Author: Yuk Hui
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452972109
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Developing a new political thought to address today’s planetary crises What is “planetary thinking” today? Arguing that a new approach is urgently needed, Yuk Hui develops a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. Machine and Sovereignty starts with three premises. The first affirms the necessity of developing a new language of coexistence that surpasses the limits of nation-states and their variations; the second recognizes that political forms, including the polis, empire, and the state, are technological phenomena, which Lewis Mumford terms “megamachines.” The third suggests that a particular political form is legitimated and rationalized by a corresponding political epistemology. The planetary thinking that this book sketches departs from the opposition between mechanism and organism, which characterized modern thought, to understand the epistemological foundations of Hegel’s political state and Schmitt’s Großraum and their particular ways of conceiving the question of sovereignty. Through this reconstruction, Hui exposes the limits of the state and reflects on a new theoretical matrix based on the interrelated concepts of biodiversity, noodiversity, and technodiversity. Arguing that we are facing the limit of modernity, of the eschatological view of history, of globalization, and of the human, Hui conceives necessary new epistemological and technological frameworks for understanding and rising to the crises of our present and our future. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
Machine and Sovereignty
Author: Yuk Hui
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452972109
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Developing a new political thought to address today’s planetary crises What is “planetary thinking” today? Arguing that a new approach is urgently needed, Yuk Hui develops a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. Machine and Sovereignty starts with three premises. The first affirms the necessity of developing a new language of coexistence that surpasses the limits of nation-states and their variations; the second recognizes that political forms, including the polis, empire, and the state, are technological phenomena, which Lewis Mumford terms “megamachines.” The third suggests that a particular political form is legitimated and rationalized by a corresponding political epistemology. The planetary thinking that this book sketches departs from the opposition between mechanism and organism, which characterized modern thought, to understand the epistemological foundations of Hegel’s political state and Schmitt’s Großraum and their particular ways of conceiving the question of sovereignty. Through this reconstruction, Hui exposes the limits of the state and reflects on a new theoretical matrix based on the interrelated concepts of biodiversity, noodiversity, and technodiversity. Arguing that we are facing the limit of modernity, of the eschatological view of history, of globalization, and of the human, Hui conceives necessary new epistemological and technological frameworks for understanding and rising to the crises of our present and our future. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452972109
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Developing a new political thought to address today’s planetary crises What is “planetary thinking” today? Arguing that a new approach is urgently needed, Yuk Hui develops a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. Machine and Sovereignty starts with three premises. The first affirms the necessity of developing a new language of coexistence that surpasses the limits of nation-states and their variations; the second recognizes that political forms, including the polis, empire, and the state, are technological phenomena, which Lewis Mumford terms “megamachines.” The third suggests that a particular political form is legitimated and rationalized by a corresponding political epistemology. The planetary thinking that this book sketches departs from the opposition between mechanism and organism, which characterized modern thought, to understand the epistemological foundations of Hegel’s political state and Schmitt’s Großraum and their particular ways of conceiving the question of sovereignty. Through this reconstruction, Hui exposes the limits of the state and reflects on a new theoretical matrix based on the interrelated concepts of biodiversity, noodiversity, and technodiversity. Arguing that we are facing the limit of modernity, of the eschatological view of history, of globalization, and of the human, Hui conceives necessary new epistemological and technological frameworks for understanding and rising to the crises of our present and our future. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
The Political Machine
Author: Adam T. Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.
Art and Cosmotechnics
Author: Yuk Hui
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452963991
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Book Description
In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today? Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge of technology to the existence of art and traditional thought, especially in light of current discourses on artificial intelligence and robotics. It carries out an attempt on the cosmotechnics of Chinese landscape painting in order to address this question, and further asks: What is the significance of shanshui (mountain and water) in face of the new challenges brought about by the current technological transformation? Thinking art and cosmotechnics together is an attempt to look into the varieties of experiences of art and to ask what these experiences might contribute to the rethinking of technology today.
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452963991
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Book Description
In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today? Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge of technology to the existence of art and traditional thought, especially in light of current discourses on artificial intelligence and robotics. It carries out an attempt on the cosmotechnics of Chinese landscape painting in order to address this question, and further asks: What is the significance of shanshui (mountain and water) in face of the new challenges brought about by the current technological transformation? Thinking art and cosmotechnics together is an attempt to look into the varieties of experiences of art and to ask what these experiences might contribute to the rethinking of technology today.
Critiquing Sovereign Violence
Author: Gavin Rae
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474445306
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Gavin Rae offers an original approach to sovereign violence by looking at a wide range of thinkers, which he organises into three models. Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari form the radical-juridical perspective; Foucault and Agamben the biopolitical; Derrida the bio-juridical - which Rae argues produces the most nuanced account. Rae engages with new translations of 'The Beast and the Sovereign' and 'The Death Penalty' to show that Derrida offers a radical and alternative angle in which violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474445306
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Gavin Rae offers an original approach to sovereign violence by looking at a wide range of thinkers, which he organises into three models. Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari form the radical-juridical perspective; Foucault and Agamben the biopolitical; Derrida the bio-juridical - which Rae argues produces the most nuanced account. Rae engages with new translations of 'The Beast and the Sovereign' and 'The Death Penalty' to show that Derrida offers a radical and alternative angle in which violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other.
Staging Sovereignty
Author: Arthur Bradley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231561695
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
To become sovereign, one must be seen as sovereign. In other words, a sovereign must appear—philosophically, politically, and aesthetically—on the stage of power, both to themselves and to others, in order to assume authority. In this sense, sovereignty is a theatrical phenomenon from the very beginning. This book explores the relationship between theater and sovereignty in modern political theory, philosophy, and performance. Arthur Bradley considers the theatricality of power—its forms, dramas, and iconography—and examines sovereignty’s modes of appearance: thrones, insignia, regalia, ritual, ceremony, spectacle, marvels, fictions, and phantasmagoria. He weaves together political theory and literature, reading figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida, and Agamben alongside writers including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller, Melville, Valéry, Kafka, Ionesco, and Genet. Formally inventive and deeply interdisciplinary, Staging Sovereignty offers a surprising and original narrative of political modernity from early modern political theology to the age of neoliberal capitalism.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231561695
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
To become sovereign, one must be seen as sovereign. In other words, a sovereign must appear—philosophically, politically, and aesthetically—on the stage of power, both to themselves and to others, in order to assume authority. In this sense, sovereignty is a theatrical phenomenon from the very beginning. This book explores the relationship between theater and sovereignty in modern political theory, philosophy, and performance. Arthur Bradley considers the theatricality of power—its forms, dramas, and iconography—and examines sovereignty’s modes of appearance: thrones, insignia, regalia, ritual, ceremony, spectacle, marvels, fictions, and phantasmagoria. He weaves together political theory and literature, reading figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida, and Agamben alongside writers including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller, Melville, Valéry, Kafka, Ionesco, and Genet. Formally inventive and deeply interdisciplinary, Staging Sovereignty offers a surprising and original narrative of political modernity from early modern political theology to the age of neoliberal capitalism.
On the Existence of Digital Objects
Author: Yuk Hui
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452949921
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Digital objects, in their simplest form, are data. They are also a new kind of industrial object that pervades every aspect of our life today—as online videos, images, text files, e-mails, blog posts, Facebook events.Yet, despite their ubiquity, the nature of digital objects remains unclear. On the Existence of Digital Objects conducts a philosophical examination of digital objects and their organizing schema by creating a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, which Yuk Hui contextualizes within the history of computing. How can digital objects be understood according to individualization and individuation? Hui pursues this question through the history of ontology and the study of markup languages and Web ontologies; he investigates the existential structure of digital objects within their systems and milieux. With this relational approach toward digital objects and technical systems, the book addresses alienation, described by Simondon as the consequence of mistakenly viewing technics in opposition to culture. Interdisciplinary in philosophical and technical insights, with close readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Simondon as well as the history of computing and the Web, Hui’s work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data and metadata that increasingly define our world.
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452949921
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Digital objects, in their simplest form, are data. They are also a new kind of industrial object that pervades every aspect of our life today—as online videos, images, text files, e-mails, blog posts, Facebook events.Yet, despite their ubiquity, the nature of digital objects remains unclear. On the Existence of Digital Objects conducts a philosophical examination of digital objects and their organizing schema by creating a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, which Yuk Hui contextualizes within the history of computing. How can digital objects be understood according to individualization and individuation? Hui pursues this question through the history of ontology and the study of markup languages and Web ontologies; he investigates the existential structure of digital objects within their systems and milieux. With this relational approach toward digital objects and technical systems, the book addresses alienation, described by Simondon as the consequence of mistakenly viewing technics in opposition to culture. Interdisciplinary in philosophical and technical insights, with close readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Simondon as well as the history of computing and the Web, Hui’s work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data and metadata that increasingly define our world.
The Stack
Author: Benjamin H. Bratton
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026202957X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 523
Book Description
A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture. What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self—quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image? In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton proposes that these different genres of computation—smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation—can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us. In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling—not only computational forms but also social, human, and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks,” in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention. The Stack is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Interweaving the continental, urban, and perceptual scales, it shows how we can better build, dwell within, communicate with, and govern our worlds. thestack.org
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026202957X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 523
Book Description
A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture. What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self—quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image? In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton proposes that these different genres of computation—smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation—can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us. In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling—not only computational forms but also social, human, and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks,” in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention. The Stack is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Interweaving the continental, urban, and perceptual scales, it shows how we can better build, dwell within, communicate with, and govern our worlds. thestack.org
Beyond Sovereign Territory
Author: Thom Kuehls
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816624683
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
How should we think about politics in a world where ecological problems - from the deforestation of the Amazon to acid rain - transcend national boundaries? This is the timely and important question addressed by Thom Kuehls in Beyond Sovereign Territory. Contending that the sovereign territorial state is not adequate to contain or describe the boundaries of ecopolitics, the author reorients our thinking about government, nature, and politics. Kuehls argues that changes in technology and the scope of governmental aims have rendered conventional ecological and internationalist aims anachronistic - and ultimately ineffective - in the face of impending environmental collapse. He questions the process by which land is transformed into an object of sovereignty - into "territory" - demonstrating how representations of political space that are premised on territorial sovereignty fail to come to terms with much of what is involved in ecopolitics. Ultimately, Kuehls critiques an orientation that privileges a certain utilitarian relationship between humans and nonhuman nature, one in which the earth is largely interpreted as given to humans. Deeply humanistic and challenging conventional wisdom, Beyond Sovereign Territory will be of interest to readers of environmental politics, geography, international politics, and political theory.
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816624683
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
How should we think about politics in a world where ecological problems - from the deforestation of the Amazon to acid rain - transcend national boundaries? This is the timely and important question addressed by Thom Kuehls in Beyond Sovereign Territory. Contending that the sovereign territorial state is not adequate to contain or describe the boundaries of ecopolitics, the author reorients our thinking about government, nature, and politics. Kuehls argues that changes in technology and the scope of governmental aims have rendered conventional ecological and internationalist aims anachronistic - and ultimately ineffective - in the face of impending environmental collapse. He questions the process by which land is transformed into an object of sovereignty - into "territory" - demonstrating how representations of political space that are premised on territorial sovereignty fail to come to terms with much of what is involved in ecopolitics. Ultimately, Kuehls critiques an orientation that privileges a certain utilitarian relationship between humans and nonhuman nature, one in which the earth is largely interpreted as given to humans. Deeply humanistic and challenging conventional wisdom, Beyond Sovereign Territory will be of interest to readers of environmental politics, geography, international politics, and political theory.
The Critique of Management
Author: Vincent Blok
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000482596
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
This book reflects on the nature of business management to contribute to the development of a philosophy and ethics of management. It engages in conceptual engineering of management to delineate the phenomenon of management and, as a result, to open a new perspective on management beyond its self-evident conceptualization. After questioning the self-evident concept of management, the author develops a philosophy of management with six dimensions of the nature of management: management as participation; management as resistance and responsive action; management as constitution of meaning; management as politico-economic governance; management as non-reductive stakeholder engagement; and management as epistemic insufficient entrepreneurship. These six dimensions of management are taken as points of departure to develop an integrated concept of business ethics, an individual competence for ethical business management, and a concept of ethical codes for corporate social responsible behavior. This new conception of philosophy of management and business ethics can guide future philosophical and empirical work on the nature of management. The Critique of Management is an excellent resource for researchers, students, and professionals interested in philosophy of management, business ethics, and corporate social responsibility.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000482596
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
This book reflects on the nature of business management to contribute to the development of a philosophy and ethics of management. It engages in conceptual engineering of management to delineate the phenomenon of management and, as a result, to open a new perspective on management beyond its self-evident conceptualization. After questioning the self-evident concept of management, the author develops a philosophy of management with six dimensions of the nature of management: management as participation; management as resistance and responsive action; management as constitution of meaning; management as politico-economic governance; management as non-reductive stakeholder engagement; and management as epistemic insufficient entrepreneurship. These six dimensions of management are taken as points of departure to develop an integrated concept of business ethics, an individual competence for ethical business management, and a concept of ethical codes for corporate social responsible behavior. This new conception of philosophy of management and business ethics can guide future philosophical and empirical work on the nature of management. The Critique of Management is an excellent resource for researchers, students, and professionals interested in philosophy of management, business ethics, and corporate social responsibility.
The End of the World
Author: Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786602636
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
The 'end of the world' opens up philosophical questions concerning the very notion of the world, which is a fundamental element of all existential, phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy. Is the 'end of the world' for us 'somebody's' death (the end of 'being-in-the-world') or the extinction of many or of all (the end of the world itself)? Is the erosion of the 'world' a phenomenon that does not in fact affect the notion of the world as a fundamental feature of all existential-ontological inquiry? This volume examines the present state of these concerns in philosophy, film and literature. It presents a philosophical hermeneutics of the present state of the world and explores the principal questions of the philosophical accounts of the end of the world, such as finality and finitude. It also shows how literature and cinema have ventured to express the end of the world while asking if a consequent expression of the end of the world is also an end of its expression.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786602636
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
The 'end of the world' opens up philosophical questions concerning the very notion of the world, which is a fundamental element of all existential, phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy. Is the 'end of the world' for us 'somebody's' death (the end of 'being-in-the-world') or the extinction of many or of all (the end of the world itself)? Is the erosion of the 'world' a phenomenon that does not in fact affect the notion of the world as a fundamental feature of all existential-ontological inquiry? This volume examines the present state of these concerns in philosophy, film and literature. It presents a philosophical hermeneutics of the present state of the world and explores the principal questions of the philosophical accounts of the end of the world, such as finality and finitude. It also shows how literature and cinema have ventured to express the end of the world while asking if a consequent expression of the end of the world is also an end of its expression.