Shifter Magazine 16: Pluripotential (2010)

We present scores, scripts, instructions, critical essays and more for Shifter’s 16th issue entitled “Pluripotential”.

Here we invoke a term, which describes the innate ability of stem-cells to differentiate into almost any cell in the body, to think through the possibility of criticality and cultural change through aesthetic strategies.

The skin that we are born with is transformed as a result of its life of touches, caresses and trauma and becomes flesh. While on the one hand each of us experiences a unique set of circumstances, our common knowledge also shapes this flesh. Analogously, the brain becomes the mind through its history of experiences: A British child growing up in Tokyo speaks fluent Japanese, something her parents having arrived later in life to Japan may never be able to do. The brain is prepared for a multiplicity of cultural and linguistic conditions, within certain biological limits of malleability. Furthermore, as Agamben has noted, “the child [...], is potential in the sense that [s]he must suffer an alteration (a becoming other) through learning.”

These limits of malleability may fall within the paradigm of what Ranciere calls the distribution of the sensible: “the system of self-evident facts of sense perception, that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common, and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it.” Does art have the pluripotential ability to produce events in the cultural landscape, which in turn produce a redistribution of the sensible: a shift in public consciousness concerning how and what we see and feel, and furthermore a reconsideration of who constitutes the public “we.” Here the contradicting ideas of a homogeneous people, versus the singularities that produce differences within the multitude become relevant.

This play between structural constraints and a potential for continuous change is seen in forms such as scores, scripts and instructions; and strategies including “detournement” and remix, which hold within them the potential to be performed and reconstituted in multiple ways. It is therefore through these forms that we set out to explore “Pluripotential”.

Editors: Sreshta Rit Premnath, Warren Neidich
April 2010
Work by SHIFTER is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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Fredric Jameson: The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (1998)

Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of late capitalism in this essential volume. Classic insights on pastiche, nostalgia, and architecture stand alongside essays on the status of history, theory, Marxism, and the subject in an age propelled by finance capital and endless spectacle. Surveying the debates that blazed up around his earlier essays, Jameson responds to critics and maps out the theoretical positions of postmodernism’s prominent friends and foes.

Publisher Verso, 1998
ISBN 1859841821, 9781859841822
Length 206 pages

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Larry Hickman: Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture. Putting Pragmatism to Work (2001)

A practical and comprehensive appraisal of the value of philosophy in today’s technological culture.

Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture contends that technology—a defining mark of contemporary culture—should be a legitimate concern of philosophers. Larry A. Hickman contests the perception that philosophy is little more than a narrow academic discipline and that philosophical discourse is merely redescription of the ancient past. Drawing inspiration from John Dewey, one of America’s greatest public philosophers, Hickman validates the role of philosophers as cultural critics and reformers in the broadest sense. Hickman situates Dewey’s critique of technological culture within the debates of 20th-century Western philosophy by engaging the work of Richard Rorty, Albert Borgmann, Jacques Ellul, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and Martin Heidegger, among others. Pushing beyond their philosophical concerns, Hickman designs and assembles a set of philosophical tools to cope with technological culture in a new century. His pragmatic treatment of current themes—such as technology and its relationship to the arts, technosciences and technocrats, the role of the media in education, and the meaning of democracy and community life in an age dominated by technology—reveals that philosophy possesses powerful tools for cultural renewal. This original, timely, and accessible work will be of interest to readers seeking a deeper understanding of the meanings and consequences of technology in today’s world.

Title Philosophical tools for technological culture: putting pragmatism to work
Series: The Indiana series in the philosophy of technology
Publisher Indiana University Press, 2001
ISBN 0253338697, 9780253338693
Length 215 pages

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Ronald E. Day: The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power (2008)

Ronald E. Day provides a historically informed critical analysis of the concept and politics of information in the twentieth century. Analyzing texts in Europe and the United States, his critical reading method goes beyond traditional historiographical readings of communication and information by engaging specific historical texts in terms of their attempts to construct and reshape history.

After laying the groundwork and justifying his method of close reading for this study, Day examines the texts of two pre-World War II documentalists, Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. Through the work of Otlet and Briet, Day shows how documentation and information were associated with concepts of cultural progress. Day also discusses the social expansion of the conduit metaphor in the works of Warren Weaver and Norbert Wiener. He then shows how the work of contemporary French multimedia theorist Pierre Lévy refracts the earlier philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari through the prism of the capitalist understanding of the “virtual society.”

Turning back to the pre-World War II period, Day examines two critics of the information society: Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. He explains Heidegger’s philosophical critique of the information culture’s model of language and truth as well as Benjamin’s aesthetic and historical critique of mass information and communication. Day concludes by contemplating the relation of critical theory and information, particularly in regard to the information culture’s transformation of history, historiography, and historicity into positive categories of assumed and represented knowledge.

Publisher SIU Press, 2008
ISBN 0809328488, 9780809328482
Length 152 pages

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Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture – 1st free issue (2009)

We commence publication of Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture with a special issue on what we believe is a matter of considerable interest. It begins with a question: ‘Do recent developments in the media – convergence, interactivity, Web 2.0 in short, mean that we need to reassess how we think about the media, how we research into it and how we write and teach about it?’ The guest editor, Paul Taylor, has assembled a very serious and lively exploration of the notion of Media Studies 2.0 which we hope, and fully expect, will lead to further discussion in these pages and elsewhere.

Now to move on to our overall publishing policy: this will be a eneralist journal. It is our intention to publish the best work from the widest possible range, by subject matter and by approach: theoretical, empirical and historical of current research in communication and culture. Sometimes, as here, issues will be themed, others will be more general so that in the round, over time, our pages will address all interests. Our subject matter will be international, as will our contributors and we welcome submissions from both better and lesser known academics and departments. We will return to important topics with the intention of establishing informed, scholarly  conversations on matters of note. As in the best fiction, our ournal will have multiple storylines, and like good Cubists we will look at our subject from every possible angle.

Contents:

Editorial
Authors: Anthony McNicholas, Tarik Sabry, Mascha Brichta, Alessandro D’Arma, Daniel Day, Janne Halttu, Sofia Johansson, Salvo Scifo, Burcu Sumer and Xin Xin

Editorial introduction – Optimism, pessimism and the myth of technological neutrality
Authors: Paul A. Taylor

Media Studies 2.0: upgrading and open-sourcing the discipline
Authors: William Merrin

Critical Media Studies 2.0: an interactive upgrade
Authors: Mark Andrejevic

Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise
Authors: David J. Gunkel

Sounds like teen spirit: iTunes U, podcasting and a sonic education
Authors: Tara Brabazon

Critical theory 2.0 and im/materiality: the bug in the machinic flows
Authors: Dr Paul A. Taylor

Audience Studies 2.0. On the theory, politics and method of qualitative audience research
Authors: Joke Hermes

Straw men or cyborgs?
Authors: Professor Jonathan Dovey and Emeritus Professor Martin Lister

Media Studies 2.0: a response
Authors: David Gauntlett

Review
Authors: Tero Karppi

Print ISSN: 1757-2681

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John Holloway, Fernando Matamoros, Sergio Tischler (eds.): Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism (2009)

How can activists combat the political paralysis that characterizes the anti-dialectical theories of Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, without reverting to a dogmatic orthodoxy? This book explores solutions in the “negative dialectics” of Theodor Adorno.

The poststructuralist shift from dialectics to “difference” has been so popular that it becomes difficult to create meaningful revolutionary responses to neoliberalism. The contributors to this volume come from within the anti-capitalist movement, and close to the concerns expressed in Negri and Hardt’s Empire and Multitude. However, they argue forcefully and persuasively for a return to dialectics so a real-world, radical challenge to the current order can be constructed. This is a passionate call to arms for the anti-capitalist movement. It should be read by all engaged activists and students of political and critical theory.

Publisher Pluto Press, 2009
ISBN 0745328369, 9780745328362
Length 252 pages

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Eduardo Mendieta: Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory (2007)

Global Fragments offers an innovative analysis of globalization that aims to circumvent the sterile dichotomies that either praise or demonize globalization. Eduardo Mendieta applies an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most fundamental experiences of globalization: the mega-urbanization of humanity. The claim that globalization unsettles our epistemic maps of the world is tested against a study of Latin America. Mendieta also recontextualizes the work of three major theorists of globalization—Enrique Dussel, Cornel West, and Jürgen Habermas—to show how their thinking reflects engagement with central problems of globalization and, conversely, how globalization itself is exemplified through the reception of their work. Beyond the epistemic hubris of social theories that seek to accept or reject a globalized world, Mendieta calls for a dialogic cosmopolitanism that departs from the mutuality of teaching and learning in a world that is global but not totalized.

Publisher SUNY Press, 2007
ISBN 0791472574, 9780791472576
Length 226 pages

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Damian F. White: Bookchin. A Critical Appraisal (2008)

This is the first comprehensive overview of the work of Murray Bookchin, the left-libertarian social theorist and political ecologist who is widely regarded as the visionary precursor of anti-corporate politics. Bookchin’s writing spans fifty years and engages with a wide variety of issues: from ecology to urban planning, from environmental ethics to debates about radical democracy. Weaving insights from Hegel and Marx, Kropotkin and Mumford, Bookchin presents a critical theory whose central utopian message is ‘things could be other than they are’. This accessible introduction maps the evolution of Bookchin’s project. It traces his controversial engagements with Marxism, anarchism, critical theory, postmodernism and eco-centric thought. It evaluates his attempt to develop a social ecology. Finally, it considers how his thinking relates to current debates in social theory and environmentalism, critical theory and philosophy, political ecology and urban theory. Offering a clear account of Bookchin’s key themes, this book provides a critical but sympathetic account of the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s writing.

Publisher Pluto Press, 2008
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Jul 17, 2009
ISBN 0745319645, 9780745319643
Length 236 pages

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Herbert Marcuse: Technology, War and Fascism (1998)

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse’s critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of Marcuse’s thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in Technology, War and Facism provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality.

Technology, War and Fascism is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse’s Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

Editor Douglas Kellner
Publisher Routledge, 1998
ISBN 0415137802, 9780415137805
Length 278 pages

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Simon Cooper: Technoculture and Critical Theory. In the Service of the Machine? (2002)

The author explores the work of major thinkers and cultural movements that have grappled with the complex relationship between technology, politics and culture. Subjects such as the Internet, cloning, warfare, fascism and Virtual Reality are placed within a broad theoretical context which explores how humanity might, through technology, establish a more ethical relationship with the world.
Examining the philosophy of writers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, Lyotard, Virilio, and Zizek, and cultural movements such as Italian Futurism, this book marks a timely intervention in critical theory debates. The broad scope of the book will be of vital interest to those in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, politics and communications.

Publisher Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415261600, 9780415261609
Length 182 pages

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Paul A. Taylor, Jan Ll Harris: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now (2007)

With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture.

This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They:

* Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers
* Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today
* Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today’s mass culture

The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past – Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television.

Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.

Publisher Open University Press, 2007
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Apr 24, 2008
ISBN 0335218113, 9780335218110
Length 233 pages

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Andrew Feenberg: Transforming Technology. A Critical Theory Revisited (2002)

Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor–as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems–is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.

Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2002
ISBN 0195146158, 9780195146158
Length 218 pages

Keywords and phrases
Marxism, critical theory, theory of technology, critique of technology, capitalist, deskilling, Frankfurt School, technological rationality, technoscience, Marx, Minitel, double aspect theory, socialist, Soviet Union, artificial intelligence, public ownership, posthumanist, online education, hegemony, division of labor

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Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick (eds.): Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers (2002)

A perfect companion to the recently published Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the key terms, arguments, and theories relating to issues in cultural theory. The essays focus on those thinkers who have been essential in the development of this field of study. Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers will equip students with the necessary background knowledge to further enhance their understanding of the complex issues in the study of culture.

Each entry is concerned with the work of each thinker and reflects the wide range of disciplines that feed into cultural theory, from literary theory, media studies, and phenomenology to philosophy, semiology, and sociology. The book features contemporary greats like Durkheim, Kant, Marcuse, and Lyotard; and significant figures in Western tradition, such as Aristotle, Hume, Plato, and Rousseau.

Publisher Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415232805, 9780415232807
Length 288 pages

Keywords and phrases
Descartes, Nietzsche, semiotic, ontology, Hegel, Aristotle, psychoanalysis, Dasein, Levinas, Plato, Birth of Tragedy, hermeneutics, post-structuralist, metaphysics, Husserl, structuralist, Phenomenology, conscience collective, critical theory, life-world

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Simon Tormey, Jules Townshend: Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism (2006)

Key Thinkers in Critical Theory to Post Marxism is the first comprehensive introduction to perhaps the most key intellectual trend in contemporary critical theory. In jargon-free language, it seeks to unpack, explain and review many of the key figures behind the rethinking of the legacy of Marxism in theory and practice.

Key thinkers covered include Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Laclau and Mouffe, Agnes Heller, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas and post-Marxist feminism.

Each chapter covers a key thinker or contribution and thus can be read as a stand alone introduction to the principal aspects of their approach. Each chapter is followed by a summary of key points with a guide to further reading.

Underlying the text is also the central question: What is Post-Marxism?

Instead of viewing Post-Marxism as an ideology, movement or tradition of theorizing, the authors advocate Post-Marxism as a loose appellation describing those who have problematised Marx’s approach to understanding and challenging contemporary capitalism. As such the book also offers an engaging commentary on some of the key political developments of our time including, for example, the anti-globalisation movement.

Key Thinkers in Critical Theory to Post Marxism provides an ideal introduction to a hitherto complex subject and will be essential reading for all students of contemporary social and political inquiry today.

Publisher Pine Forge Press, 2006
ISBN 0761967621, 9780761967620
Length 234 pages

Keywords and phrases
Post-Marxism, feminism, Derrida, Lyotard, Post-Marxist, Anti-Oedipus, Thousand Plateaus, Habermas, feminist, meta-narrative, Cornelius Castoriadis, post-structuralist, post-structuralism, hegemony, proletariat, lifeworld, Agnes Heller, Donna Haraway, cyborg, division of labour

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Fiona Cameron, Sarah Kenderdine (eds.): Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage. A Critical Discourse (2007)

In Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, experts offer a critical and theoretical appraisal of the uses of digital media by cultural heritage institutions. Previous discussions of cultural heritage and digital technology have left the subject largely unmapped in terms of critical theory; the essays in this volume offer this long-missing perspective on the challenges of using digital media in the research, preservation, management, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage. The contributors—scholars and practitioners from a range of relevant disciplines—ground theory in practice, considering how digital technology might be used to transform institutional cultures, methods, and relationships with audiences. The contributors examine the relationship between material and digital objects in collections of art and indigenous artifacts; the implications of digital technology for knowledge creation, documentation, and the concept of authority; and the possibilities for “virtual cultural heritage”—the preservation and interpretation of cultural and natural heritage through real-time, immersive, and interactive techniques.

The essays in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage will serve as a resource for professionals, academics, and students in all fields of cultural heritage, including museums, libraries, galleries, archives, and archaeology, as well as those in education and information technology. The range of issues considered and the diverse disciplines and viewpoints represented point to new directions for an emerging field.

Contributors:
Nadia Arbach, Juan Antonio Barceló, Deidre Brown, Fiona Cameron, Erik Champion, Sarah Cook, Jim Cooley, Bharat Dave, Suhas Deshpande, Bernadette Flynn, Maurizio Forte, Kati Geber, Beryl Graham, Susan Hazan, Sarah Kenderdine, José Ripper Kós, Harald Kraemer, Ingrid Mason, Gavan McCarthy, Slavko Milekic, Rodrigo Paraizo, Ross Parry, Scot T. Refsland, Helena Robinson, Angelina Russo, Corey Timpson, Marc Tuters, Peter Walsh, Jerry Watkins, Andrea Witcomb

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Jun 3, 2008
ISBN 0262033534, 9780262033534
Length 465 pages

Keywords and phrases
virtual heritage, digital art, virtual reality, Net art, taonga, Powerhouse Museum, haptic, Lev Manovich, media art, Maori, polysemic, Geser, locative media, SFMOMA, Archaeology, Dublin Core, DigiCULT, multimedia, museological

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