CULTURE MACHINE <http://www.culturemachine.net> is pleased to announce
the publication of the following new book reviews:
* Benjamin Arditi (2007) Politics on the Edges of Liberalism:
Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. Reviewed by Paul Bowman.
The arguments and conclusions of Politics on the Edges of Liberalism
boil down to a mature and compelling distillation and synthesis of
Laclauian and Rancičrean insights. But these insights are organised into
a perspective that you will not find in Rancičre or Laclau, namely a
perspective interested in how activists might make political change.
Arditi is a theorist of political activism. This book is extremely
well-versed in both traditional and radical Continental and
Anglo-American political and cultural theory, so it will be of interest
and importance both to political theorists and to political activists.
It offers exceptionally clear and reliable accounts of the arguments of
very many of the main historical and contemporary political theorists,
and it does so without hyperbole, myopia or partisanship. Rather, Arditi
surveys, analyses and takes what is best from any political theory and
deploys it in the development of new concepts that will stimulate action
and activism in academic theory as well as cultural and political
practice.
* Mark Poster (2006) Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age
of Digital Machines. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Reviewed
by Federica Frabetti.
Poster starts from the claim that today we increasingly retrieve
information from (usually networked) machines, rather than humans to
develop a fascinating analysis of what he calls the contemporary
‘assemblages of humans and networked computing’, or ‘the humachine’.
With its combination of theoretical inquiry and media analysis,
Information Please continues the tradition of his earlier books on
digitality. In a cunning parallel with software, Poster actually
suggests that it could be regarded as version 4.0 of his 1990 book, The
Mode of Information, with The Second Media Age (1995) and What’s the
Matter with the Internet? (2001) seen as versions 2.0 and 3.0
respectively. … One of the reasons why this book is so important is the
attention it pays to the materiality of new media. Poster emphasises
that technological mediation is a general condition of culture, that it
is not neutral (and certainly not to be understood under the sign of
‘tool’), and that we need to look seriously at cultural objects (texts,
images, and sound) as material constructs.
TO READ THE FULL REVIEWS:
1. Go to <http://www.culturemachine.net>
2. Click on the ‘E-journal’ blue button
3. Click on the ‘Reviews’ purple button at the bottom of the screen.
CULTURE MACHINE <http://www.culturemachine.net> publishes new work from
both established figures and up-and-coming writers. It is fully refereed
and has an International Editorial Advisory Board which includes
Geoffrey Bennington, Robert Bernasconi, Sue Golding, Lawrence Grossberg,
Peggy Kamuf, Alphonso Lingis, Meaghan Morris, Paul Patton, Mark Poster,
Avital Ronell, Nicholas Royle, Tadeusz Slawek and Kenneth Surin.
--
Dr Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK
My website: http://www.joannazylinska.net
Reviews Editor for Culture Machine: http://www.culturemachine.net
New book:
Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the
Holocaust
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bookinfo/5146.html
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