Keyword: networks

How Vital is Nature? Animated Bodies and Agency in Contemporary Capitalism

Screenshot by author.
By Gareth Dale

This paper brings into conversation two ontologies that depart from the anthropocentric norm: new materialism, represented here by the US vitalist philosopher Jane Bennett, and the animated cosmology common among Indigenous peoples, as an example of which I take Braiding Sweetgrass by the Potawatomi bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. I provide exegeses of both philosophies, with respect in particular to the notion of “animation,” noting that the animated sphere is much more extensive for Bennett than for Kimmerer. I then track Bennett’s shift away from environmental ethics. Finally, I relate differences in philosophy to differences with regard to race and racism, with a detailed discussion of Bennett’s tribute to Walt Whitman, and the genocidal elements within his democratic politics.

For the Moment, I Am Not Scrolling

Cover of Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement In Search of the Opt-Out Button by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake (University of Westminster Press). Image by ketchup.
By Andrew Culp, Claudia Skinner, Adi Kuntsman, Esperanza Miyake and Tero Karppi

Andrew Culp and Cultural Studies Association’s New Media and Digital Cultures Working Group Co-Chair Claudia Skinner take a look into Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake’s new book Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button, published by University of Westminster Press (2022). This podcast is accompanied by a scholarly commentary by Tero Karppi.

For the Moment, I Am Not Scrolling

Cover of Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement In Search of the Opt-Out Button by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake (University of Westminster Press). Image by ketchup.
By Claudia Skinner, Andrew Culp, Adi Kuntsman, Esperanza Miyake and Tero Karppi

Andrew Culp and Cultural Studies Association’s New Media and Digital Cultures Working Group Co-Chair Claudia Skinner take a look into Adi Kuntzman and Esperanza Miyake’s new book Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button, published by University of Westminster Press (2022).

Review of After Art by David Joselit (Princeton)

By Lindsay Garcia

David Joselit’s slim volume “After Art” offers multiple intriguing frameworks to analyze art in the present-day globalized art world. After Art backs away from the traditional approach of artist intent and production and looks at what happens to images once they are attached to the networks that circulate them. Instead of proselytizing individual or even original artworks, Joselit champions images that are constantly reproduced and remediated by artists and architects such as Tania Bruguera, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, Matthew Barney, Le Corbusier, and Rem Koolhaus.