Proximities – serie

An interdisciplinary study charting the war against microbial futures leads to a new theory of contemporary vision and visuality   In 1989, a group of U.S. government scientists met to discuss some surprising findings: new diseases were appearing around the world, and viruses that they thought long vanquished were resurfacing. Their appearance heralded a future perpetually threatened by unforeseeable biological risks, sparking a new concept of disease: the “emerging microbe.” With the Cold War nearing its end, American scientists and security experts turned to confront this new “enemy,” redirecting national security against its risky horizons. In order to be fought, emerging microbes first needed to be made perceptible; but how could something immaterial, unknowable, and ever mutating be coaxed into visibility, knowability, and operability?   Microbial Resolution charts the U.S.-led war on the emerging microbe to show how their uncertain futures were transformed into objects of global science and security. Moving beyond familiar accounts that link scientific knowledge production to optical practices of visualizing the invisible, Gloria Chan-Sook Kim develops a theory of “microbial resolution” to analyze the complex problematic that arises when dealing with these entities: what can be seen when there is nothing to see? Through a syncretic analysis of data mining, animal-tracking technologies, media networks, computer-modeled futures, and global ecologies and infrastructures, she shows how a visual impasse-the impossibility of seeing microbial futures-forms the basis for new modes of perceiving, knowing, and governing in the present.   Timely and thought provoking, Microbial Resolution opens up the rich paradoxes, irreconcilabilities, and failures inherent in this project and demonstrates how these tensions profoundly animate twenty-first-century epistemologies, aesthetics, affects, and ecologies.

An interdisciplinary study charting the war against microbial futures leads to a new theory of contemporary vision and visuality   In 1989, a group of U.S. government scientists met to discuss some surprising findings: new diseases were appearing around the world, and viruses that they thought long vanquished were resurfacing. Their appearance heralded a future perpetually threatened by unforeseeable biological risks, sparking a new concept of disease: the “emerging microbe.” With the Cold War nearing its end, American scientists and security experts turned to confront this new “enemy,” redirecting national security against its risky horizons. In order to be fought, emerging microbes first needed to be made perceptible; but how could something immaterial, unknowable, and ever mutating be coaxed into visibility, knowability, and operability?   Microbial Resolution charts the U.S.-led war on the emerging microbe to show how their uncertain futures were transformed into objects of global science and security. Moving beyond familiar accounts that link scientific knowledge production to optical practices of visualizing the invisible, Gloria Chan-Sook Kim develops a theory of “microbial resolution” to analyze the complex problematic that arises when dealing with these entities: what can be seen when there is nothing to see? Through a syncretic analysis of data mining, animal-tracking technologies, media networks, computer-modeled futures, and global ecologies and infrastructures, she shows how a visual impasse-the impossibility of seeing microbial futures-forms the basis for new modes of perceiving, knowing, and governing in the present.   Timely and thought provoking, Microbial Resolution opens up the rich paradoxes, irreconcilabilities, and failures inherent in this project and demonstrates how these tensions profoundly animate twenty-first-century epistemologies, aesthetics, affects, and ecologies.

An acute theorization of the human voice in contemporary artVoiceworks is a perceptive exploration of contemporary artworks in which the primary medium of activation is the human voice. Engaging in close readings of video and installations primarily from the 2010s and 2020s, Sarah Hayden reveals how voiceworks intervene politically through their handling of writing and voicing.Surveying works from eighteen established and emerging artists including Hito Steyerl, John Akomfrah, Alban Muja, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Cally Spooner, Voiceworks attends to the sensuous potentiality of voiced language in composition and physical space. The book elucidates how these works operate relationally, conscripting embodied involvement in the service of collective critical and resistant aims.Augmented by Hayden's experience as a curator of exhibitions and public programs around audiovisual work, Voiceworks skillfully traverses scholarship in critical theory, sound studies, film and video theory, poetics, and feminist criticism to analyze this prominent but underexplored strand of contemporary art practice.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Unraveling the hidden influence of the paranormal on science, literature, and belief   Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis: these attributes of the paranormal mind are widely dismissed as nonsense, but what can an exploration of such pseudoscientific phenomena tell us about accepted scientific and cultural thought? In Parascientific Revolutions, Derek Lee traces the evolution of psi epistemologies across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to uncover how these ideas have migrated into scientific fields such as quantum physics and neurology, as well as diverse literary genres including science fiction, ethnic literature, and even government training manuals.   Lee introduces the groundbreaking concept of “parascience,” a dynamic cultural space where ideas rejected by the scientific establishment blend with alternative strains of literary, mythic, and philosophical thought to regenerate and return to mainstream discourse. From early modernist works by James Joyce to postwar speculative fiction by Philip K. Dick to ethnofuturist narratives by Ruth Ozeki, Parascientific Revolutions demonstrates how cultural and intellectual currents reshape paranormal ideas over time. Examining psychic surveillance programs like Project Stargate and bizarre particles of extrasensory perception such as the psitron, Lee illustrates the ways paranormal concepts persist and evolve to influence culture.   Presenting pseudoscience as an inevitable by-product of the scientific process, Parascientific Revolutions offers fresh insight into how the paranormal mind continually challenges our understanding of knowledge and belief. It invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between science and the unknown, revealing a world where speculative thought and empirical investigation are deeply intertwined.     Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.