Rosi Braidotti

This practice-based doctoral research explores the nature of the feral, as manifested in an object-based installation practice of contemporary art that scavenges - physically, socially and metaphorically - in the gap between defined spaces. My conception of the feral draws out the political promise of this indeterminacy: the state of being partly wild and partly civilised. The page is also constructed materially, as a space where
heterogeneous elements meet: different voices expressed through the writing and images of my practice.

In claiming the feral as a critical concept, I reject its more common, derogatory, usage. In particular, during the 2011 London riots, the former British Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke labelled the rioters a “feral
underclass”, seeking to fix them in this uncivilised, abject position. I unfix this separation, through a feral interpretation of my objects, as they interpenetrate domestic, institutional, and civilised public spheres.
Mother’s milk solidifies as plaster-filled condom bombs, at once phallic and breast-like, poised to ignite a pyre of social theory texts in a gallery project space, a former factory; haphazard conglomerations of plant matter and urban debris are strung together in bunting on an inner-city community hall.

The feral becomes here a rival concept to Julia Kristeva’s formulation of abjection, as the seeping bodily organs evoked by my objects are not defined in terms of the individual, but reflected on through the formless
mass of the social body, the displaced undercommons of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, the wild of Jack Halberstam, the rioters of Joshua Clover.
The feral has an antagonistic quality, but it cannot fit the relational models of art put forward by Chantal Mouffe and Claire Bishop that seek to civilise this antagonism. Neither can the positivity of Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman new materialism extract the hybridity of materials I use from the precariousness of the social conditions from which they are drawn. My practice, like the feral, resists these separations.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

Thinking posthumanly – from a post-Enlightenment, critical, new materialist perspective – things, including concepts, become more permeable and topological – they leak and stretch. Freed from limiting notions of agency, things behave. Rivers have established the same legal rights as humans in New Zealand  and India,  stones have been reported slithering across the desert floor in California,  an electrical power grid in the USA has revealed a unique agential dexterity  and walls have been spotted walking over mountains in the UK’s Lake District.  Thinking with a posthuman partiality, we begin to witness a democracy of objects rather than an anthropocentric dictatorship over inorganic materials. If agency is reworked into an ‘enactment’ as opposed to something that is ‘held’,  conceivably humans and other biological organisms are not necessary for agency (or life) to emerge as inorganic material agency erupts from unchoreographed assemblages of spacetimematter(ing). And if cognitive and dermatological boundaries are no longer organ-ised by an Enlightenment prescription, how might pedagogies perform differently and more equitably?
This article draws on the empirical materials from two psychogeographic walks that agitate lithic spaces with a posthuman affection. Part One examples a radical mobile classroom that I undertake regularly with university students where the use of it-narratives exposes the distributed agency of buildings. I explore what a posthuman gaze might do to/for performative pedagogies as my students attempt to interview a building. Part Two offers an example from my previous post-qualitative PhD inquiry which – by manipulating the practices of psychogeography and schizocartography – highlights how a shopping centre assemblage called Liverpool ONE diagnosed itself with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), thus reinforcing the notion of inorganic agential distribution. The pedagogic implications of this posthuman diagnosis are discussed.

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

I call the living I mourn the dead I break the lightning A transposition indicates an intertextual, cross-boundary, or transversal transfer, in the sense of a leap from onecode, field or axis into another, not merely in the quantitative mode of plural multiplication but rather in the qualitative sense of complex multiplicities. (Braidotti 2006g, p. 5

Political responses to 9/11 have bolstered an approach to ethics that gives priority to the translation of abstract principles into concrete dilemmas, rather than one that sees ethics as a transient encounter. Yet both politics and ethics arise precisely from this encounter and the responsibility that emerges through it. Unlike applied ethics, an ethics of encounter must consider the unpredictability that arises out of political and social situations, each of which require unique interpretations of plural contexts. Traditional discourses of political theory struggle to think ethics and political action in these terms. In order to overcome these limits and think anew the ethics of encounter, this paper turns to an unlikely resource: musical improvisation. It argues that the principles and practices of radical improvisation in music provide new avenues for theorising contingency, alterity and potentiality. Musical improvisation embraces infinite contingency via an interactive dialogue that encompasses both the sonic and the corporeal. In so doing, it provides an idea and an instantiation of an ethics that is grounded in the encounter, and that might challenge hegemonic orders of practical ethics and the politics these produce.

Ein Brückenschlag zwischen Posthumanismus und Philosophischer Anthropologie Oh Voltaire! Oh Humanität! Oh Blödsinn! (Nietzsche 1999 [1886], 54) Seit ihrer umfassenden Neubestimmung in der Philosophischen Anthropolo gie der Neunzehnhunderzwanzigerjahre war die "Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos" (Scheler 2002 [1928]) selten so prekär wie heute, wo der Mensch zum Namensgeber einer geologischen Epoche avanciert ist. Im An thro po zän tobt vor dem Hintergrund ökologischer Katastrophenszenarien und radikaler technologi scher Innovationen ein neuer diskursiver Kampf um das Humane. Auf der einen Seite befinden sich die Transhumanisten. Als Verbündete Homo fabers führen sie eine intensivierte prometheische Rhetorik ins Feld und suchen das planetari sche Heil in Geoengineering und MenschMaschineFusionen. Ihnen gegenüber stehen die Kombattantinnen des Posthumanismus. Bei allen Unterschieden im Detail ist ihnen (neben der Präferenz für ein materialistischrelationales Theorie design) die mehr oder weniger radikale Zurückweisung traditioneller Menschen fassungen gemeinsam. Negiert werden die humanistische Zentralperspektive, konkrete Bestimmungen, also alle Formen positiver Anthropologien, sowie meta physisch fundierte Wertungen. Davon ausgehend könnte man fragen, inwieweit jene posthumanistischen Neu bzw. (im doppelten Wortsinn) Umschreibungen des Menschen sich tatsäch lich von problematischen humanistischanthropologischen Traditionsbeständen freigemacht haben -und um welchen Preis. Stattdessen plädieren wir für gezielte Rückgriffe, das heißt in diesem Fall einen Brückenschlag zwischen Posthuma nismus und Philosophischer Anthropologie: (1) Nach einer kurzen Geländever messung des Anthropozän arbeiten wir Kernpositionen zweier Protagonistinnen der aktuellen Debatte, Rosi Braidotti und Donna Haraway, heraus. Diese kont rastieren wir anschließend (2) mit Arbeiten des jungen Günther Anders aus dem Kontext der Philosophischen Anthropologie. In seinen frühen Schriften entwirft Anders eine an Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Nicolai Hartmann und Martin Heidegger anknüpfende negative Anthropologie der Weltfremdheit, die er später um eine politische Philosophie der Technik erweitert. Sein Theorieprojekt erweist sich retrospektiv nicht nur als vielfach anschlussfähig an aktuelle Diskussionen. Es lässt sich im Rahmen einer kritischen Revision posthumanistischer Positio

ENGLISH:
The recent triumph of Conchita Wurst –a transgender artist who, acting as Austria’s representative, won the 2014 edition of the singing contest Eurovision –allows us to test Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire as a positive potential of production and of becoming (woman) as the process of realizing this potential. Conchita’s online and media appearances triggered numerous reactions full of hatred, and her figure was often equated with that of the monstrous –the bearded lady, the deformity, the ‘freak’. From a Deleuzian and Spinozist standpoint, I will consider whether the force producing these reactions could be the force of a sad passion: the envy towards a becoming that challenges the binary social machine and reveals another face of the monstrous. Not the soothing organic counterpart of the ‘well constituted’ subjectivity, but a new subjective figuration whose ‘sustainability’ involves a different rapport with change.

ESPAÑOL:
El reciente triunfo de Conchita Wurst –artista transgénero que, representando a Austria, resultó ganadora en la versión 2014 del concurso de canto Eurovisión –permite poner a prueba los conceptos deleuziano-guattarianos del deseo como potencia positiva de producción y del devenir (mujer) como proceso de realización del deseo. Las apariciones mediáticas y virtuales de Conchita provocaron numerosas reacciones de odio en las que su figura es frecuentemente asimilada a la de lo monstruoso: la mujer barbuda, la deformación, el “freak”. En clave deleuziana y spinozista, me preguntaré si la fuerza que produce estas reacciones no es acaso la de una pasión triste: la envidia ante un devenir que desafía la máquina social binaria y que revela otra cara de lo monstruoso. Ya no la contratara orgánica y tranquilizadora de la subjetividad “bien constituida”, sino una nueva figuración subjetiva cuya “sustentabilidad” pasa por otra relación con el cambio.

Most contemporary scholarly work on posthumanism and transhumanism rests on the idea that both perspectives are part of an ontological continuum. This article, however, acknowledges and explores the differences between them. In order to prove that evident theoretical –and, therefore, practical– differences exist between both positions, a genealogy of their development from the 1980s is proposed. The definition of the two different ontologies associated to each of the discussed positions is followed by an analysis of the consequences that this theoretical separation would have for research. This paper also lays out a revision of their epistemologies and their ethical and practical implications. To conclude, we offer a contextualized justification of why the two discussed positions are actually antithetic, and how considering them as such would be useful for future research in the field.

The ideas embedded in Enlightenment concepts of subjectivity, understood as a coherent and rational identity, have established a universal perspective for a long time. Today, this outlook is being questioned by the experience of difference. The voices of minorities demanding acceptance and representation, both in social practice and in theory, have become more audible. But while theory allows for radical mental conclusions, the social and existential practices require positive theoretical solutions. A postmodern deconstructed subject does not constitute a sufficient basis for social activity or political identification. Therefore, a significant challenge for the feminist theory today is to find a form for the social subjectivity and, at the same time, avoid an oppressive and reductive category. Rosi Braidotti employed the Deleuzian figure of a nomad, and proposed a concept of a subject being resistant to postmodern fragmentation. She made a distinction between identity and subjectivity: identity is rooted in the unconscious, while subjectivity is conscious and
a source of political resistance. The resistance is not due to stronger foundations, in comparison to the Cartesian subject, but results from mobility and openness to the Other. Attempting to construct a clearly positive conception of a subject, Braidotti proposes ‘a nomadic political project’. The question is: is it possible to put this idea into a social reality or
do we have just another sophisticated theoretical concept?

This thesis is a result of the one-year master programme in Photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. I chose my research subject deeply inspired by the work of Geert Goiris, my professor of photography, and the theoretical writing of Donna Haraway. I would like to thank my supervisor, Inge Henneman, for her enthusiasm and support during the research process and for motivating me to pursue and conclude this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to Geert Goiris who, despite being my tutor, agreed to be interviewed by me and allowed me to discuss his works in this thesis.

This article shows how Elena Ferrante, in the second part of Storia della bambina perduta, deconstructs the traditionally author/reader dichotomy, where the two opposite entities interact according to a «narrative pact» based on the dynamic of patriarchal desire but, at the same time, she reconstructs, or try to reconstruct, a different relationship between author and reader, inspired by non-oedipal and feminist forms of desire.

Questo articolo mostra come Elena Ferrante, nella seconda parte di Storia della bambina perduta, decostruisce la dicotomia tradizionale autore/lettore, dove le due opposte entità si relazionano secono il «patto narrativo» basato sulla dinamica del desiderio patriarcale ma, allo stesso tempo, l’autrice ricostruisce, o tenta di ricostruire, una relazione differente tra autore e lettore, ispirata da dinamiche di desiderio non-edipiche e femministe.

Let us imagine how we might begin to react when we live in a world where consciousnesses spring into existence fully formed and greet us with a bounding "Hello, I'm here!" This is the stage of the film Her (2013). More than that, let us imagine a world where totally average and apparently rational adults come to form relationships and romances with the consciousnesses embedded in their electronic devices. This is the drive behind the film Her.

Z zainteresowaniem przeczytałam w „Widoku” recenzję Andrzeja Marca "Nekros. ONtologia martwego (męskiego) ciała". Wzbudziła je nie tyle jej wartość merytoryczna, ile światopoglądowy charakter. Recenzent, zarzucając mi postawę zachowawczą i konserwatywną, krytykuje brak deklaracji ideologicznych i odrzucenie idei feministycznych. Zdaniem Marca stanowi to główny problem książki i ujawnia się zarówno w specyficznym użyciu języka, jak i w podejściu badawczym, a w konsekwencji wpływa także na treść publikacji.

The study analyses the changing construction of femininities and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon, a central deity in Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) esoteric religion Thelema. Femininity has occupied a problematic position in feminist theory, frequently associated with lack, artifice, and restriction. However, this study assumes that femininities are multiple, neither exclusively heterosexual nor limited to women, and can be constructed in ways that challenge the existing gender system. Based on historical and contemporary written sources, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Anglo-American esoteric milieu, the study utilises Mimi Schippers’ model of multiple femininities to analyse the Babalon discourse from the fin-de-siècle until today, against the background of shifting perceptions of femininity and feminine sexuality. Inspired by Luce Irigaray’s theorisation of sexual difference, Rosi Braidotti’s concept of feminist figurations, and Catherine Waldby’s notion of erotic destruction, a central question is whether Babalon can function as a figuration enabling new ways of articulating and inhabiting femininities. Reworking the negative feminine stereotype of the femme fatale, Crowley connected Babalon to an initiatory imperative of ego-annihilation, epitomising both feminine, erotic otherness and a feminised receptive modality required of all seekers. Crowley also linked Babalon with liberated female sexuality. Babalon has subsequently been interpreted by other esotericists, including John W. Parsons (1914–1952), who constructed the goddess as a feminist revolutionary; and Kenneth Grant (1924–2011), who equated Babalon with the sex magical priestess and notions of non-dual void preceding manifest creation, linking femininity to the dissolution of stable meaning. Growing awareness of feminism and LGBTQ issues in Anglo-American esotericism from the 1990s on has coincided with the increased visibility of female esotericists as ideology producers within the Babalon discourse. The contemporary Babalon discourse emphasises the feminine, desiring subject as sacred, and connected to the simultaneous threat and promise of the undoing of bounded subjectivity. The study shows how a previously derogatory feminine stereotype is reworked over time in ways that both reproduce and challenge hegemonic notions of femininity, arguing that Babalon functions as a situated and contingent figuration supporting the articulation of alternative ways of doing femininity and feminine sexuality.

Introduction
Uncompromising and undaunted, Regina José Galindo fights for her and others’ freedom through art. She exposes her fragile, female body, its psychophysical condition, to threat and humiliation so as to shake up the contemporary society indifferent to violence.
The naked body of the artist – the common denominator of most of her works – contrasted with the aggression of the events she arranges, symbolizes the striking fragility of a living organism. It points to the enormous and mysterious potential of a body as a site of psychic strength or overwhelming trauma.
This analysis is a results of a fascination with the seemingly distant and strange Guatemalan artist. Getting acquainted with her output and having analyzed the forms of enslavement that she touches upon, one has to perceive her art in global terms, as a  universal and live representation of human condition. The performances discussed herein have been divided into groups in accordance with the leading themes of the artist’s output. Correspondingly, the dissertation is composed of four chapters.
The first one – An Artist of Guatemala – has been devoted to situations which are indirectly connected with Guatemala – Regina Galindo’s motherland and current place of residence. The second provides arguments for her being a Total Artist. The third – An Artist-Poet – points to the artist’s other (apart from body art) passion – poetry, tracing the similarities between the two disciplines. The last chapter, divided into four subsections, unravels along the associations with the word “corpse”. The first of the subsections – Symptoms of Death, Symptoms of Life – describes actions connected with dying. With them, the artist makes the audience confront the view of a corpse. The Object subsection discusses human body as reduced to a  sum of organic components. Volunteers covers the works that would not have been possible without the help of “assistants”. It shows the easiness with which the just-goaded participants successfully take on the roles of oppressors. Care and Memory includes examples of translating intense self-care onto caring for others.
Art that is aimed for a general public has to be radical and exaggerated. This is why the artist uses the image of death when she tries to speak of affirmation of life. When she wants to mock the discourse of biopower, she undergoes hymenoplasty and reclaims her won body. In order to speak of how we all are indecisive, enslaved, and complicated, she makes her traumas public and evokes sympathy.
Since Regina Galindo’s output has not been analyzed in Polish language so far, this dissertation is of particular academic and cognitive value. The detailed accounts of events in the successive pieces have been recreated with the use of supplementing video material, interviews with the artist, and critical texts in foreign languages.

Lei parla a più riprese di «amore per zoe» e della necessità di andare oltre i confini di specie. Quindi, se intendiamo bene, dovremmo guardare alla "specie" come a una sorta di costrutto artificiale? Dobbiamo sottoporre la "specie" alla stessa decostruzione a cui è andata incontro la nozione di "genere"?

Jak myśleć o życiu i śmierci, o utracie i nadziei w postapokaliptycznym i posttraumatycznym świecie? Jak nie tracąc z oczu globalnych i planetarnych wyzwań „naszego dzisiaj”, móc myśleć także o materialnych, konkretnych, usytuowanych, wręcz intymnych szczegółach i związkach, w które wchodzi życie w swoich jednostkowych przejawach i formach? Jak tworzyć odpowiedzialne relacje ze światem, jak o nim opowiadać i myśleć? Jak myśleć o człowieku inaczej niż przez pryzmat autonomiczności, samowystarczalności, atomizacji czy jednostkowości? Jak pomyśleć człowieka jako „bycie ze świata”, uchwycić ruch antropo-de-centralizacji, immanentnej relacyjności, sieci współzależności? Na te pytania autorka próbuje odpowiadać współ-myśląc z tekstami współczesnych myślicielek posthumanizmu przede wszystkim Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Vinciane Despret, Natalie Jeremijenko, Erin Manning i Michaela Mardera.
Narracje naukowe, filozoficzne czy interwencje artystyczne opowiadają nam o świecie i mogą to czynić na różne sposoby. Eseje z tego zbioru są próbą wypracowania teorii, konceptualizacji, wizji, utopii czy opowieści o świecie, które rozpoznając specyfikę „naszego dzisiaj”, eksperymentują z myśleniem o „naszym jutrze” (czasem podważając sam linearny obraz czasu) i zmierzają ku praktykom zmiany codziennego etosu.

Jesienią tego roku na polskim rynku, za sprawą Wydawnictwa Naukowego PWN oraz intensywnych prac tłumaczek Joanny Bednarek i Agnieszki Kowalczyk, pojawiła się książka Po człowieku autorstwa Rosi Braidotti. Feministyczna filozofka-badaczka znana jest u nas przede wszystkim za sprawą pojęcia podmiotów nomadycznych(1). Miałem okazję podyskutować na temat tej pracy z kilkoma osobami i opinie były bardzo zróżnicowane, zazwyczaj skrajne: od "bardzo słaba" do "świetna". Skąd taka rozbieżność?

This article seeks to offer a critical assessment of the conception of ethics underlying the growing constellation of 'new materialist' social theories. It argues that such theories offer little if any purchase in understanding the contemporary transformations of relations between mind and body or human and non-human natures. Taking as exemplary the work of Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, and Karen Barad, this article asserts that a continuity between ethics and ontology is central to recent theories of 'materiality'. These theories assert the primacy of matter by calling upon a spiritual or ascetic self-transformation so that one might be 'attuned to' or 'register' materiality and, conversely, portray critique as hubristic, conceited, or resentful, blinded by its anthropocentrism. It is argued that framing the grounds for ontological speculation in these ethical terms licences the omission of analysis of social forces mediating thought's access to the world and so grants the theorist leave to sidestep any questions over the conditions of thought. In particular, the essay points to ongoing processes of the so-called primitive accumulation as constituting the relationship between mind and body, human and non-human natures.

Rozprawa stanowi próbę ukazania w jaki sposób splątane konceptualizacje i praktyki ciała przenikają się w procesie samoorganizacji materii. Tak sformułowane rozważania zostały usytuowane w obrębie dwóch współczesnych nurtów filozoficznych: posthumanizmu i nowego materializmu. Przedstawicieli i przedstawicielki tych formacji myślowych łączy potrzeba przemyślenia sposobów stawania się materii, uchwytnych w dynamice przeistaczających się ciał. Tego rodzaju ukierunkowanie rozważań umożliwia rozumienie cielesności w kategoriach procesów, relacji, zależności, a także wspólnotowości. Nieodłącznym wątkiem tak sformułowanych filozoficznych dociekań są analizy poświęcone powiązaniom ludzkich i nie-ludzkich przejawów sprawczości. W takim ujęciu myślenie i ruch, zachodzące w układach powiązanych ciał, stanowią nierozerwalne przejawy aktywności materii. W związku z tym filozoficzne spekulacje zostały połączone z analizą praktyk ciała wywodzących się z tańca, performance, sztuk wizualnych itp., aby umożliwić lepsze zrozumienie ich wzajemnego przenikania się w procesie samoorganizacji materii, a tym samym w przekształceniach współdziałających ciał. Słowa kluczowe: konceptualizacje ciała, praktyki ciała, ciało, materia, cielesność, posthumanizm, nowy materializm

Though most neomaterialists share a commitment to the Copernican decentring of humans from the world stage, there is disagreement on the purposes of such an endeavour. The polemic stems from a fundamental discrepancy about what the return to materiality entails: is matter the principle of the non-thinking as such, or is it always already imbued with some sort of subjectivity? Is the new materialism's goal to come to terms with the non-living origin of life? Or is it rather to recognize that seemingly dead materials are always in some sense incipiently alive? For convenience , we can think of two neomaterialist perspectives: the rationalist or elim-inative neomaterialism, and the vitalist or panpsychist neomaterialism. I explore some of the conceptual problems faced by both camps and, drawing from the recently developed theory of consciousness as integrated information (Tononi), as well as its quantum physical construal by Max Tegmark, I suggest some provisional ways to address those issues.

It has been said that in this technologically inundated era, we are all cyborgs. Such a radical redefinition of the human being is but one manifested example of how the category ‘human’ and its multifaceted sub-categories have undergone a long process of re-conceptualisation under postmodernism. This paper explores how the concept of ‘the posthuman’ allows for human kind to expand its abilities, its perception and its understanding of our world, as seen through the work of various artists articulating these ideas.

Today, more than any other historical period, the movement of products, people,
and capital in combination with cyberspace transforms radically our perception of
space and time, therefore the relationship with ourselves and our bodies. In these
conditions of constant mobility, we are called upon to adapt to new data, to become
subject of change (becoming subjects), neo-nomadic. In this research I would like to
give voice to the embodied experiences of people living far from their place of origin
and experiencing transformations in their sense of identity (ethnicity, gender, race,
class). The lived experience is the starting point for understanding a number of issues
surrounding the formation of new identities. The relationship of identity and place, the
emergence of relationships of social power and control in space, as well as the
possibilities of agency are central to the research questions. Drawing mainly on the
theoretical arsenal of Rosi Braidotti's and Grilles Deleuze's and Felix Guattari's
"nomadic theory" I attempt to create a field of dialogue, where research methods of
qualitative social research meet contemporary artistic practices to produce new forms
of knowledge, empowerment and social change.
Keywords: nomadism, mobility, identity, cartographies, politics of location.

The book addresses a present-day crisis, evidenced in both praxis and theory - the question of individual agency in a postmodern world. Invoking individuality, self-becoming, desire and well-being, Creating Oneself offers a rethinking of individuals’ capacity to influence their reality by way of their own actions.
The book describes the shortcomings of associating  agency with resistance to social norms and institutions, arguing that agency, as a way of life involves an affirmative dynamic of self-creation.  Drawing mainly on the works of Irigaray, Butler, Foucault and Deleuze, this book provides an account of agency as a mode of  social and personal transformation that endeavor to materialize a horizon of a better future.s

Sicilian writer Goliarda Sapienza (1924–1996) is increasingly regarded as a central figure in modern Italian literature, especially with the international success of her masterpiece L’arte della gioia [The Art of Joy]. This book offers an in-depth analysis of Sapienza’s major works, identifying their main themes and central poetics, and establishing her originality and signicance within the context of twentieth-century Italian literature.

The study follows Sapienza’s autofictional journey from the painful reconstruction of the self in Lettera aperta [Open Letter] and Il filo di mezzogiorno [Midday Thread], to Modesta’s rebellious adventure in L’arte della gioia, to the playful portrayal of childhood in Io, Jean Gabin [I, Jean Gabin] and, finally, to the representation of prison life and queer desire in L’università di Rebibbia [Rebibbia University] and Le certezze del dubbio [The Certainties of Doubt]. Themes of freedom, the body, nonconformist gender identities and sexuality, autobiography and political commitment are explored in connection to a variety of philosophical discourses, including Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and queer theory. From a position of marginality and eccentricity, Sapienza gives voice to a radical aspiration to achieve freedom and social transformation, in which writing and literary communication are conferred a fundamental role.

This book was the winner of the 2015 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Women’s Studies.

Książka stanowi oryginalną propozycję filozoficznego spojrzenia na epokę antropocenu oraz kryzysu klimatycznego. Nawiązuje do takich współczesnych nurtów filozoficznych, jak nowy materializm (Karen Barad, Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway), realizm spekulatywny (Graham Harman) oraz ontologia zwrócona ku przedmiotom (Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant).

The ontology of animality, starting from Derrida's writings, determines the reconsideration of the human being and his ontological condition within an environment (Umwelt) in which the anthropocentric point of view has hitherto been predominant. The post-human represents the urgency for ethics willing to reflect on a world inhabited both by hybridizing life forms breaking the boundaries, and a common and immanent substratum yearning for its own limit: the animality partaken by all of us. The boundaries will be deconstructed starting from the ontology, through the epistemology, in order to define post-human ethics.

Introduzione I CAPITOLO PRIMO Il postumanesimo di Roberto Marchesini: dall'ontologia riflessiva all'ontologia relazionale 1 1.1. L'essenza umana tra i paradigmi umanistici dell'incompletezza e della purezza 3 1.2. I limiti del dualismo e della dicotomia antropocentrica 14 1.3. Il superamento dell'antropocentrismo ontologico: l'antropopoiesi come processo ibridativo 21 1.4. La soggettività tra umanesimo e postumanesimo: prerogativa umana o emergenza dall'animalità? 32 1.5. L'epifania animale come fondamento estetico dell'ontologia relazionale 40 CAPITOLO SECONDO Il postumanesimo di Rosi Braidotti: un'etica nomade per soggettività incarnate 48 2.1. Dal soggetto universale dell'umanesimo al soggetto incarnato del materialismo postumanista 51 2.2. Itinerari di divenire-minoranza: un progetto etico-politico per soggettività relazionali 59 2.3. Leggere l'alterità: dall'essenzialismo alle cartografie nomadi 68 2.4. Il postumanesimo come sperimentazione di molteplici divenire 76 CAPITOLO TERZO Soggettività post-umane: analogie tra Marchesini e Braidotti e criticità del postumanesimo 82 3.1. La fine del dualismo ontologico e il ruolo dell'alterità nella soggettività 84 3.2. Il post-umano tra la crisi dell'umanesimo e la fine dell'antropocentrismo 90 3.3. Le priorità del postumanesimo: complessità, differenze e relazioni 96 3.4. Il desiderio come centro e propulsore della soggettività 101 3.5. Il postumanesimo come umanesimo e criticità dell'ibridazione mutazionale 105 Conclusioni 113 Bibliografia 118

Fashioning a new materialist agenda, this essay calls for sensitivity to subtly moving matters present in the processes of making and encountering art. Otherwise, it claims, we will end up with seriously restricted understandings of art’s capabilities. Indeed, we might even miss art’s most inventive and moving offering: how it can change our thinking-feeling. In this essay, I
suggest methods of relating to art in more bodily and material terms, and propose concepts that help to point out the materiality of encountering and making art. To make sense of how a new materialist approach might work in the case of contemporary art, I will offer three propositions that revolve around ontology, ethics and politics. These propositions arise from participation with art and are probed and provoked by a close relation to art.

The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphysics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analyticcontinental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intellectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical 'sound' from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring. But our main interest is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy.

This dissertation uses the theories of posthumanism, cyborg feminism, Deleuzian concepts of the body and the monstrous. Through these ideas, I argue for a reconceptualisation of women’s bodies alongside technology. This reconceptualisation and reconfiguration opposes the boundaries and dualisms imposed on women’s bodies. I do this by mapping out the rational humanism associated with the Enlightenment. I argue for new lines of flight to be explored, while examining the potentially transgressive forms of bodily transformation and metamorphosis. This exploration includes the analysis of two opposing yet complementary case-studies: the avant-garde French performance artist ORLAN, and the cosmetic surgery reality television (CSRTV) show Botched. I explore their overlapping discourses of self-transformation and their respective disregard for the sacrosanctity of the ‘natural’ body and flesh. Where they differ, is in their modes of obtaining self-transformation, and the politics that underlie their intentions

J'ai réfléchi aux mécanismes de résistance élaborés dans l’écriture de Monique Wittig à partir de Virgile, non. L’écrivaine transpose le mythe dantesque de la traversée de l’enfer au temps contemporain en plaçant l’action dans la ville américaine de San Francisco. Inspiré par l’idée de renversements, son processus se concentre à éclairer les multiples dominations auxquelles les femmes sont soumises dans les cercles de l’enfer et dans le monde contemporain. Comment la mise en scène de la lutte armée chez M. Wittig sert-elle sa langue militante ? Elle argumente pour le fait que la figure de la "militante" soit une identité sociale - à travers l’écriture, la fiction et l’imagination. Cette position est en lien avec le texte performatif puisque c’est par l’interpellation du lecteur, l’apostrophe, que cela se produit, me ramenant à conclure sur l’idée de l’écriture comme une arme. Cette écriture se caractérise par l’éclatement du réel social.

RESEARCH MA THESIS: The main research question this thesis investigates is: "how is the notion of the Anthropocene challenged, refined and reimagined in contemporary feminist theory and fiction and in what ways does an approach via narratives negate a binary and teleological reading of the Anthropocene?" A multiple and threaded approach of theory and fiction is explored in this thesis. How the story is told is always at least as important as what that story consists of. So, the questions this thesis is asking and after are: "what kinds of narratives, what kinds of metaphors in narratives are being deployed to talk about the Anthropocene?". In order to come to an understanding of what it might mean to live in the Anthropocene attention is drawn to storytelling and the notion of narrative. It is clear that Earth is in constant change. The idea of the Anthropocene frames this change into a narrative of human responsibility and consequences for the human inhabitants of Earth. Only through particular narratives and metaphors does a changing Earth become socially and culturally meaningful. The work of feminist theorists and fiction writers that is analysed (i.e. the work of Braidotti, Haraway, Zylinska, Colebrook, Atwood and Winterson) reflects this practice of knowledge production. In both the theoretical and literary approaches to the Anthropocene that are considered here, a meaningful engagement with a changing planet is key. Whether through coming up with alternatives, pushing the boundaries of what the Anthropocene has come to stand for, or engaging with it through a particular lens, contemporary feminist theory and fiction have taken the challenges the Anthropocene represents and faced them head on.

Feminist theorists have long been concerned with, in Peta Hinton and Pat Treusch’s (2015) words, “revealing and negotiating inequalities conceived along the break-line of a binary logic that has characterized and sedimented Western traditions of thought” (p. 1). Feminist posthuman thinkers continue this work exploring how historical exceptionalism given to human “man” has helped foster vastly unequal hierarchies and social stratifications that privilege some human and nonhuman bodies, knowledges, and modes of being over others. As Jasmine Ulmer (2017) writes, posthumanism has urged “renewed attention to materiality, vitalism, ecologies, flora, fauna, climate, elements, things, and interconnections [and] has created openings across academic fields regarding who and what has the capacity to know” (p. 1). The word “renewed” is key, since as Ulmer and many others point out, posthumanism does not inaugurate such attention, but rather follows a rich and varied legacy of indigenous knowledges that have long positioned the human as part of, rather than sovereign over, a vibrant ecology of active matter and systems. This entry introduces feminist posthumanism, paying specific attention to key thinkers, including philosopher Rosi Braidotti, and further explores emerging methodologies for engaging in research that accounts for the posthumanist turn in feminist thought and action.