Manuela Rossini - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Call for participation by Manuela Rossini
Monographs by Manuela Rossini
SCIENCE/FICTION: Imagineering the Future of the Human
This monograph ('second book') began more than 20 years ago, after I listed to Katherine Hayles s... more This monograph ('second book') began more than 20 years ago, after I listed to Katherine Hayles speaking on 'how we became posthuman' in 1999. I then received a postdoc grant by the Swiss National Science Foundations to work on this 'habilitation' project in the Netherlands from 2003-2006, first at the Gender Centre of the University of Nijmegen, then at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.
Below is the abstract I wrote back then which caused a lot of frowning at the time - especially when I talked about taking the human-animal relation seriously as a topic in critical theory and literary/cultural studies; meanwhile, the posthuman has turned into a new paradigm for the 21st century in a number of academic fields and creative practices, and animals/animots have been followed in many wonderful books.
The plan is to finally get the book out there soon, with most of the chapters being elaboration of published articles and unpublished talks and conversations with colleagues of the Critical Posthumanism Network and the international as well as European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts.
ABSTRACT
In the wake of the postmodernist challenge to the humanist values of the Enlightenment and, more effectively perhaps, due to the extraordinary advances in computer technology and biomedical engineering, the category of the human and its analogues – humanism, humanity, humane – are undergoing profound transformations. These changes raise the greatest hopes and deepest fears within contemporary human beings with regard to their individual identity as well as with regard to the future of the human species. With the growing intersections between human, animal and technology, there are no longer any clear answers - if ever there were - to questions such as what it means to be 'human' and where 'humanness' or 'human nature' is to be found. Instead, 'we' witness the death of the liberal-humanist subject as a coherent and autonomous being and the concomitant artificial birth of what has been referred to as 'the posthuman' or 'cyborg', an amalgam of various organic and non-organic components, an entity whose boundaries undergo continuous (de)construction and reconstruction. The project focuses on the category of the post/human as constructed primarily in contemporary science fiction written in English but also as 'imagineered' in theoretical and philosophical writings as well as in (popular) scientific texts on reproduction in a wide sense. The research starts from the premise that the popular genre of science fiction is an important cultural resource for dealing with those changes and, in turn, shapes developments in information and biomedical technology in crucial ways. Because of my contention that the hitherto separate spheres of science fiction, science and social reality are collapsing and in order to emphasise the narrative nature of scientific writings, I consider all the selected types of text as 'science/fiction' to be subjected to a careful narratological analysis which is theoretically and methodologically informed by gender studies, bioethics, deconstruction and the cultural studies of technoscience. My main research interests lie in the investigation of how human beings are 'built' textually and how 'human' is differentiated from other organic and non-organic entities. Special emphasis is given to the relationship between different 'imagineerings' of the post/human and prevailing structures of inequality and discrimination: what/who does the term 'human' include or exclude, and in whose advantage or disadvantage are such inclusions or exclusions?
Edited books and journals by Manuela Rossini
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022
Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the cha... more Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an ongoing historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism's impact across disciplines and areas of study.
Energy as a nomadic concepts - traveling in many forms, flowing, mattering.
Essays by Manuela Rossini
The history and politics of Western modernity is to a large extent clocked by formations and tran... more The history and politics of Western modernity is to a large extent clocked by formations and transformations of time. For centuries, dominant human/ist and technoscientific notions of teleology, progress and innovation have been used to structure developments and classify human and nonhuman life.
Exploring the Animal Turn: Human-Animal Relations in Science, Society and Culture, Dec 2014
Taking its cue from the humanist moment in David Lynch’s film The Elephant Man (1980), when the p... more Taking its cue from the humanist moment in David Lynch’s film The Elephant Man (1980), when the protagonist emphatically insists on being a (hu)man, my talk riffs on the well-known essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” (1974) by anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner. In this influential text, the feminist argues that women’s universal status as second-order human beings is predicated upon an equally universal devaluation of ‘nature’ while ‘culture’ is elevated as the product of conscious thought and rational action associated more closely with the male of the human species.
It is thus perfectly understandable that second-wave feminism privileged the paradigm of social and cultural constructionism in order to denaturalize ontological and epistemological categories. In the process, feminists preferred to deny any continuity with the animal ‘Other’. Such a (di)stance, however, left the nature-culture hierarchy in place and did not prevent women – certainly not non-white and non-Western women and minorities of all colours –, from being subjugated to the same sexist and racist logic of domination that underwrites the discourse of speciesism. At the same time, as the recent Hypatia issue “Animal Others” (2012) reminds us, animal studies are very much indebted to feminist theorizing, even though more inclusive intersectional analyses are rare.
Under the umbrella of new materialism and, even more broadly, critical posthumanism, I would like to offer for discussion some points of similarity and difference between animals studies, gender studies and other approaches informed by an emancipatory politics before zooming in on more specific debates around issues of rights and the agency of nonhuman animals to promote an ethics of care based on our mutual dependency and shared situatedness in a world in which technology encroaches on ‘the living in general’ – regardless of species membership.
Cultural Transfer, Dec 15, 2014
Tierstudien 04 (2013)
"Fischfunkerzählungen" nennt Christoph Ransmayr die Geschichten seiner Damen & Herren unter Wasse... more "Fischfunkerzählungen" nennt Christoph Ransmayr die Geschichten seiner Damen & Herren unter Wasser, die er zu Farbtafeln von Manfred Wakolbinger aufgezeichnet hat. Mit den Tentakeln des Riffkalmars Herr Blueher (ein Ex-Museumswärter) saugen wir uns an sechs weitere ehemals menschliche Meerestiere heran, die sich eines Tages plötzlich in schwimmende Wesen verwandelt haben. In Tierkörper verhüllte Menschen werden in der Literatur meisten als über- oder unnatürliche Metamorphosen beschrieben und am Ende wird der ursprüngliche Zustand wieder hergestellt. In Ransmayrs Text dagegen ist der Ursprung das Ende und Mutationen erscheinen am Schluss als die natürlichste Sache der Welt, wie sie Charles Darwin in Origin of Species figuriert hat. Damit fällt auch die Illusion einer festen Identität und die Vorstellung einer linearen Entwicklung primitiver Lebewesen hin zum Menschen als Vollendung und Krone der Schöpfungsgeschichte buchstäblich ins Wasser; Ursprung und Ende der Menschheit liegen auf dem Meeresboden, zusammen mit weiteren durch Wasserstoff entstandene Spielformen der Evolution.
Als Spielformen des Erzählens betitelt der Verlag S. Fischer die Reihe der in die Tiefe gehenden Prosa von Ransmayr, wodurch die hier diskutierte Unterweltgeschichte zu einer Allegorie über das Schreiben als transformative Technik wird. Damen & Herren unter Wasser zeigt die Macht der Imagination, passendere Bilder unserer conditio humana im Zeitalter zunehmender Hybridisierung und ständiger Transformationen zu entwerfen. Wenn der Ich-Erzähler schlussendlich hofft, sein Fisch-Werden möge nur Anfang einer Rückentwicklung vorwärts in eine Zukunft sein,„wo alle Formen und Gestalten wieder blosseMöglichkeit“ sind und Wesen entstehen, die sich als „grotesker und bösartiger ..., vielleicht aber auch liebevoller und gütiger, als wir es je waren“ erweisen, dann ist uns mit dieser Verwandlungsgeschichte eine posthumanistische Kosmopoetik jenseits der anthropologischen Differenzmaschine gegeben.
Future Reloaded: Zukunftsvisionen in Wissenschaft und Science Fiction. Ed. Rainer Egloff. , 2013
Wegen seinen beiden klingen-oder sensenähnlichen Federprothesen erhielt Pistorius den Spitznamen ... more Wegen seinen beiden klingen-oder sensenähnlichen Federprothesen erhielt Pistorius den Spitznamen «Blade Runner» -wie die menschlichen Superhelden des gleichnamigen Cyberpunk-Films, die als Polizeibeamte dafür sorgen, dass in der fiktiven Hightech-Welt von 2019 künstliche Menschen eines anderen Planeten eliminiert werden. Wissenschaft, Technik und Science-Fiction «erfinden» also den Menschen «neu», auch wenn sie diesen meistens mit «alten», allzu menschlichen Attributen aus der humanistischen Matrix ausstatten. 3 Schliesslich wird sowohl in der Science-Fiction wie auch in der Technoscience der Mensch oder das Menschsein an sich zur Utopie -der Mann/ Mensch mit oder ohne Beine dafür mit universell menschlichen Eigenschaften wie Emotionen 4 , freiem Willen, Erinnerungen und Kampfgeist steht zur Disposition und ist in Gefahr, durch seine eigenen Erfindungen und Reproduktionen (Replikanten, wie sie in «Blade Runner» genannt werden) überholt und aus der Bahn geworfen zu werden.
Animal Encounters, eds. Manuela Rossini and Tom Tyler, 2009
Keywords: critical posthumanism, new materialism, feminism, science fiction
Raffia, 2005
Posthuman all to human and huMAN.
Revista canaria de estudios ingleses , Apr 2005
Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "tw... more Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "two cultures" divide and emphasises instead the interdependency between science and literature or, more specifically, between "real science" and "science fiction". It argues that technoscientific visions are indebted to narrative imaginings and that the promises of technoscience, in turn, influence individual and collective fantasies. The analytical focus is on imagineerings of the posthuman body or subject in various types of science/fiction. In order to challenge the orthodoxy of posthumanism's progressive
trajectory, these figurations will be scrutinised in view of underlying liberal-humanist and, hence, androcentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric assumptions.
figurationen, 2003
Im Versuch, die künstliche Grenze zwischen den " zwei Kulturen " zu überschreiten, soll hier die ... more Im Versuch, die künstliche Grenze zwischen den " zwei Kulturen " zu überschreiten, soll hier die Bezeichnung Science/Fiction in einem umfassenderen Sinn verstanden werden. Filmische und literarische Zukunftsentwürfe sind mit diesem Begriff ebenso gemeint wie (populär)wissenschaftliche Visionen, theoretische Schriften und Werbekampagnen. Diese unterschiedlichen Textsorten, so eine These des vorliegenden Aufsatzes, bilden Entwicklungen in der Reprogenetik nicht nur ab, sondern beteiligen sich entscheidend an deren materiell-semiotischer Gestaltung und Anwendung. Zudem können die besprochenen kulturellen Artefakte auch selber als " reproduktiv " charakterisiert werden, da sie einerseits uralte Narrative und Denkmuster fort-und festschreiben (Replikation des Gegebenen), andererseits aber auch neue Körper-und Identitätskonzepte jenseits naturalisierter hegemonialer Ordnungen figurieren (Generation des Neuen und Möglichen).
The essay looks at the reconfiguration of identity beyond the two culturally intelligible genders... more The essay looks at the reconfiguration of identity beyond the two culturally intelligible genders and compulsory heterosexuality through the less of the renaissance stage convention of the transvestite boy actor.
Book Reviews by Manuela Rossini
WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed, theme-based journal, is published in the summer ... more WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed, theme-based journal, is published in the summer and winter by The Feminist Press at
Interviews by Manuela Rossini
properly commenced, dr. Rossini wanted to give a clear definition of the term 'posthumanism.' As ... more properly commenced, dr. Rossini wanted to give a clear definition of the term 'posthumanism.' As a preliminary point, I would like to say a few words about my understanding of the terms 'posthumanism, 'posthuman,' and 'posthumanist.' Very broadly speaking, 'posthumanism,' is a world-view as well as a paradigm, mode of interpretation or epistemological frame to reflect on humanism and its aftermath. It also refers, like any other '-ism,' to an ethical and political standpoint. Of course there is not only one posthumanism, like the other '-isms,' it has different forms and ideological colours. The 'posthuman' would relate more to the subject as figured in narratives and images in literature and culture at large. And, finally, we [Rossini speaks of herself and the general editors of the Rodopi monograph series "Critical Posthumanisms," red.] mainly use 'posthumanist' to denote a critical practice, a theoretical approach and attitude that is, arguably, next in line after poststructuralism and postmodernism. For the readers of Frame it is perhaps interesting to mention that posthumanism as a critical and cultural theory has mainly been developed by scholars of English and American Studies in the USA from the 1960's onwards.
SCIENCE/FICTION: Imagineering the Future of the Human
This monograph ('second book') began more than 20 years ago, after I listed to Katherine Hayles s... more This monograph ('second book') began more than 20 years ago, after I listed to Katherine Hayles speaking on 'how we became posthuman' in 1999. I then received a postdoc grant by the Swiss National Science Foundations to work on this 'habilitation' project in the Netherlands from 2003-2006, first at the Gender Centre of the University of Nijmegen, then at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.
Below is the abstract I wrote back then which caused a lot of frowning at the time - especially when I talked about taking the human-animal relation seriously as a topic in critical theory and literary/cultural studies; meanwhile, the posthuman has turned into a new paradigm for the 21st century in a number of academic fields and creative practices, and animals/animots have been followed in many wonderful books.
The plan is to finally get the book out there soon, with most of the chapters being elaboration of published articles and unpublished talks and conversations with colleagues of the Critical Posthumanism Network and the international as well as European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts.
ABSTRACT
In the wake of the postmodernist challenge to the humanist values of the Enlightenment and, more effectively perhaps, due to the extraordinary advances in computer technology and biomedical engineering, the category of the human and its analogues – humanism, humanity, humane – are undergoing profound transformations. These changes raise the greatest hopes and deepest fears within contemporary human beings with regard to their individual identity as well as with regard to the future of the human species. With the growing intersections between human, animal and technology, there are no longer any clear answers - if ever there were - to questions such as what it means to be 'human' and where 'humanness' or 'human nature' is to be found. Instead, 'we' witness the death of the liberal-humanist subject as a coherent and autonomous being and the concomitant artificial birth of what has been referred to as 'the posthuman' or 'cyborg', an amalgam of various organic and non-organic components, an entity whose boundaries undergo continuous (de)construction and reconstruction. The project focuses on the category of the post/human as constructed primarily in contemporary science fiction written in English but also as 'imagineered' in theoretical and philosophical writings as well as in (popular) scientific texts on reproduction in a wide sense. The research starts from the premise that the popular genre of science fiction is an important cultural resource for dealing with those changes and, in turn, shapes developments in information and biomedical technology in crucial ways. Because of my contention that the hitherto separate spheres of science fiction, science and social reality are collapsing and in order to emphasise the narrative nature of scientific writings, I consider all the selected types of text as 'science/fiction' to be subjected to a careful narratological analysis which is theoretically and methodologically informed by gender studies, bioethics, deconstruction and the cultural studies of technoscience. My main research interests lie in the investigation of how human beings are 'built' textually and how 'human' is differentiated from other organic and non-organic entities. Special emphasis is given to the relationship between different 'imagineerings' of the post/human and prevailing structures of inequality and discrimination: what/who does the term 'human' include or exclude, and in whose advantage or disadvantage are such inclusions or exclusions?
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022
Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the cha... more Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an ongoing historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism's impact across disciplines and areas of study.
Energy as a nomadic concepts - traveling in many forms, flowing, mattering.
The history and politics of Western modernity is to a large extent clocked by formations and tran... more The history and politics of Western modernity is to a large extent clocked by formations and transformations of time. For centuries, dominant human/ist and technoscientific notions of teleology, progress and innovation have been used to structure developments and classify human and nonhuman life.
Exploring the Animal Turn: Human-Animal Relations in Science, Society and Culture, Dec 2014
Taking its cue from the humanist moment in David Lynch’s film The Elephant Man (1980), when the p... more Taking its cue from the humanist moment in David Lynch’s film The Elephant Man (1980), when the protagonist emphatically insists on being a (hu)man, my talk riffs on the well-known essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” (1974) by anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner. In this influential text, the feminist argues that women’s universal status as second-order human beings is predicated upon an equally universal devaluation of ‘nature’ while ‘culture’ is elevated as the product of conscious thought and rational action associated more closely with the male of the human species.
It is thus perfectly understandable that second-wave feminism privileged the paradigm of social and cultural constructionism in order to denaturalize ontological and epistemological categories. In the process, feminists preferred to deny any continuity with the animal ‘Other’. Such a (di)stance, however, left the nature-culture hierarchy in place and did not prevent women – certainly not non-white and non-Western women and minorities of all colours –, from being subjugated to the same sexist and racist logic of domination that underwrites the discourse of speciesism. At the same time, as the recent Hypatia issue “Animal Others” (2012) reminds us, animal studies are very much indebted to feminist theorizing, even though more inclusive intersectional analyses are rare.
Under the umbrella of new materialism and, even more broadly, critical posthumanism, I would like to offer for discussion some points of similarity and difference between animals studies, gender studies and other approaches informed by an emancipatory politics before zooming in on more specific debates around issues of rights and the agency of nonhuman animals to promote an ethics of care based on our mutual dependency and shared situatedness in a world in which technology encroaches on ‘the living in general’ – regardless of species membership.
Cultural Transfer, Dec 15, 2014
Tierstudien 04 (2013)
"Fischfunkerzählungen" nennt Christoph Ransmayr die Geschichten seiner Damen & Herren unter Wasse... more "Fischfunkerzählungen" nennt Christoph Ransmayr die Geschichten seiner Damen & Herren unter Wasser, die er zu Farbtafeln von Manfred Wakolbinger aufgezeichnet hat. Mit den Tentakeln des Riffkalmars Herr Blueher (ein Ex-Museumswärter) saugen wir uns an sechs weitere ehemals menschliche Meerestiere heran, die sich eines Tages plötzlich in schwimmende Wesen verwandelt haben. In Tierkörper verhüllte Menschen werden in der Literatur meisten als über- oder unnatürliche Metamorphosen beschrieben und am Ende wird der ursprüngliche Zustand wieder hergestellt. In Ransmayrs Text dagegen ist der Ursprung das Ende und Mutationen erscheinen am Schluss als die natürlichste Sache der Welt, wie sie Charles Darwin in Origin of Species figuriert hat. Damit fällt auch die Illusion einer festen Identität und die Vorstellung einer linearen Entwicklung primitiver Lebewesen hin zum Menschen als Vollendung und Krone der Schöpfungsgeschichte buchstäblich ins Wasser; Ursprung und Ende der Menschheit liegen auf dem Meeresboden, zusammen mit weiteren durch Wasserstoff entstandene Spielformen der Evolution.
Als Spielformen des Erzählens betitelt der Verlag S. Fischer die Reihe der in die Tiefe gehenden Prosa von Ransmayr, wodurch die hier diskutierte Unterweltgeschichte zu einer Allegorie über das Schreiben als transformative Technik wird. Damen & Herren unter Wasser zeigt die Macht der Imagination, passendere Bilder unserer conditio humana im Zeitalter zunehmender Hybridisierung und ständiger Transformationen zu entwerfen. Wenn der Ich-Erzähler schlussendlich hofft, sein Fisch-Werden möge nur Anfang einer Rückentwicklung vorwärts in eine Zukunft sein,„wo alle Formen und Gestalten wieder blosseMöglichkeit“ sind und Wesen entstehen, die sich als „grotesker und bösartiger ..., vielleicht aber auch liebevoller und gütiger, als wir es je waren“ erweisen, dann ist uns mit dieser Verwandlungsgeschichte eine posthumanistische Kosmopoetik jenseits der anthropologischen Differenzmaschine gegeben.
Future Reloaded: Zukunftsvisionen in Wissenschaft und Science Fiction. Ed. Rainer Egloff. , 2013
Wegen seinen beiden klingen-oder sensenähnlichen Federprothesen erhielt Pistorius den Spitznamen ... more Wegen seinen beiden klingen-oder sensenähnlichen Federprothesen erhielt Pistorius den Spitznamen «Blade Runner» -wie die menschlichen Superhelden des gleichnamigen Cyberpunk-Films, die als Polizeibeamte dafür sorgen, dass in der fiktiven Hightech-Welt von 2019 künstliche Menschen eines anderen Planeten eliminiert werden. Wissenschaft, Technik und Science-Fiction «erfinden» also den Menschen «neu», auch wenn sie diesen meistens mit «alten», allzu menschlichen Attributen aus der humanistischen Matrix ausstatten. 3 Schliesslich wird sowohl in der Science-Fiction wie auch in der Technoscience der Mensch oder das Menschsein an sich zur Utopie -der Mann/ Mensch mit oder ohne Beine dafür mit universell menschlichen Eigenschaften wie Emotionen 4 , freiem Willen, Erinnerungen und Kampfgeist steht zur Disposition und ist in Gefahr, durch seine eigenen Erfindungen und Reproduktionen (Replikanten, wie sie in «Blade Runner» genannt werden) überholt und aus der Bahn geworfen zu werden.
Animal Encounters, eds. Manuela Rossini and Tom Tyler, 2009
Keywords: critical posthumanism, new materialism, feminism, science fiction
Raffia, 2005
Posthuman all to human and huMAN.
Revista canaria de estudios ingleses , Apr 2005
Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "tw... more Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "two cultures" divide and emphasises instead the interdependency between science and literature or, more specifically, between "real science" and "science fiction". It argues that technoscientific visions are indebted to narrative imaginings and that the promises of technoscience, in turn, influence individual and collective fantasies. The analytical focus is on imagineerings of the posthuman body or subject in various types of science/fiction. In order to challenge the orthodoxy of posthumanism's progressive
trajectory, these figurations will be scrutinised in view of underlying liberal-humanist and, hence, androcentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric assumptions.
figurationen, 2003
Im Versuch, die künstliche Grenze zwischen den " zwei Kulturen " zu überschreiten, soll hier die ... more Im Versuch, die künstliche Grenze zwischen den " zwei Kulturen " zu überschreiten, soll hier die Bezeichnung Science/Fiction in einem umfassenderen Sinn verstanden werden. Filmische und literarische Zukunftsentwürfe sind mit diesem Begriff ebenso gemeint wie (populär)wissenschaftliche Visionen, theoretische Schriften und Werbekampagnen. Diese unterschiedlichen Textsorten, so eine These des vorliegenden Aufsatzes, bilden Entwicklungen in der Reprogenetik nicht nur ab, sondern beteiligen sich entscheidend an deren materiell-semiotischer Gestaltung und Anwendung. Zudem können die besprochenen kulturellen Artefakte auch selber als " reproduktiv " charakterisiert werden, da sie einerseits uralte Narrative und Denkmuster fort-und festschreiben (Replikation des Gegebenen), andererseits aber auch neue Körper-und Identitätskonzepte jenseits naturalisierter hegemonialer Ordnungen figurieren (Generation des Neuen und Möglichen).
The essay looks at the reconfiguration of identity beyond the two culturally intelligible genders... more The essay looks at the reconfiguration of identity beyond the two culturally intelligible genders and compulsory heterosexuality through the less of the renaissance stage convention of the transvestite boy actor.
WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed, theme-based journal, is published in the summer ... more WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed, theme-based journal, is published in the summer and winter by The Feminist Press at
properly commenced, dr. Rossini wanted to give a clear definition of the term 'posthumanism.' As ... more properly commenced, dr. Rossini wanted to give a clear definition of the term 'posthumanism.' As a preliminary point, I would like to say a few words about my understanding of the terms 'posthumanism, 'posthuman,' and 'posthumanist.' Very broadly speaking, 'posthumanism,' is a world-view as well as a paradigm, mode of interpretation or epistemological frame to reflect on humanism and its aftermath. It also refers, like any other '-ism,' to an ethical and political standpoint. Of course there is not only one posthumanism, like the other '-isms,' it has different forms and ideological colours. The 'posthuman' would relate more to the subject as figured in narratives and images in literature and culture at large. And, finally, we [Rossini speaks of herself and the general editors of the Rodopi monograph series "Critical Posthumanisms," red.] mainly use 'posthumanist' to denote a critical practice, a theoretical approach and attitude that is, arguably, next in line after poststructuralism and postmodernism. For the readers of Frame it is perhaps interesting to mention that posthumanism as a critical and cultural theory has mainly been developed by scholars of English and American Studies in the USA from the 1960's onwards.
Animal Encounters, 2009
Animal Encounters presents a multidisciplinary selection of essays in which nonhuman animals meet... more Animal Encounters presents a multidisciplinary selection of essays in which nonhuman animals meet with philosophers, literary scholars and cultural theorists, scientists and historians, feminists and environmentalists, artists and activists, who are interested in the productive potential of interspecies exchange and collaboration. Brought together under six strategic headings, the collection constitutes a series of encounters not only between animals, human and otherwise, but also between different disciplinary methods, theoretical approaches, and ethical positions. Animal Encounters includes essays by Carol J. Adams, Steve Baker, Monika Bakke, Pamela Banting, Jonathan Burt, Donna Haraway, Randy Malamud, Manuela Rossini, Laurie Shannon, Robyn Smith, Susan Squier and Tom Tyler.
Attached is the introduction, 'The Case of the Camel', which includes summaries of the book's sections and chapters.
This publication describes the nomadic concepts tool and is part of a series of tools and methods... more This publication describes the nomadic concepts tool and is part of a series of tools and methods compiled in the td-net toolbox for co-producing knowledge (www.transdisciplinarity.ch/toolbox). <br> Nomadic concepts is a heuristic tool for exchanging understandings of concepts across disciplinary, professional and cultural boundaries.
The gendered spatiology of Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
The Gendered Spatiology of Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside Manuela Rossini A succ... more The Gendered Spatiology of Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside Manuela Rossini A successful revolution must effect changes in space Henri Lefebvre This reading of Thomas Middleton's city comedy is informed by an un-derstanding of space which combines a static, ...
Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "tw... more Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "two cultures" divide and emphasises instead the interdependency between science and literature or, more specifically, between "real science" and "science fiction". It argues that technoscientific visions are indebted to narrative imaginings and that the promises of technoscience, in turn, influence individual and collective fantasies. The analytical focus is on imagineerings of the posthuman body or subject in various types of science/fiction. In order to challenge the orthodoxy of posthumanism's progressive trajectory, these figurations will be scrutinised in view of underlying liberal-humanist and, hence, androcentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric assumptions.
European Journal of English Studies, 2014
Revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 2005
Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "tw... more Introducing the terms "science/fiction" and "imagineering", the essay aims to move beyond the "two cultures" divide and emphasises instead the interdependency between science and literature or, more specifically, between "real science" and "science fiction". It argues that technoscientific visions are indebted to narrative imaginings and that the promises of technoscience, in turn, influence individual and collective fantasies. The analytical focus is on imagineerings of the posthuman body or subject in various types of science/fiction. In order to challenge the orthodoxy of posthumanism's progressive trajectory, these figurations will be scrutinised in view of underlying liberal-humanist and, hence, androcentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric assumptions.
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman
Machine generated contents note: Preface: literature, posthumanism, and the posthuman Bruce Clark... more Machine generated contents note: Preface: literature, posthumanism, and the posthuman Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini; Part I. Literary Periods: 1. Medieval Karl Tobias Steel; 2. Early modern Kevin LaGrandeur; 3. Romantic Ron Broglio; 4. Modern Jeff Wallace; 5. Postmodern Stefan Herbrechter; Part II. Posthuman Literary Modes: 6. Science fiction Lisa Yaszek and Jason W. Ellis; 7. Autobiography Kari Weil; 8. Comics and graphic novels Lisa Diedrich; 9. Film Anneke Smelik; 10. E-literature Ivan Callus and Mario Aquilina; Part III. Posthuman Themes: 11. The nonhuman Bruce Clarke; 12. Bodies Manuela Rossini; 13. Objects Ridvan Askin; 14. Technologies R. L. Rutsky; 15. Futures Claire Colebrook.
Kritikos, 2006
Feminist productions in the fields of literary, cultural and social studies are almost exclusivel... more Feminist productions in the fields of literary, cultural and social studies are almost exclusively-though for good reasons-informed by a radical constructivism. Drawing on discourse analysis and semiotics, such work relies predominantly on gender as a category of analysis in order to examine the social, cultural and psychic construction of subjectivity, while neglecting questions of biological sex. The general refusal of scholars from those disciplines to engage with the materiality of bodies, with their physiological, biochemical or microbiological details, forms and formations, is indicative of an anti-essentialist stance which is very understandable from a historico-political perspective: When politicians and scientists have for centuries recurred to "natural" (because biological) differences to explain and legitimate social discrimination, oppression and inequality between the sexes and between human beings of different classes and ethnicities, it was more than necessary to counter, if not downright deny, biologistic argumentations. Meanwhile, however, the hostile attitude towards the natural sciences and empirical research has "naturalised" itself and the socio-cultural framing of bodies and gender has simply become the counterpart of the ideology known as biological reductionism, insofar as influences of the environment and society as well as individual technologies of the self count as the determining factors now that, in their turn, can be acted upon by the feminist subject. As a consequence of this disciplinary division of labour, scientific debates between and within different academic fields remain trapped in the dead-end street of the dualisms nature/culture, essentialism/constructivism, materiality/discourse and sex/gender. Judith Butler's attempt (in Gender Trouble and even more so in Bodies that Matter) to dissolve the sex/gender dichotomy by negating the preceding materiality of gender or, conversely, by postulating sex as a discursive and performative construct, is not particularly fruitful for transdisciplinary models of explanations and research questions beyond the nature/culture or nature/nurture divide.i I am not arguing for the abandonment of the (de)constructivist method in gender studies-on the contrary: as I will argue in more detail later, I would like to foster a much broader and literally deeper understanding of the constructedness of bodies as "material". This understanding would result in an approach that balances the overemphasis of discursive analyses not only by including aspects of bodily (self-)experience, how bodies are present in space and time, and the social practices of the corporeal, but also brings in the weight of biological dimensions in the construction of subjectivities-without, however, reinforcing naturalist-essentialist assumptions. If this
Von begleitender zu integrierter ELSI- Forschung am Beispiel der Nanowissen- schaften und Nanotechnologien (NuN)
Der vorliegende Bericht beschftigt sich mit der Zusammenarbeit von Medizin, Natur - und Ingenieu... more Der vorliegende Bericht beschftigt sich mit der Zusammenarbeit von Medizin, Natur - und Ingenieurwissen -schaften sowie Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften im Bereich neuer T echnologien am Beispiel der Nanowissenschaften und Nanotechnologien (NuN). International besteht die T endenz, dass in Forschungs -programmen zu neuen T echnologien rund 1 % der Mittel in die geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche ELSI- und Governance-Projekte siessen. Diese Entwicklun g ist in der Schweiz bisher nicht feststellbar . All -gemein und nicht nur auf den Bereich der NuN bezogen ist die ELSI-Forschung in der Schweiz zwar vorhan -den, allerdings nicht als langfristig bestehender Forschungsansatz verankert, sondern lediglich ber Projekt -gelder Þnanziert.In den letzten Jahren zeigt sich international ein W echsel von einer begleitenden hin zu einer integrierten ELSI-Forschung. In integrierten Projekten arbeiten ELSI-Forschende von Anfang an mit Forschenden aus medizinischen, naturwisse...
Peer Review Processes for Transdisciplinary Articles: A Reflection on Journals' Practices
Publishing is an essential means of validation and communication of research. This is no differen... more Publishing is an essential means of validation and communication of research. This is no different in transdisciplinary research, where publishing also aims at contributing to the development of society through sharing of knowledge. In the scientific world, authors need to disseminate and validate results, reflect on issues, and participate in debates. On the other hand, institutions and individuals are assessed according to their publication record – as probably the most influential of all current evaluation criteria. Occupying the space between article production and counting impact factors, journal editors and reviewers play an important role in defining and using rules to assess and improve the work submitted to them. Publishing transdisciplinary research poses specific challenges, in particular with regard to peer-review processes, as it addresses different knowledge communities with different value systems and purposes.
Ökologisches Wirtschaften, 2009
TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis
Bodies
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, 2000
Submarine Experiments with Human Lives by Christoph Ransmayr – A Waterman Narrates
Narrating Life – Experiments with Human and Animal Bodies in Literature, Science and Art, 2000
Zoontologien: Companion Species und Ribofunk als theoretische und literarische Beiträge zu einem kritisch-posthumanistischen Feminismus
Die Lebenswissenschaften als Herausforderung für die Gender Studies, 2000