Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters, Conversations

Description

A sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world How do contemporary art and theory contemplate the problem of the "bio" of biopolitics and bioart? How do they understand the question of "life" that binds human and nonhuman worlds in their shared travail? In Art and Posthumanism, Cary Wolfe argues for the reconceptualization of nature in art and theory to turn the idea of the relationship between the human and the planet upside down. Wolfe explores a wide range of contemporary artworks-from Sue Coe's illustrations of animals in factory farms and Eduardo Kac's bioart to the famous performance pieces of Joseph Bueys and the video installations of Eija-Liisa Ahtila, among others-examining how posthumanist theory can illuminate, and be illuminated by, artists' engagement with the more-than-human world. Looking at biological and social systems, the question of the animal, and biopolitics, Art and Posthumanism explores how contemporary art rivets our attention on the empirically thick, emotionally charged questions of "life" and the "living" amid ecological catastrophe. One of the foremost theorists of posthumanism, Wolfe pushes that philosophy out of the realm of the purely theoretical to show how a posthumanist engagement with particular works and their conceptual underpinnings help to develop more potent ethical and political commitments.

Cary Wolfe is Dunleive Professor of English at Rice University. He is author of Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" and What Is Posthumanism? and editor of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, all from Minnesota. He edits the Posthumanities series for Minnesota.

"Conversational in style yet highly ambitious in its ideas, this inspiring collection explores different ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans alike. Cary Wolfe provides a unique approach to thinking both about art and with art-but also a new possibility for seeing and sensing the world through art."-Joanna Zylinska, King's College London "Cary Wolfe is one of the few animal studies scholars thoroughly fluent in the complex language of contemporary visual arts culture, and he brings his talents for exquisite prose to Art and Posthumanism. I can think of no more valuable volume for makers engaged in the culture of interspecific ecological entanglements."-Mark Dion, visual artist