The Posthuman
Rosi Braidotti

“This is an exciting and important text, full of intellectual brilliance and insight. It will make a major mark.”
Henrietta L. Moore, University of Cambridge

The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital ‘second life’, genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman explores the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities.

Publishing April 2013

9780745641584 paperback £14.99/€19.90

Review by Stefan Herbrechter in Culture Machine: link

Dear all participants and future participants of the WinterSchool!

In January we had lively discussions about authorship, Foucault and Barthes. Now I’m organizing a workshop in Bochum on 23.11.2012. It is about the question of a “Second Authorship” in the cases of Kafka, Panizza, Döblin, Benn, Schnitzler and Musil. It will be in German but I would be happy to welcome also English speaking guests.

You’ll find further information here: http://staff.germanistik.rub.de/neugermanistik-2/veranstaltungen/

and please do not hesitate to contact me for any questions! I hope to see you (again) soon! Klara

Dear participants of the Winter School 2012

The memory of our lively conversations is as fresh as the snow that (finally) covers the Swiss landscape now. I would like to thank you once more for your manifold contributions to the success and friendly atmosphere of the first of a series of at least four of such international events for doctoral and postdoctoral students. It was marked by intellectual curiosity, polite dialogue and mutual learning as well as cheerful evenings of music and play.

In the following, I would like to post the overall concept of the Bernese Winter School that I introduced in my welcome speech on Sunday evening. Read more

The ethics of Yahya ibn Adi. An ethical debate between Jewish, Muslim and Christian thinkers in Baghdad of the early middle ages? (working title)

Baghdad of the 10^th century – a melting pot of cultures, religions and scientific scholarship, as well as the centre of governance of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Buyid rulers– seem to offer the intellectual platform for some influential philosophers to conceive elementary writings of moral philosophy. The contemporary thought in those days was reflected in a brisk culture of polemics between and within different religious groups. The reception of Hellenistic philosophy among others made up the methodical as well as the topical setting. Thereto pertaining the gnomological collections (moral quotes and anecdotes of the ancients), moral tractates attributed to Galen and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which where translated from Greek and Syriac into Arabic as early as the 9^th and the beginning of the 10^th century. At least since the dissemination of these writings among the dependants of the Arabic speaking community, one can assume a debate in moral philosophy, which reached far beyond the various circles of scholarship. Read more

Neither hypnosis, nor the study of syphilis, nor the debate on Friedrich’s III. death of throat cancer – Arthur Schnitzler has followed the medical discourse of his time and participated in its shaping. His Medizinische Schriften documents this participation in a multitude of different reviews, reports, and the only independent study Über funktionelle Aphonie und deren Behandlung durch Hypnose und Suggestion. In this text materia Schnitzler’s comments on his contemporaries’ medical works and the Viennese School present a well-grounded analysis of the situation of the medical profession during his time. These texts demonstrate different kinds of knowledge at the same time: Knowledge about the treatment of hysteria, the aetiology of syphilis, the arguments of hereditary theories and other issues. The extensive opus of Schnitzler’s literary texts stands next to this medical discourse, coeval varies and expounds its problems and therefore transforms parts of this medical knowledge. Read more

Companies with international ambitions are increasingly becoming global players. Many of them have decided to fight for their share of the international market, or even for market leadership through such activities as company acquisition or the establishment of joint ventures, as well as by engaging in various other types of cooperation with companies abroad. Such partnerships are now more rapidly attainable than ever before, thanks to modern media of communication and increasing mobility, among other things. Consequently, these global players have a constant need to recreate their corporate culture and identity. Read more

Due to the impacts of postmodernism, social and cultural anthropology has been dealing intensively with the possibilities and limits of representing “other” human beings and their meaningful worlds. So far, the discipline has discussed ways of improving its methods of representation without, however, fully raising questions about the quality and validity of the objects represented and the very idea, that they could be “represented”. Thus, despite attempts to purify classical anthropological categories, substantialized identities (“Humans”, “Others”, “Pygmies” etc.) along with various forms of binary oppositions (us – them, culture – nature, human – animal, fact – representation) have been rehearsed. The project aims to dissect and challenge the metaphysical outputs of the “anthropological machine” (Giorgio Agamben).

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In media studies it is often argued that the emergence of new media inevitably leads to anxieties among devotees of old media who suspect that these media become irrelevant: photography menaces painting, film executes photography, tv menaces film, and the Internet finishes everything else. The printed book is no exception from this logic. Long before the invention of ebooks and Open access, various prophets predicted the decline of the Gutenberg Galaxis. Even without subscribing to such apocalyptic visions, we can not overlook the fact that the humanistic book has come under pressure. Being the unquestioned and primordial scientific medium in the 20th century, an assembly of habituations and practices has shifted within a few years. That implies institutions of advanced studies, publishers, research communities and the scholars themselves. The question, thus, is:  Which role will the printed book play within and without the humanities?

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How should the humanities be positioned in the face of general and higher education policies’ transformation processes? This question will be the point of departure of the three-day conference «Für eine neue Kultur der Geisteswissenschaften?» organized by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW) in cooperation with the University of Basel’s «Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung».

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In an article, recently posted on the Politblog, Politik der Schweiz, the former ETH professor and member of the National Council of Switzerland, Jacques Neirynck, has criticized politicians’ perspectives on the humanities. From a profit-oriented perspective, he argues, the humanities are often considered useless, as opposed to technical or medical sciences. In his article, he offers a contrasting view, considering the humanities “the breeding ground for politics”. Read the entire article (in German only).