Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.1
I’m rebooting the Haul of Books feature to show you all what I’ve been buying or getting in the mail (for review or otherwise). My hope is that you’ll at least find some interesting new reads to add to your own collection. Since I’m rebooting this, I am also changing the format. I’d appreciate comments on the format, if you can spare the minute or two to scribble something down at the bottom of this post. If you don’t like it or have suggestions, let me know! So, without further ado, here is the first of my Haul of Books posts for 2010:These books should seem familiar, because I talked about them very briefly here. I bought all of these (and a couple others to come later) at the Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conference in St. Louis earlier this month. Back cover information about the books, in order from left to right, top to bottom, follows (taken from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk): 1. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman by William S. Haney II Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision. 2. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville Science fiction and socialism have always had a close relationship. Many of novelists and filmmakers are leftists. Others examine explicit or implicit Marxist concerns. As a genre, if is ideally suited to critiquing the present through its explorations of the social and political possibilities of the future. This is the first collection to combine analysis of science fiction literature and films within a broader overview of Marxist theorizations and critical perspectives on the genre. This is an accessible and lively introduction for anyone studying the politics of science fiction, covering a rich variety of examples from Weimar cinema to mainstream Hollywood films, and novelists from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross. 3. History, the Human, and the World Between by R. Radhakrishnan History, the Human, and the World Between is a philosophical investigation of the human subject and its simultaneous implication in multiple and often contradictory ways of knowing. The eminent postcolonial theorist R. Radhakrishnan argues that human subjectivity is always constituted “between”: between subjective and objective, temporality and historicity, being and knowing, the ethical and the political, nature and culture, the one and the many, identity and difference, experience and system. In this major study, he suggests that a reconstituted phenomenology has a crucial role to play in mediating between generic modes of knowledge production and an experiential return to life. Keenly appreciative of poststructuralist critiques of phenomenology, Radhakrishnan argues that there is still something profoundly vulnerable at stake in the practice of phenomenology. Radhakrishnan develops his rationale of the “between” through three linked essays where he locates the terms “world,” “history,” “human,” and “subject” between phenomenology and poststructuralism, and in the process sets forth a nuanced reading of the politics of a gendered postcolonial humanism. Critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, David Harvey, and Ranajit Guha, Radhakrishnan examines the relationship between systems of thought and their worldly situations. History, the Human, and the World Between is a powerful argument for a theoretical perspective that combines the existential urgency of phenomenology with the discursive rigor of poststructuralist practices. 4. Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall “Cylons in America” is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society. With its fourth season due to air in January 2008, the award-winning Battlestar Galactica continues to be exceptionally popular for non-network television, combining the familiar features of science fiction with direct commentary on life in mainstream America. “Cylons in America” is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society.Battlestar Galactica depicts the remnants of the human race fleeing across space from a robotic enemy called the Cylons. The fleet is protected by a single warship, the Battlestar, and is searching for a “lost colony” that settled on the legendary planet “Earth.” Originally a television series in the 1970s, the current series maintains the mythic sense established with the earlier quest narrative, but adds elements of hard science and aggressive engagement with post-9/11 American politics. “Cylons In America” casts a critical eye on the revived series and is sure to appeal to fans of the show,