OJS at Oregondigital.org (Oregon State University / University of Oregon)
Not a member yet
2079 research outputs found
Sort by
The Tragedy of a Man Who Cursed: On Leonardo Padura's The Novel of My Life (2002)
Get PDFThis article explores how in The Novel of My Life Heredia’s tragedy -that is forced exile- stems from a dynamics between colonialism and culture in Cuba. At the same time, this dynamics reveals the transatlantic concatenations between the imperial politics of Spain and the colonial character of nineteenth-century Cuba. Heredia’s tragedy, I argue, is depicted in Padura’s novel as a consequence of a socio-historical reality in which Heredia’s enlightened, or liberal, ideas about politics and independence where rather “misplaced ideas” in the Cuba of the 1820s. In other words, some of these European liberal ideas became “misplaced ideas” when they were displaced first to the Spanish context, and subsequently to the colonial context in Cuba. The incongruences between the political structures and culture of the Spanish dynastic state and enlightened European ideas reflected themselves on colonial Cuba
Film Spaces, Memory Traces: The Family House in Recha Jungman’s Etwas tut weh (1979)
Get PDFIn 2016 Recha Jungmann’s film Etwas tut weh (Something Hurts, 1976) was rediscovered and restored. Jungmann, alongside with Ula Stöckl, was one of the few women graduates of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, where Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge taught. In Etwas tut weh she revisits her family’s former estate which is now a ruin, abandoned and vandalized. This article explores how memory work and camera work unite to create spaces in which her family finds a (new) aesthetic home, and in which the film as a form of remembrance creates solidarity with the audience in the cinema -- a space that can give a home to films and spectators alike
Time of the End? More-Than-Human Humanism and Artificial Intelligence
Get PDFThe first part (“Is there a future?”), discusses the idea of the future in the context of Carl Schmitt’s vision for the spatial revolutions of modernity, and then the idea of Anthropocene, as a synonym for an environmental crisis endangering the very survival of humankind. From this point of view, the conquest of space and the colonization of Mars at the center of futuristic and technocratic visions appear to be an attempt to escape from human responsibilities on Earth. The second part (“AI and other hyperobjects”) discusses the extent of intellectual hubris expressed in computation, AI (Garvin Minsky e Ray Kurzweil), and the philosophy of computing and information (Eric Fredkin), involved in the elaboration of new theoretical assessments on the ultimate nature of reality. Their vision is then contrasted and made to interact with that of philosopher Timothy Morton. He has taken the perspective of global warming and the possibility of ecological catastrophe seriously, avoiding all the futuristic enthusiasms and instead emphasizing the radical nature of the transformations that humans experience in the present. In this perspective, AI becomes one of the “hyperobjects,” like the Internet or climate change, in which humans are immersed. Morton’s hyperobjects delineate an uncanny view of the future; this uncanniness is not related to the supernatural but to the environment.
The third section (“More-than-human-humanism”) further reflects on the “uncanniness” that human perceive in the encounters with the manifestations of hyperobjects. It also seeks to understand the human position in the face of the radical technological transformations induced by cybernetics and AI. This section discusses Anti-humanism, Transhumanism, and Posthumanism within the broader category of more-than-human thought, which seems to be a more appropriate term to clarify the possible misunderstandings induced by the word “posthuman” and “transhuman.” The central question is not to empower (Transhumanism) or disempower (Posthumanism) humans, but to see them in relation to what is not human, including other animals, the environment, and the machine. The analysis considers the works of Cary Wolfe, Jane Bennet, Bryant Levi, among others, and introduces ethical debates on cyborgs, robots, and Autonomous weapons systems (AWS). The fourth section (“Ethical Perspectives”) continues this inquiry, concentrating on the non-standard ethical theories of Luciano Floridi (Computer and Information Ethics) and David Gunkel (The question of the Machine). It examines the opportunity and feasibility of including in the discussion on the ethics of our time - characterized by the pervasiveness of AI - the notions of consciousness as theorized by Emmanuel Levinas’s Humanism of the Other and Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another.
Finally, the last section (“The time of the end?”) reflects on how the hyperobject, Anthropocene, re-establishes a sense of limits in human history and confirms the special responsibility of human beings, and supports the need for a more-than-human-humanism. The latter, in other words, means intertwining ourselves with a unique ecosystem which cannot be overlooked and which restores meaning to our relationship with the past, present, and future. The awareness of the current challenges of technology can and must express itself in different forms of resistance to the adverse effects of AI in our lives. The ethical approach based on the persisting role of human consciousness is essential, but it must be coupled with human decision-making and political action
Two Projects from the metaLAB (at) Harvard
Get PDFThe presentation of these two projects the metaLAB (at) Harvard complements Jeffrey Schnapp's interview published in the section Perspectives of this issue of Humanist Studies and the Digital Age. The first project, A Flitting Atlas of the Human Gaze, performs an art historical experiment. The second project, Their Names, is an online Denkmal or monument that visualizes the names of 28,000+ fatal encounters with American police dating from the year 2000 up until the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020
Entrevista con el autor argentino Pablo Pérez
No full textEl VIH/SIDA no solamente colonizó cuerpos por todo el mundo, provocando una epidemia corporal, sino que también provocó una epidemia discursiva, enredando discursos mediáticos, politicos, religiosos, literarios, cinematográficos tanto como los discursos medicinales de la terminología médica y las terapias alternativas. Segun Lina Meruane en Viral Voyages, "el virus se convirtió en una pandemia de significaciones...una necesidad de narraciones que intentan explicar la epidemia". Asi que, autores y artistas Latinoamericanos utilizaron una variedad de estéticas políticas y narrativas para visibilizar la precariedad de los latinoamericanos que han vivido con o muerto a causa del VIH. El autor argentino Pablo Pérez, quien declara abiertamente su estatus de seropositivo, ha publicado varios libros sobre el tema y dos de sus novelas auto-referenciales fueron adaptadas juntas en una sola película. Esta entrevista con el autor profundiza el tema en relación con sus obras literarias, su trabajo periodístico y su trabajo pedagógico como docente en la Universidad de Argentina, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas.El VIH/SIDA no solamente colonizó cuerpos por todo el mundo, provocando una epidemia corporal, sino que también provocó una epidemia discursiva, enredando discursos mediáticos, politicos, religiosos, literarios, cinematográficos tanto como los discursos medicinales de la terminología médica y las terapias alternativas. Segun Lina Meruane en Viral Voyages, "el virus se convirtió en una pandemia de significaciones...una necesidad de narraciones que intentan explicar la epidemia". Asi que, autores y artistas Latinoamericanos utilizaron una variedad de estéticas políticas y narrativas para visibilizar la precariedad de los latinoamericanos que han vivido con o muerto a causa del VIH. El autor argentino Pablo Pérez, quien declara abiertamente su estatus de seropositivo, ha publicado varios libros sobre el tema y dos de sus novelas auto-referenciales fueron adaptadas juntas en una sola película. Esta entrevista con el autor profundiza el tema en relación con sus obras literarias, su trabajo periodístico y su trabajo pedagógico como docente en la Universidad de Argentina, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas
Dientes de leche perdidos: una reseña del poemario Historia de la leche de Mónica Ojeda
No full textEl terror yace en la blancura más pura, porque en ella está contenida la inevitable inminencia de la mancha. Esa blancura yace en el centro de la obra de Mónica Ojeda, poeta y narradora ecuatoriana autora del poemario Historia de la leche. Se trata de una revisión de mitos, una narración poetizada que explora las relaciones entre la destrucción y el amor, la creación y la muerte, el deseo y el horror. “Apagado su diseño abierto / tu cadáver es sólo un testimonio visible / de mi capacidad de crear” (46). Historia de la leche desarrolla una poética de lo sublime y lo abominable, que toma como modelo el mito de Caín y Abel, pero lo transporta a un universo femenino donde el deseo de matar se explora no desde el odio o la envidia sino desde el amor.El terror yace en la blancura más pura, porque en ella está contenida la inevitable inminencia de la mancha. Esa blancura yace en el centro de la obra de Mónica Ojeda, poeta y narradora ecuatoriana autora del poemario Historia de la leche. Se trata de una revisión de mitos, una narración poetizada que explora las relaciones entre la destrucción y el amor, la creación y la muerte, el deseo y el horror. “Apagado su diseño abierto / tu cadáver es sólo un testimonio visible / de mi capacidad de crear” (46). Historia de la leche desarrolla una poética de lo sublime y lo abominable, que toma como modelo el mito de Caín y Abel, pero lo transporta a un universo femenino donde el deseo de matar se explora no desde el odio o la envidia sino desde el amor
The Distance Between Our Values and Actions: We Can’t Be Passive When it Comes to Privacy
Get PDFIn September 2021, the WOC+Lib collective published a searing "Statement Against White Appropriation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color's Labor (BIPOC)," decrying the exploitation and abuse of BIPOC library workers. One of the many hypocrisies the group took issue with was:
the proliferation of anti-racism statements put out by information institutions and organizations in 2020 without also taking on actions addressing the lack of Black, Indigenous, or People of Color workers or how the BIPOC within those very libraries and organizations have been ostracised and disrespected for years prior to 2020, while allowing the mistreatment to continue. (WOC+Lib, 2021)
In the midst of the international uprisings for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, many libraries put out antiracist statements affirming their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Yet in a recent survey of library directors, only 31 percent of academic library directors agreed that their “library has well-developed equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility strategies for employees" (Frederick and Wolff-Eisenberg, 2021, p. 10). The lack of progress made in these areas suggests that while diversity may be a library value, dismantling systems of oppression to improve DEI is not a top priority at most institutions
