Sex After Life

Sex After Life aims to consider the various ways in which the concept of life has provided normative and moralizing ballast for queer, feminist and critical theories. Arguing against a notion of the queer as counter-normative, Sex After Life appeals to the concept of life as a philosophical problem. Life is neither a material ground nor a generative principle, but can nevertheless offer itself for new forms of problem formation that exceed the all too human logics of survival

Death of the posthuman: Essays on extinction, vol. 1

Death of the PostHuman undertakes a series of critical encounters with the legacy of what had come to be known as 'theory,' and its contemporary supposedly post-human aftermath. There can be no redemptive post-human future in which the myopia and anthropocentrism of the species finds an exit and manages to emerge with ecology and life. At the same time, what has come to be known as the human - despite its normative intensity - can provide neither foundation nor critical lever in the Anthropocene epoch. Death of the PostHuman argues for a twenty-first century deconstruction of ecological and seemingly post-human futures

Sex after life: Essays on extinction, vol. 2

Sex After Life aims to consider the various ways in which the concept of life has provided normative and moralizing ballast for queer, feminist and critical theories. Arguing against a notion of the queer as counter-normative, Sex After Life appeals to the concept of life as a philosophical problem. Life is neither a material ground nor a generative principle, but can nevertheless offer itself for new forms of problem formation that exceed the all too human logics of survival

Twilight of the Anthropocene idols

Following on from Theory and the Disappearing Future, Cohen, Colebrook and Miller turn their attention to the eco-critical and environmental humanities’ newest and most fashionable of concepts, the Anthropocene. The question that has escaped focus, as “tipping points” are acknowledged as passed, is how language, mnemo-technologies, and the epistemology of tropes appear to guide the accelerating ecocide, and how that implies a mutation within reading itself—from the era of extinction events.Only in this moment of seeming finality, the authors argue, does there arise an opportunity to be done with mourning and begin reading. Drawing freely on Paul de Man’s theory of reading, anthropomorphism and the sublime, Twilight of the Anthropocene Idols argues for a mode of critical activism liberated from all-too-human joys and anxieties regarding the future. It was quite a few decades ago (1983) that Jurgen Habermas declared that ‘master thinkers had fallen on hard times.’ His pronouncement of hard times was premature. For master thinkers it is the best of times. Not only is the world, supposedly, falling into a complete absence of care, thought and frugality, a few hyper-masters have emerged to tell us that these hard times should be the best of times. It is precisely because we face the end that we should embrace our power to geo-engineer, stage the revolution, return to profound thinking, reinvent the subject, and recognize ourselves fully as one global humanity. Enter anthropos

Victorian Studies in the Anthropocene: An Interview with Claire Colebrook

In this interview, Claire Colebrook discusses the implications of the Anthropocene for Victorian literature — and, by extension, for the field of Victorian studies — as well as literary history and critical theory more broadly. A literary scholar by training, with a focus on Romanticism, Colebrook is now a leading figure in Anthropocene studies, and her work in this field examines how climate change forces us to reassess the modes of thinking upon which we have come to rely in the humanities. In this provocative discussion, Colebrook addresses the ways in which the Anthropocene might be traced back through Romantic and Victorian poetry, the emergence of post-apocalyptic narratives in the nineteenth century, the challenges posed to feminism by planetary destruction, and the humanities’ complicity with ecological degradation

Hosts elevate either within-clutch consistency or between-clutch distinctiveness of egg phenotypes in defence against brood parasites

In host-parasite arms races, hosts can evolve signatures of identity to enhance the detection of parasite mimics. In theory, signatures are most effective when within-individual variation is low ('consistency'), and between-individual variation is high ('distinctiveness'). However, empirical support for positive covariation in signature consistency and distinctiveness across species is mixed. Here, we attempt to resolve this puzzle by partitioning distinctiveness according to how it is achieved: (i) greater variation within each trait, contributing to elevated 'absolute distinctiveness' or (ii) combining phenotypic traits in unpredictable combinations ('combinatorial distinctiveness'). We tested how consistency covaries with each type of distinctiveness by measuring variation in egg colour and pattern in two African bird families (Cisticolidae and Ploceidae) that experience mimetic brood parasitism. Contrary to predictions, parasitized species, but not unparasitized species, exhibited a negative relationship between consistency and combinatorial distinctiveness. Moreover, regardless of parasitism status, consistency was negatively correlated with absolute distinctiveness across species. Together, these results suggest that (i) selection from parasites acts on how traits combine rather than absolute variation in traits, (ii) consistency and distinctiveness are alternative rather than complementary elements of signatures and (iii) mechanistic constraints may explain the negative relationship between consistency and absolute distinctiveness across species.Peer reviewe

Confronting law affectively: encounters of a Patpong sex tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises

Chase-away evolution maintains imperfect mimicry in a brood parasite-host system despite rapid evolution of mimics.

We studied a brood parasite-host system (the cuckoo finch Anomalospiza imberbis and its host, the tawny-flanked prinia Prinia subflava) to test (1) the fundamental hypothesis that deceptive mimics evolve to resemble models, selecting in turn for models to evolve away from mimics ('chase-away evolution') and (2) whether such reciprocal evolution maintains imperfect mimicry over time. Over only 50 years, parasites evolved towards hosts and hosts evolved away from parasites, resulting in no detectible increase in mimetic fidelity. Our results reflect rapid adaptive evolution in wild populations of models and mimics and show that chase-away evolution in models can counteract even rapid evolution of mimics, resulting in the persistence of imperfect mimicry. [Abstract copyright: © 2023. The Author(s).