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Leonardo Reviews in the social impacts at various levels of also illustrates the catastrophic failure Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt the global economic system. of protective agencies to deal with Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Recipes for Disaster is a Finnish docu- the resulting flood. Doubts are raised mentary that tackles the question of the about the true will of the government Associate Editors: Dene Grigar, excessive amounts of anthropogenic to protect the poorest citizens of New Martha Blassnigg, Hannah Drayson CO2 continuously sent into the atmo- Orleans. The title itself refers to the A full selection of reviews is pub- sphere. Usually, remarks the director, wisely self-consistent attitude of keeping lished monthly on the LR web site: people blame corporations and indus- a hatchet in the attic to smash the ceil-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 the breakdown of trust between the Taken together, these documenta- changing, and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s government and its citizens dramati- ries offer a comprehensive historical book is an indicator of how we might cally emerges, along with evidence of and societal portrait of our times—a move beyond the gap between the the scarce social resiliency of modern rather depressing one, unfortunately. scholar and the fan, the elite and the America. The influence of race and Although dissimilar, all capture another popular notions of SF. In a way, Csic- class on the destiny of the evacuees is view of the scarcely sustainable trends sery-Ronay’s book signals a third kind of questioned, as is the ethics of documen- of modernity. We can clearly feel the figure beyond the scholar and the fan, tary filmmaking itself. fickleness and superficial prosperity of which we can, a bit tongue-in-cheek, The last work discussed here, several situations along with the rising call the SF “dweller.” Whereas both the Umbrella, shows the contemporary economic tide, but what emerges as a scholar and the fan are beholden to the results of the economic reforms initi- major obstacle is the difficulty of engag- specialized, genre-based status of SF, ated in China in 1978, aimed at financ- ing in a real change of perspectives. the dweller is not only the person who ing the modernization of the nation. “Even in a sinking boat,” we are told by lives in SF story worlds but the person Farming is still the basis for the Chinese John Webster, “passengers wait for the who takes it for granted that the actual way of life, but now those sweeping very last chance before leaving.” It is the world must be understood in terms of transformations have become plainly same for social behavior and econom- SF. It is this expansion and diffusion of visible in a country increasingly divided ics: people tend to favor conventional SF that constitutes the overarching con- between its rural and urban regions. conduct, no matter if in the long term cern of Csicsery-Ronay’s book. Today, Those farmers traditionally engaged in it is the losing choice. Everywhere in the increasing ubiquity of SF in culture land cultivation continuously migrate the world, whatever the situation, peo- stimulates toward the cities, where the global ple can overcome almost any problem, economy seems to flourish before but first they must overcome themselves science-fictional habits of mind, so that we no longer treat SF as purely a genre- spreading through the whole world, and their societal divisions. engine producing formulaic effects, like the ubiquitous low-price Chinese but rather as a kind of awareness we umbrella. might call science-fictionality, a mode Using a purely observational style, of response that frames and tests expe- riences as if they were aspects of a work with no narration or commentary— Books of science fiction [2]. one can simply observe labor routines or read written sentences, maxims That said, The Seven Beauties of Science and exhortations—Umbrella is divided Fiction is, first and foremost, a book into five parts, each corresponding to The Seven Beauties about SF as a genre. Csicsery-Ronay a social group. The first scene shows of Science Fiction has done something remarkable—he the workaday life of young employees by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Wesleyan Uni- has posed a number of philosophical of Umbrella Factory in Guangdong versity Press, Middletown, IL, U.S.A., questions concerning SF itself, while, at Province—a monotonous, endlessly 2008. 339 pp. Trade. ISBN: 978-0-8195- the same time, providing a set of con- and rapidly repeated routine for which 6889-2. ceptual tools for understanding SF as a they are paid a meager piece rate. genre and as a narrative form. Csicsery- In another part of China, the Yiwu- Reviewed by Eugene Thacker, School of Liter- Ronay is in a good position to do this; Zhejiang province, a successful farmer ature, Communication & Culture, Georgia for a number of years he has edited the has become an entrepreneur, running Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. journal Science Fiction Studies, and SF an umbrella manufacturing business E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 ics such as Darko Suvin, Carl Freedman, sublime, there is something “out there” The California Deserts: Frederic Jameson and many others. that cannot be incorporated into a An Ecological Rediscovery Briefly, the “seven beauties” of SF are: subject “in here”; with the grotesque, by Bruce M. Pavlik. University of Cali- (1) “fictive neology” (the signs and lan- there is a something “in here” that fornia Press, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., 2008. guage of SF, from the technical jargon cannot be repulsed or pushed away 384 pp., illus. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0- and the language of future politics, to into an object “out there.” SF explores 520-25140-3. futuristic slang and alien linguistics); precisely this boundary management (2) “fictive novums” (borrowing from between the grotesque and sublime, Reviewed by Aparna Sharma, New Delhi, Darko Suvin’s use of the term novum the “out there” and the “in here,” the India. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 the 19th century, and later through its communities to recuperate. Processes of discovery by botanist Mary DeDecker dispersal, colonization, soil formation, in the 20th century. Quotations from and vegetation development impart re- silience to biological systems that allows desert philosopher John Van Dyke are persistence (p. 296). carefully interwoven to suggest how the desert landscape is at once harsh and Bringing together dimensions of filled with solace. This is one of Van ecological study, this book presents an Dyke’s succinct comments: interdisciplinarity necessary for the study of cultural landscapes. Its empiri- Not in vain these wastes of sand. And this time not because they develop cally informed and conversational writ- character in desert life, but simply be- ing style is complemented with a spread cause they are beautiful in themselves of illustrations and images that enhance and good to look upon whether they be the reading experience. References are life or death (p. 56). usefully divided according to the chap- The study of American wilderness ters and sections of the manuscript. in anthropology, American and cul- tural studies builds a consciousness of colonial exploits and their impacts on The Origin of Humanness native peoples. Bruce Pavlik skillfully in the Biology of Love negotiates through this, contextualiz- by Humberto Maturana Romesin and ing a spread of data and accounts. The Gerda Verden-Zöller. Imprint Aca- ecological and cultural diversity of the demic, Exeter, U.K., 2008. 227 pp., illus. California desert landscapes is histori- Paper. ISBN: 978-184540088-0. cized, and this posits culture and ecol- ogy as interactive and coextensive with Reviewed by Martha Blassnigg, University of each other. Both are living, fragile and Plymouth, U.K. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 beings through our operation in the calls for responsibility for our desires represents a new image of freedom that different domains of operational coher- as a choice for future directions in the is closely linked to consumerism, which ences in which we live” (p. 156). In human creative evolution. is best exemplified by reality television the authors’ view, any explanation can programs whose purpose is to promote ultimately only explain experience, References and Notes certain lifestyles. On the other hand, which reveals the constructedness of haunted-house narratives provide a 1. Humberto Maturana Romesin has more fully de- the notion of “reality” or “existence” as veloped a discussion with regard to technology in counter-discourse that illustrates the explanatory. This perspective is not only a 1997 article entitled “Metadesign,” where the art- repressive controls lurking behind such useful for understanding the authors’ ist and artistic, creative dimension in human being arises as a most significant interventionist potential consumerist fantasies. Reality television position when reading their reflections for change through aesthetics linked to the emo- and haunted houses thus represent on the origin of humanness, but it also tional domain. The article can be found on-line at “opposite sides of the same coin of uni-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 ethics. Heckman argues, for example, book ultimately failed. While Heckman cinated by the figure of Lenin. The that “the smart home functions theo- acknowledges that Walt Disney’s Epcot author seems to feel an affinity with retically in accordance with the classic and Roy Mason’s Xanadu were never Tzara on many levels, whereas Lenin conception of the cyborg” because it successful, for example, he still suggests may embody socially minded censors, allows “subjectivity to migrate through that these failures contributed in some editors and college deans who have informational flows” and it replaces way to the contemporary incorporation policed him throughout his lifetime. “the ‘human’ with a representation of technology into the home. It seems Consequently, Codrescu celebrates of subjectivity that is accentuated by a possible, however, to interpret the dadaists, who variety of machines” (p. 151). Heckman failure of Jim Sutherland’s Electronic notes that Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Computing Home Operator (ECHO meant to induce collective delirium, joy, hopefully, but rage if there was no Manifesto” does address “questions of IV) and Honeywell’s H316 Kitchen choice, and to drive the maddened ‘human rights,’ such as welfare, access Computer as emblematic of a more collective to either an orgy or arbitrary to health care, and labor reform,” yet widespread resistance against the capi- destruction, “arbitrary” being the oper- he adds that it “makes little effort to talist forces that guide the development ative word. “Nonarbitrary” destruction establish or even acknowledge the of new technologies. This idea already was what the political mobs had been doing forever and what, unbeknownst humanist foundations from which seems to be implied in Heckman’s to the dadas of 1916, they were going to these scholars can clearly operate and discussion of haunted-house narratives, do to much more sinister effect in the offers no assurances or ‘rules’ by which and I would have liked to see Heckman coming decades (p. 91). abuses can be soundly critiqued” (p. draw a closer connection between the 147). Heckman thus concludes that presence of this counter-discourse and Tzara was born Sammy Rosenstock, “abandoning the human as a solution the failed promises or dystopian futures while Lenin was born V.I. Ulyanov. is foolish” (p. 152) and runs the risk of that the smart home also represents. Codrescu reveals how names are a slip- “delivering subjects over to the mercy of pery thing, as are many of the concepts, the free market” (p. 153). In his closing tropes and personalities whirling in the he osthuman ada paragraph Heckman even compares the T P D historical constellation of dada, whose repressive force of the “Perfect Day” to Guide: Tzara & Lenin parts he seizes and fishes out from the Nazi concentration camps: Play Chess maelstrom for examination. The alpha- by Andrei Codrescu. Princeton Univer- betical organization of this book serves The Perfect Day . . . may very well still sity Press, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A., 2009. this process, though at times (when so use the motto “works makes you free”— 248 pp. Paper. ISBN: 978-0691-13778-0. much is packed in under several dates in the sense that this promise of total in 1915), it seems like a slightly lazy agency is one which requires a form one. As a creative artist, Codrescu wit- of constant attention to a multiplic- Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher, ity of media forms. In the walls of the Saginaw Valley State University. E-mail: nessed many of the most radical aes- fully automated home is a camp that
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 thetic ideas of the century tamed into the period recall their own experiences. fashion and commodity and academic These chapters really bring the subject curricula. alive, providing a personal dimension to the broader historical analyses of the Today, almost everything you’re wear- period made by authors who were not ing or thinking that gives you the slight- directly involved. est bit of subversive pleasure comes from a dead dadaist. Janco’s costumes It has been instructive to read about for Huelsenbeck, for instance, have how these practitioners overcame tech- been recycled by fashion so many times, nological limitation and institutional there are now real bishops wearing resistance in order to create work that them (p. 95). remains inspiring today. From the vari- ous personal recollections, one gets a There is wit here, which is essential sense of how early computer art was for dada (though too often not for the created through a painstakingly labori- humorless surrealists). There are some ous, time-consuming process. Examples nice passages of poetical imagery-hurl- include Harold Cohen’s description of ing, which would only look precious if learning to program FORTRAN and quoted out of context but enliven the Malcolm Le Grice’s account of how it chapters in which they appear, often took him 9 months to create 8 seconds at their conclusive and climactic end- of computer-generated film. ings. And, in the spirit of the dandy The results of such efforts have a gossipmonger Hans Richter, Codrescu continued, or perhaps rediscovered, use technology rather than get others tosses out parenthetical asides that contemporary relevance beyond the to do it for them, an example being maddeningly cry for unpacking over a world of “computer art.” For example, Ihnatowicz, whose approach, according pitcher of mojitos: a linkage of dadaism Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles dealt to Aleksander Zivanovic, “was closer and vampirism elicits “’Wherever there with themes of sexual selection and to engineering than to conventional is cable, there I am,’ Grampa Munster signaling behavior explored more art” (p. 108). There could also be two- [Al Lewis] said to me in Havana, 1996.” recently in situated robotics, while way traffic, as computer programmers Was Cuban dadaist Francis Picabia also Edward Ihnatowicz’s Senster is an early became artists (for example, John at the table, Andrei? Lily Munster on example of the type of bottom-up Vince at Middlesex Polytechnic). Fidel’s arm? approach to engineering later exem- This book also provides a wider Any reviewer in Michigan takes plea- plified in the mid-1980s by Rodney context for understanding computer sure, although reservedly, in Codrescu’s Brooks’s behavior-based robotics. Paul art during this period, both in terms references to dada in our rustbelt. He Brown recalls how, during the 1970s, of its relation to broader artistic con- conflates two years worth of events that he and others at the Slade School of cerns, such as constructivism, and as a include a Living Theater university per- Fine Art were dealing with certain demonstration of how progress in the formance, an urban anarchists’ disin- themes associated with “artificial life” arts does not exist in isolation from formation project an hour away, and a before the term was coined. Similarly, the wider cultural opinion of the time. student reviewer’s opportune, zeitgeist- Stephen Willats’s conceptual drawing Government and industry provided grabbing “Paul is Dead” college news- Virtual Reality Booth was created in the much of the funding and technical paper hoax . . . but Codrescu’s seamless mid-1960s, many years before Jaron means, making the title of this book, fabric does weave it—normalize it—all Lanier popularized the term. with its reference to British Prime into a jolly, fast-moving story. Overall, the ambitions of these early Minister Harold Wilson’s “white heat Because (snicker) after all, Dada is projects left the impression that much of technology” speech, especially apt. Normal, and Normal is Nice. current work is something of a reinven- In particular, government support for tion of the wheel or, more charitably, the creation of polytechnics seemed a White Heat Cold Logic: that much current work is following in pivotal development that led to much British Computer Art the footsteps of these early pioneers. multi-disciplinary research because of a 1960–1980 Tantalizingly, there may be much more “collaborative research-based culture” to draw on, as Brian Reffin Smith (Mason, p. 254). Then there was the edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, writes: “There is a mine, a treasure military, for, as Gustav Metzger said in Nicholas Lambert and Catherine trove, a hoard—I cannot emphasize 1971, “the true avant-garde is the army” Mason. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, this too strongly—of art ideas that (cited by Ford on p. 171). U.S.A., 2009. 568 pp., illus. Hardcover. emerged in the early decades of com- In conclusion, this book is about ISBN: 978-0-262-02653-6. puters that still have not remotely considerably more than an academic been explored” (p. 388). history of the computer arts. It is also a Reviewed by Jon Bedworth, Brighton, U.K. This period in the development of record of the passion, difficulties and E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 Rediscovering Aesthetics: present volatility, constant changeability readers, engage them at a deep intel Transdisciplinary Voices and, some would argue, fundamental lectual level, pave the way for a new from Art History, vacuity of contemporary art. As the edi- understanding of aesthetics and become Philosophy, and Art tors suggest, contemporary aesthetics is a core text for many cultural theory, Practice a discipline under construction (p. 11). philosophy and art history courses. edited by Francis Halsall, Julia Jansen Following a period in which theories Reference and Tony O’Connor. Stanford Univer- and histories of art, art criticism, and sity Press, Stanford, CA, U.S.A., 2009. artistic practice seemed to focus exclu- 1. Harle, R.F. “Biobehavioral Basis of Art,” in Techno- sively on political, social or empirical etic Arts—Journal of Speculative Research. Vol. 6 No. 3, 336 pp., illus. Hardcover, paper. interpretations of art, aesthetics is 2008. pp. 259–268. ISBN: 978-0-8047-5990-8; ISBN: 978- being discovered as both a vital arena 0-8047-5991-5. for discussion and as a valid interpretive approach outside its traditional philo- From Papyrus to Reviewed by Rob Harle, Australia. E-mail: sophical domain (back cover). Hypertext: Toward the
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 in a non-linear, thematic organization, Between Earth and Sky: which makes the book less heavy and Our Intimate Connections more in tune with present hypertext to Trees writing style. In this way he treats cen- by Nalini M. Nadkarni. University of tral, concrete cultural and philosophi- California Press, U.S.A., 2009. 336 pp., cal issues that all seem to be affected by illus. Hardcover, paper. ISBN: 978-0- the shift from the centrality of print to 5202-4856-4; 978-0-5202-6165-5. the computer as the primary text orga- nizer and comes up with many relevant Reviewed by Jan Baetens, University of Leu- reflections.From Papyrus to Hypertext ven, Belgium. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 strong emphasis on the positive aspects Studies in computer science and engi- duction and an extensive conclusion on of trees. In Nadkarni’s worldview, trees neering have addressed the question the VCS’s influence on contemporary only give shelter; they never kill people of how platforms are best developed videogame culture. and what is best encapsulated in the when they fall upon them, so to speak. platform. Studies in digital media have The title, Racing the Beam, refers In spite of these restrictions, one can addressed the cultural relevance of to the centerpiece of the Atari VCS; only say that the story told is very con- particular software of platforms. But “The processor is always called the vincing. The second major aspect of little work has been done on how the ‘brain’ of a computer, and, indeed, hardware and software of platforms the book’s structure is its transcultural influences, facilitates, or constrains par- the MOS Technology 6507 is the Atari dimension: Nadkarni reconciles the ticular forms of computational expres- VCS’s brain. But the custom Televi- viewpoints of many different people— sion (p. 3). sion Adapter (TIA) is its heart” (p. peasants and city-dwellers, canopy 27). The authors do a commendable scholars and Inuit who have never seen Racing the Beam is an attempt to do job of elucidating the components of a tree in their lives, artists and prison this, and credit goes to the authors, for the VCS in an engaging style without inmates—as well as she manages to what makes this book such an appeal- compromising on technicality. This seamlessly gather Western and non- ing read is the unwavering focus on a also serves to clarify the historical and Western or contemporary and less-mod- remarkable piece of limited technology. economic conditions in which the VCS ern voices. This is a great achievement, If one were to compare a platform study technology was developed, and it is and the resulting homogenization of the VCS with its contemporaries, this rigorous, thorough contextualiza- cleverly underlines the very holistic namely, the early microcomputers tion that stops the reader from over- approach of man and tree in the book. (Commodore 64, BBC Micro, TRS 80) scanning through the VCS’s technical Targeting a very broad audience, fitted with BASIC, a microcomputer details. The authors elaborate on the author has nevertheless managed platform study would require a greater specific relationships between all the to present here an amazing wealth of level of complexity (for example the platform’s components in a relatively scientific data on trees. Yet the presen- interaction between its hardware com- lucid manner. For instance, the authors tation of these data is always extremely ponents and operating system). For the dedicate a large portion of the book to user friendly and constantly highlighted purposes of a short and engaging read, the VCS’s low memory constraints—a by the use of a kind of material that is a platform study into a narrow, restric- result of the huge manufacturing costs usually missing in scientific prose, even tive piece of technology such as the VCS of memory in the late 1970s. The VCS if it belongs to the subfield of scientific (which never even had an operating shipped with 128 bytes of RAM and no vulgarization: poetry. Nadkarni’s book is system) is for the reader an accommo- disk storage; its interchangeable ROM also a personal anthology of poetry on dating move. game cartridges shipped with typically trees, and this is a refreshing decision. The book is split into eight chapters, 4K of memory (or in some cases, such six of which cover seminal games and as the included game Combat, only arcade conversions for the platform: 2K). Such monumental technological Racing the Beam: The Atari Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars’ constraints forced developers to wring Video Computer System Revenge, Pitfall! and Star Wars: The every last drop of processing space out by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. MIT Empire Strikes Back. Detailed analyses of the VCS in order to develop games Press, Cambridge, MA, and London. into these retro-emblematic pieces of that had some chance of industry suc- 180 pp. Hardback. ISBN-13: 978-0-262- game culture are actually prisms that cess. In this sense, Racing the Beam 01257-7. Platform Studies, edited by shed light onto the creativity of the recounts the ingenuity of designers in Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. respective game developers. The two coming to terms with the weakness of remaining chapters offer a brief intro- the platform. Reviewed by Robert Jackson, U.K. E-mail: The previously mentioned TIA
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 not even enough to store one eight-bit thinking on singularly important issues the field of molecular biology itself. It is color value for every line of the 192-line of our time, it might well invoke con- no doubt fascinating to read how DNA visible display (p. 27). sternation from scientists. Why? Judith serves as a cultural form, as a vehicle for Subsequent chapters reveal the cre- Roof argues throughout that the idea chauvinist patriarchal hegemony, but ative lengths to which VCS program- of DNA and the gene are ideological in the end, deoxyribonucleic acid exists mers needed to go in order to create constructions rather than scientific facts and its structure and basic biochemi- just a simple working videogame. Each and that they serve as vectors for pro- cal function is certainly not a figment cartridge had to be written manually, moting homophobic, sexist and racist of the imagination. That is the fact of line by line, so that it worked in har- discourses. the matter, and as science advances, mony with the television’s electron gun. Roof writes that the humanities can we progressively learn more and more Through such examples, the authors show science “how the relation between about the complexities of the system reveal again and again how severe limi- science and representation produces and especially the role mRNA plays, tations can force new artistic processes. a paradox that is self-contained in the and therein lies the poetry of it all. As A particular highlight is how designers figure of DNA’s double helix” (p. 22). I see it, then, the most important ques- of Pitfall! managed to procedurally gen- In arguing against the use of linguistic tion to ask must remain how this study erate 255 explorative “screens” using and structuralist models and analogies might or might not inform the thinking hardly any ROM space. in science, the following sentences are of molecular biologists with a broad For those who have an interest in the paradigmatic of the whole, synecdoche enough interest in the humanities to culture and history of retro gaming, if you will: seriously consider the arguments made here. Will The Poetics of DNA have any Racing the Beam is an obvious choice. The gene is the imaginary embodiment But this book may also be a less obvious of a binary principle never detached influence on future scientific investiga- choice for those interested in how artis- from ideas of gender, the logic of het- tion and insight into the nature and tic expression can be affected by mate- erosexual reproduction, or the struc- function of DNA itself? ture of kinship . . . . The DNA gene is While Roof is careful to note that rial limitations. Furthermore, there is the perfect synthesis . . . the signifier a hint in Racing the Beam that the very par excellence, whose significance she is referring to the use of figurative objects we create seemingly have their reflects all other significance and whose speech referring to genes and DNA, of own agenda. Perhaps this book can be imagined operation enacts the structur- the consequences of imagining them alist principle by which it is situated as a in terms of texts, codes, ciphers, meta- seen as an attempt to re-establish digital reduction of all (p. 48). media as equally participating objects phors and metonyms, the discussion (or actors) in their own right, rather In all this, DNA and genes are imag- consistently refers back directly to DNA than privileging the digital realm as ined as surreptitious narrative double or the gene, or the DNA gene, such a means to facilitate human commu- agents that serve to reproduce domi- that it can be argued that contrary to nication and exchange. It can be said nant misogynistic ideologies. the argument that the subject is how (and the authors insinuate this in an As a consequence of the serious- DNA has been imagined and how that intriguing manner) that Racing the Beam ness of Roof’s postmodernist political knowledge has been used, in the end transforms a historical piece of video‑ critiques of one of the most important we are still struggling to better under- game culture into an object with curi- areas of scientific research of the 20th stand and describe molecular chemis- ous agency. century, this study should perhaps be try, if it is even possible do to so without debated first and foremost by scientists, figurative language and dynamic struc- who might be interested in reflecting turalist models. To reiterate the essence The Poetics of DNA on the consequences it could have for of this review, we must simply ask: If the their own work, conceptually speaking. arguments made here are significant by Judith Roof. University of Minnesota While that is relatively unlikely, this enough to give scientists cause for con- Press, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A., 2007. book will certainly provide for lively cern, then how might this book allow us 245 pp. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-8166-4998-3. debate in graduate seminars on the to both better understand and advance history of science. Ideally, it will impel molecular biology, the indisputable Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg, U.S.A. students to return to Watson’s epiphany progress in understanding the structure E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 an argument for the role of the analogi- be to advance the creative application French Theory: cal figure in sustaining dominant West- of concepts of metaphor, metonym, How Foucault, Derrida, ern patriarchal cultural hierarchies. metalepsis, metathesis and allegory, Deleuze, & Co. Keeping such brief detail in mind, and synecdoche and such while significantly Transformed the the synopsis in her conclusion, one can enhancing debate over what consti- Intellectual Life of imagine the significant challenge this tutes pseudoscientific versus scientific the United States study will present to scientists not well discourse. And there, as The Poetics of enough versed in social science to be DNA concludes, the implications are of by François Cusset, translated by Jeff able to challenge the logic of her argu- the utmost significance in the realms Fort, with Josephine Berganza and ments on their own terms. of technology, economics, politics and Marlon Jones. University of Minnesota What The Poetics of DNA does is to religion. Press, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A., 2008. very effectively bring together an Writing as a social scientist with a Originally published in French in 2003. intriguing range of the popular, sci- scientific background, I would main- 388 pp. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-8166-4733-0. entific and philosophical literature tain that, in the end, the process and Reviewed by Jennifer Ferng, Department of on DNA to bear on the evolution of epiphany of coming to the realization Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- analogies, on the shifting metaphoric that the structure of the double helix nology, U.S.A. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.182 by guest on 27 September 2021 works originating in the 1960s and 1996, “Transgressing the Boundaries: foster the adoption of given ideological 1970s by theorists ranging from Deleuze Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics policies related to the present global to Virilio, remains an influential and of Quantum Gravity” in the cultural recession, climate change and the envi- preeminent set of academic meth- studies journal Social Text, performs ronment, or the crisis of the humanities odologies, and there has not been a as a crux of vexation and controversy, in education? French society, Cusset single discipline or field, including art, launching debates about the merits of insists, is just beginning to grasp the cultural studies, film, gender studies, these theorists’ ideas, printed through multiple subject and the consequences history or literature, that has remained underground publishing houses such as of intellectual isolation, where, in the untouched by its pedagogical impetus. Semiotext(e) and communicated to an words of Walter Benjamin, their drive Densely written, highly informed and American audience in the 1970s, who, for knowledge derives entirely from “a comprehensive in its scope, connecting in turn, disseminated French theory feeling of obligation, not to revolution theory to the far-flung reaches of poli- through many seminars, conferences but to traditional culture” (p. 323). By tics and social action both inside and and artistic movements. exploring social critique beyond Marx outside the university setting, Cusset’s Cusset assembles his book around and continuing to exercise political book, as translated from the original three central themes, although there vigilance (p. 330), French theory may French, sets out in a cultivated, distinc- are, in fact, many more that could be bring about the convergence of oppos- tive fashion to rediscover why American recognized: the French issue of writ- ing philosophical ideologies. It not only academics became so enamored with ing that becomes the American issue produced “intensive hypotheses, general the ideas of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze of reading, how capitalism was trans- and specific at the same time . . . on and others such as Baudrillard. In his formed into the enigma of cultural communitarian apparatuses, discursive intricate descriptions of how these con- identity, and how micropolitics turned regimes, or the machinery of capitalist cepts were appropriated, skewed, then into a different question of symbolic desire,” but if it could reestablish oppo- deployed in the service of politicized conflicts (the “denationalizing” of texts sition to polarized representations and agendas that ranged from affirmative in a global market). French theorists binary discourses such as German Marx- action to neoconservative crusades for cast representation and language as ism and French Nietzscheanism and counter-intelligentsia to deconstruc- problems in specifying any goal, pres- join such apparently disparate camps tion and postmodern architecture, the suring existentialists, structuralists, (p. 334), theory could coincide with multifarious episodes and numerous Marxists and feminists to surpass their forms of activism today (even in 1978, examples are well-contextualized and critiques. While the entirety of the book when Foucault was arrested for visiting historicized, expatiating how these is engaging but concentrated, two sec- both sides of Berlin). Oswald Spengler, reactionary thoughts were transmitted tions are rather compelling: Chapter 6, in The Decline of the West, acknowledged from French institutions and intellec- “The Politics of Identity,” and Chapter the importance of the “art of deliber- tual figures to those corresponding in 12, “Theory as Norm: A Lasting Influ- ate misunderstanding” or “felicitous the United States. What the French call ence.” Intellectuals from the third misreading,” which was indissociable “thought” is what Americans know as world, as Cusset indicates, are forced to from a culture’s pure essence, and this “theory,” or so claims Sylvère Lotringer, use the “arms of the adversary,” such as very act is what Cusset conjures for us who edited an older volume of articles terms taken from the Enlightenment and demands that we owe to the life with Sande Cohen, similarly entitled and rational progressivism, and the of texts—or “the interval between the French Theory in America (2001), and subaltern is often taken as the “blind emergence of writing and its canonical views the first book of French theory as spot of the historical process” (p. 147). normalization, between the logics of John Cage’s For the Birds. For those not French academics are set apart from the intellectual field and the unpre well versed in French philosophy, post- the international networks set up by dictabilities of posterity” (p. 338)—and structuralism and Marxism, this book American universities, theorizing exile to an existence of devoted political may prove to be a fairly difficult task, and miscegenation as a political condi- engagement, either at home or abroad, since Cusset assumes that the reader is tion of the contemporary subject (p. that will help us fathom the conditions familiar with the suppositions associated 296). How Foucault and Derrida are of our changing world. with Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and read directly in Mexico and Brazil, for is capable of seeing beyond the popu- example, produced entirely different larized associations of power, discipline, readings than those generated from difference, and schizophrenia to some within the United States. Leonardo of the more sophisticated philosophical Stanley Fish, a literary critic who Reviews On-Line consequences of these arguments. pokes at the uselessness of academics Three moments of cultural con- and who has also reviewed this book, tact between France and the United does not believe that such intellectuals States—the artistic and intellectual need be essential, stating, “Although the November 2009 exiles who traveled from the U.S. ‘textual’ or the ‘discursive’ is . . . a cru- between 1940 and 1945; the exporta- cial site of social contestation, the peo- Camoupedia—A Compendium of Research tion of Surrealism, Sartrean existential- ple who study that site are not crucial on Art, Architecture and Camouflage by ism and the ideas of the Annales group; players in the contest” (p. 157). Theory Roy R. Behrens. Reviewed by Mike and the October 1966 conference held should be given a place in contempo- Leggett. at Johns Hopkins University—mark rary times and a global destiny to fulfill, what Cusset views as integral, pro- as Cusset intimates; along these lines, Digital Material: Tracing New Media in longed exchanges that revolutionized what is the expected responsibility of a Everyday Life and Technology, edited by viewpoints for those in both countries. public intellectual in the United States, Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Alan Sokal’s notorious hoax article of and how can academic encounters Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost
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