality; • examine the constructions of personhood, the rigidity of path dependencies, the unpredictable connections between humans and objects and the intricate paths of past events in varied geographic and historical contexts that channel future actions. This broad focus is inclusive of early complex developments in Asia and Europe, imperial and state strategies in the Andes and Mesoamerica, continuities of postcolonialism in North America, and the unforeseen and complex consequences that derive from archaeological practices. This volume will appeal to archaeologists and their advanced students.
Biomedical Entanglements is an ethnographic study of the Giri people of Papua New Guinea, focusing on the indigenous population’s interaction with modern medicine. In her fieldwork, Franziska A. Herbst follows the Giri people as they circulate within and around ethnographic sites that include a rural health center and an urban hospital. The study bridges medical anthropology and global health, exploring how the ‘biomedical’ is imbued with social meaning and how biomedicine affects Giri ways of life.
Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque explores the profound impact that visual digital technologies are having on the practice and theory of law. Today, lawyers, judges, and lay jurors face a vast array of visual evidence and visual argument. From videos documenting crimes and accidents to computer displays of their digital simulation, increasingly, the search for fact-based justice inside the courtroom is becoming an offshoot of visual meaning making. But when law migrates to the screen it lives there as other images do, motivating belief and judgment on the basis of visual delight and unconscious fantasies and desires as well as actualities. Law as image also shares broader cultural anxieties concerning not only the truth of the image but also the mimetic capacity itself, the human ability to represent reality. What is real, and what is simulation? This is the hallmark of the baroque, when dreams fold into dreams, like immersion in a seemingly endless matrix of digital appearances. When fact-based justice recedes, laws proliferate within a field of uncertainty. Left unchecked, this condition of ontological and ethical uneasiness threatens the legitimacy of law’s claim to power. Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque offers a jurisprudential paradigm that is equal to the challenge that current cultural conditions present.
A Companion to Environmental Geography is the first book to comprehensively and systematically map the research frontier of 'human-environment geography' in an accessible and comprehensive way. Cross-cuts several areas of a discipline which has traditionally been seen as divided; presenting work by human and physical geographers in the same volume Presents both the current 'state of the art' research and charts future possibilities for the discipline Extends the term 'environmental geography' beyond its 'traditional' meanings to include new work on nature and environment by human and physical geographers - not just hazards, resources, and conservation geographers Contains essays from an outstanding group of international contributors from among established scholars and rising stars in geography
What can creativity achieve in an era of ecocide? How are people using creative and artistic practices to engage with (and resist) the destruction of life on earth? What are the relationships between creativity and repair in the face of escalating global environmental crises? Across twelve compelling case studies, this book charts the emergence of diverse forms of artistic practice and brings together accounts of how artists, scholars and activists are creatively responding to environmental destruction. Highlighting alternative approaches to creativity in both conventional art settings and daily life, the book demonstrates the major influence that ecological thought has had on contemporary creative practices. These are often more concerned with subtle processes of feeling, experience and embodiment than they are with charismatic 'eco-art' works. In doing so, this exploratory book develops a conception of creativity as an anti-ecocide endeavour, and provides timely theoretical and practical insights on art in an age of environmental destruction.
Art has been as significant as text in the history of book design and production. This collection of papers examines the place of illustration and innovation, both conceptual and technical, in the relation of image to text in books of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, both in Europe and that outreach of European culture in the Pacific, New Zealand. Topics of the papers range from the work of Marcel Duchamp and Kazimir Malevich to the design of multimodal books and the early development of 3D printing.