It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity. In this short and provocative book, Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls 'hypermodulation,' as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily clicking ourselves to death. This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.
What can Roger Rabbit tell us about the Second Gulf War? What can a woman married to the Berlin Wall tell us about posthumanism and inter-subjectivity? What can DJ Shadow tell us about the end of history? What can our local bus route tell us about the fortification of the West? What can Reality TV tell us about the crisis of contemporary community? And what can unauthorized pictures of Osama Bin Laden tell us about new methods of popular propaganda? These are only some of the thought-provoking questions raised in Avoiding the Subject, which highlights the feedback-loops between philosophy, technology, and politics in today's mediascape.
In Divisible Cities takes Italo Calvino's classic re-imagining of Venice, viewed in the mind's eye from many different metaphysical angles, and projects it on to the world at large. Where the Italian saw his favorite city as an impossible metropolis of many moods, shades, and ways of being, this unauthorized sequel unpacks the Escheresque streets in unexpected directions. In Divisible Cities is thus an exercise in cartographic origami: the reflective and poetic result of the narrator's desire to map hidden cities, secret cities, imaginary cities, impossible cities, and overlapping cities, existing beneath the familiar Atlas of everyday perception. Stitching these different places and spaces together is a "double helix" or "Siamese seduction" between the traveler and his romantic shadow, revealing -- step by step -- a clandestine itinerary of hidden affinities, nestled within the habitual rhythm of things. Matter matters. That's what the drone of the city tells us. And yet we dream of something beyond these invisible walls. Were I an architect-deity, I would create an Escheresque subway system, linking all the cities in the world. The tunnels themselves, and the people decanted from one place to the other, would eventually create an Ecumenopolis: a single and continuous city, enlaced and endless. Were this the case I could get on the F train at Delancey Street, Manhattan, and -- after a couple of changes mid-town -- emerge in the night-markets of Taipei, or near the Roman baths of Budapest. Or perhaps even downtown Urville.
Are totems merely a thing of the distant past? Or might it be that our sleek new machines are producing totemic forces which we are only beginning to recognize? This book asks to what degree today's media technologies are haunted by a Freudian ghost, functioning as totems or taboos (or both). By isolating five case-studies (rabbits in popular culture, animated creatures that go "off-program," virtual lovers, jealous animal spirit guides, and electronic paradises), Look at the Bunny highlights and explores today's techno-totemic environment. In doing so, it explores how nonhuman avatars are increasingly expected to shepherd us beyond our land-locked identities, into a risky - sometimes ecstatic - relationship with the Other. ,
I haven't made a single mistake in my life. I've just made a lot of good decisions that went really badly. Try as we might, we simply can't imagine what our world would now look like, had our forefathers decided to use asparagus instead of electricity. In Humid, All Too Humid, social commentator Dominic Pettman curates the overheated thoughts of his own feverish mind, in response to a world struggling with unprecedented levels of cultural climate change. Humanity is like that obnoxious bore that arrives at the party drunk -- thinks he's witty and charming and wise, but is in fact a complete psychotic loser. All the other creatures, however, are too polite to say anything. So they just watch us quietly, and hope that we disappear as quickly as we came. The book takes the form of aphorism, witticism, maxim, axiom, dictum, quip, jape, adage, proverb, pun, precept, reflection, suggestion, observation, paraphrase, bon mot, vagary, specificky, put-on, put-off, mummery, miscellany, aside, in-front, behind, knock-knock joke, one-liner, tweet, re-tweet, truism, and not-so-truism. When you think about it, how rude it is for people to get married in public. This whole ritual is set up so that one person can say they love this one other person more than you. More than anyone else in the room. Is this why people really cry at weddings? Is this why we cover their car with rubbish? A sublimated response to their ceremonial insult? Known for his scholarly work on love, sex, and the (post)human condition, Pettman now assembles this collection of humoristic micro-meditations on everything from the meaning of life to the "yoghurt of human unkindness." Archaeologists in Turkey have uncovered a new fragment of Anaximander, which simply reads: "Because reasons." Humid, All Too Humid reads as if Oscar Wilde had first written Minima Moralia, after binge-watching too many episodes of The Simpsons.
Annotation Elizabeth A. Kaye specializes in communications as part of her coaching and consulting practice. She has edited Requirements for Certification since the 2000-01 edition.
What is the carbon footprint of your libido? In this highly original book, Dominic Pettman examines the mutual influence and impact of human desire and ecological crisis. His account is premised on a simple but startling observation: the decline of libido among the world’s population, the loss of the human sex drive, closely tracks the destruction of environments worldwide. The advent of the Anthropocene leads to the decline of eros, the weakening of the link between sexual pleasure and human reproduction, and thus, potentially, to human extinction. Our capacity to care for one another in any meaningful way is being replaced by a restless, technologically-enhanced zombie drive. The environmental crisis of our time is also, and simultaneously, a crisis of human reproduction and of interpersonal intimacy. What Freud called ‘libidinal economy’ has morphed into libidinal ecology. Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers from Georges Bataille to Donna Haraway, Pettman explores the implications of peak libido, linking this development to the new cultural interest in eco-sexuality, polyamory, and other cases of the ‘greening of the libido’. Peak Libido is a forceful reminder that our hearts and loins are primarily ecological organs, beholden to their wider environments, and, as such, they share the same fate.
Applying Jean Baudrillard's question "What are you doing after the orgy?" to the postmillennial climate that informs our contemporary cultural moment, this book argues that the imagination of apocalyptic endings has been an obsessive theme in post-Enlightenment culture. Dominic Pettman identifies and examines the dynamic tensions of various apocalyptic discourses, from the fin-de-siècle decadents of the 1890s to the fin-de-millènnium cyberpunks of the 1990s, in order to highlight the complex constellation of exhaustion, anticipation, panic, and ecstasy in contemporary culture. Through analyses of rapturous cults, cyberpunk literature, post-apocalyptic cinema, techno-paganism, death fashion, and the Y2K prophecy, After the Orgy explores why the twentieth century swung so violently between the poles of anticipation and anticlimax. In the process, the book raises pressing questions concerning the relevance of such ideas in our new millennium and points out alternatives to the monotonous horror of traditional narratives.
What kinds of knowledge and understandings of the world can be generated - and shared - when we use para-academic techniques and sensibilities to decode or respond to relatively orthodox intellectual objects? And what worlds might be possible if we practiced scholarly work from a place of collaboration and pleasure, as joyful fellow explorers? In METAGESTURES, historian Carla Nappi and cultural theorist Dominic Pettman explore the use of fiction as a tool to write and think with works of theory. Taking Vilém Flusser's GESTURES as its point of inspiration and departure, METAGESTURES collects 16 pairs of short stories in which Pettman and Nappi make fictional worlds that animate and enliven each of the major gestures in Flusser's book. Nappi and Pettman focus on Flusser's mediations on the gestures of filming, planting, loving, smoking a pipe, turning a mask around, and much more, with their own creative explorations of each theme, in a gathering of short fictions that test, expand, and further the social scientific claims of the original text with new scenarios and occasions. Here, Flusser's reflections on physical gesture serve as an inspiration for new ways of conceiving and conducting theory, and for thoughtful creative scholarly imagining, with and alongside one another. Carla Nappi is a historical pataphysicist and Mellon Chair in History at the University of Pittsburgh. She has published widely in the history of bodies, medicine, and translation in early modern China, and you can explore her recent shenanigans at carlanappi.com. Dominic Pettman is Professor of Culture & Media at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, and the author of numerous books on technology, humans, and other animals; including the recent Creaturely Love (Minnesota University Press) and Sonic Intimacy (Stanford University Press).
The Humid Condition: (More) Overheated Observations continues on the clicking heels of Dominic Pettman's Humid, All Too Humid (2016), providing a companion volume of pithy and witty observations for our overheated age. Covering topics from pop culture to academia to romance to politics to human mortality to everything in between, this collection of pointed musings aims to amuse, edify, instruct, provoke, tease, caution, and inspire. As with the first installment, the spirit of this book represents a fusion of Montaigne and Wilde; a mashup of Adorno and Yogi Berra; a parallel channeling of Marx and Marx (both Karl and Groucho). No doubt, Hannah Arendt would be appalled at the irreverence on display within these pages. Then again, "Heidegger has left the bildung." And as the author himself notes: "I have nothing new to say. And I'm saying it!" Dominic Pettman is Professor of Culture & Media at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. He is the author of numerous books on technology, humans, and other animals, including Creaturely Love (Minnesota, 2017) and Sonic Intimacy (Stanford, 2017). Previous books published by punctum include In Divisible Cities, Humid, All Too Humid, and Metagestures.
Schism press brings you its first anthology, edited by Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker. A collection of essays on beheading and cinema, with full color interior. Contents: Dominic Pettman, "What Came First, the Chicken or the Head?" - Eugene Thacker, "Thing and No-Thing" - Alexi Kukuljevic, "Suicide by Decapitation" - Alexander Galloway, "The Painted Peacock" - Evan Calder Williams, "Recapitation" - Nicola Masciandaro, "Decapitating Cinema" - Ed Keller, "Corpus Atomicus" - Gary J Shipley, "Remote Viewing." Photography by Leighton Pierce.
What is the carbon footprint of your libido? In this highly original book, Dominic Pettman examines the mutual influence and impact of human desire and ecological crisis. His account is premised on a simple but startling observation: the decline of libido among the world’s population, the loss of the human sex drive, closely tracks the destruction of environments worldwide. The advent of the Anthropocene leads to the decline of eros, the weakening of the link between sexual pleasure and human reproduction, and thus, potentially, to human extinction. Our capacity to care for one another in any meaningful way is being replaced by a restless, technologically-enhanced zombie drive. The environmental crisis of our time is also, and simultaneously, a crisis of human reproduction and of interpersonal intimacy. What Freud called ‘libidinal economy’ has morphed into libidinal ecology. Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers from Georges Bataille to Donna Haraway, Pettman explores the implications of peak libido, linking this development to the new cultural interest in eco-sexuality, polyamory, and other cases of the ‘greening of the libido’. Peak Libido is a forceful reminder that our hearts and loins are primarily ecological organs, beholden to their wider environments, and, as such, they share the same fate.
Are totems merely a thing of the distant past? Or might it be that our sleek new machines are producing totemic forces which we are only beginning to recognize? This book asks to what degree today's media technologies are haunted by a Freudian ghost, functioning as totems or taboos (or both). By isolating five case-studies (rabbits in popular culture, animated creatures that go "off-program," virtual lovers, jealous animal spirit guides, and electronic paradises), Look at the Bunny highlights and explores today's techno-totemic environment. In doing so, it explores how nonhuman avatars are increasingly expected to shepherd us beyond our land-locked identities, into a risky - sometimes ecstatic - relationship with the Other. ,
“Everything is sad,” wrote the Ancient poets. But is this sadness merely a human experience, projected onto the world, or is there a gloom attributable to the world itself? Could the universe be forever weeping the “tears of things”? In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key “negative affects” – both eternal and emergent – associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change. Between the information gathered by planetary sensors and the simple act of breathing the air, new unsettling moods are produced for which we currently lack an adequate language. Should we feel grief over the loss of our planet? Or is the strange feeling of witnessing mass extinction an indicator that the planet was never “ours” to begin with? Sad Planets explores this relationship between our all-too-human melancholia and a more impersonal sorrow, nestled in the heart of the cosmic elements. Spanning a wide range of topics – from the history of cosmology to the “existential threat” of climate change – this book is a reckoning with the limits of human existence and comprehension. As Pettman and Thacker observe, never before have we known so much about the planet and the cosmos, and yet never before have we felt so estranged from that same planet, to say nothing of the stars beyond.
Applying Jean Baudrillard's question "What are you doing after the orgy?" to the postmillennial climate that informs our contemporary cultural moment, this book argues that the imagination of apocalyptic endings has been an obsessive theme in post-Enlightenment culture. Dominic Pettman identifies and examines the dynamic tensions of various apocalyptic discourses, from the fin-de-siècle decadents of the 1890s to the fin-de-millènnium cyberpunks of the 1990s, in order to highlight the complex constellation of exhaustion, anticipation, panic, and ecstasy in contemporary culture. Through analyses of rapturous cults, cyberpunk literature, post-apocalyptic cinema, techno-paganism, death fashion, and the Y2K prophecy, After the Orgy explores why the twentieth century swung so violently between the poles of anticipation and anticlimax. In the process, the book raises pressing questions concerning the relevance of such ideas in our new millennium and points out alternatives to the monotonous horror of traditional narratives.
Drawing on political, social and economic theory, Reforming Civil Procedure focuses on the English civil justice system by looking at its history and its processes. The book considers the objectives of civil procedure and how it operates for and against particular societal groups, and what ideas and behaviours impact upon it. The reform of civil procedure has been beset with difficulties. Some are caused by questions of culture and mind-sets resistant to the changes, some by a confusion and conflict of values, some by overambitious reform efforts, some by a failure to follow through on purpose clauses, and some by swinging from laxity to rigidity with insufficient analysis. This book makes a strong contribution to the field by synthesising the work of English writers with different views, extending the work in England on the role of philosophy, values, process and culture in litigation, and engaging extensively with American writers who have not previously been the subject of much attention in English civil procedural studies.
The new edition of this leading text is an essential guide to promoting healthy behaviour in a multi-cultural society, providing a holistic stance that integrates both physical and mental health and wellbeing. With a comprehensive overview of the interplay between social class, gender, ethnicity and individual health differences, the book also looks at key lifestyle issues such as eating well, smoking, drinking alcohol and safe sex, as well as the mechanisms for behavioural change. Each chapter features engaging case studies, points for discussion and student activities. Updated since the COVID-19 pandemic, the new edition also discusses the effects of lockdowns on healthy behaviours. An accessible and engaging text, the third edition of Promoting Healthy Behaviour will continue to be essential reading for both students and practitioners across nursing, public health and allied health professions.
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