Category Archives: Posthumanism

Perhaps you have had a nightmare in which you fell through the bottom of your known universe into a vortex of mutated children, talking animals, mental illness, freakish art, and clamoring gibberish. There, you were subjected to the gaze of creatures of indeterminate nature and questionable intelligence. Your position as the subject of your own dream was called into question while voices outside your sight commented upon your tenuous identity. When you woke, you were relieved to find that it was only a dream-version of the book you were reading when you fell asleep. Maybe that book was Alice in Wonderland; maybe it was What is Posthumanism?

Now, it is not quite fair to compare Cary Wolfes sober, thoughtful scholarship with either a nightmare or a work of (childrens?) fantasy. It is a profound, thoroughly researched study with far-reaching consequences for public policy, bioethics, education, and the arts. However, it does present a rather odd dramatis personae, including a glow-in-the-dark rabbit, a woman who feels most at ease in a cattle chute, an artist of Jewish descent who implants an ID-chip in his own leg, researchers who count the words in a dogs vocabulary, and horses who exhibit more intelligence than the average human toddler. The settings, too, are often wildly different from those you might expect in an academic work: a manufactured cloud hovering over a lake in Switzerland, a tree park in Canada where landscape and architecture blend and redefine one another, recording studios, photographic laboratories, slaughterhouses, and (most of all) the putative minds of animals and the deconstructed minds of the very humans whose ontological existence it seeks to problematize.

But that is another exaggeration. Wolfes goal is not to undermine the existence or value of human beings. Rather, it is to call into question the universal ethics, assumed rationality, and species-specific self-determination of humanism. That is a mouthful.

Indeed, Wolfes book is a mouthful, and a headful. It is in fact a book by a specialist, for specialists. While Wolfe is an English professor (at Rice University) and identifies himself with literary and cultural studies (p. 100), this is first of all a work of philosophy. Its ideal audience is very small, consisting of English and Philosophy professors who came of age in the 70s, earned their Ph.D.s during the hey-day of Derridean Deconstruction, and have spent the intervening decades keeping up with trends in systems theory, cultural studies, science, bioethics, and information technology. It is rigorous and demanding, especially in its first five chapters, which lay the conceptual groundwork for the specific analyses of the second section.

In these first five chapters, Wolfe describes his perspective and purpose by interaction with many other great minds and influential texts, primarily those of Jacques Derrida. Here, the fundamental meaning and purpose of Posthumanism becomes clear. Wolfe wants his readers to rethink their relationship to animals (what he calls nonhuman animals). His goal is a new and more inclusive form of ethical pluralism (137). That sound innocuous enough, but he is not talking about racial, religious, or other human pluralisms. He is postulating a pluralism that transcends species. In other words, he is promoting the ethical treatment of animals based on a fundamental re-evaluation of what it means to be human, to be able to speak, and even to think. He does this by discussing studies that reveal the language capacities of animals (a dog apparently has about a 200-word vocabulary and can learn new words as quickly as a human three-year-old; pp. 32-33), by recounting the story of a woman whose Aspergers syndrome enables her to empathize with cows and sense the world the way they do (chapter five), and by pointing out the ways in which we value disabled people who do not possess the standard traits that (supposedly) make us human.

But Wolfe goes further than a simple suggestion that we should be nice to animals (and the unspoken plug for universal veganism). He is proposing a radical disruption of liberal humanism and a rigorous interrogation of what he sees as an arrogant complacency about our species. He respects any variety of philosophy that challenges anthropocentrism and speciesism (62)anthropocentrism, of course, means viewing the world as if homo sapiens is the center (or, more accurately, viewing the world from the position of occupying that center) and specisism is the term he uses to replace racism. We used to feel and enact prejudice against people of different ethnic backgrounds, he suggests, but we now know that is morally wrong. The time has come, then, to realize that we are feeling and enacting prejudice against people of different species.

Although Wolfe suggests many epistemological and empirical reasons for rethinking the personhood of animals, he comes to the conclusion that our relationship with them is based on our shared embodiment. Humans and animals have a shared finitude (139); we can both feel pain, suffer, and die. On the basis of our mutual mortality, then, we should have an emphasis on compassion (77). He is not out to denigrate his own species far from it. Indeed, he goes out of his way to spend time discussing infants (who have not yet developed rationality and language), people with disabilities (especially those that prevent them from participating in fully rational thought and/or communication), and the elderly (who may lose some of those rational capacities, especially if racked by such ailments as Alzheimers). Indeed, he claims: It is not by denying the special status of human being[s] but by intensifying it that we can come to think of nonhuman animalsasfellow creatures (77).

This joint focus on the special status of all human beings along with the other living creatures roaming (or swimming, flying, crawling, slithering) the globe has far-reaching consequences for public policy, especially bioethics. Wolfe says that, currently, bioethics is riddled with prejudices: Of these prejudices, none is more symptomatic of the current state of bioethics than prejudice based on species difference, and an incapacity to address the ethical issues raised by dramatic changes over the past thirty years in our knowledge about the lives, communication, emotions, and consciousnesses of a number of nonhuman species (56). One of the goals of his book, then, is to reiterate that knowledge and promote awareness of those issues that he sees as ethical.

If you read Wolfes book, or even parts of it, you will suddenly see posthumanism everywhere. You can trace its influence in the enormously fast-growing pet industry. From the blog Pawsible Marketing: As in recent and past years, there is no doubt that pets continue to become more and more a part of the family, even to the extent of becoming, in some cases, humanized.

You will see it in bring-your-pet-to-work or bring-your-pet-to-school days. You might think it is responsible for the recent introduction of a piece of legislation called H.R. 3501, The Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years, know as the HAPPY Act, which proposes a tax deduction for pet owners. You will find it in childrens books about talking animals. You will see it on Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, and a PBS series entitled Inside the Animal Mind. You will find it in films, such as the brand-new documentary The Cove, which records the brutal slaughter of dolphins for food. And you will see it in works of art.

Following this reasoning, section two of Wolfes book (chapters six through eleven) veers off from the strictly philosophical approach into the more traditional terrain of cultural studies: he examines specific works of art in light of the philosophical basis that is now firmly in place. Interestingly, he does not choose all works of art that depict animals, nor those that displace humans. He begins with works that depict animals (Sue Coes paintings of slaughterhouses) and that use animals (Eduardo Kacs creation of genetically engineered animals that glow in the dark), but then moves on to discuss film, architecture, poetry, and music. In each of these examinations, he works to destabilize traditional binaries such as nature/culture, landscape/architecture, viewer/viewed, presence/absence, organic/inorganic, natural/artificial, and, really, human/nonhuman. This second section, then, is a subtle application of the theory of posthumanism itself to the arts, [our] environment, and [our] identity.

What is perhaps most important about What is Posthumanism remains latent in the text. This is its current and (especially) future prevalence. By tracing the history of posthumanism back through systems theory into deconstruction, Wolfe implies a future trajectory, too. I would venture to suggest that he believes posthumanism is the worldview that will soon come to dominate Western thought. And this is important for academics specifically and thinkers in general to realize.

Whether you agree with Cary Wolfe or not, it would be wise to understand posthumanism. It appears that your only choice will be either to align yourself with this perspective or to fight against it. If you agree, you should know with what. If you fight, you should know against what.

What, then, is the central thesis of posthumanism? Wolfes entire project might be summed up in his bold claim that, thanks to his own work and that of the theorists and artists he discusses, the human occupies a new place in the universe, a universe now populated by what I am prepared to call nonhuman subjects (47)such subjects as talking rabbits, six-inch people, and mythical monsters?

Well, maybe not the mythical monsters.

Excerpt from:

What is Posthumanism? | The Curator

Perhaps you have had a nightmare in which you fell through the bottom of your known universe into a vortex of mutated children, talking animals, mental illness, freakish art, and clamoring gibberish. There, you were subjected to the gaze of creatures of indeterminate nature and questionable intelligence. Your position as the subject of your own dream was called into question while voices outside your sight commented upon your tenuous identity. When you woke, you were relieved to find that it was only a dream-version of the book you were reading when you fell asleep. Maybe that book was Alice in Wonderland; maybe it was What is Posthumanism?

Now, it is not quite fair to compare Cary Wolfes sober, thoughtful scholarship with either a nightmare or a work of (childrens?) fantasy. It is a profound, thoroughly researched study with far-reaching consequences for public policy, bioethics, education, and the arts. However, it does present a rather odd dramatis personae, including a glow-in-the-dark rabbit, a woman who feels most at ease in a cattle chute, an artist of Jewish descent who implants an ID-chip in his own leg, researchers who count the words in a dogs vocabulary, and horses who exhibit more intelligence than the average human toddler. The settings, too, are often wildly different from those you might expect in an academic work: a manufactured cloud hovering over a lake in Switzerland, a tree park in Canada where landscape and architecture blend and redefine one another, recording studios, photographic laboratories, slaughterhouses, and (most of all) the putative minds of animals and the deconstructed minds of the very humans whose ontological existence it seeks to problematize.

But that is another exaggeration. Wolfes goal is not to undermine the existence or value of human beings. Rather, it is to call into question the universal ethics, assumed rationality, and species-specific self-determination of humanism. That is a mouthful.

Indeed, Wolfes book is a mouthful, and a headful. It is in fact a book by a specialist, for specialists. While Wolfe is an English professor (at Rice University) and identifies himself with literary and cultural studies (p. 100), this is first of all a work of philosophy. Its ideal audience is very small, consisting of English and Philosophy professors who came of age in the 70s, earned their Ph.D.s during the hey-day of Derridean Deconstruction, and have spent the intervening decades keeping up with trends in systems theory, cultural studies, science, bioethics, and information technology. It is rigorous and demanding, especially in its first five chapters, which lay the conceptual groundwork for the specific analyses of the second section.

In these first five chapters, Wolfe describes his perspective and purpose by interaction with many other great minds and influential texts, primarily those of Jacques Derrida. Here, the fundamental meaning and purpose of Posthumanism becomes clear. Wolfe wants his readers to rethink their relationship to animals (what he calls nonhuman animals). His goal is a new and more inclusive form of ethical pluralism (137). That sound innocuous enough, but he is not talking about racial, religious, or other human pluralisms. He is postulating a pluralism that transcends species. In other words, he is promoting the ethical treatment of animals based on a fundamental re-evaluation of what it means to be human, to be able to speak, and even to think. He does this by discussing studies that reveal the language capacities of animals (a dog apparently has about a 200-word vocabulary and can learn new words as quickly as a human three-year-old; pp. 32-33), by recounting the story of a woman whose Aspergers syndrome enables her to empathize with cows and sense the world the way they do (chapter five), and by pointing out the ways in which we value disabled people who do not possess the standard traits that (supposedly) make us human.

But Wolfe goes further than a simple suggestion that we should be nice to animals (and the unspoken plug for universal veganism). He is proposing a radical disruption of liberal humanism and a rigorous interrogation of what he sees as an arrogant complacency about our species. He respects any variety of philosophy that challenges anthropocentrism and speciesism (62)anthropocentrism, of course, means viewing the world as if homo sapiens is the center (or, more accurately, viewing the world from the position of occupying that center) and specisism is the term he uses to replace racism. We used to feel and enact prejudice against people of different ethnic backgrounds, he suggests, but we now know that is morally wrong. The time has come, then, to realize that we are feeling and enacting prejudice against people of different species.

Although Wolfe suggests many epistemological and empirical reasons for rethinking the personhood of animals, he comes to the conclusion that our relationship with them is based on our shared embodiment. Humans and animals have a shared finitude (139); we can both feel pain, suffer, and die. On the basis of our mutual mortality, then, we should have an emphasis on compassion (77). He is not out to denigrate his own species far from it. Indeed, he goes out of his way to spend time discussing infants (who have not yet developed rationality and language), people with disabilities (especially those that prevent them from participating in fully rational thought and/or communication), and the elderly (who may lose some of those rational capacities, especially if racked by such ailments as Alzheimers). Indeed, he claims: It is not by denying the special status of human being[s] but by intensifying it that we can come to think of nonhuman animalsasfellow creatures (77).

This joint focus on the special status of all human beings along with the other living creatures roaming (or swimming, flying, crawling, slithering) the globe has far-reaching consequences for public policy, especially bioethics. Wolfe says that, currently, bioethics is riddled with prejudices: Of these prejudices, none is more symptomatic of the current state of bioethics than prejudice based on species difference, and an incapacity to address the ethical issues raised by dramatic changes over the past thirty years in our knowledge about the lives, communication, emotions, and consciousnesses of a number of nonhuman species (56). One of the goals of his book, then, is to reiterate that knowledge and promote awareness of those issues that he sees as ethical.

If you read Wolfes book, or even parts of it, you will suddenly see posthumanism everywhere. You can trace its influence in the enormously fast-growing pet industry. From the blog Pawsible Marketing: As in recent and past years, there is no doubt that pets continue to become more and more a part of the family, even to the extent of becoming, in some cases, humanized.

You will see it in bring-your-pet-to-work or bring-your-pet-to-school days. You might think it is responsible for the recent introduction of a piece of legislation called H.R. 3501, The Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years, know as the HAPPY Act, which proposes a tax deduction for pet owners. You will find it in childrens books about talking animals. You will see it on Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, and a PBS series entitled Inside the Animal Mind. You will find it in films, such as the brand-new documentary The Cove, which records the brutal slaughter of dolphins for food. And you will see it in works of art.

Following this reasoning, section two of Wolfes book (chapters six through eleven) veers off from the s
trictly philosophical approach into the more traditional terrain of cultural studies: he examines specific works of art in light of the philosophical basis that is now firmly in place. Interestingly, he does not choose all works of art that depict animals, nor those that displace humans. He begins with works that depict animals (Sue Coes paintings of slaughterhouses) and that use animals (Eduardo Kacs creation of genetically engineered animals that glow in the dark), but then moves on to discuss film, architecture, poetry, and music. In each of these examinations, he works to destabilize traditional binaries such as nature/culture, landscape/architecture, viewer/viewed, presence/absence, organic/inorganic, natural/artificial, and, really, human/nonhuman. This second section, then, is a subtle application of the theory of posthumanism itself to the arts, [our] environment, and [our] identity.

What is perhaps most important about What is Posthumanism remains latent in the text. This is its current and (especially) future prevalence. By tracing the history of posthumanism back through systems theory into deconstruction, Wolfe implies a future trajectory, too. I would venture to suggest that he believes posthumanism is the worldview that will soon come to dominate Western thought. And this is important for academics specifically and thinkers in general to realize.

Whether you agree with Cary Wolfe or not, it would be wise to understand posthumanism. It appears that your only choice will be either to align yourself with this perspective or to fight against it. If you agree, you should know with what. If you fight, you should know against what.

What, then, is the central thesis of posthumanism? Wolfes entire project might be summed up in his bold claim that, thanks to his own work and that of the theorists and artists he discusses, the human occupies a new place in the universe, a universe now populated by what I am prepared to call nonhuman subjects (47)such subjects as talking rabbits, six-inch people, and mythical monsters?

Well, maybe not the mythical monsters.

More here:

What is Posthumanism? | The Curator

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Deconstruction and Excision in Philosophical Posthumanism

Abstract

I am focusing here on the main counterarguments that were raised against a thesis I put forward in my article Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism (2009), namely that significant similarities can be found on a fundamental level between the concept of the posthuman, as put forward by some transhumanists, and Nietzsches concept of the overhuman. The articles with the counterarguments were published in the recent Nietzsche and European Posthumanisms issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technology (January-July 2010). As several commentators referred to identical issues, I decided that it would be appropriate not to respond to each of the articles individually, but to focus on the central arguments and to deal with the counterarguments mentioned in the various replies. I am concerned with each topic in a separate section. The sections are entitled as follows: 1. Technology and evolution; 2. Overcoming nihilism; 3. Politics and liberalism; 4. Utilitarianism or virtue ethics?; 5. The good Life; 6. Creativity and the will to power; 7. Immortality and longevity; 8. Logocentrism; 9. The Third Reich. When dealing with the various topics, I am not merely responding to counterarguments; I also raise questions concerning transhumanism and put forward my own views concerning some of the questions I am dealing with.

I am very grateful for the provocative replies to my article Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism (2009), published in the recent Nietzsche and European Posthumanisms issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technologyy (January-July 2010). In the following nine sections, I will address the most relevant arguments that have been put forward against some of the points I was raising. As several commentators referred to identical issues, I decided that it would be appropriate not to respond to each of the articles individually, but to focus on the central arguments and to deal with the counterarguments mentioned in the various replies. I will be concerned with each topic in a separate section. The sections will be entitled as follows: 1. Technology and evolution; 2. Overcoming nihilism; 3. Politics and liberalism; 4. Utilitarianism or virtue ethics?; 5. The good life; 6. Creativity and the will to power; 7. Immortality and longevity; 8. Logocentrism; 9. The Third Reich.

1. Technology and evolution

One of the central issues that many commentators discussed was the appropriate understanding of who is the overhuman and how can he come about. In the final paragraphs of his article, Hauskeller attacks the idea that Nietzsches overhuman is to be understood in an evolutionary sense (2010, 7). However, I can confidently claim that he is wrong in this respect. Let me list the most important reasons for this. First, Nietzsche saw human beings as the link between animals and overhumans (KSA, Za, 4, 16). How is this to be understood, if not in the evolutionary sense? Second, Nietzsche valued Darwin immensely. Nietzsche readers frequently point out that Nietzsche was very critical of Darwin, and falsely conclude from this that he did not hold a theory of evolution. But the inference is false, as is their understanding of Nietzsches evaluation of Darwin. It is true that Nietzsches remarks concerning Darwin were critical. However, he criticized him for a specific reason: not for putting forward a theory of evolution, but for putting forward a theory of evolution based on the assumption that the fundamental goal of human beings is their struggle for survival (KSA, GD, 6, 120). According to Nietzsche, the world is will to power, and hence the fundamental goal of human beings is power, too (KSA, GD, 6, 120). Why, one might wonder, if Nietzsche was so close to Darwin, did he have to be so critical of him? Nietzsche stresses explicitly that he distances himself most vehemently from those to whom he feels closest. In order to give a clear shape to his philosophy, he deals most carefully and intensely with those who are closest to his way of thinking, which is the reason why he permanently argues against Socrates (KSA, NF, 8, 97). The same applies to all those thinkers, such as Darwin, with whom he shares many basic insights. Hence, Nietzsche is not arguing with Darwin over the plausibility of the theory of evolution but concerning the appropriate understanding of the theory and the fundamental theory of action that underlies it. Third, a simple way of showing that Nietzsche did hold a theory of evolution is by referring not only to the writings he published himself, but also to those of his writings that were published by others later on. Here one finds several clear attempts at developing a theory of evolution (KSA, NF, 13, 316-317).

Fourth, many of the commentators are correct in stressing that Nietzsche regarded education as the primary means for realizing the overhuman and the evolutionary changes that would enable the overhuman to come into existence. However, Nietzsche also talks about breeding in some passages of his notebooks. In my recent monograph on the concept of human dignity (2010, 226-232), I described in detail how the evolutionary process towards the overhuman is supposed to occur from Nietzsches perspective. In short, Nietzsche regards it as possible to achieve by means of education. Thereby, the more active human beings become stronger and turn into higher human beings, such that the gap between active and passive human beings widens itself. Eventually, it can occur that the group of the active and that of the passive human beings stand for two types of human beings which represent the outer limits of what the human type can be or what can be understood as belonging to the human species. If such a state is reached, then an evolutionary step towards a new species can occur and the overhuman can come into existence. Many transhumanists, by contrast, focus on various means of enhancement, in particular genetic enhancement, for such an event to occur. In both cases, the goal is to move from natural selection towards a type of human selection, even though the expression human selection sounds strange particularly, perhaps, for many contemporary Germans. Yet, I do not think that human selection must be a morally dubious procedure. If the selection is a liberal one, i.e. a type of selection undertaken within a liberal and democratic society, many problematic aspects vanish.

Even though transhumanist thinkers and Nietzsche appear to differ over the primary means of bringing about an evolutionary change, I think the appearance is deceptive. Classical education and genetic enhancement strike me as structurally analogous procedures, and in the following section I will offer some reasons for holding this position.

1.1 Technology

Quite a few commentators have pointed out that that Nietzsche regarded education as the main means of bringing about the overhuman, whereas transhumanists focus on technological means of altering human beings to realize the posthuman. Blackford explicitly stresses this in the editorial of the Nietzsche and European Posthumanisms issue: It is unclear what Nietzsche would make of such a technologically-mediated form of evolution in human psychology, capacities, and (perhaps) morphology (2010, ii). Certainly, this is a correct estimation. Max More is also right when he stresses the following: From both the individual and the species perspective, the concept of self-overcoming resonates strongly with extropic transhumanist ideals and goals. Although Nietzsche had little to say about technology as a means of self-overcoming neither did he rule it out (2010, 2). Stambler, on the other hand, goes much further and declares confidently: in addition [...] his denial of scientific knowledge and disregard of technology [...] are elements that make it difficult to accept him as an ideological forerunner of transhumanism (2010, 19). Stambler supports his doubts about Nietzsches ancestry of transhumanism by stressing the point in a further passage: Nietzsche too placed a much greater stock in literary theory than in science and technology (2010, 22).

I can understand Blackford and More who doubt whether Nietzsche would have been affirmative of technological means of enhancing human beings. However, Stamblers remarks concerning Nietzsche are rather dubious given the current state of the art in Nietzsche scholarship. Stambler writes that Nietzsche denies scientific knowledge. However, it needs to be stressed that Nietzsche rejected the possibility of gaining knowledge of the world, as that is understood within a correspondence theory of truth, by any method, whether the sciences, the arts, philosophy or any other means of enquiry, since he held that each perspective is already an interpretation. It is false to infer from this that Nietzsche had a disrespect for science. On the contrary, he was well aware that the future would be governed by the scientific spirit (Sorgner 2007, 140-158). As he found it implausible to hold that there is an absolute criterion of truth, what was important for a worldview to be regarded as superior and plausible was that it corresponds to the spirit of the times. Nietzsche himself put forward theories that he regarded as appealing for scientifically minded people so that his worldview might become plausible.

Indeed, Nietzsche's respect for the various sciences is immense. He upholds a theory of evolution which is based upon a naturalistic worldview that can be summarized by the term will to power (Sorgner 2007, 40-65). In addition, he puts forward the eternal recurrence of everything, which he tries to prove intellectually by reference to the scientific insights of his day. Unfortunately, he fails to put forward a valid argument, even though it would have been possible for him to have one. Elsewhere, I have reconstructed a possible argument and shown that the premises which must be true for the eternal recurrence to occur are such as correspond to contemporary scientific insights (Sorgner 2009b, vol. 2, 919-922). In addition to all this, Nietzsche wanted to transfer to Paris to study natural sciences in order to be able to prove the validity of the eternal recurrence (Andreas-Salome 1994, 172). Thus his high estimation of the sciences becomes clear. This does not mean, of course, that he disrespects the literary arts. However, it shows that he does not regard scientific enquiry and literary theory as two antagonistic approaches to philosophy, as Stambler claims. Nietzsche accepts the value of both approaches and stresses the great importance of scientific approaches for the future, and he is right in doing so. In this regard, his approach is very similar to that put forward by Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

Is it possible to infer from Nietzsches high estimation of the sciences that he would have been in favor of enhancement procedures by means of technology? Not necessarily. However, there are good reasons for holding that the procedures of classical education and genetic enhancement are structurally analogous. Given that Nietzsche was in favor of education to bring about the overhuman, and assuming that classical education and genetic enhancement are structurally analogous procedures, there are good reasons for concluding that Nietzsche would have been affirmative of technological means for bringing about the overhuman. I am currently working on a monograph on the relationship between genetic enhancement and classical education, and in the following sections I will summarize some of its important points.

1.1.1 Education and enhancement as structurally analogous procedures

Habermas (2001, 91) has criticized the position that educational and genetic enhancements are parallel events, a position held by Robertson (1994, 167). I, on the other hand, wish to show that there is a structural analogy between educational and genetic enhancement such that their moral evaluation ought also to be analogous (Habermas 2001, 87). Both procedures have in common that decisions are being made by parents concerning the development of their child, at a stage where the child cannot yet decide for himself what it should do. In the case of genetic enhancement, we are faced with the choice between genetic roulette vs genetic enhancement. In the case of educational enhancement, we face the options of a Kasper Hauser lifestyle vs parental guidance. First, I will address two fundamental, but related, claims that Habermas puts forward against the parallel between genetic and educative enhancement: that genetic enhancement is irreversible, and that educative enhancement is reversible. Afterwards, I will add a further insight concerning the potential of education and enhancement for evolution given the latest findings of epigenetic research.

1.1.1.1 Irreversibility of genetic enhancement

According to Habermas, one claim against the parallel between genetic and educative enhancement is that genetic enhancement is irreversible. However, as recent research has shown, this claim is implausible, if not plain false.

Let us consider the lesbian couple discussed by Agar (2004, 12-14) who were both deaf and who chose a deaf sperm donor in order to have a deaf child (Agar 2004, 12-14). Actually, the child can hear a bit in one ear, but this is unimportant for my current purpose. According to the couple, deafness is not a defect, but merely represents a being different. The couple was able to realize their wish and in this way managed to have a mostly deaf child. If germ-line gene therapy worked, then they could have had a non-deaf donor, changed the appropriate genes, and still brought about a deaf child. However, given that the deafness in question is one of the inner ear, it would then be possible for the person in question to go to a doctor later on and ask for surgery in which he receives an implant that enables him to hear. It is already possible to perform such an operation with such an implant.

Of course, it can be argued in such a case that the genotype was not reversed, but merely the phenotype. This is correct. However, the example also shows that qualities which come about due to a genetic setting are not necessarily irreversible. They can be changed by such means as surgery. Deaf people can sometimes undergo a surgical procedure so they can hear again, depending on the type of deafness they have and when the surgery takes place.

One could object that the consequences of educational enhancement can be reversed autonomously whereas in the case of genetic alterations one needs a surgeon, or other external help, to bring about a reversal. This is incorrect again, as I will show later. It is not true that all consequences of educational enhancement can be reversed. In addition one can reply that by means of somatic gene therapy, it is even possible to change the genetic set up of a person. One of the most striking examples in this context is siRNA therapy. By means of siRNA therapy, genes can get silenced. In the following paragraph, I state a brief summary of what siRNA therapy has achieved so far.

In 2002, the journal Science referred to RNAi as the Technology of the Year, and McCaffrey et al. published a paper in Nature in which they specified that siRNA functions in mice and rats (2002, 38-9). That siRNAs can be used therapeutically in animals was demonstrated by Song et al. in 2003. By means of this type of therapy (RNA interference targeting Fas), mice can be protected from fulminant hepatitis (Song et al. 2003, 347-51). A year later, it was shown that genes at transcriptional level can be silenced by means of siRNA (Morris 2004, 1289-1292). Due to the enormous potential of siRNA, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello were awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for discovering RNAi mechanism in 2006.

Given the empirical data concerning siRNA, it is plausible to claim that the following process is theoretically possible, and hence that genetic states do not have to be fixed: 1. An embryo with brown eyes can be selected by means of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD); 2. The adult does not like his eye color; 3. Accordingly, he asks medics to provide him with siRNA therapy to change the gene related to his eye colour; 4. The altered genes bring it about that the eye color changes. Another option would be available if germ line gene-therapy became effective. In that case, we could change a gene using germ-line gene therapy to bring about a quality x. Imagine that the quality x is disapproved of by the later adult. Hence, he decides to undergo siRNA therapy to silence the altered gene again. Such a procedure is theoretically possible.

However, we do not have to use fictional examples to show that alterations brought about by genetic enhancement are reversible; we may simply look at the latest developments in gene therapy. A 23-year-old British male, Robert Johnson, suffered from Lebers congenital amaurosis, which is an inherited blinding disease. Early in 2007, he underwent surgery at Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College Londons Institute of Ophthalmology. This represented the worlds first gene therapy trial for an inherited retinal disease. In April 2008, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of this operation, which revealed its success, as the patient had obtained a modest increase in vision with no apparent side-effects (Maguire et al. 2008, 2240-2248).

In this case, it was a therapeutic use of genetic modification. As genes can be altered for therapeutic purposes, they can also be altered for non-therapeutic ends (assuming one wishes to uphold the problematic distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic ends). The examples mentioned here clearly show that qualities brought about by means of genetic enhancement do not have to be irreversible. However, the parallels between genetic and educative enhancement go even further.

1.1.1.2 Reversibility of educative enhancement

According to Habermas, character traits brought about by educative means are reversible. Because of this crucial assumption, he rejects the proposition that educative and genetic enhancement are parallel processes. Aristotle disagrees, and he is right in doing so. According to Aristotle, a hexis, a basic stable attitude, gets established by means of repetition (EN 1103a). You become brave, if you continuously act in a brave manner. By playing a guitar, you turn into a guitar player. By acting with moderation, you become moderate. Aristotle makes clear that by means of repeating a certain type of action, you establish the type in your character, you form a basic stable attitude, a hexis. In The Categories, he makes clear that the hexis is extremely stable (Cat. 8, 8b27-35). In the Nichomachean Ethics, he goes even further and claims that once one has established a basic stable attitude it is impossible to get rid of it again (EN III 7, 1114a19-21). Buddensiek (2002, 190) has correctly interpreted this passage as claiming that once a hexis, a basic stable attitude, has been formed or established, it is an irreversible part of the person's character.

Aristotles position gets support from Freud, who made the following claim: It follows from what I have said that the neuroses can be completely prevented but are completely incurable (cited in Malcolm 1984, 24). According to Freud, Angstneurosen were a particularly striking example (Rabelhofer 2006, 38). Much time has passed since Freud, and much research has taken place. However, in recent publications concerning psychiatric and psychotherapeutic findings, it is still clear that psychological diseases can be incurable (Beese 2004, 20). Psychological disorders are not intentionally brought about by educative means. However, much empirical research has been done in the field of illnesses and their origin in early childhood. Since irreversible states of psychological disorders can come about from events or actions in childhood, it is clear that other irreversible effects can happen through proper educative measures.

Medical research has shown, and most physicians agree, that Post Traumatic Stress Disorders can not only become chronic, but also lead to a permanent personality disturbance (Rentrop et al. 2009, 373). They come about because of exceptional events that represent an enormous burden and change within someones life. Obsessional neuroses are another such case. According to the latest numbers, only 10 to 15 % of patients get cured, and in most cases the neurosis turns into a chronic disease (Rentrop et al. 2009, 368). Another disturbance which one could refer to is the borderline syndrome, which is a type of personality disorder. It can be related to events or actions in early childhood, such as violence or child abuse. In most cases, this is a chronic disease (Rentrop et al. 2009, 459).

Given the examples mentioned, it is clear that actions and events during ones lifetime can produce permanent and irreversible states. In the above cases, it is disadvantageous to the person in question. In the case of an Aristotelian hexis, however, it is an advantage for the person in question if he or she establishes a virtue in this manner.

To provide further intuitive support for the position that qualities established by educational enhancement can be irreversible, one can simply think about learning to ride a bike, tie ones shoe laces, play the piano or speak ones mother tongue. Children get educated for years and years to undertake these tasks. Even when one moves into a different country, or if one does not ride the bike for many years, it is difficult, if not impossible, to completely eliminate the acquired skill. Hence, it is very plausible that educative enhancement can have irreversible consequences, and that Habermas is doubly wrong: genetic enhancement can have consequences that are reversible, and educative enhancement can have consequences that are irreversible. Given these insights, the parallel between genetic and educative enhancement gains additional support.

1.1.1.3 Education, enhancement and evolution

Can education bring about changes that have an influence on the potential offspring of the person who gets educated? As inheritance depends upon genes, and genes do not get altered by means of education, it has seemed that education cannot be relevant for the process of evolution. Hence, Lamarckism, the heritability of acquired characteristics, has not been very fashionable for some time. However, in recent decades doubts have been raised concerning this position, based on research on epigenetics. Together with Japlonka and Lamb (2005, 248), I can stress that the study of epigenetics and epigenetic inheritance systems (EISs) is young and hard evidence is sparse, but there are some very telling indications that it may be very important.

Besides the genetic code, the epigenetic code, too, is relevant for creating phenotypes, and it can get altered by environmental influences. The epigenetic inheritance systems belong to three supragenetic inheritance systems that Japlonka and Lamb distinguish. These authors also stress that through the supragenetic inheritance systems, complex organisms can pass on some acquired characteristics. So Lamarckian evolution is certainly possible for them (Japlonka and Lamb 2005, 107).1

Given recent work in this field, it is likely that stress,2 education,3 drugs, medicine or diet can bring about epigenetic alterations that, again, can be responsible for an alteration of cell structures (Japlonka/Lamb 2005, 121) and the activation or silencing of genes (2005, 117).4 In some cases, the possibility cannot be excluded that such alterations might lead to an enhanced version of evolution. Japlonka and Lamb stress the following:

The point is that epigenetic variants exist, and are known to show typical Mendelian patterns of inheritance. They therefore need to be studied. If there is heredity in the epigenetic dimension, then there is evolution, too. (2005, 359)

They also point out that the transfer of epigenetic information from one generation to the next has been found, and that in theory it can lead to evolutionary change (2005, 153). Their reason for holding this position is partly that new epigenetic marks might be induced in both somatic and germ-line cells (2005, 145).

A mothers diet can also bring about such alterations, according to Japlonka and Lamb (2005, 144), hence the same potential as the ones stated before applies equally to the next method of bringing about a posthuman, i.e. it is possible that the posthuman can come about by means of educational as well as genetics enhancement procedures.

1.1.1.4 Nietzsche and Technology

Given the above analysis, I conclude that Habermas is wrong concerning fundamental issues when he denies that educational and genetic enhancements are parallel events. Even if the parallel between educational and genetic enhancement is accepted, however, it does not solve the elementary challenges connected to it, such as questions concerning the appropriate good that motivates efforts at enhancement.

Even though I am unable to discuss that issue further here, this analysis provides me with a reason to think that Nietzsche would have been in favor of technological means for bringing about the overhuman. Nietzsche held that the overhuman comes into existence primarily by means of educational procedures. I have shown that the procedures of education and genetic enhancement are structurally analogous. Hence, it seems plausible to hold that Nietzsche would also have been positive about technological means for realizing the overhuman.

2. Overcoming nihilism

The next topic I wish to address is that of nihilism. More mentioned it, and I think that some further remarks should be added to what he said. I think that More is right in pointing out that Nietzsche stresses the necessity to overcome nihilism. Nietzsche is in favor of a move towards a positive (but continually evolving) value-perspective (2010, 2). More agrees with Nietzsche in this respect, and holds that nihilism has to be overcome. However, before talking critically about nihilism one has to distinguish its various forms. It is important not to mix up aletheic and ethical nihilism, because different dangers are related to each of the concepts. Aletheic nihilism stands for the view that it is currently impossible to obtain knowledge of the world, as that is understood in a correspondence theory of truth. Ethical nihilism, on the other hand, represents the judgment that universal ethical guidelines that apply to a certain culture are currently absent. To move beyond ethical nihilism does not imply that one reestablishes ethical principles with an ultimate foundation, but it merely means that ethical guideline which apply universally within a community get reestablished (Sorgner 2010, 134-135). Nietzsches perspectivism, according to which every perspective is an interpretation, implies his affirmation of aletheic nihilism (Sorgner 2010, 113-117). I think Nietzsches position is correct in this respect. Ethical nihilism, on the other hand, can imply that the basis of human acts is a hedonistic calculation, and Nietzsche is very critical of hedonism (KSA, JGB, 5, 160). He definitely favored going beyond ethical nihilism, but I doubt that his vision concerning the beyond is an appealing one. In general, I find it highly problematic to go beyond ethical nihilism, because of the potentially paternalistic structures that must accompany such a move. I will make some further remarks concerning this point in the next section. From my remarks here, it becomes clear that there are good reasons for affirming both types of nihilism in contrast to Nietzsche, who hopes that it will be possible to go beyond the currently dominant ethical nihilism which he sees embodied in the last man whom he characterizes so clearly in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Coming back to aletheic nihilism, I wish to stress that, like Nietzsche, I regard this type of nihilism as a valuable achievement and I regard it as the only epistemic position that I can truthfully affirm. Why is it valuable? Aletheic nihilism helps to avoid the coming about of violent and paternalistic structures. Religious fundamentalists claim that homosexual marriages ought to be forbidden because they are unnatural. What the concept unnatural implies is that the correspondence theory represents a correct insight into the true nature of the world. Political defenders of a concept of nature act like a good father who wishes to institutionalize his insight to stop others from committing evil acts. The concept natural implies the epistemic superiority of the judgment to which it applies. Aletheic nihilism, on the other hand, implies that any judgment and all concepts of the natural are based on personal prejudices and that each represents a specific perspective not necessarily anything more. Religious fundamentalists commit an act of violence by claiming that x is an unnatural act, which then implies that those (a, b, & c) who commit act x do some evil, and thereby these fundamentalists look down upon a, b, and c who suffer from being humiliated. If we realize that all judgments are interpretations based upon personal prejudices, it is easier to refrain from universalizing ones own values and norms and to accept that other human beings uphold different values and norms. Hence, it becomes a matter of negotiation and a fight between various interest groups which norms get established in a political system. If we affirm aletheic nihilism, no norm is a priori false or true and the argument that a value is evil or false cannot get further support by means of reference to God or nature. Instead, one needs to appeal to more pragmatic and this-worldly aspects, such as the consequences of a rule or the attitude of someone who commits the corresponding acts. I regard these lines of argument as valuable and appropriate for our times, and I am not claiming that there is just one pragmatic way of arriving at an appropriate decision.

3. Politics and liberalism

Given the argument of the previous section, it is not surprising that I was slightly worried when I read that Roden affirms the move away from bio-political organizations such as liberalism or capitalism (2010, 34). I wonder what is the alternative, because I think we have done pretty well recently in Western industrial countries with liberal and social versions of democracy. I do not think that there is nothing which can get improved or criticized, but generally speaking I am very happy living in a Western liberal democracy with a well developed health system and permanently new technological innovations that help us in improving our lives as long as we do not let ourselves get dominated by these developments. Most other types of political organization so far have led to paternalistic systems in which the leaders exploited the citizens in the name of the common good. Any system that does not sufficiently stress the norm of negative freedom brings about structures which are strongly paternalistic. I do not think that social liberal democracies are the final answer to all questions or that they are metaphysically superior to other types of political organization, but I think that pragmatically they seem to work pretty well. In addition, I am afraid of the violence and cruelties related to political structures that are based upon stronger notions of the public good.

An apparent difference between transhumanism and Nietzsches philosophy in this respect is pointed out by Hauskeller, who stresses that transhumanists aim at making the world a better place, whereas Nietzsche does not because he supposedly holds that there is no truly better or worse, and so does not aim at bettering humanity (2010, 5). There is some truth in what Hauskeller says. However, Nietzsche did have a political vision, even though he also claimed to be a non-political thinker. I think that his political vision, which I described in detail in my recent monograph (2010, 218-32), is not very appealing, because it leads to a two-class society in which a small class of people can dedicate themselves to the creation of culture, while the rest of humanity has to care for the pragmatic background so that the small group of artists can dedicate themselves to such a life style. This is Nietzsches suggestion of how ethical nihilism ought to get transcended.

Given this vision, it seems that there is a clear difference between Nietzsches view and that of transhumanists. However, I do not think that this is necessarily the case. The danger of a two-class society also applies to many visions of transhumanists, especially if an overly libertarian version gets adopted. Transhumanism can lead to a genetic divide and a two-class society, as has been shown convincingly in the Gattaca argument. In particular, a solely libertarian type of transhumanism implies the danger of a genetic divide that would not be too different from Nietzsches vision.

Again, I agree with Mores judgment that the goals of transhumanists and Nietzsche do not have to imply any kind of illiberal social or political system (2010, 4). However, in the case of Nietzsche it is more plausible to interpret his political vision such that it is not a very appealing one, because it leads towards a two-class society. This danger can also arise from an overly libertarian type of transhumanism.

James Hughes (2004) has put forward some plausible arguments why a social democratic version of transhumanism might be more appropriate. I have some reservations about both social-democratic and libertarian positions, even though I share many basic premises of both. I share Hughes fear that a libertarian type of transhumanism leads to a genetic divide. However, I also fear that a social democratic version of transhumanism might not sufficiently consider the wonderful norm of negative freedom for which several interest groups have been fighting since the Enlightenment so that we nowadays can benefit from the results of these struggles. I regard a dialectic solution as more plausible; this implies that there is no ideal political system which can serve as the final goal towards which all systems ought to strive. Any system brings about challenges that cannot get solved within the system, but they can be resolved by altering the system. As this insight applies both to libertarian and social democratic systems, a pragmatic pendulum between those extremes might be the best we can achieve, which also implies that we permanently have to adapt ourselves dynamically to the new demands of social institutions and scientific developments. Dynamic adaptation works best in the process of evolution and might be the best we can achieve on a cultural level, which includes our political systems, too. Hence, not sticking dogmatically to ones former evaluations might not be a sign of weakness, but of dynamic integrity (Birx 2006).

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Beyond Humanism: Reflections on Trans- and Posthumanism

The Critical Posthumanism Network aims to connect academics, artists, writersand scientists who are critically and creatively engaging with the emerging new paradigm of posthumanism and the posthumanities.They share theview that posthumanism is an exciting area that can be even richer when it allies its appealing interdisciplinary profile with a capacity and readiness for powerful (self-)critique.

What does it mean to be human?This age-old question, today, is being asked with increased urgency. Technological and global economic challenges, looming environmental disaster and the erosion of traditional demarcations between human and nonhuman have been producing new and alternative ways of thinking about humanity. The ongoing critique or deconstruction of humanism that the label posthumanism points towards increasingly affects human self-understanding in terms of ethics (a critique of anthropocentrism, speciesism), politics (cyborgization, a critique of biopolitics), aesthetics (bioart, new media art, (electronic) literature), institutions (new (life) sciences, posthumanities, new media) and life style (prosthesization, enhancement, virtual reality).

The proliferating ideas and visions of our posthumanity are reaching a wider public and are now circulating in the traditional mass media and increasingly of course in the so-called new, digital and social media.The transformative potential of posthumanism has become undeniable for better or for worse. The people who are here joining forces in the name of Critical Posthumanism Network have been critical commentators of these developments for at least the past decade or so. The critical in Critical Posthumanism Network is aimed at evaluating the truly innovative potential of posthumanism. It welcomes for example the new and extensive possibilities for co-operations between the sciences (and the new bio- or life sciences in particular) and the humanities and the social sciences. On the other hand, critical also means appreciating the resistance to the ideas relating to the posthuman, posthumanisation, posthumanism or posthumanity. The aim is to historicize and contextualize the anxieties and desires at work when dealing with concepts of the human, posthuman and nonhuman and to look at prefigurations, genealogies, disavowals and alternative futures.

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Critical Posthumanism Network

Editors note: We recently ran a review of Cary Wolfes What is Posthumanism? Because a driving principle behind The Curator is the exploration of things humans create, we felt that it would be important to continue this conversation. How might those who care about human-ness grapple with the implications of a posthuman framework?

While concern for human identity is certainly not restricted to those who profess belief in the Christian scriptures, those beliefs certainly have much to say about these ideas, and the implications should interest both Christians and those who are interested in humanist and posthumanist ideas. Toward that end, Srina Higgins addresses below how the framework of Christianity might address the ideas of posthumanism.

In the first part of my review of Posthumanism, I began by comparing this theory to a nightmare. Although I went on to qualify that simile, saying that Cary Wolfes work is serious academic philosophy, I left the nightmare images intact. Indeed, a Christians first reaction might very well be horrified fear. Several premises of this book are terrifying: it seeks to problematize humanitys unique existence; it calls into question universal ethics; it interrogates our assumptions about rationality; and it destabilized distinctions that are essential to religion, such as nature/culture, presence/absence, and human/nonhuman.

There are indeed many aspects of this approximately fifteen-year-old theory that are fundamentally opposed to traditional Christianity. First and most obviously: the very name, posthumanism, announces that human beings are no longer central or essential. This echoes the terrifying proposition put forward by Copernicus and Galileo that our planet was not the center of the universe. Had not God, asked the Roman Church, created the universe as a physical expression of His plan for salvation? The scientific answer was no.

Next were the strident voices of the Enlightenment that replaced faith with vigorous empiricisms and rationalisms that frightened the supernatural into a mental corner. Then spoke Charles Darwin, telling us that we were just animals, and derived from other species, no less. And now along comes Wolfe, telling us that humans are not central to the rational, observational, or subject-oriented realms, either. As he puts it: The human is, at its core and in its very constitution, radically ahuman and constitutively prosthetic (xxvi). In other words: we are not what we thought we were, and we are inessential to the universe. We are not the apple of Gods eye; we are an artificial limb.

The posthuman worldview goes a step beyond demoting human beings in the hierarchy of value. It promotes other species, proposing that animals are more rational than we knew. We are forced to ask: If rationality is not our Imago Dei, what is? Will you say next that we dont have souls?

Well, unfortunately, yes. Not only does Wolfe say we need to move beyond anthropocentrism (thinking that humans are the center of the universe) and speciesism (prejudice based on our species differences from nonhuman animals); his entire theory is anti-ontological, and also assumes we all gave up metaphysics a long time ago. It is thoroughly materialistic, the heir to a long line of thought that traces itself back through cybernetics and systems theory to Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, then to Darwin, and thence to the most anti-religious minds of the Enlightenment.

Although it resists reduction and terse definition, one major premise of Wolfes book is that the nature of thought must change (xvi): human beings are, in his construction, thinking themselves out of existence. One possible Christian reaction to posthumanism, then, might be vigorous and total rejection. We are certainly not about to think ourselves out of existence, nor out of our Lords care and regard. Nor are we about to share our place in the plan of salvation with spotted newts and thorny hedgehogs.

There is, of course, another attitude that Christians could take towards posthumanism. It was modeled by Francis Schaeffer and summed up in his maxim All truth is Gods truth. At the very least, any propositions that are true, even if rooted in a flawed theory, are redeemable by Gods people. The Church eventually found out it was wrong about Copernicus and Galileo. It is still pondering whether it was wrong about Darwin. Even Cary Wolfe is created in the image of God in spite of himself, so even he can come up with some tidbits of truth we can rescue from the wreckage. Another examination reveals many valuable corollaries to posthumanisms fundamental thesis.

First of all, Christians agree that we ought to be kind to animals. Proverbs 12:10reads: A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal. Indeed, it is only in Christian theology that there ever was a time when animals were treated ethically; in all other thought such a time only will be. It is the most conservative, fundamentalist, Bible-banging Young-Earth Creationism that teaches all animals and humans were vegetarians and non-predatory once before the Fall and (according to some Creation researchers) up until Noahs world-wide flood.

It is Christian theology that claims an Edenic state will be restored, predicated upon the lion lying down with the lamb. Evolution, then, is not necessary for a theory on which to rest the ethical treatment of animals. Historic Christianity had that all along.

A more profound and relevant injunction of Wolfes book teaches the ethical treatment and full valuing of all people, regardless of their full participation in rationalism or other aspects of normative human functionality: the unborn, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the elderly. Wolfe champions the absolute support of the lives of these people from a platform not unlike Christianitys own pro-life campaigns. In this matter, then, he is a valuable ally to the Church.

And his thoughts resonate with the Churchs in another way: he opposes fantasies of disembodiment associated with transhumanism, an altogether different ideology than posthumanism (xv). Transhumanism suggests that by means of research, technology, and science, we can overcome our embodied predicament and conquer sickness, injury, and (almost) death: in other words, evolve into a being as little tied to its body as possible, into the next species after homo sapiens. Wolfe rejects this outright. He affirms our embodied nature. In fact, he came to the conclusion that our relationship with animals is based on our shared embodiment. Christianity, too, affirms embodiment in its most central principle: the Incarnation.

Wolfe points out another feature of nineteenth- to twenty-first-century life as a warning with which we can readily concur. He recognizes our co-existence with technology (xv) and encourages human beings to examine their relationship with technologies. Now, he goes a step further and describes our evolutionary history as concurrent with and co-dependant with the development of technologies but it behooves Christians to examine their relationship with technologies. Are we idolizing our gadgets? Using them to minimize our spiritual lives? Or redeeming their use in the scheme of sanctification and missiology?

There is one final aspect of posthumanism in which Christians can see truth, and which we can reconfigure for our own spiritual purposes, and that is the essential decentralizing of the human: Wolfes anti-anthropocentrism. We are terrified of being on the periphery of creation. We were afraid of the heliocentric universe. But how much of this reaction is really fear
, and how much is pride? Do we hate the idea of humankinds brief existence in the material timeline because it weakens our theology, or only because it weakens our self-image? We could do with a little more humility as a species.

To go one step further: Do we fear the end of our species because we feel it means the end of God, since our extinction means we wont be there to apprehend Him? How arrogant. How petty. However short or long the timeline of the human is compared to that of other species or to the existence of the material universe, Christian theology ought to be first in affirming its brevity compared to the uncreated, unbeginning, unending life of our God. We shouldnt need Cary Wolfe to tell us that. As long as he is saying it, we should listen.

Now, that would be a lovely place to end this review: with an affirmation of the bits of posthumanism we can slide neatly into a quaint Christian system. However, that would be facile at best and dishonest at worst.

The full truth is that there is no Christian response to posthumanism. There can be no Christian interaction with posthumanism, because there has not been a thorough response to poststructuralism.

Near the beginning of Posthumanism, Wolfe mentions that when poststructuralism (perhaps more commonly known as deconstruction) hit the academic scene in the 70s, scholars were terrified. But we all got over it (4). Deconstruction became common parlance in English departments, academic spheres in general, and in popular attitudes towards language, literature, authority, and truth. However, the Christian church in America stayed afraid. Those who were not afraid did not understand the far-reaching implications of texts self-referential and constitutive natures.

There have been individual Christian academics who have become deconstructionists. There are those who have written thoughtful scholarly responses. More recently, there are those who are attempting a more popular involvement and re-creation. Most noteworthy of these are the five volumes of the Church and Postmodern Culture series published by Baker Academic. But there has not been a radical, systemic Christian analysis, appropriation, integration, and re-creation of deconstruction.

The majority of Christian churches have had one of two fruitless responses. On the liberal side, churches have not talked about deconstruction, but have allowed it to steal the Bible from them. This response leaves the church eviscerated: anti-supernatural, anti-inspirational, anti-incarnational. In short, it leaves them without anything that made them Christian in the first place, stripping them of either internal meaning or a means of engagement with external realities and theories.

On the fundamentalist side, churches have hidden away from contemporary trends. Congregations and pastors of this ilk hardly interacted with T. S. Eliot, never mind Jacques Derrida. They closed their walls, doors, and minds, huddled together in a medieval mindset in the worst sense of the word, as closed to evolution (in thought as well as in the descent of man) as if they had refused the Copernican revolution itself. This response, while it can nurture profound studies of doctrine and personal morality, is also unengaged with contemporary thought. Each subsequent generation that is raised in such isolation grows further from its context. What is the Gospel, if not to be shared? Who was Christ, if not in flesh? What good is the Church, if not in conversation?

All of this is to say that if Cary Wolfe is correct in his belief that posthumanism is the worldview that will soon come to dominate Western thought, then he is certainly correct that it will have far-reaching consequences for public policy, bioethics, education, and the arts.

And if Christians cannot stomach it, then they might as well hand public policy over to the secular realm. If they want to participate in bioethics, education, and the arts over the next century, they have a lot of catching up to do. They could start by reading Whos Afraid of Postmodernism?, then try a little Derrida, then finally turn to What is Posthumanism? We shouldnt be afraid of Derrida or of the big, bad Wolfe.

After all, theyre onlyhuman?

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Posthumanism: A Christian Response | The Curator

In the space of possible modes of being, the ones accessible to human beings form a tiny subset. Our biological constraints impose real limitations on what thoughts we can think, what emotions and enjoyment we can experience, and how long we can remain healthy and alive.

Just as much of the richness of human life and human relationships is foreclosed to the comprehension of even the smartest chimpanzee, so too there are possible values that lie beyond our own comprehension - this is, at least, seems like a modest and plausible conjecture. These values are currently unrealizable. If and when we learn how to develop new capacities and extend the ones we have, we might be able to access these wider regions of modes of being, and perhaps discover some that are fantastically desirable.

To significantly modify our biological constraints, we will need to use technology. Many of the requisite technologies can be foreseen, but we do not know how long it will take to develop them.

Posthumanism (or transhumanism to use the standard term) is the view that we ought to try to develop - in ways that are safe and ethical - technological means that will enable the exploration of the posthuman realm of possible modes of being. Transhumanists believe that all people should have access to such technologies. The choice of whether to use them, however, should normally rest with the individual.

The word "posthumanism" has also been used in other senses, for example to refer to a critique of humanism, emphasizing a change in our understanding of the self and its relations to the natural world, society, and human artifacts. Transhumanism, by contrast, advocates not so much a change in how we think of ourselves, but rather a vision of how we might concretely use technology and other means to change what we are - not to replace ourselves with something else, but to realize our potential to become something more than we currently are. Just as a child grows up and develops the capacities of an adult, new technological options might one day allow adults to continue to develop and to mature into beings with posthuman capacities.

The human species is still young on this planet, and it is possible that we have as yet seen little of what is possible for us to become. But success in this enterprise is far from assured, because we still have only our rather limited human wisdom and compassion to guide us through the transition. To develop greater practical and moral understanding would seem to be a first priority. This, along with development of human enhancement tools, efforts to reduce catastrophic risks, and work to alleviate the more immediate sources of human suffering, is enough the fill the days of responsible transhumanists and others who strive to improve the human condition.

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Posthumanism

The Six Million Dollar Man, Robocop and The Matrix share common DNA human beings enhanced by technology. Bionics, cybernetics and neuro-enhancers are not just figments of fertile movie-making imaginations. Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute researches the implications of human enhancement. In America, super-warrior technologies are being developed for battlefield deployment.

Professor Brent Waters, the Stead Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, talks to Nigel Bovey about the theological implications of emerging technologies and the accompanying philosophy known as posthumanism.

Nigel Bovey: Professor Waters, what is posthumanism?

Brent Waters: Posthumanism is a commitment to use technology to extend longevity and enhance physical and cognitive performance. To become posthuman represents the maximisation, even perfection, of latent qualities that are frustrated by the limitations imposed by the body. The goal is to overcome those perceived limitations, thereby making an individual human being better than merely being human.

Immortality is being pursued on three fronts. Biological immortality is about the genetic enhancement of the immune system, or infinite cellular regeneration, so that lifespan increases dramatically as technology wins the war against ageing and disease.

The goal is making an individual human being better than merely being human

Bionic immortality allows for the replacement of body parts with longer-lasting synthetic substitutes. Nanobots will carry out surgery. Neuro-enhancers will be inserted into the brain to prevent the deterioration of and to enhance brain function. In principle, a bionic being could live for ever, so long as the artificial parts are properly maintained.

The most speculative approach is virtual immortality, where memory, personality and intelligence are digitised, organised and downloaded to a robotic body or collection of bodies.

The thinking is that, since the mind is ultimately what a person is, it can be codified into digital data and stored indefinitely. The body, therefore, is merely an information network carrier. If it packs up, the data can be transferred to another carrier. In this way, a person is indefinitely replicated.

For the posthumanist, death is not a natural consequence but an outrage a tragedy to be resisted and overcome. Consequently, technology that extends longevity should be developed. But physical immortality is different from the biblical concept of eternity.

Posthumanism is all fanciful, isn't it?

Yes, but it's amazing how posthumanism is capturing imagination and financial investment. It is already shaping the way we see ourselves and our desires. Humankind increasingly sees itself as a self-constructed project that turns to technology to overcome physical and mental limitations.

A lot of ideas for civilian applications are coming out of military research. In the States, Darpa the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency has been looking at full-body armour systems. For an ageing population, one civilian application of this could be the development of an exoskeleton that would support a weakened body.

Over the years, combatants have been given pep pills and rum tots before battle. Are the implications of emerging technologies more serious?

In the first Iraq war, some American pilots were given high doses of the drug that fights sleeping sickness, so they could fly 72-hour sorties without diminished performance. Military thinking, though, as we see with the use of drones, is turning towards pilotless aircraft and soldierless battlefields.

A future generation of weapons will be run by artificial intelligence, because the human brain is not fast enough and the body has limitations. This suggests that, while technology doesn't have a life of its own, we are not in control of it.

So the Six Million Dollar Man is an emerging fact?

Bionics are amazing, as is the body's ability to respond to digital technologies. Quadriplegics, for example, can now have implants to manipulate computers and control devices. Computer games can be controlled by thought, channelled through a temporary 'tattoo'.

In future, implants could keep humans connected to the internet. But, as neuroscientists tell us, we can't define human beings simply in terms of a series of the ones and zeros of digital technology.

What is the difference between using new technologies and, say, applying the established understanding of optics to correct vision?

There is a difference between wanting to live well and wanting to live for ever

Every therapy is an enhancement. Spectacles are therapeutic devices to bring eyesight to a workable level. But that's different from putting an implant into soldiers to enhance their night vision.

The question to ask when considering technological enhancement is: for what purpose? If technology doesn't enhance love for God and our neighbour, then I'm not sure it has a good purpose.

There is a difference between wanting to live well and wanting to live for ever.

But wouldn't an implant that, for instance, cured dementia simply be an expression of the biblical notion of humankind exercising God-given stewardship of creation a way of loving one's neighbour?

It's a question of motivation. For example, the use of cochlear implants to enhance hearing helps a person restore the bonds of human fellowship. But posthumanists want technology to help them avoid fellowship. For them, technology is a means to give people greater autonomy and greater power to construct a world in which they decide who is admitted and who excluded.

Theologically, what is posthumanism?

Posthumanism is largely nihilism the notion that faith beliefs have no basis or value. It's also a mixture of two old heresies: Pelagianism, which regards the human condition as essentially good and not needing redemption, and Manichaeism, where salvation is possible only through knowledge. It is the simultaneous loathing of the body with the false idea that it knows what perfection is.

What attracted you to the subject of theology?

I had to work out what it meant to love God with my mind. What could be more interesting than the study of God? Besides which, theology knows no boundaries it speaks to every subject.

My father was a church minister, but when I went to university to study religion and politics, I rebelled. I stopped going to church. After a few years, I realised that something was missing from my life. Rather than actively searching for God, I became aware of a love that was pursuing me. So there was a great sense of being welcomed back.

theology knows no boundaries it speaks to every subject

I went on to do a Master of Divinity degree and a Doctorate of Ministry and became a campus minister. But it was not until after my ordination that I became what I call a real Christian taking time to observe the disciplines of prayer and worship. I had a book-club subscription which I'd meant to cancel but had forgotten. This book Resurrection and Moral Order arrived, so I thought I'd read it anyway. I didn't realise how thirsty I was until I started drinking.

When I finished the book, I was irritated. I knew in that moment that I'd either have to find the courage to step away from it or take Christianity seriously. For me, that included finding grace in the world wherever possible and resisting the sin of despair, even when there were good reasons to fall into it.

The Bible has much to say about the body. It describes Jesus as the Word that became flesh. What do you understand by that?

The Word is that which orders creation towards its end. The Word pervades the world. Increasingly, people want information, not narration. They look for space, not place. Yet the story of God taking on human form dispels all notions that humans are autonomous. We depend on others and on our Creator. Humankind cannot save itself. We need to allow ourselves to be embraced by God.

Is the Virgin Birth a literal or metaphorical description of the Word becoming flesh?

I do not believe that Jesus had a human father. It was a miraculous birth. The Virgin Birth is a necessary component of the Incarnation God taking on human form.

The Bible describes a bodily resurrection of Jesus. Do you interpret that as a literal account or as an analogy?

Jesus was not resuscitated. He was resurrected. If we believe the body is important, then we should not be eager to discount a bodily resurrection. The Greeks distinguished between body (soma) and flesh (sarx). Flesh had a broader meaning than body. Flesh was often regarded as being in opposition to God, as humans live according to certain disordered desires because of the flesh. The Christian hope lies in the resurrection of the body, not flesh, and not in the immortality of the disembodied soul.

Jesus' resurrection is the sign of what will happen to us all at the end of time. Christians don't need to try to explain the physics. We can accept this as an extraordinary gift of God.

To what extent does Western culture worship the body beautiful?

People simultaneously love and loathe their bodies

People simultaneously love and loathe their bodies. We love our bodies because this is how we have sensual experience and interact. Yet, if we truly love our bodies, why do we spend so much money changing them?

For example, in the United States some parents buy their high-school daughter a graduation gift of breast-augmentation surgery. What kind of message does that send? We love you, but we'd love you more with a 'better' body. That illustrates the ambivalence of simultaneously loving and loathing the body.

To what extent are science and Christianity compatible?

I'm a biblical literalist. I read the Bible's poetry literally as poetry and history literally as history. I don't try to make the Bible say what it was never intended to say. There are problems on both sides.

The sin on the Christian side is to make the Bible say something that was never intended. It is not a scientific textbook. On the other hand, science is a wonderful methodology, but it is wrong to make science explain everything. It can't. So, for example, I don't see a conflict between the creation story and evolution.

Why do some Christians regard evolution theory as being anti-biblical?

Because they grant too much to science, as being the force that validates things. They endow science with power that science neither seeks nor should strive for.

Christians do not have to prove the existence of God in order to validate God, any more than I can scientifically validate my wife's love. I experience and enjoy the evidence of that love and I know that it exists.

Christianity is not dependent on proving that, for example, there was a flood that engulfed the whole world. That's not the point of the Noah story.

Do scientists play God?

Some do, but they do it very badly.

Where scientists get in trouble is the notion that knowledge always leads to mastery when science is driven not by awe and wonder at the world but by a desire to use the discovery in some way.

Scientists like to think that their work is driving technology, but it is the other way round. People come up with applications and they look to science to find the ways to make that happen. I doubt, for example, that millions of dollars were spent on mapping the human genome just so we could say: "Wow! Now we know how many genes we've got."

Most science is done in pursuit of God-given stewardship for creation. One can be driven to a knowledge of the world out of a love of God and a strong motivation to help others.

2014 The Salvation Army

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Posthumanism, technology and immortality - bethinking.org

Film adaptations of Victorian and Edwardian Novels and Short Stories Cahiers victoriens et douardiens 82 Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2015

Chief editor: Luc Bouvard The reasons for the great success of Victorian and Edwardian novels for producers, screenwriters, film directors, actors and spectators are many. The first that comes to mind is the international popularity of the source materials from Wuthering Heights to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde through Tess or Howards End. The other reasons for this predestination of Victorian and Edwardian texts to be adapted to the big or small screen are now well known: theatrical adaptations previous to film; Eisensteins theory according to which such a novelist as Dickens could have invented the fundamentals of cinema; the novelists (such as Conrad) and directors (such as Griffith) common wish to make the reader and spectator see what they have imagined; the importance of illustrations accompanying those texts. Adapters have a vast range of possibilities from the most faithful transpositions in mini-series, which the BBC still deems a viable and advisable model, to the substantial changes in space-time contextualisations (21st-century South Africa or Toronto for new versions of Oliver Twist for instance), through to stunning modifications concerning the ending or the moral of the story. These alterations are to be considered as the visible tip of the adaptive iceberg. There are in fact many different ways of revisiting the source texts and it is the aim of this new volume to allow new analyses to emerge. Contributions could focus on the newly acquired type of gender relationships (feminist and neo-feminist approaches), on the space-or time-shifts from hypo- to hyper-texts (cultural studies) or on a new narratological point of view in the transposition process (narratological and intermedial studies). Comparing and ranking adaptations according to their fidelity to the source text is really not on the agenda and simply accounting for what has been lost or gained in the adaptation process is not enough, but rather a close analysis of what the interpreting third party has wished to throw into relief will be necessary. Thanks to the processes of renewal, critique, extrapolation, popularization, transculturalization (Robert Stam), this appropriation will be seen from the more positive angle of the inflections brought to the initial text and of the renewed relevance of the work and its authors ideas and preoccupations, thus avoiding fixation and museification. In the introduction to her book Adaptation Revisited (2002), Sarah Cardwell drew a parallel between the Darwinian definition of the term adaptation and the film and television adaptive practices, thus suggesting that one had to adapt or perish. If the well-known reception theory may also be used, we shall most particularly encourage more recent intermedial types of analysis. The studies may be grounded in McFarlanes 1995 neo-structuralist comparative methodology, in Sarah Cardwells 2002 pluralist approach as well as in Linda Hutcheons fundamental 2006 A Theory of Adaptation. Finally, the cross-fertilization between cinema and the other arts (intericonicity) and interfilmicity itself may also be useful to sustain these analyses. Suggested bibliography : CARDWELL, Sarah. Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. ELSAESSER, Thomas & Malte HAGENER. Film Theory. An Introduction Through the Senses. Routledge, 2009. HUTCHEON, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd revised edition. London: Routledge, 2012. MCFARLANE, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: OUP, 1996. NAREMORE, James (ed.). Film Adaptation. London: The Athlone Press, 2000. STAM, Robert and Allesandra RAENGO. Literature and Film; A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Please send your submissions to luc.bouvard@univ-montp3.fr Deadline for submissions : December 31st 2015.

(posted 4 September 2015)

This issue of Imaginaires will be dedicated to the study of British women travellers in the East, their accounts, their stories and their lives. The approach will be transversal (historical, sociological, literary). The orientalists, who were translators, adventurers, archaeologists, artists or writers embarked on the Oriental adventure, broke off their ties with their native country; some joined the secrets services and others decided to remain in the East. A few women took part in this mainly masculine circle, some were wives or sisters, and others only in search of adventure as artists or travellers.

To what extent were these women seeking independence, leaving and sometimes renouncing the West? What kind of discourse did these Westerners adopt facing the Orient? Did the orientalist vision reflect incomprehension, blindness, or envy and curiosity? This issue of Imaginaires seeks to reflect on these British women, from the XVIIIth to the XXth century, who experienced an Oriental adventure and were transformed by this elsewhere. What kind of voice did they choose? How did they look at this Other? And what description did they give of Oriental women? What did they see in the mirror of the Orient? What kind of Oriental experience did they have? What were their travelling conditions? In this issue, we exclude the Far East. We propose to explore the lives of these women, cut off from the Western society, who fled the British institutions, the class system and the strictness of English morals, in order to free themselves from a straightjacket. The word feminism, used at the end of the XIXth century, was associated with the protest movement of women and was often rejected by these travellers. However, these eccentric and free-minded women set themselves free thanks to their travels. Some lines are suggested in this study: Literature and exile. The Foucaldian dialectics of Knowledge and Power. The in-between state. The concept of nomadism introduced by Gilles Deleuze. Orientalism and imperialism in Edward Saids founding works. Feminism. The studies will go from travel stories and letters to biographies. They will also include the works of these women (translations, studies, archaeological discoveries, paintings, photographs). Various aspects of the Orient sometimes a reason for escape, sometimes an attraction toward the Other will be questioned. These orientalist visions could give rise to various micro-analyses. What is, in the end, these womens point of view?

Imaginaires is the review of the CIRLEP (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches sur les Langues et la Pense), at the university of Reims. Please send your abstracts, in English or French, accompanied by a short biographical note by January 15th 2016 to: Laurence Chamlou laurence.chamlou@gmail.com

(posted 7 October 2015)

Editors: David Banks (Universit de Bretagne Occidentale), Emilia Di Martino (Universit di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa)

Communication of science to the general public is progressively more often recognized as an equally crucial responsibility of scientists to research, and scientific writing is being looked upon as public discourse to an increasing extent. However, while scientists are explicitly taught research methodologies, they mostly seem to be expected to naturally acquire the ability to communicate with other scientists, and they usually receive inadequate explicit training and do not seem to easily develop the skills needed to communicate scientific concepts to lay audiences. The present collection of papers, which will be submitted to a journal in linguistics once a suitable number of high quality submissions has been reached, aims to discuss the linguistic and discourse issues of contemporary scientific communication in light of recent views on the role and functions of science and scientists in society with the aim of practically contributing both to its advancement and to broad dissemination. Contributions are solicited that address the interface between language and science or amongst language, science and education, particularly approaching it via such methodologies as genre analysis, discourse analysis, rhetorical analysis and multimodal analysis.

Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to) the following: The historical development of scientific discourse; Scientific discourse and its context; Aspects of contemporary scientific discourse; Scientific writing as public discourse; Strategies for the communication of uncertainty; English in scientific knowledge construction and local hybridizing practices; The place of translating in science communication; Authorship, identity and genre; Language and peer review; Content and Language Integrated Learning: linguistic implications.

Select Bibliography Alastru Ramn Plo, Prez-Llantada Carmen (eds.), English as a Scientific and Research Language. Debates and Discourses English in Europe, Vol. 2, De Gruyter Mouton, 2015 Banks David, The Development of Scientific Writing. Linguistic Features and Historical Context, Equinox, 2008 Bauer, Martin W., The Evolution of Public Understanding of Science. Discourse and Comparative Evidence, Science, Technology and Society, Vol. 14, No 2, 2009, pp. 221-240 Curry Mary Jane, Hanauer David I. (eds.), Language, Literacy, and Learning in STEM Education: Research Methods and Perspectives from Applied Linguistics, John Benjamins 2014 Halliday, M.A.K. (ed. Jonathan J; Webster), The Language of Science, Continuum, 2004. Kueffer Christoph, Larson Brendon M.H., Responsible Use of Language in Scientific Writing and Science Communication, BioScience, Vol. 64, No 8, 2014, pp.719-724 Prez-Llantada Carmen, Scientific Discourse and the Rhetoric of Globalization: The Impact of Culture and Language, Continuum, 2012 Wallace, Carolyn S., Framing New Research in Science Literacy and Language Use: Authenticity, Multiple Discourses, and the Third Space', Science Education, Vol. 88, No 6, November 2004, pp. 901914 Winter Stephan, Krmer Nicole C., Rsner Leonie, Neubaum German, Dont Keep It (Too) Simple. How Textual Representations of Scientific Uncertainty Affect Laypersons Attitudes, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 34, No 3, June 2015, pp. 251-272 Yore Larry D., Marilyn K. Florence, Terry W. Pearson, Andrew J. Weaver, Written Discourse in Scientific Communities: A conversation with two scientists about their views of science, use of language, role of writing in doing science, and compatibility between their epistemic views and language, International Journal of Science Education, Vol. 28, Nos 23, 15 February 2006, pp. 109141

Please send a 300-word abstract by 15 January 2016 (new extended deadline) to: david.banks@univ-brest.fr emiliadimartino@gmail.com

(posted 3 January 2016)

A collection of essays. Editors: Merritt Moseley (University of North Carolina, Asheville), Dieter Fuchs (Vienna University), Wojciech Klepuszewski (Koszalin University of Technology)

Kingsley Amis is predominantly famous for Lucky Jim, published in 1954, which remains a much-cherished classic, reprinted regularly and translated into many languages. This was, in fact, Amiss first published novel, as prior to writing Lucky Jim, he had written The Legacy, which remained unpublished. It seems that the title of his first, and failed, literary attempt, paradoxically heralded a long literary career, with a whole range of novels, poems, short stories, non-fiction, and other works. As a result, two decades after Kingsley Amiss death, we can reflect upon the legacy of one of the most distinguished English writers of the 20th century. Much has been written about Kingsley Amis and his oeuvre, be it in the form of numerous reviews, critical articles, and, most importantly, monographic volumes written by eminent scholars. What should also be mentioned are works of a biographical nature, the monumental biography and the edition of Amiss letters, both by Zachary Leader, being the case in point. However, Kingsley Amiss heritage is so rich and inspiring that there is still room for scholarly and critical analysis, room to discuss perspectives and voices. The aim of the volume is manifold and comprises predominantly Amiss literary works, all genres included, but also Amiss non-fiction, letters, and memoirs. A full picture of Amis and his achievement would not be comprehensive without including the people who influenced his life and works, such as his friend, Philip Larkin; his second wife, Jane Howard, also a writer; and his son, Martin Amis, who became an acclaimed writer himself. Possible areas comprise the following: -Amis as a poet -Amis and academic fiction -Amis in non-fiction -Amis and The Angry Young Men -Amis and women -Amis the critic -Amis in letters -The Bond Amis -Amis in film -Amis and friends -Amis and America -Amis and son -Amis on Amis -Amis in translation -Amis and SF -Amis and crime fiction -Amis on ageing -Amis on drink -Amis and politics -Amis in biographies -Amis and the English language However, any relevant contribution in the context of Kingsley Amis, his life and his works, is most welcome.

Please send a short proposal by 30 January 2016dieter.fuchs@univie.ac.at and klepuszewski@poczta.pl

(posted 12 November 2015)

An edited volume. Editors: gnes Gyrke, Senior Lecturer, University of Debrecen, Department of British Studies Imola Blgzdi, Senior Lecturer, University of Debrecen, North American Department

Affect studies has emerged as one of the most productive fields of analysis since the turn of the 21st century. Following in the footsteps of Teresa Brennan and Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, for instance, a number of scholars have explored the function of affect and emotion in literature, culture and social life. Relying on psychoanalytical as well as social theories, the affective turn has contributed to cultural studies in many ways: books focusing on gender, emotional politics, transnationalism, the moving image, political engagement and leadership theories from the perspective of emotion, empathy and affect were published, among many other studies that investigate the role of emotion in social life. Few critics, however, have investigated the intersections of emotion and location, particularly, urban space, in literary and visual texts. Henri Lefebvre has famously claimed that space expresses social relations, but does it also express emotional geographies? Can we talk about an urban sensitivity, as Heiko Schmid assumes, which provides a more sophisticated framework for city studies than Georg Simmels famous notion of the blas attitude, for instance? Can we read the moving image as a map that connects affects and space?

Our volume aims to explore these issues: we invite papers that investigate the affective dimensions of space in various post-1945 cultural contexts. We are particularly interested in comparative and cross-geographical analyses and encourage contributors to focus on the emotional geographies of iconic cities. Contributors are invited to explore one of the following themes: East-Central Europe as textual and spatial boundary Translocal empathy The place of trauma and aggression Urban geographies of sexuality Desire, utopia and the city Emotional border crossings Crime, guilt and the city Emotional geography of eating practices Obsession, addiction and city life Nostalgia and urban memory Marginalisation, exclusion and the city

Proposals are welcomed for papers within the field of literature, film, music, and the visual arts. Abstracts of no more than 500 words are due by January 30, 2016 and notification of selection will be made by February 15, 2016. Final papers of 7000-8000 words are due by May 30, 2016. Please send the abstract and your CV of no more than 3 pages to gyorke.agnes@arts.unideb.hu and bulgozdi.imola@arts.unideb.hu

For more information on the Gender, Translocality and the City Research Group follow the link: http://ieas.unideb.hu/index.php?p=1519&l=en

(posted 27 November 2015)

Western thinkers have long been fascinated by the possibility of creating new forms of organic and inorganic life. In Plato, Homer and Aristotle we read of the living bronze and gold statues modelled by the master craftsman Daedalus and the divine blacksmith Hephaestus, while in Ovids tales it is Pygmalion that fashions himself an ivory girl to love. Marking the beginnings of science fiction, Mary Shelleys Frankenstein imbues a patchwork monster with the breath of life, a fictional Thomas Edison creates what he believes to be the perfect female android in Tomorrows Eve, and in Karel apeks play from 1920, the Rossum factory churns out hundreds of thousands of robots that are indistinguishable from human beings. Influenced by Darwins revolutionary understanding of the notion of species and evolutionary change, other writers chose to turn their attention towards the human species itself and began to reflect on the possible evolution of the human into new forms of being. H.G. Wells contemplated the possible degeneration of man into creatures that descended from, but could no longer be recognised as, human, while in The Coming Race Edward Bulwer-Lytton created an elaborate fictional world in which mankind is succeeded by highly-technologised creatures whose capabilities far exceed those of Homo sapiens. In their dreams of extending the experience of human life to objects that were previously inanimate and in their portrayal of mankind as containing the germs of its own otherness, these texts disturb essentialist conceptions of the human and pre-empt our contemporary fascination with the figure of the posthuman.

Over recent decades several theorists have utilised the notion of the posthuman to describe a new phase in the history of humanity one that has evolved out of mans extended relationship with technology. In her now famous Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway describes a new form of life emerging out of the congress of man and machine; a joint kinship that defies the perceived boundaries between the organic and the inorganic, the human and the non-human. N. Katherine Hayles, meanwhile, argues that the human is being transformed into an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction (How we Became Posthuman). Under the banner of transhumanism, other thinkers have foretold of the coming of a technological singularity that will utterly transform the nature of the human species.

In distinction to these visions of the post or after of the human, a number of other theorists have chosen to use posthumanism to investigate more specifically how our perception of the human has been transformed and to recognise that what we have defined as human has always been inherently other. Whereas some theorists have chosen to write about a post- to the human, others have sought to articulate what they conceive of as the post- of humanism. Bringing these two positions together, the notion of the posthuman prompts us to think of that which comes after the human or humanism, while also inviting us to look back upon the evolution of the human, of language and of technology, or, as Cary Wolfe describes it, the prosthetic coevolution of the human animal with the technicity of tools and external archival mechanism [] all of which comes before that historically specific thing called the human (What Is Posthumanism?).

Marked by a curious temporality, the posthuman comes both before and after (What Is Posthumanism?; my italics) the human and humanism and prompts us to look backwards and forwards to our past and our possible futures. The title of this journal issue adds one more layer to this temporal deferral, inviting contributors to think about how contemporary theories of the posthuman are pre-empted by philosophical, literary and scientific works from earlier periods. Contributors are invited to look back upon works from the past that project themselves into imagined futures, other past texts that in their old age reveal the germinal roots of a more contemporary understanding of the human, or perhaps contemporary texts that seek to inscribe the posthuman into our human past.

In one sense, then, this issue seeks to explore a genealogy of posthumanism, tracing its roots and origins into the past. In addition, however, it invites us to question the very notion of genealogy itself. The conflation of the two prefixes proto and post may be understood as an invitation to reflect more closely on how the temporal ambiguity opened up by our use of the term posthumanism is inherent to any possible thinking of it. According to R. L. Rutsky, the posthuman cannot simply be identified as a culture or age that comes after the human, for the very idea of such a passage, however measured or qualified it may be, continues to rely upon a humanist narrative of historical change (Mutation, History and Fantasy in the Posthuman). If one is to truly speak of or speak as the posthuman, then this must necessarily entail a new understanding of time and history. By drawing attention to the strange temporality of a post that is always already a proto and a proto that is always already a post the title to this issue urges us to rethink the very notions of human temporality, evolution, history and genealogy.

We invite contributions related, but not limited to, the following: Past literary, philosophical, religious and scientific texts that speak of the future of the human, the possibility of human obsolescence, or, indeed, the promise of a higher order of human being; Philosophical, literary and scientific works whose representation of the human pre-empts that of current posthumanist thought; Contemporary texts that seek to rewrite or reinterpret the past through the lens of posthumanism; Explorations of how the origins of the human species, of technology, and of language may be rethought through understandings of posthumanism; A rethinking of the notions of temporality, evolution, genealogy and history from the perspective of posthumanism. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, ranging across critical theory, literary and cultural studies, linguistics, as well as other disciplines in the humanities and the sciences. Contributors are advised to follow the journals submission guidelines and stylesheet. The deadline for abstract submission is January 31, 2016. Please send 1,000 word proposals to the editor of the volume who will answer any queries you may have. Articles selected for publication must be submitted by April 30, 2016. All submitted articles will be blind-refereed except when invited. Accepted articles will be returned for post-review revisions by June 30, 2016, and will be expected back in their final version by September 30, 2016 at the latest. Proposals and articles should be sent as attachments to wordandtext2011@gmail.com.

(posted 25 March 2015)

It has been sixty years since Lolita first appeared in its green-clad double volume in 1955 in Paris, published by Maurice Girodias (Olympia Press). During those six decades, the nymphet that Nabokov carved out of American poshlust made her way through all the clichs of magazines and tabloids, but also through the history of literature and the history of language (one can now look up the noun Lolita in dictionaries). Lolita also shaped a very specific way of being a reader, mainly because of its intertextual layering which plays with the stereotypes of Romantic poetry and detective novels, and because of its very unique narrative stance and traps. This way of being a reader has in its turn influenced writers, as can be traced in the novels numerous ripples in contemporary literature.

Yet, what could one hope to say about Lolita that has not been said in six decades of criticism, annotations and commentaries? As Brian Boyd states in his 2008 essay Lolita: What We Know and What We Dont (Cycnos, Volume 24 n1), critics have probably not yet unraveled all the threads of the delicate and intricate weave of the text: There is much, much more we need to learn about Lolita, Boyd claims.

This publication in Miranda (a peer-reviewed e-journal, following the double blind review standard) edited by the French Vladimir Nabokov Society thus offers to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Lolita with papers focusing on new readings or elements of research so far unknown or not yet exploited by critics. Contributors are invited to explore the following aspects, provided they deliver fresh elements and/or analyses: the context and history of the composition, publication and translation(s) of the book throughout the world; the reception of the novel throughout the years: censorship, misreadings, and (mis)appropriations of the nymphet figure in popular culture; resurgences and re-uses of the novels plot, characterization, or narrative stance in contemporary literature; any other unstudied or under-analyzed aspect of the text (annotation and interpretation of a specific motif, or of a large-scale feature).

Paper proposals must be submitted by January 31, 2016 at the latest. Participants will be notified by February 15, 2016 whether their proposal was accepted. Completed papers will be due at the latest on May 31, 2016, so that the double-blind peer-reviewing process can begin. Important: please note that acceptance of a proposal does not necessarily entail its publication, since the final publication in Miranda will depend upon the peer-reviewing procedure. 500-word proposals accompanied by a short bio should be sent to agnes.edelroy@vladimir-nabokov.org by January 31, 2016. http://www.vladimir-nabokov.org

(posted 30 November 2015)

We welcome articles that focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics: Topics and areas for research that may be covered will therefore take into consideration: Theoretical and methodological openings and perspectives Convergences between literary texts and artistic media: hybridization and duality Literary creation arising from an extraliterary artistic element Works of art as mediators for writers The signifiers of artistic media within a literary text Other related topics proposed by those who wish to collaborate in the volume will be seriously evaluated by the Scientific Committee, in order to expand the exploration undertaken in the current issue of the Journal.

Submission Guidelines. If you are interested in contributing please submit an abstract (min. 10/max. 20 lines) and a short Curriculum Vitae by February 1st, 2016 to redazione.polifemo@iulm.it Authors will be notified by February 19th, 2016 and each accepted paper will have to be submitted (in either Italian, English or French) by June 1st, 2016. All contributions will be subject to a double blind peer review.

The issue, edited by Prof. Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi and Dr. Laura Gilli, will be published in December 2016. Read the full call for papers.

(posted 30 September 2015)

The Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes announces the call for papers for the first 2016 special issue: ESP in Iran. The focus is on representing rich and diverse practice and research of English for Specific and Academic Purposes and the related fields. We hope to present the exquisite, scholarly work conducted in this country, which at the same time encompasses the specifics of the given environment, yet transcends it to universally applicable teaching and learning skills in this particularly demanding field of ELT. We invite scholars affiliated with institutions in Iran and elsewhere with the hands-on experience or research related to Iran, to contribute to this issue. The guidelines for contributions are available on the Journal website. The call for papers will be open until February 1st, 2016. It is our intention and hope that issues like this one will become our regular practice in our attempt to thoroughly represent this ever growing, ever more relevant, and already enormously rich area of language study.

Special issue editors: Reza Dashtestani (University of Tehran, Iran) Seyed Mohammad Alavi (University of Tehran, Iran) Majid Nemati (University of Tehran, Iran) Nadeda Stojkovi, Editor-in-Chief

(posted 30 November 2015)

The wonder opened up elsewhere. The things we dont do. Andres Neuman, The Things We Dont Do, The Paris Review (Summer 2015), 207-208 (p.208).

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth See The Road Not Taken, in Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993), p. 1

Thanks to consciousness, am I not at all times elsewhere from where I am, always master of the other and capable of something else? Yes, this is true, but this is also our sorrow. Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, trans. by Ann Smock (Lincoln, NE, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 134

Find a map and spread it out on your desk. Close your eyes and pick a random spot. Open your eyes and find out whether the place you picked is any better than where you are now. The chances are it isnt, and yet, to think of elsewhere often comes with the unspoken addendum, anywhere but here. And of course, elsewhere is so appealing because of the implicit promise that, elsewhere, there must be something else. To want to leave here is to ask: Is this all there is? Is there nothing else? But this desire or demand can be easily disappointed, either because elsewhere is always inaccessible, or because (and this is not necessarily different), once we are elsewhere, it becomes here.

Though often associated with suspended desire, elsewhere can also, contrarily, be an undesirable possibility kept at bay on purpose, if not an impending peril threatening to defamiliarise the here and now. Our fears and anxieties of what is not (yet) here, however, can become familiar to the extent that they are no less real than what is here already. This is not always a thing of terror. If elsewhere can be the unmappable dreamscape for fantasy and whimsy, the forever-delayed escape, elsewhere can also be a very real and habitable place. If we combine temporal and spatial coordinates, we might find ourselves thinking of someone, somewherehow can the world contain so many lives? Jeffrey Eugenides asks. It is rather extraordinary to consider, for a minute, how life necessarily entails simultaneous, parallel, but entirely separate existences, to the point of mutual affirmation. And for each here, there is at least one elsewhere-and all this in one single world. Elsewhere can be both a testimony to potential and possibility, as well as to the disappointment that there is nothing else. Because elsewhere should, by definition, be other than what is there, its already precarious existence depends entirely on the binary formula of which it is part. The term elsewhere must, a priori, be evasive. Otherwise, why would we be interested in it in the first place? And what can be more appealing than elsewhere and otherwise? Conversely, here is definite and definitive. Where else can we be but here? If we were to follow the vague direction of elsewhere, we would never be able to get there. Where is elsewhere? Nowhere, or at least, nowhere in particular. And so elsewhere opens up the possibility of possibilities, while itself being impossible. What is this impossible heterotopia, and what are its possibilities? It can be Thomas Mores Utopia, or it could be George Orwells or Margaret Atwoods dystopias. But must one only imagine elsewhere? To return to maps, elsewhere is Africa, what was to Marlows imagination the biggest, the most blank of blank spaces, ready to be made here. Or perhaps elsewhere is the orient as presented in Forster, where Indias a muddle. Novels like Things Fall Apart may evidence the violence of transposing elsewhere. The reality of elsewhere, then, seems also to place an ethical onus on both the notion of elsewhere. And what happens when people from elsewhere come here, as with immigration? Is not their anxiety of displacement simultaneously ours as well? Can elsewhere be demarcated by political borders? If not, is travel and travel-writing even possible, in going from here to here? Elsewhere is another culture. The vagabond, the wanderer, the peripatetic, itinerant, nomadichow do these figures problematise ideals of settling down into a here and now? Elsewhere is another now in another time. Can biography, history, or archaeology grasp the elsewhere, and how do they do it? It is the future, too, one we so often meet in fiction, what we realise is not yet present. But is fiction the elsewhere of what is real, or is it its essence? Where exactly are the other worlds presented in science fiction and fantasy, and are they further from the other worlds of Jane Austen or Franz Kafka? What is a parallel universe, and is fiction here, between the covers of this book? Where else? How far can we stretch the notion of elsewhere? How far does elsewhere extend? And conversely, how local, inward and internalised can elsewhere be? Elsewhere is another feeling. Perhaps all one needs to do is to think otherwise than being. Who is elsewise? Is it the other gender, the other race, the other religion, the other demographic? Elsewhere sometimes speaks back, its discourse being reverse. Is elsewhere only what is different to the same, or am I also, biologically, psychologically, temporally, philosophically, other to myself? Arguably, you can be elsewhere right here, just a pill away, from the elsewhere of illness to the here of well-being, or from boredom to ecstasy and back. So how close is elsewhere, really? In todays world, elsewhere can be very close indeed, as far as the closest cinema. How does film, in all its manifestations from documentary to detective drama, represent other places, other scenarios? Elsewhere can be even closer, as the clicking shutter of a camera. Is photography a representation of elsewhere, or itself? Elsewhere can be at your hands right now: is going to a different website going elsewhere? What about video games? Is the person you are chatting with online elsewhere, just as you are? With GoogleMapsTM perhaps just one click away, what stops us from going to Brazil or Australia? And so, having come back to maps, we realise how elsewhere can sometimes encourage paralysis, simulate and situate inertia, so that, having gone everywhere, one has gone nowhere.

In light of the above, the editors of antae welcome submissions on or around the topic of elsewhere. The authorial guidelines are available on http://www.antaejournal.com, and the deadline for submissions to antaejournal@gmail.com is the 29th of February, 2016. Issues and topics relevant to this publication include, but are not limited to: Thinking Elsewhere: Alterity, Ethics, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Ontology and Ontologies Elsewhere on drugs Elsewhere in Postcolonial Studies Writing Time Elsewhere: Biography, History, Archaeology, determinism and fatalism, death Elsewhere and International Politics, migration, borders and displacement Writing Space Elsewhere: Travel Writing, Science Fiction, Fantasy, heterotopias, the exotic Digital Elsewhere: the other spaces of photography, the internet, gaming, technology Identities elsewhere: minorities, marginalisation, cultures, myself, friendship Elsewhere in Film Studies Elsewhere and love, among other feelings Quantum elsewhere: parallel universes, exoplanets, terraforming, fictions of space

antae is an international refereed postgraduate journal aimed at exploring current issues and debates within English Studies, with a particular interest in literature, criticism and their various contemporary interfaces. Set up in 2013 by postgraduate students in the Department of English at the University of Malta, it welcomes submissions situated across the interdisciplinary spaces provided by diverse forms and expressions within narrative, poetry, theatre, literary theory, cultural criticism, media studies, digital cultures, philosophy and language studies. Creative writing is also accepted.

(posted 18 November 2015)

The Human (issn: 2147-9739) is an international and interdisciplinary indexed journal that publishes articles written in the fields of literatures in English (British, American, Irish, etc.), classical and modern Turkish literature, drama studies, and comparative literature (where the pieces bridge literature of a country with Turkish literature). To learn more about The Human: Journal of Literature and Culture and its principles, please see our manifesto on this page: http://www.humanjournal.org/index.php/about-the-human-manifesto

The Human is now inviting submissions for a special issue to be published in June 2016. The special issue will be devoted to the performance of masculinities on film in all of its diverse forms and multiplicity of cultural, social and historical situations. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, as are treatments that deal with global (both Western and non-Western) film or that bridge East and West. Less-covered subjects are most welcome. Areas of inquiry can include documentary, feature film, short film, and/or animation, focusing attention on the visual landscape of masculinity in world cinema and exploring the social, political and economic value of masculinities within global film production. Successful submissions will demonstrate originality, rigor and persuasive argumentation. View further details on the journals website: call-for-works. Completed essays of 4500-5500 words should be submitted no later than March 1, 2016, to guest editors, Robert Mundy and Jane Collins at jcollins@pace.edu

(posted 9 October 2015)

Interactive, transmedial, multi-modal, adaptive, therapeutic or global, narratives have been revealing an extraordinary pervasiveness in the current scenario of literary and non-literary communication. As a consequence of the progressive and rapid broadening of the focus of research from the forms traditionally reputed as authoritative (like literature), to storytelling meant as a mode of thought, peculiarly characteristic of the human species, speculation about the act of narrating has been continuously enriched with contributions from various and different fields and disciplines. Not to neglect the analyses of the symbolic universe, of the processes of identity construction, of the various modes the Self shapes itself in relation to others.

On the theoretic side, for example, we are attending to a redefinition of narratology in the light of new methodologies of investigation and criticism, which take into consideration the discoveries of neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists and the new centrality conferred to the reader; studies are being developed which interpret original works in their potential for interaction with the user or for transcoding towards media different from native; possible answers are being investigated to the big question about the role narratives have played in the adaptive-evolutive process of the human species; hypotheses and speculations are being carried out about their impact on humans wellbeing and sociality.

Stirred by the new learned attention and by seven-digit sales, narrative production has been diversifying itself in countless blends of genre, with different modes of fruition and a gradient of potentials for immersive transportation into fictional worlds: from the fragmentation of fanfictions on the web to the unchallenged emerging of a dominant kind of global novel.

The first issue of Comparatismi, the official digital periodical of the Board of Literary Criticism and Compared Literature, aims at hosting contributes representing as widely as possible the current range of approaches to narrative thinking, both in theory and in the practice of criticism; including studies both in close and distant reading on the most significant narrative modes in the world today, in literature, advertising, life-stories, television serials, cinema and graphic novels.

Contributes, in the form of articles ready for publication and inclusive of an abstract, should be submitted within 31st March 2016, following the instructions available on this website (see Online submissions). The texts selected to be submitted to peer review will be notified within 15th April 2016. The articles accepted after reviewing will be published in June 2016. Submissions in languages other than Italian (preferably English, otherwise French) are encouraged and appreciated.

For further information, please write to Francesco Laurenti (francesco.laurenti@iulm.it) or to Stefano Ballerio (stefano.ballerio@unimi.it).

You can read the call for papers and submit your proposals here: http://www.ledijournals.com/ojs/index.php/comparatismi/index

(posted 22 January 2016)

Edited by Marie Ruiz (Universit Paris Diderot, LARCA)

Migration in the Victorian era has been identified as a paramount feature of the history of worldwide migrations and diasporas. Contrary to popular belief, the Victorian era was not only marked by an extensive exodus from Britain to the USA and the British colonies, but the Victorians also experienced a great degree of inward migration with the arrival of Catholic Irish, and oppressed Jews and Germans, among others. Inward, outward and internal movements were sometimes a response to economic hardships and employment opportunities, but this cannot solely explain the extent of international migrations in the Victorian era.

In the Victorian period, mass migration played a significant role in shaping the nations identity, as well as Britains relationships with the outside world. This raises the question of the impact of migrations on the Motherland, as the Victorian migration trends also attracted numerous immigrants and transmigrants, who ended up remaining in Britain rather than emigrating to the USA or the British colonies. Yet, while the origins of these immigrants and transmigrants are now difficult to trace, the question of their potential impact on the Victorian society needs to be addressed.

This edited volume aims at offering a global perspective on international migrations in the Victorian era including emigration, immigration and internal migration within Britain. Papers relating to the following themes, though not exclusively, are welcome:

350-word abstracts, along with short academic biographies, should be submitted to mariejruiz@yahoo.fr. The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 1, 2016.

(posted 23 March 2016)

The first issue of the ESSE Messenger online (Volume 25, Issue 1, Summer 2016) will have Childrens literature as theme for professional articles.

Please note that contributions sent to the ESSE Messenger should observe the Editorial Code and the Stylesheet.

Proposals should be sent to Adrian Radu, editor of ESSE, by 1 May 2016

See the ESSE Messenger website.

(posted 1 February 2016)

Special Issue Editor: Matthew J. Smith

This special issue of Christianity & Literature furthers the journals aim to investigate the complex relations between literature, drama, and Christian thought and history by bringing a critical eye to sacramental reading to examine its limitations, unseen investments, and unexplored promises.

DESCRIPTION: A dominant theme of recent years turn to religion in English studies has been the sacramental dimensions of texts and performances. Scholars have explored the interpretive deliverances of how texts enact and embody the cultural, epistemological, and metaphysical functions that Christian practice traditionally associates with sacramental devotion. Especially in their poetics and theatricality, texts and performances have been described as sacramental, incarnation, and eucharistic. Sometimes scholars connect these readings to an authors awareness of theological controversy, such that an author or playwright is thought to engage in theological debate through writing and performance. Other approaches focus on a broader cultural demand or gap in popular access to the transcendent, and literary production is understood to meet such demands for transcendence, justice, semiotic complexity, embodiment, or metaphysical depth. Yet these reading strategies e.g., sacramental drama, sacramental poetics, incarnational texts have been largely neglected from critical scrutiny and, at times, are only defined loosely or even analogically in connection with theological doctrines of penance, the trinity, and various historical versions of sacramental theology (transubstantiation, consubstantiation, memorialism, and so on). In fact, it has begun to be suggested that sacramental reading may in fact, almost ironically, contribute to a secularization thesis, where claims of literatures sacramental surrogation imply some sort of loss or dysfunction in sacred access in mainstream devotional culture. What do sacramental readings imply about the state of devotion in a given society? How, if at all, are such terms as sacramental, eucharistic, and incarnational any more than metaphorical when applied to literary production or to audiences? And does this reading strategy sometimes impose a sacred-secular binary anachronistically upon historical societies? Alternatively, does the language of sacramentality demand further investment and offer unique insight into semiotic and performative force of drama and poetry?

We invite essay submissions that question and explore the sacramental, incarnational, or eucharistic aspects of texts or performances from any historical moment. Submit essays (6,000-9,000 words) to Matthew Smith at cal@apu.edu by June 1, 2016. Christianity & Literature is a peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE.

(posted 4 November 2015)

Ed. Jakub Lipski, Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz

Image [&] Narrative is seeking papers for a special tercentenary issue devoted to the work of Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Articles covering all aspects of Walpoles literary career are welcome, though preference will be given to those focusing on the correspondences between word and image. Possible topics may include:

Prospective contributors are invited to send in 300-word abstracts of papers by June 1, 2016. Preliminary selection will be made by the end of June, 2016. Complete essays of about 5000 words should be submitted b February 1, 2017. Final selectdion, following double-blind peer review, will be made by the end of June 2017. The issue will be published in September 2017, in the month of Horace Walpoles birth. Questions, expressions of interest and article proposals should be addressed to j.lipski@ukw.edu.pl

To read more on the journals aims and scope, as well as the author guidelines, see http://www.imageandnarrative.be

(posted 29 January 2016)

The academic journal Meridian critic invites contributions which celebrate the global cultural legacy of Shakespeare and Cervantes, in a year which marks the fourth centennial of their death. Submissions might address any related issues including, but certainly not limited to, the following:

Deadline for article submission: 1 June 2016. Please send the abstracts (ca 200 words), the full paper (up to 7000 words), as well as a brief biographical note (ca 400 words) to the following addresses: l_turcu@yahoo.com, corneliamacsiniuc@yahoo.com

For details regarding style, please visit the following page: http://meridiancritic.usv.ro/index.php?page=instructions-to-authors

We also welcome book-length studies in the field of literature, linguistics, and cultural studies published in 2015, to be reviewed in our journal. Please send the books to the following address: Meridian critic, Facultatea de Litere i tiine ale Comunicrii, Universitatea tefan cel Mare Suceava, Str. Universitii nr. 13, 720229 Suceava, Romania

(posted 1 February 2016)

A special issue (Summer 2017) of Womens History edited by Marie Ruiz (Universit Paris Diderot, LARCA) and Mlanie Gru (Universit Paris-Est Crteil Val de Marne, IMAGER)

Historians face a difficult task when dealing with historical documents, testimonials revealing or concealing truth. As objects of enquiry, documents, sometimes limited in what they can disclose, have very often resisted historians intentions to show reality. This is even more vivid in the context of womens history, a subjected topic that has undergone invisibility through male domination. In Policing Truth (1994), Leigh Gilmore argues that the notion of truth is intertwined with the notion of gender: man is a judge who has historically defined the rules and standards of truth in order to perpetuate patriarchal authority and male privilege. Barbara Kanners work of bibliomethodology, Women in English Social History, 1800-1914: A Guide to Research (1988), has been a major contribution to unveiling the existence of documents informing the participation of women in all fields of British history. This special issue of Womens History intends to address the subjectivity of historical documents, and the place left to women in the course of history. It gives a special place to historical evidence and iconic documents revealing womens resistance to patriarchal rule, whether in history, photography, film, or artistic representations. This volume focuses on the nature of historical documentation and its gender bias. It intends to address the question of subjectivity in womens history. The articles that will constitute this special issue shall focus on what documents have shown about women. The role of historians, witnesses, artists and writers shall also be included, as well as questions related to reality and objectivity in womens history. Contributions dealing with women as producers of documents are welcome. As an oppressed group, women have indeed seized the opportunity to write their personal and collective history on their own terms, to document their lives and claim their worth against the patriarchal rule. They have produced a wide array of documents, from text to image and film, revealing the reality of female experience. The question of perception and reception is also of interest as it determines what documents tell us about womens ability to find a place in history through their disruption of dominant cultures.

Proposals dealing with what documents can reveal about womens personal and collective history are welcome. They may include the following themes, though not exclusively:

5000-word articles, along with short academic biographies, should be submitted to both editors: mariejruiz@yahoo.fr and melanie.grue@hotmail.com. The deadline for submission of articles is June 1, 2016.

(posted 21 March 2016)

Legal Geography, a fairly recent phenomenon, investigates the interconnected, reciprocal and interdependent links between geography and law. This interdisciplinary field of study concerns the complex interrelations between law, space and society. Law can be geographically located, in physical settings and spaces it describes and codifies. Space affects law, in order words, geographies structure law, like the north-south divide in the UK between separate national English and Scottish legal systems within the same British state. On the other hand, law affects space in inverting the environment-law relation to look at how laws impact space. The perspective of critical legal geography/-ies looks beyond these binary categories to examine and challenge deterministic views of these intricate interrelations. A third way, then, might be identified, which transcends the strictures of the law/space space/law binaries, and allows these complex interrelations of the legal, spatial and social to be explored. It becomes useful to recognise that there is no analytical separation of law, space and society, no passive spatial structure, no two discrete realms, and no higher sphere above politics.

This journals edition attempts to contribute to a critical legal geography, studying law as a site of a struggle over geography (Sad) from the premises that space is socially and politically produced (Lefebvre et al.). The following questions may be considered, notably whether spatio-legal dimensions create spatializations in France and abroad. Also, does legal-decision making stem from the jurisdiction of a state, a region, a supranational construct, or does it take place at the very margins of confined spaces? It is conceivable to reflect on new dialectical implications between geography and law based on spaces in which such ideas as concrete and abstract, memory and identity, passages and transgressions, chaos and order collide. This might also include the critical assessment that law is somehow above geography, in a higher sphere divorced from its environmental contexts. Spatial claims and representations in legal and linguistic constructs might be evaluated. In addition, it might be interesting to look at geopolitics of law. What kinds of theoretical approaches can be adopted to interpret the interdisciplinary relationship of geography and law in order to critically engage readers and researchers in a constantly changing geographical world? Articles may concern various fields of studies and disciplines (geography, law, linguistics, literature, etc.).

A selection of articles will be published in the Journal Geographie de lEst (Universit de Lorraine). For more information, please go to: http://rge.revues.org/5660 Articles (max. 50 000 signs), along with short academic biographies, should be submitted to andreas.pichler@univ-amu.fr. The deadline for submission of articles is 15 September 2016.

(posted 18 February 2016)

Guest Editors: Sarah Falcus (Huddersfield) and Maricel Or Piqueras (Lleida)

The final decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of humanistic or cultural gerontology, and this has continued apace into the twenty-first century. Interest in English Studies has ranged across the disciplines and beyond, establishing connections with biomedicine, sociology and politics. This work includes studies and creative projects that both analyse and produce visual representations of ageing, from photography to film. In linguistics, explorations of language attrition in Alzheimers Disease provide humanistic perspectives on the experience and treatment of this form of dementia. Literary studies has seen explorations of the affect value of literary and cultural texts and analyses of the intersections of ageing and gender, race, sexuality and disability. There is also much work on late-life creativity and late style.

This issue seeks to extend the variety and multiplicity of approaches in cultural gerontology, contributing to the dialogue between English Studies and Ageing Studies. We welcome contributions that explore old age across the full range of literary and cultural forms.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

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Calls for contributions to journals and books - ESSE