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“HE WHO IS UNABLE TO LIVE IN SOCIETY . . . MUST EITHER BE A BEAST OR A GOD”: SITUATING THE “INHUMAN” IN ARISTOTLE’S POLITICAL THOUGHT
Get PDFAt least since Aristotle, the Western philosophical tradition has accepted the linking of the categories of the “human” and the “political.” As such, these categories have enjoyed a long history of mutual implication. Such an implication, however, constrains the semantic field by which one comes to imagine the human, the political and ultimately the political community. A clear line of distinction has been upheld between what is human and naturally belongs in a political community and what is inhuman and destined to be marginalized to the isolated fringe. In the last century or so, theory, broadly defined, has challenged the essentialism of the human as a category. A diffusion of novel conceptual formations has taken place. Such concepts as the“inhuman,” the “posthuman,” the “antihuman,” the “transhuman,” etc., have been developed forthe explicit purpose of undermining the clear and distinct category of the human. However, it remains essential, this paper argues, that theorists maintain one foot in the canonical trust bywhich the category of the human has come to be defined. Or, it is essential for theorists to recall what it is that the prefixes “in,” “post,” “anti,” “trans,” etc., are in fact opposing, overcoming,denying, sublating and/or transcending. In order to recall the human, this paper returns to Aristotle in whom one finds perhaps the definitive canonical expression of the human as political. For, in Aristotle’s Politics one reads “humans are by nature political animals” (1.2.1253a2),1 and “a social instinct is implanted in all humans by nature” (ibid, a29-30). And, in Nicomachean Ethics one reads “humanity is born for citizenship” (1.7.1097b12-13). Essential to humanity, then, is the necessity of composition, or political constitution. The human, for Aristotle, however, is hardly a clear-cut matter. In fact, Aristotle also claims for humanity a part that is divine, eternal and separable from composition/constitution. This part is nous, or “mind.” The divinity of mind stands apart from the necessity that forces political community. As such, this paper argues that mind is something inhuman. The human, for Aristotle, therefore, is something of a paradox. In order to lay bare this paradox, this paper unpacks the key Aristotelian themes of essence, humanity, community and wisdom. It focuses primarily upon Aristotle’s De Anima , Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics
THE POLITICS OF BECOMING: BREAKING THE IDENTITY GROUND OF CYBORGS/POSTHUMANS AND HUMANS
Get PDFAlthough the fixity of identity constitutes a basis for theory in Identity Politics, the debate on identity as pre-political seems to find its limits when confronted with discourses in feminism, technology and ecological thought. This paper will explore a vision of identity that enhances the way we penetrate political conflicts, by exploring visions of humanity inspired by science fiction (SF). I believe that exploring figures and creatures in Fiction/SF makes it possible to interrogate theoretical categories of identity; that is, these forms of art enhance our imagination, contest boundaries/categories, transform our understanding and perceptions of theworld/realities/subjectivities, and, more specifically, foster how we enter and conceptualize political conflicts and concepts. In this piece, my aim is to consider illustrationsof humanness as depicted in Mamoru Oshii’s film Ghost in the shell (1995). Indeed, SF problematizes and embraces a dynamic vision of humanity where body and mind are intermeshed. Moreover, when technology stains our conception of a pure humanity – destroying the human capacity to reproduce and to die – we shall see that the protagonist in Ghost in the shell (Heretofore Ghosts) seems to discover the potential to mingle both cyborgs/technology and humanness
CANADIAN GHOSTS AND THE WILL TO TRUTH: READING MARLENE NORBESE PHILIPS’ LOOKING FOR LIVINGSTONE
Get PDFWhile the ghost may be a device for resolving past issues in literature, its presence in the archive is central to Derrida’s critical approach in Archive Fever. Presenting this paper at an international colloquium “Memory: The Question of the Archives” at Freud’s own archive, Derrida considers Yerushalmi’s dialogue with the ghosted Freud as the desire that drives the archive: “… hauntedness is not only haunted by this or that ghost,… but by the spectre of the truth which has thus been suppressed” (Derrida 1998: 87). For Derrida, truth is a trace as elusive as “ash,” untouchable but always recognizable in its absence, enforcing the Freudian trust in memory as true in part, the search for which, Derrida claims, inspires a sort of illness; thus, the fever of the archive. Derrida recognizes that remembering and repeating are central to the archive as an injunction to bear witness to the past which, according to Derrida, is a responsibility not to those who have passed,but for those who will read in the future.1 Nietzsche’s understanding of the will to truth as that which perpetuates the assumption that truth exists can be understood as implicit to the endlessly repeated aporia of Derrida’s ghost (Nietzsche 1956: 288). This spectre is made visible by the will to truth of a witness for specific future time and place
A NECESSARY VIOLENCE: DECONSTRUCTING ANN HAMILTON’S TROPOS
Get PDFInstallation art is not permanent; it is an act of art - an event that takes place over a certain amount of time and is conceived of only for a specific location. Of an installation, of the event itself, one can say that it consists of a series of signs, endlessly shifting in relation to each other, to themselves and to the viewer. The work tropos by installation artist Ann Hamilton focuses most notably on instances of repetition, what the artist sometimes calls the "accretion of small gestures" (qtd. in Hickey 129), and from this we can discern ideas that constitute notions of presence and absence. In order to investigate these ideas within Hamilton’s work, we can use as a starting point the strategies of deconstruction, drawn from the writings of Marx, Freud and Derrida, to begin to unravel the many varied parts of the whole
A WALK ABOUT THE CITY: STALKER, THE TRANSURBANCE AND THE CITY MAP
Get PDFIn the spring of 2007, I joined a group of urban activists called Stalker on a walk along the Tiber River in Italy. The walk, conducted over 12 weeks, began in the ancient port city of Ostia, where the mouth of the Tiber meets the Tyrrhenian Sea, continued north-east through the centre of Rome, and ended at the far edge of Rome’s greater metropolitan region. Stalker’s Tiber walk was a so-called "transurbance," a mode of critical walking created by the collective. Transurbances are walks in the leftover spaces in and around the contemporary metropolis, which Stalker calls "actual territories." In the transurbance, walking is both a mode of expression and a useful instrument for learning about the ongoing social and morphological transformations in cities. Stalker’s transurbance of the Tiber was more specifically a means of engaging the individuals and communities living illegally along the riverbanks, and then conveying aspects of their living conditions to the public. Stalker was accompanied by architecture students whose aim was to produce an atlas of the riverbanks, describing the spaces and qualities of this urban environment that are typically excluded from city maps. In this context the transurbance is a kind of oppositional map, where the map is understood in two senses: as a process of investigating a territory ("mapping" as a verb) and a means of representation (a "map" as noun)
FIRST NATIONS ON VIEW: CANADIAN MUSEUMS AND HYBRID REPRESENTATIONS OF CULTURE
Get PDFMuseums are important public sites for the representation and authentication of history and heritage in Canadian society.The study of history and ethnographic museums allows important insights into issues of race, ethnicity and identity, and especially how the colonial legacy has shaped how Canadians see themselves. Museums are a supreme expression of imperialist Europe — publicly funded institutions devoted to colonial sensibilities. This includes vast halls set up to display the “booty” of war and conquest as well as the mounds of material evidence produced by scientific research and collecting. Museums of the 19th century were concerned with objects (and objectifying) and possessed a foundational purpose to define what was cultured or civilized (and what was not). Early exhibits emphasized purity of race, the progression of history and the sense that the “white” European race was the pinnacle of evolution. Museums defined, and continue to define and present who we are as nations or communities or cultures, and inevitably separate the we from everyone else out there (Bennett, 1995; Hooper-Greenhill,1999). By using exhibition as its form of communication, museums set up frozen instances in time and fixed them, unchangeable, as expert truth; there was no opportunity then to contest or even engage in dialogue. Objects displayed, in public, for audiences to gawk at or exclaim over. This very act of exhibition was spectacular in the Debordian sense: a representation, divorced from reality, is presented to and consumed by an undifferentiated audience
DZIGA VERTOV AND STEVE MANN: THE EMBODIMENT OF THE MASTER METAPHOR OF VISION
Get PDFAt the intersection of technology and culture, the master metaphor of vision maintains a prominent position. The privileged status of sight in Western culture can be understood as part of the striving to see the world more clearly, to combat distortion and gain an “objective” view. At the turn of the century, new imaging technologies were put into practice as a part of a utopic hope for the future and the modernist project to dispel myth. At the turn of the new millennium, the ubiquitous presence of technologies comprises a controlling system against which we must renew our vision once again. In both contexts, the use of imaging technologies offer liberating possibilities by bringing attention to controlling devices which conspire to remain hidden. Further, theoretical inquiry into the study of technology and culture is often concerned with questions of vision, and approaches are often articulated through metaphors of vision. Within this framework, the writing and practice of both Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) and Steve Mann (1962—) can be studied as embodied approaches to the meeting place of theory, technology and culture
THE ENDOSCOPIC GAZE: OBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIFICATION GO INSIDE THE BODY (AND OUT AGAIN)
Get PDFEndoscopy is a medical technique used for exploratory or surgical purposes, wherein a small camera-like device attached to the end of a probe is inserted into the body through a natural orifice or an incision if necessary. In the past, starting as early as the beginning of the 19th century, the endoscope was just that, a scope, and the physicians were the only ones who saw what it showed. However, in the past 20 years, a digital camera has been added to the scope, allowing surgeons to operate not only by looking directly into the scope but at a television-like monitor as well. Often the patient is able to view the exploration of his or her own body on this screen or might see a recording after surgery. With this evolution in the technology to include the creation of images or representations of the body, endoscopy’s impact transcended the medical field to become a form of media, a way of representing the world of the body and the body in the world. José Van Dijck points out that further explorations of endoscopic technology increased when the media disseminated video images of the inside of the body, sparking the interest of the general public. This interest only grows as endoscopic technologies continue to advance and their sociocultural impacts continue to develop
REVOLUTIONARY SPACES IN GLOBALIZATION: BEIJING'S DASHANZI ARTS DISTRICT
Get PDFBeginning in the year 2000, Chinese artists and art groups began resettlement of factories in an area known as the Dashanzi district, a northeastern segment of Beijing that had gone relatively unnoticed after the Cultural Revolution. Formerly electronic production warehouses, these factories were created during the 1950s for greater socialist (and particularly military) aims (Kiang 5). Although this phenomenon of artists inhabiting factory spaces is rather commonplace in American or European cities, the Chinese government has, in a unique moment of lax governance, “supported” such a district by allowing for its continual existence and growth. Reading the district according to Henri Lefebvre’s interpretations of space provides an approach that unifies ideology and the physical site, and reveals the multi-layers necessary and active in the sustenance of the arts district. Lefebvre’s seminal work The Production of Space bridged binaries of mental and physical space, drawing attention to its role as a locus for change and revolution. Space is produced, and the ideologies and cultures that are behind the composition of an area are as important as the physical constructions built upon it. Therefore, an area needs to be understood as a “social space” that is dialectically created by a multitude of relations (Lefebvre 68). Neither the history of the arts district, its structures, nor the art that it produces is singularly responsible for creating successful (if short-lived) grassroots urban planning, but rather the dialectic among several competing social facets, as well as our current era of globalization, can be viewed as responsible for this unique moment and physical site of contemporary art
DEVELOPMENTS IN MUSIC TECHNOLOGY: HYBRID ACTIVITY IN POPULAR MUSIC
Get PDFThe most critical [issues] to which we should turn our attention are those that have consequences for the movement of music within and through different (and sometimes altogether new) spaces, such as changes in sales mechanisms, Internet broadcasting, the use of computers for producing, consuming and distributing music, and the personalisation of musical tastes and behaviours. (Jones, “Musicand the Internet” 225) Since the invention of recorded sound, music and the technology with which it is recorded have been entwined. From the phonograph to the mp3, the history of popular music production, distribution and consumption in the twentieth century is one marked by various technological innovations (see for example Coleman, 2003; Garofalo, 1999). Currently, new digital recording technologies are facilitating changes to the music making process (Théberge, 1997). Sophisticated software programs such as ProTools and Nuendo offer near-professional song recording, mixing and mastering abilities while Reason, Acid, plus a host of other programs encourage the manipulation of original or sample-based sounds. Innovations in the technologies of consumption are causing similar impacts to the listening process (Bull, 2000). Digital jukeboxes, mp3 players and new business models from the likes of iTunes and Napster 2.0 are affecting the way we receive and use music. In many ways, the processes associated with production and consumption are currently converging into one machine: the computer