Sex, machines and navels

Sex, machines and navels

Author: Fred Botting

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2024-07-30

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1526185628

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Available again in paperback, this study offers a rigorous critical re-reading of fictions of humanity, history, technology and postmodern culture. Taking psychoanalysis into cyberspace, the book develops an innovative theoretical perspective on the relationship between bodies and machines to offer a focused re-examination of notions of desire, metaphor, sexed identity and difference and the process of technological transformation. The book unravels one figure in a detailed, lucid and extensive revision of Lacanian psychoanalysis in association with postmodern theory, feminism and deconstruction. Problematising the easy conjunction of human bodies and inhuman technology, the navel opens into networks of desire, history, culture and machines. Linked to the unconscious, to jokes and dreams, navels appear on the bodies of replicants and in the technological matrix, a strange excess in a future imagined in terms of corporeal ‘meat’ or posthuman machine. Exploring the significance of this omphalic excess, the book closely examines postmodern and cyberpunk texts (by Thomas Pynchon, Graham Swift, Julian Barnes, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker) alongside detailed readings of contemporary cultural critics and theorists.


Sex, Machines and Navels

Sex, Machines and Navels

Author: Fred Botting

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780719056253

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This work offers a critical re-reading of fictions of humanity, history, technology and postmodern culture. Taking psychoanalysis into cyberspace, the book develops a theoretical perspective on the relationship between bodies and machines.


Fantasy Fiction

Fantasy Fiction

Author: Lucie Armitt

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2005-04-13

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780826416858

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a series of introductory books about different types of writing. One strand of the series will focus on genres such as Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, and Crime. The other strand will focus on movements or styles often associated with historical and cultural locations - Postcolonial, Native American, Scottish, Irish, American Gothic. These introductions all share the same nine-part structure: 1.A broad definition of the genre and its essential elements 2.A timeline of historical developments 3.Critical concerns to bear in mind while reading 4.Detailed readings of several key texts 5.In-depth analysis of major themes and issues 6.Signposts for further study 7.A summary of the most important criticism in the field 8.A glossary of terms 9.An annotated, critical reading list Writers covered in this book include: Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mary Shelley, J.K. Rowling, H.G. Wells, Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yann Martel, Jeanette Winterson, and William Gibson.


Culture and Computing. Design Thinking and Cultural Computing

Culture and Computing. Design Thinking and Cultural Computing

Author: Matthias Rauterberg

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-03

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 3030774317

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The two-volume set LNCS 12794-12795 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Culture and Computing, C&C 2021, which was held as part of HCI International 2021 and took place virtually during July 24-29, 2021. The total of 1276 papers and 241 posters included in the 39 HCII 2021 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 5222 submissions. The papers included in the HCII-C&C volume set were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: ICT for cultural heritage; technology and art; visitors’ experiences in digital culture; Part II: Design thinking in cultural contexts; digital humanities, new media and culture; perspectives on cultural computing.


The Body

The Body

Author: Tiffany Atkinson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2005-09-11

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0230213367

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What do we mean when we talk about 'the body'? This Reader challenges the assumption that it can be invoked as a neutral, or indeed natural, point of reference in critical discussion or cultural practice. The essays collected here foreground the historical construction of 'the body' throughout a range of discourses from the modern to the postmodern, and seek to present it not as a biological 'given', but as a contestable signifier in the articulation of identities.


James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

Author: Mark A. Wollaeger

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-03-27

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0199726973

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This casebook offers a comprehensive introduction to this landmark in modern fiction. The essays collected here will help first-time readers, teachers, and advanced scholars gain new insight into Joyce's semi-autobiographical story of an Irish boy's slow and difficult discovery of his artistic vocation. Mark Wollaeger's introduction provides an overview of the composition and early reception of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as a survey of some of the recurrent issues debated by literary critics. Essays by Hugh Kenner and Patrick Parrinder offer both indispensable overviews of the entire novel-its themes, structure, and idiom-and close attention to specific interpretive cruxes. Other essays include classic responses by Wayne Booth, Fritz Senn, Michael Levenson, Hélène Cixous, and a newly revised and expanded version of Maud Ellmann's groundbreaking "Polytropic Man." Together the essays bring into focus the wide range of questions that have kept A Portrait fresh for the new millennium.


Sound Effects: The Object Voice in Fiction

Sound Effects: The Object Voice in Fiction

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 9004304401

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sound Effects combines literary criticism and psychoanalytic theory in eleven original articles which explore the potential of the object voice as an analytic tool to approach fiction. Alongside the gaze, the voice is Jacques Lacan’s original addition to the set of partial objects of classical psychoanalysis, and has only recently been theorised by Mladen Dolar in A Voice and Nothing More (2006). With notable exceptions like Garrett Stewart’s Reading Voices (1990), the sonorous element in fiction has received little scholarly attention in comparison with poetry and drama. Sound Effects is a contribution to the burgeoning field of sound studies, and sets out to fill this gap through selective readings of English and American fiction of the last two hundred years. Contributors: Fred Botting, Natalja Chestopalova, Mladen Dolar, Matt Foley, Alex Hope, Phillip Mahoney, Sylvia Mieszkowski, Jorge Sacido-Romero, Marcin Stawiarski, Garrett Stewart, Peter Weise, and Bruce Wyse.


Privileging Difference

Privileging Difference

Author: Antony Easthope

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1350317802

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Difference, the key term in deconstruction, has broken free of its rigorous philosophical context in the work of Jacques Derrida, and turned into an excuse for doing theory the easy way. Celebrating variety for its own sake, Antony Easthope argues, cultural criticism too readily ignores the role of the text itself in addressing the desire of the reader. With characteristic directness, he takes to task the foremost theorists of the current generation one by one, including Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, Dona Haraway, Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler. In a final tour de force, he contrasts what he calls the two Jakes, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, to bring out the way their respective theories need each other. The book is vintage Easthope: wide-ranging, fearless, witty and a radical challenge to complacency wherever it is to be found.


Representations of the Post/human

Representations of the Post/human

Author: Elaine L. Graham

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780813530598

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This work draws together a wide range of literature on contemporary technologies and their ethical implications. It focuses on advances in medical, reproductive, genetic and information technologies.


Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense

Author: Scott Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0429919484

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers a new theory of music as a form of social bond analogous to language as it is understood according to the Lacanian orientation in psychoanalysis. It presents contemporary examples that look at how music has become both a powerful locus of discontent and a form of orientation.