This semester I will be taking an independent study on the concept of “nonhuman life.” As a part of that, I have decided to make my weekly notes, small essays, or whatever from the class available publicly–thus, for the next fifteen weeks or so, there will be a thing once a week called “Nonhuman Life” here on the blog. Each week will cover a different book and I will say some things about the book.
That is all unnecessarily formal.
Here is the (tentative) list of books that I will be writing about. Some might get added or dropped, of course. They are organized by “cluster”–I am trying to focus on both the speculative turn/postKantianism and how that interfaces with how we think through the notion of “life” in the current field of philosophy or whatever. I am also including links below in case you, for some reason, want to run off to Amazon immediately and buy any of these books.
Additionally, the posts that I will be making over the course of the class will be open for comment, and I encourage anyone who wants to read along and have a conversation to do so.
Cluster 1: Kant
- Kant – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
- Meillassoux – After Finitude
- Shaviro – Without Criteria
Cluster 2: Relations
- Morton – The Ecological Thought
- von Uexkull – A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
- DeLanda – A New Philosophy of Society
Cluster 3: Life
- Thacker – After Life
- Parikka – Insect Media
- Chun – Programmed Visions
- Massumi – Semblance and Event
this cage is worms 