Theory in the New Humanities – serie

Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political… a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required.In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought—one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate—and how—in this planet’s future.

Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political… a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required.In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought—one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate—and how—in this planet’s future.

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments—such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems— with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations.The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the ‘posthuman condition’, and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments—such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems— with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations.The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the ‘posthuman condition’, and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.

The notion of ‘the human’ is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term ‘posthuman’ provides an alternative.The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human.Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.

Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book’s ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book’s posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material).Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine ”I”, who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death’s material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning “I”’s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject.

In the postmodern era, when the interface of bodies, biologies and technologies increasingly challenges the very notion of what counts as human, Margrit Shildrick proposes new understandings of the limits and possible extensions of posthuman embodiment. Focusing on prostheses, Shildrick broadens our understanding of both what prostheses are and what they might mean for human embodiment. As well as rehabilitation devices used by disabled people to replace or augment impaired parts of the body, Shildrick introduces visceral organic prostheses, which involve any cellular material that cannot be identified with the self, from organ transplantation to the physiological processes of microchimerism and the microbiome. Beyond origin narratives that concentrate on ‘host’ and ‘guest’ and ‘self’ and ‘other’, she examines the transformative possibilities that prostheses offer as they extend the nature of the embodied self beyond genetic singularity. Building on cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in critical disability studies, transplantation studies, and bioscience, Visceral Prostheses argues that bodies with prostheses in whatever form should no longer be understood as irregular forms of normative embodiment, but as limit cases of a common experience. In doing so, it challenges the western understanding of the singular self and welcomes a new understanding of the human.

The notion of ‘the human’ is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term ‘posthuman’ provides an alternative.The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human.Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.

Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book’s ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book’s posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material).Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine ”I”, who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death’s material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning “I”’s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject.

The Philosophy of Matter is a journey in thinking through the material fate of the earth itself; its surfaces and undercurrrents, ecologies, environments and irreparable cracks. With figures such as Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres as philosophical guides and writings on New Materialism, Posthumanism and Affect Theory as intellectual context, Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy: subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living. This rethink is a work of imagination and meditation in order to conceive of “another earth for another people”. It is a homage to courageous thinking that dares to question the religious, capitalist and humanist realities of the day.A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope.

The Philosophy of Matter is a journey in thinking through the material fate of the earth itself; its surfaces and undercurrrents, ecologies, environments and irreparable cracks. With figures such as Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres as philosophical guides and writings on New Materialism, Posthumanism and Affect Theory as intellectual context, Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy: subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living. This rethink is a work of imagination and meditation in order to conceive of “another earth for another people”. It is a homage to courageous thinking that dares to question the religious, capitalist and humanist realities of the day.A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope.

In the postmodern era, when the interface of bodies, biologies and technologies increasingly challenges the very notion of what counts as human, this open access book proposes new understandings of the limits and possible extensions of posthuman embodiment.Focusing on prostheses, Margrit Shildrick broadens our understanding of both what prostheses are and what they might mean for human embodiment. As well as rehabilitation devices used by disabled people to replace or augment impaired parts of the body, Shildrick introduces visceral organic prostheses, which involve any cellular material that cannot be identified with the self, from organ transplantation to the physiological processes of microchimerism and the microbiome. Beyond origin narratives that concentrate on ‘host’ and ‘guest’ and ‘self’ and ‘other’, she examines the transformative possibilities that prostheses offer as they extend the nature of the embodied self beyond genetic singularity.Building on cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in critical disability studies, transplantation studies, and bioscience, Visceral Prostheses argues that bodies with prostheses in whatever form should no longer be understood as irregular forms of normative embodiment, but as limit cases of a common experience. In doing so, it challenges the western understanding of the singular self and welcomes a new understanding of the human.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

The notion of the posthuman continues to both intrigue and confuse, not least because of the huge number of ideas, theories and figures associated with this term. More Posthuman Glossary provides a way in to the dizzying array of posthuman concepts, providing vivid accounts of emerging terms. It is much more than a series of definitions, however, in that it seeks to imagine and predict what new terms might come into being as this exciting field continues to expand. A follow-up volume to the brilliant interventions of Posthuman Glossary (2018), this book extends and elaborates on that work, particularly focusing on concepts of race, indigeneity and new ideas in radical ecology. It also includes new and emerging voices within the new humanities and multiple modes of communicating ideas.This is an indispensible glossary for those who are exploring what the non-human, inhuman and posthuman might mean in the 21st century.

The notion of the posthuman continues to both intrigue and confuse, not least because of the huge number of ideas, theories and figures associated with this term. More Posthuman Glossary provides a way in to the dizzying array of posthuman concepts, providing vivid accounts of emerging terms. It is much more than a series of definitions, however, in that it seeks to imagine and predict what new terms might come into being as this exciting field continues to expand. A follow-up volume to the brilliant interventions of Posthuman Glossary (2018), this book extends and elaborates on that work, particularly focusing on concepts of race, indigeneity and new ideas in radical ecology. It also includes new and emerging voices within the new humanities and multiple modes of communicating ideas.This is an indispensible glossary for those who are exploring what the non-human, inhuman and posthuman might mean in the 21st century.

Uncovering the theoretical and creative interconnections between posthumanism and philosophies of immanence, this volume explores the influence of the philosophy of immanence on posthuman theory; the varied reworkings of immanence for the nonhuman turn; and the new pathways for critical thinking created by the combination of these monumental discourses. With the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari serving as a vibrant node of immanence, this volume maps a multiplicity of pathways from Deleuze, Guattari and their theoretical allies – including Spinoza and Nietzsche – to posthuman thought. As positions that insist, respectively, on the equal yet distinct powers of mind and body (immanence) and the urgent need to dismantle human privilege and exceptionality (posthumanism), each chapter reveals concepts for rethinking established notions of being, thought, experience, and life. The authors here take examples from a range of different media, including literature and contemporary cinema, featuring films such as Enthiran/The Robot (India, 2010) and CHAPPiE (USA/Mexico, 2015), and new developments in technology and theory. In doing so, they investigate Deleuzian and Guattarian posthumanism from a variety of political and ethical frameworks and perspectives, from afro-pessimism to feminist thought, disability studies, biopolitics, and social justice. Countering the dualisms of Cartesian philosophy and flattening the hierarchies imposed by Humanism, From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism launches vital interrogations of established knowledge and sparks the critical reflection necessary for life in the posthuman era.

Uncovering the theoretical and creative interconnections between posthumanism and philosophies of immanence, this volume explores the influence of the philosophy of immanence on posthuman theory; the varied reworkings of immanence for the nonhuman turn; and the new pathways for critical thinking created by the combination of these monumental discourses. With the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari serving as a vibrant node of immanence, this volume maps a multiplicity of pathways from Deleuze, Guattari and their theoretical allies – including Spinoza and Nietzsche – to posthuman thought. As positions that insist, respectively, on the equal yet distinct powers of mind and body (immanence) and the urgent need to dismantle human privilege and exceptionality (posthumanism), each chapter reveals concepts for rethinking established notions of being, thought, experience, and life. The authors here take examples from a range of different media, including literature and contemporary cinema, featuring films such as Enthiran/The Robot (India, 2010) and CHAPPiE (USA/Mexico, 2015), and new developments in technology and theory. In doing so, they investigate Deleuzian and Guattarian posthumanism from a variety of political and ethical frameworks and perspectives, from afro-pessimism to feminist thought, disability studies, biopolitics, and social justice. Countering the dualisms of Cartesian philosophy and flattening the hierarchies imposed by Humanism, From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism launches vital interrogations of established knowledge and sparks the critical reflection necessary for life in the posthuman era.

Bringing together phenomenology and materialism, two perspectives seemingly at odds with each other, leading international theorist, Manuel DeLanda, has created an entirely new theory of visual perception. Engaging the scientific (biology, ecological psychology, neuroscience and robotics), the philosophical (idea of 'the embodied mind') and the mathematical (dynamic systems theory) to form a synthesis of how to see in the 21st century. A transdisciplinary and rigorous analysis of how vision shapes what matters.

Bringing together phenomenology and materialism, two perspectives seemingly at odds with each other, leading international theorist, Manuel DeLanda, has created an entirely new theory of visual perception. Engaging the scientific (biology, ecological psychology, neuroscience and robotics), the philosophical (idea of 'the embodied mind') and the mathematical (dynamic systems theory) to form a synthesis of how to see in the 21st century. A transdisciplinary and rigorous analysis of how vision shapes what matters.

Incomputable Earth: Technology and the Anthropocene Hypothesis challenges the dominant narrative that positions technological solutions as the primary response to ecological crisis. This open access collection argues that climate breakdown represents an irreducibly incomputable problem that cannot be resolved through algorithmic optimization or cybernetic planetary management. Radically interrogating the political epistemology underlying the Anthropocene hypothesis against the backdrop of new regimes of algorithmic classification and prediction, this volume addresses the crucial need to rethink the meaning and inter-relationality of “human,” “nature,” and “technology.” Drawing on feminist science studies, decolonial epistemologies, and historical materialist analysis, the contributors examine how computational frameworks transform Earth’s complex relationships into extractable data, perpetuating the very logics that created planetary crisis.Examining new forms of subjectivity and resistance, this timely volume provides both rigorous critique of technoscientific planetary governance and speculative horizons for collective response to climate breakdown—offering a blueprint for reclaiming abstraction from computational capture while centering radically transformed ways of knowing and being human.This book is available open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com It is funded by The Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

A timely dethroning of the human subject and embracing of a new kind of existence, in this book Christine Daigle highlights the affirmative potential of vulnerability amidst unprecedented times of more-than-human crises. By bringing together traditions as diverse as feminist materialist philosophy, phenomenology, and affect theory, Daigle convincingly pleas for the radical embracing of a shared posthumanist vulnerability.Posthuman Vulnerability fills a significant theoretical gap - whilst feminism has explored the affirming power of vulnerability, it's been from a very human-centric viewpoint. In posing a feminist and posthuman take on vulnerability, Daigle is bridging traditions in a totally original and much needed way.

A timely dethroning of the human subject and embracing of a new kind of existence, in this book Christine Daigle highlights the affirmative potential of vulnerability amidst unprecedented times of more-than-human crises. By bringing together traditions as diverse as feminist materialist philosophy, phenomenology, and affect theory, Daigle convincingly pleas for the radical embracing of a shared posthumanist vulnerability.Posthuman Vulnerability fills a significant theoretical gap - whilst feminism has explored the affirming power of vulnerability, it's been from a very human-centric viewpoint. In posing a feminist and posthuman take on vulnerability, Daigle is bridging traditions in a totally original and much needed way.

A 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleFrom angiotensin to cortisol, testosterone to xenoestrogens, and dopamine to endocrine disruptors, hormones are everywhere. These chemical entities are foundational to biological life and shape social, cultural, and political forces, while simultaneously being shaped by them. Hormones are increasingly central not only to medical and other body-shaping practices and contemporary science, but also environmentally-oriented conversations. Throughout Hormonal Theory, authors trace how biomedical, social, political, and experiential forces entangle to produce hormones as we know them today. It illuminates how hormones emerge and exist as complex entities that permeate every sphere of our lives.Each glossary entry takes a particular hormonal compound as its starting point, yet works to elaborate and complicate understandings of hormones as distinct biological or chemical entities. The entries collectively show how hormones never operate in isolation from other hormones, nor bodies in isolation from other human and non-human bodies and their socio-ecological surroundings. Indeed, they “cascade” into one another. This volume, then, is not simply a qualitatively-rich companion to medical knowledge about hormones, but a challenge to the conceptual underpinnings of current dominant understandings of disease, wellness, and normalcy.

A 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleFrom angiotensin to cortisol, testosterone to xenoestrogens, and dopamine to endocrine disruptors, hormones are everywhere. These chemical entities are foundational to biological life and shape social, cultural, and political forces, while simultaneously being shaped by them. Hormones are increasingly central not only to medical and other body-shaping practices and contemporary science, but also environmentally-oriented conversations. Throughout Hormonal Theory, authors trace how biomedical, social, political, and experiential forces entangle to produce hormones as we know them today. It illuminates how hormones emerge and exist as complex entities that permeate every sphere of our lives.Each glossary entry takes a particular hormonal compound as its starting point, yet works to elaborate and complicate understandings of hormones as distinct biological or chemical entities. The entries collectively show how hormones never operate in isolation from other hormones, nor bodies in isolation from other human and non-human bodies and their socio-ecological surroundings. Indeed, they “cascade” into one another. This volume, then, is not simply a qualitatively-rich companion to medical knowledge about hormones, but a challenge to the conceptual underpinnings of current dominant understandings of disease, wellness, and normalcy.

What is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? The Good Robot addresses these crucial questions through the voices of leading feminist thinkers, activists and technologists. Each thinker provides a snapshot of key challenges, questions and provocations in the field of feminism and technology.While the question of whether various AI and technological advances can be ethical is not new, the embedded nature of feminist perspectives pulls out whether this perceived ‘goodness’ or ‘wrongness’ might actually impact our lives in the 21st century. This book explores both the radical possibilities of technology to disrupt practices of patriarchy, colonialism, racism and beyond but also provides a significant critique of how we can contain the ethical possibilities of entities we cannot predict. In exploring unjust technological practices and engaging critical voices in the tech industry, the existing moral issues are brought to light as well as the possible ethical quagmires.This book opens a new space of discussion on digital technologies – one that insists that the future of AI is an urgent feminist issue.

What is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? The Good Robot addresses these crucial questions through the voices of leading feminist thinkers, activists and technologists. Each thinker provides a snapshot of key challenges, questions and provocations in the field of feminism and technology.While the question of whether various AI and technological advances can be ethical is not new, the embedded nature of feminist perspectives pulls out whether this perceived ‘goodness’ or ‘wrongness’ might actually impact our lives in the 21st century. This book explores both the radical possibilities of technology to disrupt practices of patriarchy, colonialism, racism and beyond but also provides a significant critique of how we can contain the ethical possibilities of entities we cannot predict. In exploring unjust technological practices and engaging critical voices in the tech industry, the existing moral issues are brought to light as well as the possible ethical quagmires.This book opens a new space of discussion on digital technologies – one that insists that the future of AI is an urgent feminist issue.

Cancer Ecologies: A Queer Femme Portal invites readers on a journey through the tangled roots of the current cancer epidemic. Moving between personal accounts and eco-critical reflections, the Nina Lykke and Camila Marambio ask: What if cancer is not just a personal tragedy or monstrous invader, but a symptom of Earth in distress – a message from the planet itself? Challenging the idea of cancer as an isolated enemy to be eradicated, this book sees it as a manifestation of the toxic entanglements of the Anthropocene: capitalist extraction, colonial exploitation, and environmental degradation.Through an eco-ethics of softness, the authors – one living with cancer, the other a carer to a partner who died from it – explore how cancer might be approached as a portal: as a conversation between pain and possibility, between necropolitics and vibrantly ongoing life. Encouraging readers to understand themselves not as separate from Earth, but as lovers entangled with peatmoss, the microalgae, diatoms, and other humble creatures that sustain us, Cancer Ecologies experiments with a genre-bending methodology: part poetic story-telling and part eco-philosophical analysis. The book offers a transformative rethinking of cancer: less as a battle, more as an invitation to compost grief and cultivate ongoing cycles of life and death, rooted in relationality, shared vulnerability, and practices of joy.

Land and Country brings philosophical thought into direct engagement with Australia’s contested debates on identity, sovereignty, and belonging.Drawing on the author’s family history of convict descent, and expounding on the thorny and variegated web of relations that determine the Australian past and present, this book traces the intersection of ancestral lives with the violence of settlement: land grants on stolen Country, frontier conflict, the Appin massacre, and the shifting cultural meanings of convict shame and pride. Beneath these stories lies a deeper inquiry: what does it mean to pursue family history as an act of truth-telling in a nation still struggling to reckon with its own past?Interweaving political philosophy, feminist critique, and intellectual history, Lloyd examines the conceptual frameworks that continue to shape national debate – whiteness and multiculturalism; Enlightenment ideas of property and progress; the emotional dynamics of guilt, shame, pride, and responsibility; and the colonial mindset that persists in public discourse. She brings Locke, Kant and Spinoza into dialogue with Indigenous critiques of sovereignty, and explores how contemporary First Nations storytelling and visual practice unsettle colonial narratives and offer new imaginative “entry points” into shared truths about Country, climate change, and coexistence.This intervention from one of Australia’s most eminent contemporary philosophers is especially germane in the wake of the rejection of the 2023 referendum on a constitutionally enshrined indigenous ‘Voice’ to government: its principal objective is to make a philosophical contribution to the path towards indigenous recognition and national reconciliation. Part memoir, part philosophy, part cultural criticism, this book offers a compelling contribution to ongoing truth-telling, and to the still-unfinished task of imagining a just future between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians.

Land and Country brings philosophical thought into direct engagement with Australia’s contested debates on identity, sovereignty, and belonging.Drawing on the author’s family history of convict descent, and expounding on the thorny and variegated web of relations that determine the Australian past and present, this book traces the intersection of ancestral lives with the violence of settlement: land grants on stolen Country, frontier conflict, the Appin massacre, and the shifting cultural meanings of convict shame and pride. Beneath these stories lies a deeper inquiry: what does it mean to pursue family history as an act of truth-telling in a nation still struggling to reckon with its own past?Interweaving political philosophy, feminist critique, and intellectual history, Lloyd examines the conceptual frameworks that continue to shape national debate – whiteness and multiculturalism; Enlightenment ideas of property and progress; the emotional dynamics of guilt, shame, pride, and responsibility; and the colonial mindset that persists in public discourse. She brings Locke, Kant and Spinoza into dialogue with Indigenous critiques of sovereignty, and explores how contemporary First Nations storytelling and visual practice unsettle colonial narratives and offer new imaginative “entry points” into shared truths about Country, climate change, and coexistence.This intervention from one of Australia’s most eminent contemporary philosophers is especially germane in the wake of the rejection of the 2023 referendum on a constitutionally enshrined indigenous ‘Voice’ to government: its principal objective is to make a philosophical contribution to the path towards indigenous recognition and national reconciliation. Part memoir, part philosophy, part cultural criticism, this book offers a compelling contribution to ongoing truth-telling, and to the still-unfinished task of imagining a just future between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians.

How might we reinvent the humanities? This is the question at the heart of this provocative volume. It is a difficult mission and definitely one which needs to be addressed with increasing urgency. There is no better cast to confront and problematize this question than the contributors to Conflicting Humanities. They are world-renowned thinkers who can tackle the problem as researchers and teachers but also as prominent public intellectuals.Taking the intellectual and political legacies of Edward Said as a point of departure and frame of reference, the contributors – working in a range of disciplinary settings – consider the current condition of humanism and the humanities. Said's definition of the core task of the Humanities as the pursuit of democratic criticism remains more urgent than ever, though it needs to be supplemented by gender, environmental, and anti-racist perspectives as well as by detailed analysis of the necro-political governmentality of our time. An innovative piece of scholarship, this volume is committed to the refusal of a world riven by new kinds of warcraft, injustice and exploitation.