This book is an interrogation of humanity's new potentials and threats brought by technology when the question of social change is becoming more crucial than ever.
Collected in the course of 2010-2012, the selected essays in this anthology confront questions from a wide-ranging perspective that evoke the postmodern idea of the cyborg to illuminate recent phenomena from global warming, Wikileaks, to the Occupy movements. Multiple disciplines from music to psychoanalysis to journalism to anthropology collaborate to examine the way we shape the world from behind our ubiquitous screens to taking to the streets in mass protests.
What does the increasing omnipotence of networked machines ultimately mean? What do social networks do to our sense of self, others and society? Does P2P technology foster new ethics and spiritualities? What potentials does posthumanity have to bring about social change?
Featuring essays from Robert Barry, Siri Driessen & Roos van Haaften, Bonni Rambatan, Dustin Cohen, Jacob Johanssen, Michel Bauwens, Aliki Tzatha, Zakary Paget, Stefen Baack, Alessandro Zagato, Peter Nikolaus Funke, Glenn Muschert, and Jung-Hua Liu.
The book’s goal is to offer a cutting edge commentary on recent issues and debates that are of interest to a large audience precisely because they traverse borders, nation states and cultures. In its combination of complex theory, events and issues that many students, academics and readers relate to, it offers a new and illuminating way into different aspects of digital culture and helps to think about the question of how the virtual and the tangible are interwoven in our contemporary age. Part one of the book, entitled Subjects, is an exploration on the question “What is the Cyborg Subject?” Submitted by intellectuals from various fields—from music to film to psychoanalysis—this section represents the first moment: the conception of digital subjectivity and its different embodiments. Part two, Sharing, takes on this venture and proceeds to the second moment: when digital subjectivity turns into global resistance, specifically in the case of Wikileaks. The talk of shared discourses shifts our discussion from Part Two to Part three, Streets, marking the third moment: when people with a shared global consciousness enabled by digital networks begin taking to the streets, as exemplified by the worldwide Occupy movements. The book’s uniqueness lies in its connection of three contemporary issues of our age. No publication has attempted this before. We believe that it is this combination of political and ethical questions on posthumanism, Wikileaks and the worldwide Occupy movements that allows readers to see what is at stake in our world in a different light.
Bonni Rambatan is an independent critical theorist and cultural researcher with a main focus in digital culture, psychoanalysis, and Left-wing political theory. He has given talks and published writings in various seminars and anthologies in Europe and Asia. A graduate of English Literature, he now studies Management in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurships at Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia. He also actively writes novels and makes films.
Jacob Johanssen is currently a PhD student at the University of East London (UK). His work is broadly situated within psychosocial studies, media studies and cultural studies. Jacob’s research interests include psychoanalysis and the media, psychosocial studies, critical theory, as well as digital culture. His PhD thesis is about a psychoanalytic conception of the subject that is both theoretical and epistemological. The research involves interviews with viewers of the TV programme 'Embarrassing Bodies' and explores their unconscious investments, fantasies and viewing practices.
