politics

Jacques Rancière - The Politics of Aesthetics

Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Continuum, 2004.
For Rancière, aesthetics means “a specific regime for identifying and reflecting on the arts: a mode of articulation between ways of doing and making, their corresponding forms of visibility, and possible ways of thinking about their relationships”(10). It does not merely refer to… »

Chris Hables Gray - Cyborg Citizen

Chris Hables Gray. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. Routledge, 2002.
Curiously, all the theories of posthumanism have been disappeared, and discourses of the postmodern have receded like a popular fad. As if there is not any longer a serious discussion on the virtual reality today, though we have just arrived the time we expected… »

Precarious Citizenship in the Late Capitalist Society

- Adriana Petryna, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl, Princeton UP, 2002.
- Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Duke UP, 1999.

How do self and social identities change in a state of transition? How does the relationship between individuals and the state change in a rapid or gradual social crisis? How… »

Sheila Jasanoff - The Fifth Branch

Sheila Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers, Harvard Univ. Press, 1990.
Under the democratic constitution, it is generally and traditionally recognized that there are three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) as we know already. With the expansion and complexity of modern society, people’s needs of the fourth branch have been brought up…. »

Dona J. Haraway - Simians, Cyborgs, and Women

Dona J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991.

This book might be one of the most original, thought-provoking, and influential books in the history of social studies of science and technology since the 1980s, transversing from feminist theories and SF literatures to primate studies and military communication technology. Haraway tries to… »

WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN? - by Zizek

[The following is a guest post from Slavoj Žižek sent to us by Ali Alizadeh who writes, "Apparently the mainstream media has not shown interest in publishing it. Hope that the blogsphere can counteract their tendency." The piece is copy-right free and you should feel free to republish this on your own blog.]
When an authoritarian regime… »

The end of an era passes with Roh

[Column] The end of an era passes with Roh
Kim Sang-bong, Professor of Philosophy, Chonnam National University
When I first heard the news that he had thrown himself off a cliff in the mountains behind the village, I knew that an era had come to end. Former President Roh represented our era. No one else but him… »

David Harvey - Spaces of Hope

David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, U of California Press, 2000.
We have dealt with the body (subjectivity and citizenship) as something to be captured and marked up in the network of diverse forces on the social surface as well as in the intimate depth. How to understand this body and where to locate its position is… »

Google refuses South Korean government’s real-name system

Google bypasses internet regulations regarding user protections by limiting YouTube Korea’s Web site functionality
Google’s Korea Unit has decided to refuse South Korean government’s Internet regulations. Based on the Law on Internet Address Management, South Korea implements a “real-name” system, which requires a Web site to confirm users’ personal information such as their real names and… »

Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
It is not so usual to meet an author who engages himself in a single theme explaining everything about it even by focusing on its negative aspects. Among others, there is Nietzsche who spent his whole life in criticizing dominant culture of his era. In a sense, Debord’s fragmented… »