We invite submissions for an edited anthology exploring the \;disciplinary intersections of technological mediation\, design\, and the \;posthuman.
Deadline: Abstracts of 500 words should be submitted by March 30\, \;2012. Notifications will be made by early May with final drafts of \;submissions due by September 30\, 2012.
Please include a short biographical statement with abstracts.
Editors:
Dr. Amy Propen\, Rhetoric and Composition\, York College of Pennsylvania \;(apropen@ycp.edu\; \;http://amypropen.com/)
Dr. Colbey Reid\, Literary Studies\, York College of Pennsylvania \;(creid@ycp.edu)
Dr. Dennis Weiss\, Philosophy\, York College of Pennsylvania \;(dweiss@ycp.edu\, \;http://faculty.ycp.edu/~dweiss/)
In the early days of the Internet\, there was much talk about moving \;from the offline world to the online world. Fanboys to cybertheorists \;proclaimed the demassification of culture. Life\, we were told\, would \;become increasingly virtual and the world of things wouldn&rsquo\;t matter \;much. In their 1994 preamble to &ldquo\;Cyberspace and the American Dream: A \;Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age\,&rdquo\; cyberlibertarians Esther Dyson\, \;George Gilder\, and George Keyworth nicely articulated this early \;Internet dream: &ldquo\;The central event of the 20th century is the \;overthrow of matter. In technology\, economics\, and the politics of \;nations\, wealth&mdash\;in the form of physical resources&mdash\;has been losing \;value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant \;over the brute force of things.&rdquo\;
The past decade\, however\, has witnessed a renewed focus on \;materiality. From Bruno Latour&rsquo\;s constitution of a parliament of \;things to Jane Bennett&rsquo\;s efforts in Vibrant Matter to challenge the \;view of matter as passive and inert\, Johndan Johnson-Eilola&rsquo\;s recent \;exploration of the social lives and agency of texts (2010)\, and Bill \;Brown&rsquo\;s award-winning 2001 Critical Inquiry issue on &ldquo\;thing theory\,&rdquo\; a \;variety of discourses and disciplines have renewed their efforts to \;engage questions about the epistemic and rhetorical power of physical \;artifacts. Literary theorists\, digital humanists\, rhetoricians\, \;philosophers of technology\, and product designers are paying more \;attention to the crafted environment\, the manner in which artifacts \;mediate human relations\, and the constitution of a world in which the \;boundary between humans and things has seemingly imploded. \;Simultaneously\, new questions arise about the extent to which we ought \;to view humans and nonhuman artifacts as bearing equal capacity for \;agency and life\, and the ways in which technological mediation \;challenges the central tenets of humanism and anthropocentrism.
Contemporary theories of human-object relations presage the arrival of \;the posthuman\, which is no longer a futuristic or science-fictional \;concept but rather one descriptive of the present\, and indeed\, the \;past. As Charles Bazerman has observed\, &ldquo\;technology&hellip\; has always been \;part of human needs\, desires\, values\, and evaluation\, articulated in \;language and at the very heart of rhetoric&rdquo\; (383). Bill Brown&rsquo\;s A \;Sense of Things likewise points out that humans have long been living \;under what one Atlantic Monthly article positioned\, already in 1906\, \;as a tyranny of things. Discussions of the posthuman already have a \;long history in fields like literary theory\, rhetoric\, and philosophy\, \;and as advances in design and technology result in increasingly \;engaging artifacts that mediate more and more aspects of everyday \;life\, it becomes necessary to engage in a systematic\, \;interdisciplinary\, critical examination of the intersection of the \;domains of design\, technological mediation\, and the posthuman.
Design\, Mediation\, and the Posthuman\, itself a project of mediation \;within the complex intersections occasioned by the history of \;technology\, aims to bring diverse disciplines together to foster a \;dialogue on some of the significant technological issues pertinent to \;philosophy\, rhetoric\, aesthetics\, and science.
Topics may include\, but are not limited to:
Please submit abstracts of 500 words and a short biographical \;statement to Amy Propen (apropen@ycp.edu) or Colbey Reid \;(creid@ycp.edu) or Dennis Weiss (dweiss@ycp.edu) by March 30\, 2012. \;Essays appearing in the anthology will average 3\,000-6\,000 words. MLA \;style should be used where citation is required. Notification of \;acceptance will be given by early May. Completed chapters will be due \;by September 30\, 2012.
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