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Advances in Techno-Humanities: Case Studies from Culture, Philosophy and the Arts (Routledge Studies in Translation Technology and Techno-Humanities)


This book is a pioneering attempt to explore the relationships between technology and the humanities through case studies and specific contexts in the areas of language, theatre, literature, translation, philosophy, music, home designations, learning environment, and artificial intelligence. Written by scholars and specialists across various fields, the chapters explore the emerging field of techno-humanities. This book examines the development of language and society by means of Big Data, how technology is integrated into the theatres of Hong Kong and the ensuing results of such integration. The authors also highlight how technology is able to analyse, understand, and visualise literary works and to bring drastic changes to translation in the past seven decades. Long-standing philosophical issues are re-examined, linkages between technology and theoretical concepts are illuminated, and the emotional aspects of computational applications are investigated. This book also delves into insightful case studies such as providing suggestions to train novice translators through corpus-assisted translation teaching, analysing patterns of housing names, and discovering a new online method to acknowledge acquisition through authentic learning experiences. Overall, this book serves as a point of departure for us to go deeper into the role of technology in transforming the humanities in this digital age. This is a useful read for students and scholars interested in learning more about the cross section between humanities and technology.

Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power

by Erica Benner

'A sparkling page-turner full of wit, original insight and unassuming erudition.' Katja Hoyer, the GuardianDemocracy is a living, breathing thing and Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about the role ordinary citizens play in keeping it alive: from her childhood in post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to working in post-communist Poland, with its sudden gaps of wealth and security. This book draws on her experiences and the deep history of self-ruling peoples – going back to ancient Greece, the French revolution and Renaissance Florence – to rethink some of the toughest questions that we face today.What do democratic ideals of equality mean in a world obsessed with competition, wealth, and greatness? How can we hold the powerful to account? Can we find enough common ground to keep sharing democratic power in the future? Challenging well-worn myths of heroic triumph over tyranny, Benner reveals the inescapable vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for and the role each of us must play.

The Adventures of the Commodity: For a Critique of Value (Critical Theory and the Critique of Society)

by Anselm Jappe

The Adventures of the Commodity explores conceptions of a capitalist society that is ordered entirely around the exigencies of the commodity, money and labour.A distinctive introduction to critiques of capitalism and commodity society, this book illuminates the difficult concept of 'abstract' labour. Merging this with the social critique known as the “critique of value”, first developed by Robert Kurz and the German journal, Krisis, in the 1990s, Anselm Jappe highlights in particular a central, and often contested, aspect of this critique: the claim that, for several decades now, capitalism has entered into a crisis that is not cyclical, but terminal. If a society that is founded upon the fetishism of the commodity, on the value created by the abstract side of labour and represented in money, this is the result of the fact that its primary internal contradiction has reached a point of no return: the replacement of living labour, the only source of 'value', by ever-more sophisticated technologies.

Aesthetic Action

by Florian Klinger

In this new book, Florian Klinger gives readers a basic action-theoretical account of the aesthetic. While normal action fulfills a determinate concept, Klinger argues, aesthetic action performs an indeterminacy by suspending the action's conceptual resolution. Taking as examples work by Tino Sehgal, Kara Walker, Mazen Kerbaj, Marina Abramović, Cy Twombly, and Franz Kafka, the book examines indeterminacy in such instances as a walk that is at once leisurely and purposeful, a sound piece that is at once joyous and mournful and mechanical, or a sculpture that at once draws one in and shuts one out. Because it has irresolution as its point, aesthetic action presents itself as an unsettling of ourselves, our ways, our very sense of who we are. As performers of such action, we don't recognize one another as bearers of a shared human form as we normally would, but find ourselves tasked anew with figuring out what sharing a form would mean. In conversation with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe; political thinkers such as Marx and Lorde; and contemporary interlocutors such as Michael Thompson, Sebastian Rödl, and Thomas Khurana, Klinger's book makes a case for a conception of the human form that systematically includes the aesthetic: an actualization of the form that is indeterminate and nevertheless rational. The book gives the project of Western philosophical aesthetics a long-overdue formulation for our present that aims to do justice to contemporary aesthetic production as it actually exists. It will appeal to those working in philosophy, art, and political thought.

Aesthetic Action

by Florian Klinger

In this new book, Florian Klinger gives readers a basic action-theoretical account of the aesthetic. While normal action fulfills a determinate concept, Klinger argues, aesthetic action performs an indeterminacy by suspending the action's conceptual resolution. Taking as examples work by Tino Sehgal, Kara Walker, Mazen Kerbaj, Marina Abramović, Cy Twombly, and Franz Kafka, the book examines indeterminacy in such instances as a walk that is at once leisurely and purposeful, a sound piece that is at once joyous and mournful and mechanical, or a sculpture that at once draws one in and shuts one out. Because it has irresolution as its point, aesthetic action presents itself as an unsettling of ourselves, our ways, our very sense of who we are. As performers of such action, we don't recognize one another as bearers of a shared human form as we normally would, but find ourselves tasked anew with figuring out what sharing a form would mean. In conversation with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe; political thinkers such as Marx and Lorde; and contemporary interlocutors such as Michael Thompson, Sebastian Rödl, and Thomas Khurana, Klinger's book makes a case for a conception of the human form that systematically includes the aesthetic: an actualization of the form that is indeterminate and nevertheless rational. The book gives the project of Western philosophical aesthetics a long-overdue formulation for our present that aims to do justice to contemporary aesthetic production as it actually exists. It will appeal to those working in philosophy, art, and political thought.

The Aesthetic View of Moral Education

by Chuanbao Tan

The Aesthetic View of Moral Education is the result of in-depth interdisciplinary research in education and aesthetic studies. This book advocates the use of aesthetic ideas and methods to transform moral education activities, which are often trapped in a state of forced indoctrination. This book aims to address the problems of moral education in China and share certain commonalities in the exploration of educational theory. The aesthetic view of moral education is a new and practical philosophy of education. The author's theory of moral education as the appreciation of beauty, the creation of beauty, and the theory of the attainment of the ultimate realm of moral education provide an in-depth analysis of the functions of aesthetic education for moral cultivation. The author also offers unique interpretations of the aesthetic transformation of the process of moral education itself and the pursuit of the realm of moral life and education. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of education and philosophy, East Asian studies, and readers interested in China's cultural traditions.

The Aesthetic View of Moral Education

by Chuanbao Tan

The Aesthetic View of Moral Education is the result of in-depth interdisciplinary research in education and aesthetic studies. This book advocates the use of aesthetic ideas and methods to transform moral education activities, which are often trapped in a state of forced indoctrination. This book aims to address the problems of moral education in China and share certain commonalities in the exploration of educational theory. The aesthetic view of moral education is a new and practical philosophy of education. The author's theory of moral education as the appreciation of beauty, the creation of beauty, and the theory of the attainment of the ultimate realm of moral education provide an in-depth analysis of the functions of aesthetic education for moral cultivation. The author also offers unique interpretations of the aesthetic transformation of the process of moral education itself and the pursuit of the realm of moral life and education. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of education and philosophy, East Asian studies, and readers interested in China's cultural traditions.

Aesthetics across Cultures: Intertextuality, Intermediality and Interculturality

by Rosy Singh

This book critically examines the "mutual illuminations" between literature, religion, architecture, films, performative arts, paintings, woodworks, memes and masks cutting across time and space. Architecture is a good example where the eventual success of a project depends on the harmony between physical sciences and aesthetics, design and planning, knowledge of building material, the local climate and awareness of cultural sensibilities. This volume affirms that aesthetics and arts are deeply linked through existential issues of who I am. The chapters in this volume present diverse discursive structures highlighting the in-between spaces between various art forms and mediums, such as: • Architecture, literature and memory • Kafka in SoHo; Kafka and Bernhard • Kirchner’s woodcuts; pictorial and stage representations of E.T.A. Hoffmann • Hesse’s fairy tales; translations of Pañcatantra • Nietzsche, ritual arts and face masks; martyrdom in La chanson de Roland • Goethe and Hafiz; Indian thought in Martin Buber • Rhythms of the "Third" across cultures • Dadaism and contemporary memes This book examines these sublime linkages in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. Engaging and intersectional, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of arts and aesthetics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sociology, translation studies and readers who are interested in cultural, intertextual, intermedial and comparative studies.

Aesthetics across Cultures: Intertextuality, Intermediality and Interculturality


This book critically examines the "mutual illuminations" between literature, religion, architecture, films, performative arts, paintings, woodworks, memes and masks cutting across time and space. Architecture is a good example where the eventual success of a project depends on the harmony between physical sciences and aesthetics, design and planning, knowledge of building material, the local climate and awareness of cultural sensibilities. This volume affirms that aesthetics and arts are deeply linked through existential issues of who I am. The chapters in this volume present diverse discursive structures highlighting the in-between spaces between various art forms and mediums, such as: • Architecture, literature and memory • Kafka in SoHo; Kafka and Bernhard • Kirchner’s woodcuts; pictorial and stage representations of E.T.A. Hoffmann • Hesse’s fairy tales; translations of Pañcatantra • Nietzsche, ritual arts and face masks; martyrdom in La chanson de Roland • Goethe and Hafiz; Indian thought in Martin Buber • Rhythms of the "Third" across cultures • Dadaism and contemporary memes This book examines these sublime linkages in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. Engaging and intersectional, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of arts and aesthetics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sociology, translation studies and readers who are interested in cultural, intertextual, intermedial and comparative studies.

Aesthetics and Design: The Value of Everyday Living (Bloomsbury Aesthetics)

by Jeffrey Petts

What designers do and how we all, as users of designed things, live with their products raises fundamental philosophical questions about how we should live, and how the nature of design work and good design relates to our lives.Jeffrey Petts presents a holistic and pragmatist approach to the philosophy of design. Acknowledging the importance of function in design without downplaying the aesthetic dimension, Petts relates the manner of evaluating design to the designing process itself as demonstrated in the work of, for example, William Morris, Walter Gropius and Bauhaus, Charles and Ray Eames, and Dieter Rams. This metacritical and everyday approach to the philosophy of design expresses a commitment to real aesthetics, connecting concrete issues in both practice and experience to philosophical ideas, and reveals the role aesthetics plays in considerations about the good life.

Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss

by Kathleen Marie Higgins

A philosophical exploration of aesthetic experience during bereavement. In Aesthetics of Grief and Mourning, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins reflects on the ways that aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. Higgins shows how these grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.

Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss

by Kathleen Marie Higgins

A philosophical exploration of aesthetic experience during bereavement. In Aesthetics of Grief and Mourning, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins reflects on the ways that aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. Higgins shows how these grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.

The Affective Core Self: The Role of the Unconscious and Retroactivity in Self-Constitution (Contributions to Phenomenology #130)

by Lajos Horváth

This book extends the contemporary concept of the minimal self by introducing the affective core self. The overall aim is to integrate certain psychoanalytical ideas into the phenomenological investigation of passivity and reformulate the idea of the phenomenological unconscious. This volume contributes to the multidimensional analysis of the self by positioning the affective core self between the layers of the more minimal and the less minimal self. It underscores the importance of the unconscious in the constitution of the affective core self by providing the comparative analysis of the phenomenological and the psychoanalytical unconscious.Furthermore, comparisons are drawn between Freud’s conception of the afterwardsness of trauma and the phenomenological notion of retroactive sense-constitution. The book concludes that retroactive sense-making is a double-sided phenomenon and differentiates between implicit-bodily and conscious-narrative retroactive sense-constitution. In order to bolster the idea of implicit-bodily sense-constitution the volume also examines and utilizes contemporary insights on the nature of body memory. The conclusion claims that the affective core self is constituted in time by means of the underlying processes of the two-sided retroactive sense-constitution. This text appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and philosophy of mind.

Affective World-Making: Routing Planetary Thought


This volume fosters a re-imagination of the planet where it is seen not only as a resource, but also as an entity that must not be excluded from the political imperative of care and kinship. The authors go beyond the normative understanding of space by recognizing the potency of touch, where they look at somatic experiences that invite the intensity of affect.This book questions the dominance of the capitalocene through the existence of social aesthetic and records the affective encounters that facilitate the creation of planetary identity, affinity, and entanglements. With discussions on architecture, poetry, rap music, romantic literature, performance art, digital fashion, Instagram, Netflix shows, YouTube videos, moving image practices, eco-sexual movements, and graphic narratives, the chapters in this volume initiate a conversation on what it means to inhabit the world today.An important contribution, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of environmental humanities, planetary humanities, affect studies, digital humanities, and media studies, besides also being of interest to those studying interdisciplinary critical/cultural theory, Television and film studies, philosophy, and architectural theory.

Affective World-Making: Routing Planetary Thought

by Simi Malhotra Sakshi Dogra Jubi C. John

This volume fosters a re-imagination of the planet where it is seen not only as a resource, but also as an entity that must not be excluded from the political imperative of care and kinship. The authors go beyond the normative understanding of space by recognizing the potency of touch, where they look at somatic experiences that invite the intensity of affect.This book questions the dominance of the capitalocene through the existence of social aesthetic and records the affective encounters that facilitate the creation of planetary identity, affinity, and entanglements. With discussions on architecture, poetry, rap music, romantic literature, performance art, digital fashion, Instagram, Netflix shows, YouTube videos, moving image practices, eco-sexual movements, and graphic narratives, the chapters in this volume initiate a conversation on what it means to inhabit the world today.An important contribution, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of environmental humanities, planetary humanities, affect studies, digital humanities, and media studies, besides also being of interest to those studying interdisciplinary critical/cultural theory, Television and film studies, philosophy, and architectural theory.

African Ethics and Death: Moral Status and Human Dignity in Ubuntu Thinking (Routledge Studies in African Philosophy)

by Motsamai Molefe Elphus Muade

This book analyzes the concepts of moral status and human dignity in African philosophy and applies them to the moral problems associated with death. The book first challenges the criticism and rejection of moral status in African philosophy and then continues to consider how moral personhood is defined in African ethical theories, investigating which entities have full moral status or moral personhood and are therefore worthy of full ethical consideration. It then applies this theory to the problems associated with death. In the medical context, will an African theory of moral status permit or forbid euthanasia? Do we have moral obligations towards dead human bodies? Overall, the book provides an important African axiological contribution to debates on global ethics and moral philosophy. Providing an important overview of the ethical problems associated with the biological fact of death, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of philosophy and African studies.

African Ethics and Death: Moral Status and Human Dignity in Ubuntu Thinking (Routledge Studies in African Philosophy)

by Motsamai Molefe Elphus Muade

This book analyzes the concepts of moral status and human dignity in African philosophy and applies them to the moral problems associated with death. The book first challenges the criticism and rejection of moral status in African philosophy and then continues to consider how moral personhood is defined in African ethical theories, investigating which entities have full moral status or moral personhood and are therefore worthy of full ethical consideration. It then applies this theory to the problems associated with death. In the medical context, will an African theory of moral status permit or forbid euthanasia? Do we have moral obligations towards dead human bodies? Overall, the book provides an important African axiological contribution to debates on global ethics and moral philosophy. Providing an important overview of the ethical problems associated with the biological fact of death, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of philosophy and African studies.

African Philosophic Sagacity in Selected African Languages and Proverbs

by Wilfred Lajul

This book explores African philosophic sagacity, or wisdom philosophy, as proposed by Odera Oruka in his “Four Trends in Current African Philosophy” (1981), which he later expanded to six trends (1998). Oruka defines philosophic sagacity as wisdom philosophy, or philosophy of the wise men of Africa who are independent, liberal and non-conformist thinkers, and who often deviate from the accepted common norms of their societies. This book takes philosophic sagacity discourse beyond Oruka’s definition by encompassing traditional wise sayings and proverbs. It combines individual liberal thinkers and the communal ideas, and cherishes both rational and emotional engagement, offering a broader understanding of African philosophic sagacity. Wilfred Lajul opens the door for new researchers to venture into the study of African languages, wisdom sayings, and proverbs, and helps to unveil the content of this philosophy from the perspective of different African societies.

African Women’s Liberating Philosophies, Theologies, and Ethics

by Beatrice Okyere-Manu Léocadie Lushombo

This volume explores the ethical and philosophical paradigms presented by most of the influential Matriarchs of the Circle of African Women Theologians. It critically evaluates the effectiveness of their ethical and philosophical theories, models, and frameworks in pursuing justice and liberation for women in Africa and globally. The authors address critical questions: How have African women theologians reimagined existing ethical paradigms? What original ethical and philosophical ideas have they generated? How have their ethical frameworks influenced the theologies and interpretations they have developed? What purposes do their ethical and philosophical paradigms serve? How do these renderings intersect with various social categories, including gender, race, class, sexuality, capitalism, and colonialism? What liberating frameworks do they propose? The volume further explores the dialogue between distinct African contexts and universal experiences and values. It explores how universal themes such as humanity, human dignity, rights, justice, motherhood, and more can coexist with communal African concepts and themes. It contemplates how embracing African approaches engages these themes more globally, bringing together particular African contexts of women and the universal ethical, philosophical, and theological theories, models, and frameworks to advance the cause of justice and liberation for African women and women worldwide into the future.

The Afterlife of Race: An Informed Philosophical Search

by Lionel K. McPherson

The ideology that underlies the concept of race has a long history. For centuries that ideology has spun supernaturalist and scientistic stories about ostensibly natural differences between different groups. The concept of ?race? is in scientific decline, but the intertwined ideology and rhetoric behind it live on, and indeed prosper. In this groundbreaking fusion of philosophy and color-conscious politics, philosopher Lionel K. McPherson enlists sweeping historical and empirical evidence to challenge fascination with the race concept. His lively, incisive analysis illuminates why social lineage matters far more than any ?race? thing ever could, and why race ideology-rhetoric is more a distraction from gross injustice than a primary source. The Western label ?black? was merely a figurative description for African peoples and African ancestry. The idea of continental races came later--with philosophers, theologians, and eventually scientists adding some important but elusive racial factor to visible continental ancestry. McPherson argues that the race concept's main business was to sponsor absurd pretexts for Western slavery and colonialism, and their active legacies of nonrepair. Rejecting endless debate about the possible nature of race, he unpacks how color categories in America are a caste device that marked Europe-identified (white) freedom versus Africa-identified (black) enslavement. This caste reframing paves the way for a de-raced account of Black American national specificity and political solidarity, distinct from flat blackness. The Afterlife of Race concludes with a vision of tangible justice and social equality for descendants of American slavery: color aside, Americans of conscience would finally prioritize dismantling their country's foundational caste division, with its entrenched wealth and well-being chasm between White and Black America.

Against Critical Thinking in Health, Social Care and Social Work: Reframing Philosophy for Professional Practice (Routledge Advances in Social Work)

by Tom Grimwood

This book stages a provocative dialogue between social work, health and social care and contemporary philosophy in order to inform theory and practice in a complex and challenging world. Today, the social world is marked by deep-rooted complexities, tensions and challenges. Health workers and social workers are constantly reminded to employ critical thinking to navigate this world through their practice. But given how many of these challenges pose significant problems for the theories that these subjects have traditionally drawn upon, should we now be critical of critical thinking – its assumptions, its basis, and its aspirations – itself? Arguing that health and social work theory must reconsider its deep-rooted assumptions about criticality in order to navigate complex neoliberalism, post-truth, and the relationship between language and late capitalism, it examines how the fusion of theory and practice can re-imagine critical thinking for health and social work in social work. It will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals of social work and health and social care.

Against Critical Thinking in Health, Social Care and Social Work: Reframing Philosophy for Professional Practice (Routledge Advances in Social Work)

by Tom Grimwood

This book stages a provocative dialogue between social work, health and social care and contemporary philosophy in order to inform theory and practice in a complex and challenging world. Today, the social world is marked by deep-rooted complexities, tensions and challenges. Health workers and social workers are constantly reminded to employ critical thinking to navigate this world through their practice. But given how many of these challenges pose significant problems for the theories that these subjects have traditionally drawn upon, should we now be critical of critical thinking – its assumptions, its basis, and its aspirations – itself? Arguing that health and social work theory must reconsider its deep-rooted assumptions about criticality in order to navigate complex neoliberalism, post-truth, and the relationship between language and late capitalism, it examines how the fusion of theory and practice can re-imagine critical thinking for health and social work in social work. It will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals of social work and health and social care.

Agency in Transnational Memory Politics (Worlds of Memory #4)

by Jenny Wüstenberg and Aline Sierp

The dynamics of transnational memory play a central role in modern politics, from postsocialist efforts at transitional justice to the global legacies of colonialism. Yet, the relatively young subfield of transnational memory studies remains underdeveloped and fractured across numerous disciplines, even as nascent, boundary-crossing theories on topics such as multi-vocal, traveling, or entangled remembrance suggest new ways of negotiating difficult political questions. This volume brings together theoretical and practical considerations to provide transnational memory scholars with an interdisciplinary investigation into agency—the “who” and the “how” of cross-border commemoration that motivates activists and fascinates observers.

The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

by Shannon Vallor

For many, technology offers hope for the future?that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome?not by us, but by our machines. Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors, they reflect the same errors, biases, and failures of wisdom that we strive to escape. Our new digital mirrors point backward. They show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time. To meet today's grave challenges to our species and our planet, we will need something new from AI, and from ourselves. Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

Alchemies of Blood and Afro-Diasporic Fiction: Race, Kinship, and the Passion for Ontology

by Prof Nicole Simek

Alchemies of Blood and Afro-Diasporic Fiction focuses on the resurgence of biological racism in 21st-century public discourse, the ontological and material turns in the academy that have occurred over the same time period, and how Afro-diasporic fiction has responded to both with alternative visions of bloodlines, kinship, and community. In thinking through conceptions of race, ethnicity, and materiality at work within both humanities research and popular culture, Nicole Simek asks how the figure of alchemy – that semi-scientific, semi-mystical search for gold and the elixir of long life – can help scholars address the epistemological and affective investments in blood, bloodlines, and genetics marking both academic and mainstream discourses. To answer this question, Simek examines neo-plantation and Afrofuturist narratives, Afropessimist interventions, museums and public memory projects, and direct-to-consumer genetic testing services in the French Caribbean and the United States. This comparative approach to cultural production helps pinpoint and better understand the intersections and divergences between scholarship trends and troubling features of a broader Zeitgeist.

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