Book Reviews by Robert Geroux
ARENA Magazine, 2016
This is a short piece I wrote for the Australian Left magazine ARENA, back in Fall 2016
Book review of Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory (Stanford University Press, 2011).
Book review of Michael Lerma's book Guided by the Mountains (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Books by Robert Geroux
Chapter 7 of A New Social Question (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2016).
Chapter 7 of Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
Papers by Robert Geroux
Humanimalia
is Posthumanism? is a magnificently engaged and expansive book, a work of multiple and motile arg... more is Posthumanism? is a magnificently engaged and expansive book, a work of multiple and motile arguments. The sprawl of the work clearly comes from an origin in different and disparate essays, but a distinct order is discernible nevertheless. The first part approaches and interrogates theoretical and disciplinary questions; the second part turns to questions in the worlds of art and architecture. The practical inquiries arise out of the theoretical claims so that a comprehensive critical vision emerges. To paraphrase Whitman, however, that vision contains multitudes.
This is an essay I wrote for consideration, as part of the E.F. Byrne Peace and Justice Award, at... more This is an essay I wrote for consideration, as part of the E.F. Byrne Peace and Justice Award, at IUPUI. The essay did not win the award.
The Review of Politics, 2001
Theory and Event, 2020
Abstract “The Uncolonized within the Uncolonized” moves from recent debates over so-called Native... more Abstract “The Uncolonized within the Uncolonized” moves from recent debates over so-called Native DNA to contemporary discussions of the human microbiome. It bridges this gap by analyzing a recent study that purports to discover profound diversity among samples extracted from a Yanomami community with- out previous contact with Western regimes of diet and medicine. Geroux’s careful critique addresses the avidity of scientific desire, the dissipation at the end of the (so-called) civilizational process, and the problems of the “promise” of commodifying the Native biome. He concludes with an exhortation to reterritorialize such research, in part by tying it to ongoing projects of Native health and food sovereignty.
Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory, 2005
Conference Presentations by Robert Geroux
The proper disposal of radioactive waste strains temporal understanding: such compounds remain de... more The proper disposal of radioactive waste strains temporal understanding: such compounds remain deadly for ten thousand years or more, which means that contemporary strategies for isolation and containment must involve plans that strive for something close to a human experience of “permanence.” Undermining that permanence is a highly specific set of problems: on the one hand demographic shifts and the appetite for exploration; on the other hand, the tendency of communications systems towards disintegration and entropic loss. The question therefore becomes: How can we isolate potentially catastrophic waste from human populations, over a temporal span in which language itself tends to break down into incoherence? How can we develop a symbolic grammar of warning that survives tens of thousands of years?
This is the specific problem presented to the Human Interference Task Force (HITF), a body established in the US Department of Energy, as it was planning the National Nuclear Waste Repository in the early 1980s. Among the members of the HITF was Indiana University semiotician Thomas Sebeok, whose work is the focus of my paper. Sebeok’s speculative vision has much to say that is important: about the semiotic function of religion, about intergenerational obligation, about the limits of signs and the fragility of chains of transmission, and about the futility of the so-called civilizational project. At the same time, his work neglects the political dimension, the role of sovereign power in both preserving and distorting/disrupting chains of meaning. This political dimension is the focus of the paper, presented at the conference "Temporal Belongings: Material Life of Time" (March 15, 2021).
conference archive here:
https://www.temporalbelongings.org/the-material-life-of-time.html
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Book Reviews by Robert Geroux
Books by Robert Geroux
Papers by Robert Geroux
Conference Presentations by Robert Geroux
This is the specific problem presented to the Human Interference Task Force (HITF), a body established in the US Department of Energy, as it was planning the National Nuclear Waste Repository in the early 1980s. Among the members of the HITF was Indiana University semiotician Thomas Sebeok, whose work is the focus of my paper. Sebeok’s speculative vision has much to say that is important: about the semiotic function of religion, about intergenerational obligation, about the limits of signs and the fragility of chains of transmission, and about the futility of the so-called civilizational project. At the same time, his work neglects the political dimension, the role of sovereign power in both preserving and distorting/disrupting chains of meaning. This political dimension is the focus of the paper, presented at the conference "Temporal Belongings: Material Life of Time" (March 15, 2021).
conference archive here:
https://www.temporalbelongings.org/the-material-life-of-time.html
This is the specific problem presented to the Human Interference Task Force (HITF), a body established in the US Department of Energy, as it was planning the National Nuclear Waste Repository in the early 1980s. Among the members of the HITF was Indiana University semiotician Thomas Sebeok, whose work is the focus of my paper. Sebeok’s speculative vision has much to say that is important: about the semiotic function of religion, about intergenerational obligation, about the limits of signs and the fragility of chains of transmission, and about the futility of the so-called civilizational project. At the same time, his work neglects the political dimension, the role of sovereign power in both preserving and distorting/disrupting chains of meaning. This political dimension is the focus of the paper, presented at the conference "Temporal Belongings: Material Life of Time" (March 15, 2021).
conference archive here:
https://www.temporalbelongings.org/the-material-life-of-time.html