Culture Machine 2005 - Biopolitics

. Contents to the 2005 volume:

CULTURE MACHINE 7 (2005) Biopolitics

Edited by Melinda Cooper, Andrew Goffey and Anna Munster

Editorial Biopolitics, For Now

Eugene Thacker Nomos, Nosos and Bios

Hannah Landecker Living Differently in Time: Plasticity, Temporality and Cellular Biotechnologies

Bifo Biopolitics and Connective Mutation

Kane Race Recreational States: Drugs and the Sovereignty of Consumption

Julian Reid with Keith Farquhar Immanent War, Immaterial Terror...

Luciana Parisi and Steve Goodman The Affect of Nanoterror

Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy

Anna Munster Why Is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatic Life

Andrew Murphie Differential Life, Perception and the Nervous Elements: Whitehead, Bergson and Virno on the Technics of Living

Maria Hynes Rethinking Reductionism

Biosemiotics: the new challenge

CFPs... Biosemiotics: the new challenge 23 March 2005

Biosemiotics has been responsible for the acceleration of semiotics’ impetus in the last decade.

Biosemiotics promises to transform biology; it poses a challenge to aspects of Darwinian orthodoxy; it re-orientates the study of the sign; and, arguably above all, it precipitates a major re-thinking of the human subject.

‘Biosemiotics: the new challenge’ is a one-day international symposium run by the Communications and Subjectivity Research Group at London Metropolitan University in conjunction with the journal, Subject Matters. It is the first event of its kind in Britain to be devoted exclusively to biosemiotics.

The symposium will feature the molecular biologist, Jesper Hoffmeyer (Denmark), the cybernetician, Søren Brier (Denmark) and, from botany, the semiotician, Kalevi Kull (Estonia). Each will deliver papers aimed at a humanities audience addressing, in particular, biosemiotics’ consequences for the theory of the subject.

Price of entry to the symposium: £18-00.

To book or gain further information, email subjectmatters@londonmet.ac.uk

Hybrid Identities in Digital Media

Call for papers... Hybrid Identities in Digital Media Vol 11, no 4, Winter 2005

Digital bodies, virtual characters, man-machine hybrids, simulated 'humans', androids, and cyborgs

Guest-edited by Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann

The focus of the special issue:

While digitally constructed identities have entered the popular media environment through fiction film, television, and computer games, where they have homogenising effects on the viewer/user that do not encourage them to question or critically look at the cultural concept of 'hybridity', we find that in experimental fields of creative practices (arts, youth cultures, and other groups) the challenge lies in the articulation of individual features that are appropriate to specific needs and express – through diversity – reflections on the hybrid, increasingly interactive and virtual production in digital media. The common interest here seems to lie in the expression of virtual selves that abandon the pre-fabricated products of cinema, television, computer games, and so on.

We encourage a discussion of the following: In what way does the construction of hybrid identities in digital media arts and cultural practices have an effect on:

* new role models (of behaviour, action) * innovative ways of identification (participation, interaction, communication) * new ways of collaborative experience (through multiple user interfaces, MUDs) * novel ways of self-reflection (of role models, ethic/gender/social patterns) * new ways of self-representation (public/private spaces).

Copy deadline for refereed research articles: 1 April 2005

All proposals, inquiries and submissions for this special issue to:

Yvonne Spielmann Braunschweig School of Art Institute of Media Research Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1 38118 Braunschweig Germany tel: +49 (0)531 2810728 fax: +49 (0)531 2810713 email: spielmann@medien-peb.uni-siegen.de

Kerstin Mey School of Art and Design University of Belfast York Street Belfast BT15 1ED Northern Ireland, UK tel: +44 (0)28 9026 7258 fax: +44 (0)28 9026 7310 email: k.mey@ulster.ac.uk

Submission details: Two hard copies and one electronic copy (Macintosh Word compatible) of all articles should be sent to the guest editors with the following information attached separately: name, institution and address for correspondence, telephone, fax and email address. Papers should be typed on one side of the sheet with endnotes in accordance with the MLA style sheet. Authors should also enclose a 50 word biography and an abstract.

The Public Autopsy

Miah, A. (2004). "The Public Autopsy: Somewhere Between Art, Education and Entertainment." Journal of Medical Ethics 30: 576-579. Miah, A. (2003). "Dead Bodies for the Masses: The British Public Autopsy & the Aftermath" CTHEORY E119

In November 2002, Gunter von Hagens conducted a public autopsy in London, UK. Legally, it was all a bit suspect, but it was a fascinating event. This media moment took place soon after von Hagens had exhibited his plastinated bodies in the UK.

Since then, he has presented a series of programmes on UK TV called 'Anatomy for Beginners', which was considerably more professional and valuable, as an indication of what medicine does. However, the entire process relies on his technological method of plastination, so identifying the realness of the process is no easy task.

Cyborg Bodies and Digitized Desire

Jennifer Attaway's analysis of posthumanism in Philip K Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' brings into question the concept of human identity. The article is specifically about AI and spends a lot of time reviewing Dick's story, but does get into ideas about free will and desire. Attway claims that 'the technologically and ideologically mediated experiences of humans have diluted their desire to a point that there is no such thing as indivdual expression of desire'

Posthuman Podiums

Butryn, T. M. (2003). "Posthuman Podiums: Cyborg Narratives of Elite Track and Field Athletes." Sociology of Sport Journal 20: 17-39. Butryn's empirical work on technological narratives is unique. He spends time investigating how athletes articulate their relationship to technology and, while in many instances, they speak about technology as being seamless from the natural sporting body, when it comes to 'body' modification, the distinctions are much clearer. Using performance enhnacements are described by these athletes as contrary to the personal integrity of their performances, though one might beg the question as to whether these views would persist, if it were not for the moral rhetoric that surrounds them.

Prozac and the Post-human Politics of Cyborgs

Lewis, B. E. (2003). "Prozac and the Post-human Politics of Cyborgs." Journal of Medical Humanities 24(1/2): 49-63. Prozac has featured in a number of discussions about posthumanism. Along with a range of other psychopharmcological substances, it is described by many as transforming the social role of medicine. Here, Lewis discusses Donna Haraway's cyborg theory in the context of this drug that alleges to make us better than well.

Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life

Kember, S. (2003). Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life. London and New York, Routledge. Kember's work marks a new relationship between the study and theory of technological cultures. ALife signals a shift towards a fresh way of conceptualising the salient characteristics of humanness.

Implantable Brain Chips

Maguire Jr, G. Q. and E. M. McGee (1999). "Implantable Brain Chips? Time for Debate." Hastings Center Report 29(1): 7-14. Maguire and McGee review a number of prospects for brain/sensory modification, drawing on the current 'cyborg' Steve Mann.

They make the case for a serious consideration of sci-fi prospects in bioethics, a worthy view. Their moral debate recounts what might be characterised as standard objections to technological enhancement: the oppositional natural/technological natures of humanity,concerns about bodily integrity and the sanctity of life, distinctions between therapy and enhancement, safety, risks, social consequences, costs, equity.

It would probably have been useful to pursue some of the narratives of the sci-fi that they mention at the beginning. This could assist in understanding how we frame possible futures and how they relate to our (jeopardised) sense of moral agency, which is central to many stories about technology 'out of control'.

Visible Human Project

Waldby, C. (1997). "Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny." Body and Society 3(1): 1-16. Waldby, C. (2000). "Virtual Anatomy: From the Body in the Text to the Body on the Screen." Journal of Medical Humanities 21(2): 85-107.

Waldby, C. (2000). The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine. London and New York, Routledge.

Catherine Waldby's work on the VHP is not to be missed. She describes the VHP, a new digital technology that can replicate human beings internally and externally. She claims that the technology is ontologically revolutionary, arguing it to reflect a change in the relationship between life and death. Waldby suggests that public interest with the VHP can be situated in a history of popular fascination with and anxiety about medicine technologies that represent the human body. She considers that digital visualisation intensifies the altered distinction be life and death facilitated by photography.

"Virtual space as the matrix for new form of life"

VHP captures narrative of Frankenstein - the medical experiment, the reanimated corpse, the monstrosity of animated death.

Viroid Life

I like Keith Ansell-Pearson's work a lot. This book tackles a number of assumptions about concepts of technology, life, evolution, and the machinic. It argues for a symbiosis between organic and non-organic matter,between biology and the machine, essentially claiming that our evolution takes us further from the coldness of metal and closer to the wetware of biological life.