Craig Willse

Patricia Ticineto Clough

Under the auspices of neoliberalism, technical systems of compliance and efficiency have come to underwrite the relations among the state, the economy, and a biopolitics of war, terror, and surveillance. In Beyond Biopolitics, prominent theorists seek to account for and critically engage the tendencies that have informed neoliberal governance in the past and are expressed in its reformulation today. As studies of military occupation, the policing of migration, blood trades, financial markets, the war on terror, media ecologies, and consumer branding, the essays explore the governance of life and death in a near-future, a present emptied of future potentialities. The contributors delve into political and theoretical matters central to projects of neoliberal governance, including states of exception that are not exceptional but foundational; risk analysis applied to the adjudication of “ethical” forms of war, terror, and occupation; racism and the management of the life capacities of populations; the production and circulation of death as political and economic currency; and the potential for critical and aesthetic response. Together, the essays offer ways to conceptualize biopolitics as the ground for today’s reformulation of governance. Contributors. Ann Anagnost, Una Chung, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Steve Goodman, Sora Y. Han, Stefano Harney, May Joseph, Randy Martin, Brian Massumi, Luciana Parisi, Jasbir Puar, Amit S. Rai, Eugene Thacker, Çağatay Topal, Craig Willse

Essays on the Governance of Life and Death

Beyond Biopolitics

Jean Halley

DIVLinking cultural studies and sociology, this collection explores the role of affect in the theorization of the social./div

Theorizing the Social

The Affective Turn

Wide-ranging essays and experimental prose forcefully demonstrate how digital media and computational technologies have redefined what it is to be human Over the past decade, digital media has expanded exponentially, becoming an essential part of daily life. The stimulating essays and experimental compositions in The User Unconscious delve into the ways digital media and computational technologies fundamentally affect our sense of self and the world we live in, from both human and other-than-human perspectives. Critical theorist Patricia Ticineto Clough’s provocative essays center around the motif of the “user unconscious” to advance the challenging thesis that that we are both human and other-than-human: we now live, think, and dream within multiple layers of computational networks that are constantly present, radically transforming subjectivity, sociality, and unconscious processes. Drawing together rising strains of philosophy, critical theory, and media studies, as well as the political, social, and economic transformations that are shaping the twenty-first-century world, The User Unconscious points toward emergent crises and potentialities in both human subjectivity and sociality. Moving from affect to data, Clough forces us to see that digital media and computational technologies are not merely controlling us—they have already altered what it means to be human.

On Affect, Media, and Measure

The User Unconscious

Nina Power

Joan Copjec

Frenchy Lunning

Marina Gržinić

Katherine Behar

Katerina Kolozova (ed.)

Anne-Françoise Schmid

Eileen A. Joy

Jelisaveta Blagojević

Nandita Biswas Mellamphy

Recent forms of realism in continental philosophy that are habitually subsumed under the category of "speculative realism," a denomination referring to rather heterogeneous strands of philosophy, bringing together object-oriented ontology (OOO), non-standard philosophy (or non-philosophy), the speculative realist ideas of Quentin Meillassoux and Marxism, have provided grounds for the much needed critique of culturalism in gender theory, and the authority with which post-structuralism has dominated feminist theory for decades. This publication aims to bring forth some of the feminist debates prompted by the so-called "speculative turn," while demonstrating that there has never been a niche of "speculative realist feminism."Whereas most of the contributions featured in this collection provide a theoretical approach invoking the necessity of foregrounding new forms of realism for a "feminism beyond gender as culture," some of the essays tackle OOO only to invite a feminist critical challenge to its paradigm, while others refer to some extent to non-philosophy or the new materialisms but are not reducible to either of the two. We have invited essays from intellectual milieus outside the Anglo-Saxon academic center, bringing together authors from Serbia, Slovenia, France, Ireland, the UK, and Canada, aiming to promote feminist internationalism (rather than a "generous act of cultural inclusion").CONTENTSKaterina Kolozova - Preface: After the "Speculative Turn"Nina Power - Philosophy, Sexism, Emotion, RationalismKatherine Behar - The Other WomanAnne-Françoise Schmid - Libérer épistémologiquement le féminismePatricia Ticineto Clough - Notes for "And They Were Dancing"Joan Copjec - No: FoucaultJelisaveta Blagojević - Thinking WithOutMarina Gržinić - Rearticulating the Speculative TurnFrenchy Lunning - The Crush: The Firey Allure of the Jolted PuppetNandita Biswas Mellamphy - (W)omen out/of Time: Metis, Medea, MahakaliMichael O'Rourke - "Girls Welcome!!!": Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Queer TheoryABOUT THE EDITORKaterina Kolozova, PhD, is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje, Macedonia and a professor of gender studies at the University American College-Skopje. She is also visiting professor at several universities in Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. In 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar in the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) ...

After the "Speculative Turn": Realism, Philosophy, and Feminism

Patricia Ticineto Clough

Books

Your next favorite book is out there