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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00307
- Thesis Title
- A practice-informed critique of technological posthumanism and its ideologies
- Author
- David Cecchetto
- E-mail
- david.cecchetto AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Ph.D.
- Year
- 2010
- Number of Pages
- 273
- University
- University of Victoria
- Thesis Supervisor
- Stephen Ross
- Supervisor e-mail
- saross AT uvic.ca
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Steve Gibson
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Interdisciplinary (English/Visual Arts), concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought
- Copyright Ownership
- University of Victoria
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, French
- URL where full thesis can be found
- hdl.handle.net/1828/2829
- Keywords
- posthumanism; technology and culture; sound art; deconstruction; media art; aesthetics
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- With the recent emergence of copious and diverse scholarship that considers the discursive valence of the term "human", posthumanism has emerged as a timely and powerful interdisciplinary discourse. This study is a critical analysis of three dominant strains of the technologically oriented segment of this discourse; namely "scientific" (Ollivier Dyens), "humanist" (N. Katherine Hayles), and "organismic" (Mark B. N. Hansen) constructions of technological posthumanism. In each case, the study desublimates (and often deconstructs) the particular ideological claims that underwrite a given perspective, emphasizing the specific elements that such presumptions enable or foreclose. To this end, particular emphasis is given throughout the essay to the critical capacity of performativity, a perspective that is enacted through analyses of selected new media artworks.