POSTHUMAN GLOSSARY

33753.indb 1 05/06/2017 13:16 ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE THEORY SERIES

Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy General Ecology, edited by Erich Hörl with James Burton

33753.indb 2 05/06/2017 13:16 POSTHUMAN GLOSSARY

Edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova

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© Rosi Braidotti, Maria Hlavajova and contribut­ ­ors, 2018

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33753.indb 4 05/06/2017 13:16 Contents vii

Epigenetic Landscape 132 General Ecology 172 Susan M. Squier Erich Hörl

Equation (Mathematical Thinking) 133 Geo-­hydro-solar-­bio-techno-­polit­ics 175 Vera Bühlmann John Protevi

Ethereal Scent 138 Geomythologies 178 Wander Eikelboom The Otolith Group

Exclusion Zone 140 Geopolitics 181 Trevor Paglen Ryan Bishop

Execution 141 Green/Environmental Humanities 184 Critical Software Thing Tobijn de Graauw and Elisa Fiore

Expulsions 145 Gulf Labor 187 Saskia Sassen MTL Collective (Nitasha Dhillon and Amin Husain) Extended Cognition 148 Goda Klumbyte˙ H

Extinction 150 Hacking Habitat 191 Claire Colebrook Ine Gevers

F Hypersea 193 Jenna Sutela Feminicity 154 Felicity Colman Hypersocial 195 Tiziana Terranova Feminist Posthumanities 157 Cecilia Åsberg I

Food 160 Informatic Opacity 198 Karl Steel Zach Blas

Forests 162 In-­human, The 199 Paulo Tavares Katerina Kolozova

Four Elements 167 In/Human 201 Gary Genosko Keti Chukhrov

G Insurgent Posthumanism 204 Dimitris Papadopoulos Gaga Feminism 170 Jack Halberstam

33753.indb 7 05/06/2017 13:16 CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Posthuman Metamorphosis (2008) and insti­tu­tional and econom­ical critique has Energy Forms (2001). evolved over twenty years, more recently Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is Professor of English and focus­ing on the early history of capit­al­ism Director of the Medieval and Early Modern and glob­al­iz­a­tion. As co-­curator of such Studies Institute at the George Washington paradig­matic exhibi­­tions as Messe 2ok University. He has published on medi­eval (1995), ExArgentina (2004) and The Potosi studies, posthu­man­ism, mater­i­al­ity, ecothe­ory Principle (2010), Creischer has developed a and the monstrous. His books include Of specific curat­orial prac­tice that correl­ates Giants; Medieval Identity Machines, Hybridity, with her work as an artist and theor­ist, Identity and Monstrosity and Stone: An includ­ing her extens­ive prac­tice in archive Ecology of the Inhuman, as well as the edited research. collec­tions Monster Theory, Prismatic Ecology Critical Software Thing is a collect­ive of artists, and Elemental Ecocriticism. thinkers and research­ers inter­ested in Claire Colebrook is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of think­ing ‘thing’ from the perspect­ive of English at Penn State University. She has Software Studies. The group began as a published books and articles on liter­ary series of discus­sions and shared set of history, queer theory, visual culture, the interests around the notion of execu­tion, philo­sophy of Gilles Deleuze and the poetry of address­ing ques­tions around what exactly William Blake. Her most recent book is Twilight execu­tion is and where some­thing like a of the Anthropocene Idols (co-­authored with computer program might be under­stood to Tom Cohen and J. Hillis Miller, 2016). execute. The group is working on a book Felicity Colman is Professor of Film and Media project provi­sion­ally titled Executing Arts at the Manchester School of Art, Practices (as part of the Data Browser Manchester Metropolitan University. She is series). Contributors are Audrey Samson, Lea the author of Film Theory: Creating a Muldtofte, Winnie Soon, Eric Snodgrass and Cinematic Grammar (2014), Deleuze and Francisco Gallardo as part of the Critical Cinema (2011), editor of Film, Theory and Software Thing collect­ive. Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (2009), and Heather Davis is currently a postdoctoral­ fellow co-­editor of Global Arts & Local Knowledge at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities (2016) and Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life at the Pennsylvania State University where (2007). She is co-­editor (with David Deamer she researches the etho­logy of plastic and and Joanna Hodge) of the A/V Journal of its links to petro­cap­it­al­ism. She is the editor Practical and Creative Philosophy. of Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Melinda Cooper is Associate Professor in the Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments Department of Sociology and Social Policy at and Epistemologies (Open Humanities Press, the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the 2015) and Desire/Change: Contemporary author of Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Feminist Art in Canada (MAWA/McGill Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (University of Queen’s University Press, forth­com­ing 2017). Washington Press 2008) and, with Catherine Her writing can be found at heather­m­davis. Waldby, of Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and com. Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy Jolle Demmers is Associate Professor of Conflict (Duke University Press 2014). Studies at the Department of History and Art Alice Creischer studied philosophy,­ German History of Utrecht University. Her most recent liter­at­ure and visual arts in Düsseldorf. Her work is on tech­no­lo­gies of remote control (as artistic and theoretic­ agenda within deployed by the aid industry and in war), the

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Trevor Paglen, Trinity Cube, 2015, irra­di­ated glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Trinitite, 20 × 20 × 20 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Don’t Follow the Wind.

work’s inner core is made out of Trinitite, Zone opens again, any time between three the mineral created on 16 July 1945 when and thirty thou­sand years from the present. the United States exploded the world’s first See also Expulsions; Extinction; Geo- atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Hydro-Solar-Bio-Techno-Politics. Mexico, heating the desert’s surface to the point where it turned surface sand into a Trevor Paglen green­ish glass. Trinity Cube was created by melting these two forms of glass together into a cube, then installing the cube back into the Execution Fukushima Exclusion Zone as part of the Don’t Follow the Wind project curated by Execution is a func­tion that oper­ates the Don’t Follow the Wind Collective within a range of systems, such as language, (Chim ↑ Pom, Kenji Kubota, Eva and compu­ta­tion or biology. The follow­ing Franco Mattes, Jason Waite), Fukushima, entry traces a few of these instan­ti­ations of 2015 – ongoing). The artwork will be view­ execu­tion in order to high­light the mater­i­ able by the public when the Exclusion ally discurs­ive quality of any partic­u­lar

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being. It is not deceas­ing, nor is it homicide, it is death by punish­ment. It is sudden death forced upon a body of punish­ment which has no control over the viol­ence executed by the system. In these iconic, self-­pres­en­cing actu­al­iz­a­tions, we are made to force­fully witness execu­tion’s quality as an event, an act of a juridical, polit­ical, tech­nical or biolo­gical discourse enacted decis­ively upon its sentenced subject. Language can be seen as such a discurs­ ive system, one that executes by consist­ing of two separ­ate dimen­sions: langue and Bourreau tranchant la tête d’une condamnée­ parole (Saussure 1916). Langue as the (Exécution de Léonora Galigaï, 1617). Public system of language is the form­al­ized struc­ domain image. ture, the under­ly­ing system of distinct signs, oppos­ing parole, which is artic­u­lated speech. Thus parole is the exec­ut­ive side of execut­ing system, with the discus­sion language. The crucial point here is that moving from law and guil­lot­ine, language exer­cising language is not a shift from the to langue, computer instruc­tion and non-­linguistic to the linguistic. It is the memory. In each case tracing the way in actu­al­iz­a­tion and execu­tion of a system which execu­tion produces situ­ated posthu­ into an instance of discourse. man coup­lings in a dynamic ensemble of In rela­tion to this, subjectiv­ity in such conjug­at­ing systems. language is insep­ar­able from the moment The word execu­tion stems from of execu­tion, the instance in which language l’exécuteur du test­a­ment (twelfth-­century as system becomes language-­in-use (when French), desig­nat­ing the executor of the langue is conver­ted into parole). An execu­ will. Here we see how execu­tion is from its tion deict­ic­ally desig­nates a speaker, there­ incep­tion embed­ded in regu­lat­ory forms of fore it is when enter­ing language and bureau­cracy (Vallaro 2005). The ancestor of convert­ing the virtual system to actual use the will executor was the bour­r­eau, whose that the subject is consti­tuted (Benveniste func­tion goes at least as far back as Ancient 1958). However, the subject evap­or­ates in its Rome, and who performed execu­tions own artic­u­la­tion of itself as it becomes a decreed by the court, punish­ment as spec­ mere prop­erty of a symbolic system. tacle and demon­stra­tion of power, Execution of language is thus related to the perceived as a means to socially regu­late ‘killing of the subject’ (Barthes 1968) – it is crime and disobedi­ence (see the illus­tra­ in the actu­al­iz­a­tion of the language system tion). This social function­ was actu­al­ized in that the speak­ing subject produces itself as the public square, where behead­ings took an abstrac­tion separ­ated from a body. place liter­ally live. As an effectu­ ­ation of a Executable systems like language can there­ sentence, execu­tion always relates to the fore be said to be inher­ently violent, effec­tu­ now, to an actu­al­iz­a­tion, a pres­ence which at­ing a killing, be it abstract or literal. is always already over. The tongue, the embod­ied execu­tioner Execution in this instance then is not of language, the inter­face of execut­ing dying, but specific­ally to be deprived of langue, both gobbles and babbles. Following

POSTHUMAN GLOSSARY

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Michel Serres’ account of the five (human) Such cuts – execu­tion performed by senses, every time an organ – or func­tion compu­ta­tion – are expressed at the temporal – is liber­ated from an old duty, it re-­invents dimen­sion of code execu­tion, constantly itself (Serres 2001). As Hominina1 stood up render­ing the now in networked and pervas­ from her quad­ruped ancestor, the tongue, ive condi­tions. The fetch–execute cycle in freed from the vital neces­sity to sense comput­ing is used to describe the oper­a­ danger, became a univer­sal tool (Serres tional steps of perform­ing code instruc­tions 2014: 2). According to Serres, the ‘infor­ by a Central Processing Unit (or CPU) m­a­tion imper­at­ive’ is to receive, store, follow­ing its clock cycle. A CPU fetches each process and emit inform­a­tion. The tongue’s instruc­tion from the memory and breaks it embed­ded subjectiv­ity has become a down into micro-­instruc­tions, includ­ing the literal geograph­ical expan­sion of the post-­ controlling oper­a­tion sequence, comput­ing, indus­trial and the nutraceut­ical2 market. trans­fer­ring, reading, updat­ing and storing It divides bodies between obese/skinny, data in memory (Burrell 2004). Thus what is food between organic/fair-­trade. It clears written in a piece of source code should only Amazonian rain­forests for soya plant­a­tions be regarded as a partial instruc­tion within a used for feeding live­stock (Morton et al. wider, dynamic ecology of many execut­ing 2006). It frac­tions popu­la­tions between systems. When extend­ing the notion of young high-­paid social entre­pren­eurs and execu­tion into any dynamic networked the viol­ently displaced. The tongue is a envir­on­ment in which things are networked decis­ive and divis­ive organ of gentri­fic­a­ seam­lessly and data is processed continu­ tion and land forming. ously, there are differ­ent ‘micro-­decisions’ Such discurs­ive systems divide and that are executed at the level of network conquer, working to make entit­ies execut­ proto­cols to control and regu­late the trans­ able accord­ing to their partic­u­lar logics mis­sion of data (Sprenger 2015). Such deep and delim­ited needs. In his found­a­tional internal and oper­a­tional struc­tures of article ‘On Computable Numbers, with an compu­ta­tion, data processing and digital Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’, networks execute a distinct­ive rhythm and Alan Turing provides a defin­i­tion of tempor­al­ity; a compu­ta­tional form of comput­ab­il­ity as that capable of being ‘micro-­tempor­al­ity’ (Ernst 2013: 57).3 These enumer­ated and made into effect­ively compu­ta­tional cuts and micro-­decisions are calcul­able algorithms for execu­tion upon inter­twined, dynamic and subject to change and by machines (1936). In the further at any moment of time. In other words, mater­i­al­iz­a­tion of Turing’s thesis into execu­tion involves micro-­instruc­tions, actual comput­ing machines, the act of micro-­oper­a­tions and a micro-­tempor­al­ity making things discrete, so as to be comput­ of things where codes, mater­i­als and actions able, becomes one of estab­lish­ing machine-­ are conflated in a dynamic envir­on­ment. read­able cuts. These are the switch­able on This micro-­temporal dimen­sion of execu­ and off state elements, or flip-flops­ that are tion again draws atten­tion to the phenom­ enacted at the level of logic gates used to ena of now; the dynam­ics of execu­tion that store and control data flow. Such flip­pable constantly render the now. states consti­tute the mater­ial basis that Any such cuts in the name of execut­ab­ allows for the writing and running of the il­ity can be compared to what Karen Barad execut­able binary instruc­tions of machine refers to as ‘agen­tial cuts’ (2007: 429). They code upon this ‘manic cutter known as the are made in the name of a certain agency; computer’ (Kittler 2010: 228). in the case of computer code, a compu­ta­

POSTHUMAN GLOSSARY

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tional agency. In its level­ling of all data into an ongoing site of execu­tion, rather than a binary form of on and off, compu­ta­tional one of static storage, in which both habitu­ cuts enact a radical and seem­ingly non-­ ation and dele­tion are crucial. The brain discurs­ive treat­ment of inform­a­tion. The actively erases inform­a­tion as part of its data struc­tures of comput­ing are notice­ regu­lat­ory processes (Hadziselimovic et al. able for the way in which they are partic­u­ 2014). In the absence of this regu­lat­ory larly amen­able to recon­fig­ur­a­tion and func­tion, a human becomes crippled by a applic­a­tion towards a range of oper­a­tions form of neur­o­lo­gical condi­tion called (Lovelace and Menabrea 1842). Such a hyper­thyme­sia.4 Erasure and death are chan­ging of states and config­ur­a­tions is, regu­lat­ory func­tions performed through unsur­pris­ingly, often strongly felt by any execu­tion and its continu­ous actu­al­iz­a­tion. entit­ies brought into contact with their The very etymo­logy of execu­tion is execut­ing logics. Turing himself was made admin­is­trat­ive, and as a regu­lat­ory to be acutely aware of this exec­ut­ive power processing of living beings, bureau­cracy is of code, whether program­mable, polit­ical the perform­ance of the law. But a violent or cultural. Definable as a war hero accord­ disjunc­tion occurs in the confla­tion of law ing to one set of patri­otic para­met­ers, he and execu­tion: the state of excep­tion; or soon found himself rapidly switched from the confla­tion of death and execu­tion: national saviour back to sexual deviant capital punish­ment. Cuts, which are inher­ and crim­inal to be perse­cuted by the state. ently exclu­sion­ary, also contain a ready Computable accord­ing to some logics and poten­tial of violent impos­i­tions of a system config­ur­a­tions; uncom­put­able accord­ing onto bare life (Agamben 2005). If the cut to others. Such is the poten­tial power and and its execu­tion mater­i­al­ize on the one viol­ence of any cut and its execut­ab­il­ity. hand in the actu­al­iz­a­tion of an event, they This viol­ence of entangled and often can also, in biopol­it­ical fashion, take on an compet­ing execut­able logics inev­it­ably oper­at­ive func­tion as a self-perpetu­ ­at­ing leaves ‘marks on bodies’, in which the threat of viol­ence to come. Such menacing marks are ‘the differ­ences mater­i­al­ized’ poten­tial events of crisis become import­ (Barad 2007: 89). From Turing’s chem­ical ant in actual execu­tion, helping to prompt castra­tion to the growth of synapses cata­ a range of pre-­emptive forms of violent lysed by repeated stim­u­lus, organ­isms bear coded logics and crisis-oriented­ forms of the marks of inscrip­tion and execu­tion. execu­tion (Cox 2015; Chun 2016). Implicit memory, in the Pavlovian tradi­ Execution situ­ates and is situ­ated. tion, is inscribed into long-term­ memory Whether via the tongue, the guil­lot­ine, the through habitu­ation. The envir­on­ment is CPU or the synapses, execu­tion produces constantly execut­ing memory. Such is the integ­ral coup­lings of subjectiv­ity and power and force of trauma that it boot­ desub­jectiv­ity through systems such as straps long-­term memory creation (Kandel those of language, of judi­ciary, of compu­ 2006: 342). Nevertheless, memory is also ta­tion and of memory. A power­ful force, forget­ting, a dynamic process of constant leaving marks on bodies and indelible read/write execu­tion. The recall­ing of trau­matic memor­ies. Such ecolo­gies of memor­ies is based on chem­ical exchanges execu­tion are mani­fold, and the effec­tu­ within highly mutable synaptic networks ation of a system is always conjug­at­ing that require protein synthesis (Nader, amongst a mesh of other hetero­gen­eous Schafe and Le Doux. 2000). As memory is agents, processes, ener­gies and mater­ial react­iv­ated, it mutates. Memory becomes strata.

POSTHUMAN GLOSSARY

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See also Non-­human Agency; Mattering; workers whose bodies are destroyed on the Ecosophy; Extinction; Necropolitics; job and rendered useless at far too young Violence. an age, of able-­bodied surplus popu­la­tions ware­housed in ghet­toes and slums. But I Notes also include the fact that pieces of the biosphere are being expelled from their life 1. Originally described as one of the space – and I insist that the tame language earli­est ancest­ors of humans after they of climate change does not quite capture diverged from the main ape lineage. the fact, at ground level, of vast expanses of 2. A port­manteau of the words nutri­tion and dead land and dead water. phar­ma­ceut­ical. Although the term can be My argu­ment is that this massive and attrib­uted to Stephen L. DeFelice, food as very diverse set of expul­sions is actu­ally medi­cine has a long tradi­tion in western signalling a deeper systemic trans­form­a­ medi­cine, as Hippocrates famously put it tion, one docu­mented in bits and pieces in in ‘Let food be thy medi­cine and medi­cine be thy food.’ The term is applied to multiple special­ized studies, but not quite marketed products as wide as isol­ated narrated as an over­arch­ing dynamic that is nutri­ents, dietary supple­ments and herbal taking us into a new phase of global capit­al­ products, specific diets, processed foods ism – and global destruc­tion. As an analytic and bever­ages. category, expul­sions are to be distin­guished 3. Taken from Wolfgang Ernst, micro-­ from the more common ‘social exclu­sion’: tempor­al­ity refers to some­thing that is the latter happens inside a system and in proces­sual and oper­at­ive, a differ­ent that sense can be reduced, ameli­or­ated and under­stand­ing of histor­ical and narrat­ even elim­in­ated. Expulsions as I conceive of ive macro time (Ernst 2013). them happen at the systemic edge. In the 4. For further explan­a­tion on hyper­thy­­ types of complex systems I focus on, there me­sia see ‘What is Hyperthymesia? are multiple systemic edges. This partly The Highly Superior Autobiographical reflects the multi­pli­city of diverse domains Memory (HSAM)’, http://hyper­thyme­sia. in such systems: from prisons and refugee net/hyper­thyme­sia/ [accessed 13 April camps to finan­cial exploit­a­tions and envir­ 2017]. on­mental destruc­tions.1 Today, after twenty years of a partic­u­lar Critical Software Thing type of advanced capit­al­ism, we confront a human and economic land­scape marked by diver­gent dynam­ics. On the one hand, Expulsions there is the famil­iar recon­di­tion­ing of terrain in the direc­tion of greater organ­iz­ At the Systemic Edge a­tional and tech­no­lo­gical complex­ity, (A Rumination) epitom­ized by the state-­of-the-­art space of the global cities that are prolif­er­at­ing in the I use the term ‘expelled’ to describe a North and the South. This extreme upgrad­ diversity of condi­tions. They include the ing comes at a high price to those excluded growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of from its riches (Sassen 2001, 2016a). the displaced who are ware­housed in On the other hand, there is a mix of formal and informal refugee camps, of the emer­gent condi­tions often coded with the minor­it­ized and perse­cuted in rich coun­ seem­ingly neutral term of ‘a growing tries who are ware­housed in prisons, of surplus popu­la­tion’. A key under­ly­ing

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