| |
|
|
| |
EVENT DETAILS |
We are delighted to announce that our next NY Posthuman Winter/Fall Summit is scheduled for Wednesday, March 29th, to be held at NYU, 6.30-8.30 pm.
Invited Speakers
Joseph Fisher
(Columbia University):
Science, Religion, and the Human of Transhumanism
Jared Russell
(New School for Social Research):
"Analytic Neutrality as Posthuman Technique"
Olga Ast
(Archetime Project - New York Foundation for the Arts):
"Virtual Equality:
Towards the Fair Distribution of Wealth and Health, Beauty and Brains, Information and Reality"
Full abstracts and bios available in the last section of this page.
Members Reports
Rosi Braidotti "The Posthuman" Tanner Lectures (March 2017), Yale University
- Report by Francesca Ferrando, Baptiste X and Peggy Reynolds
Kevin Lagrandeur "Artificial Slaves" (Routledge 2017)
- Presentation of the new paperback copy of the book,
winner of the 2014 Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Prize.
Peggy Reynolds "The Matter of the Grid: from Prehistoric Textiles to Digital Computers"
Goldsmiths, University of London
- An update
Here all the details to attend our NY Posthuman Winter / Spring Summit:
When
Wednesday, March 29th, 6.30-8.30 pm.
Where
NYU-Liberal Studies, 726 Broadway, 6th Floor New York University, NY 10003.
Room: Conference B.
RSVP
Entrance is free, registration is required:
If you are planning to attend, please make sure to send the form, otherwise, the security will not let you in the building.
Our most sincere gratitude goes to NYU for all the kind, generous and precious support offered to our Group.
ABSTRACTS
Abstract 1: Science, Religion, and the Human of Transhumanism
How can transhumanism, a movement that identifies as secular and scientific, be made legible to scholars of religion? I contend that transhumanism performs work typically regarded as the subject of philosophy of religion through its inquiry into the nature and future of the human. Through its discussion of the posthuman, transhumanism concerns itself with a question that has been fundamental to the onto-theological' tradition: what does it mean to be a human being? Since cybernetics, the information-processing machine has provided an organizing metaphor for human being. As this techno-scientific model has moved outside of the boundaries of institutional science and into the domains of popular and speculative science, it has motivated reflection on eschatology, immortality, and transcendence, as well as the value and distinctiveness of human being. In transhumanism, this reflection performs work familiar to scholars of religion: making sense of the self and its relation to the world.
Bio: Joseph Fisher
Joseph Fisher is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, where he studies the intersection of science, technology, and religion. His dissertation offers a historical and philosophical analysis of the contemporary movement transhumanism. His work is motivated by the ways in which technologies, real and imagined, influence understandings of what it means to be human. He earned a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College in Religious Studies before earning an M.A. and M.Phil. in Religion at Columbia.
Abstract 2: "Analytic Neutrality as Posthuman Technique"
This presentation will reconsider the much misunderstood and maligned practice of psychoanalytic neutrality as providing access to posthuman transformations within a clinical register. Far from advocating the dispassionate, silent, blank screen approach that would define American psychiatry for decades, Freud's recommendations to clinicians actually present us with an anticipatory strategy for posthuman engagement by obviating desire and tending instead to the autonomy of the memory apparatus. What it means to speak of psychoanalytic technique in this way opens us up to new ways of thinking about the human and about the irreducible nature of technicity in general.
Bio: Jared Russell
Jared Russell is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He earned his PhD in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and trained as an analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). He is managing editor of The Undecidable Unconscious: A Journal of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (University of Nebraska Press), and the author of "Nietzsche and the Clinic: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Metaphysics" (Karnac Books, 2016).
Abstract 3: "Virtual Equality: Towards the Fair Distribution of Wealth and Health, Beauty and Brains, Information and Reality"
This talk examines some of the egalitarian underpinnings of our cultural fixation with the future and our drive toward utopian technology. Our transition to a post-human state has already begun with the creation of countless artificial environments, beings and simulated realities for our convenience and comfort. Does this mean that we are moving toward individual autonomy with greater capabilities; or mutating into a unified post-human organism, with each human as a functionally highly restricted unit, a tiny cell of a greater body? I will examine whether there is a conflict inherent in our drive toward egalitarianism exemplified in the slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, (or Death) that can create conditions of forced equalization, submission, oppression and control that will be exacerbated in a post-human society and environment.
Bio: Olga Ast
Olga Ast is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist, curator and independent scholar. One of her main goals is to investigate connections between time, space and information. Ast has exhibited and lectured in the U.S. and abroad, presenting her work at various interdisciplinary conferences and projects. In 2009, Olga Ast organized and curated the ArcheTime conference and exhibition dedicated to exploring artistic, academic and scientific concepts of time and published Fleeing from Absence, a book of four essays that explores the nature and interpretations of time. Later Ast collected the ArcheTime papers and artworks and designed a book titled "Infinite Instances: Studies and Images of Time" released by Mark Batty Publisher in 2011.
|
|
|
|
|
|
