The (European) Posthuman Predicament: Rosi Braidotti's The Posthuman and the Future of the Humanities

review of Rosi Braidotti's The Posthuman, a book which argues that the humanities need to rethink themselves around the notion of the posthuma

The intertextual presence of cyberpunk in cultural and subcultural accounts of science and technology

This thesis looks at the relationship between cyberpunk science fiction and those sections of cyberculture most interested in the computer networks. This relationship is investigated in order to understand the nature of a recent cultural formation developed around the use of computer-mediated communications (CMC). By means of a textual analysis of pamphlets, books, articles, and electronic discussion groups, the thesis establishes the existence of an articulate cultural consensus among groups/theorists/practitioners involved in the politics of CMC. This consensus reveals a consistent opposition between the technology of industrialisation, which is characterised by uniformity and hierarchy, and a new technology defined in terms of diversity, and autonomy. The thesis argues that the political discourse of cyberculture is structured by an opposition between 'good' and 'bad' uses of technology. CMC can be used to establish a regime of decentralised surveillance or to promote a more democratic political participation. In the narratives elaborated by cyberculture, the technology of CMC is represented as being intrinsically democratic. Cyberculture also suggests that advanced technological skills can be used to counteract the most repressive uses of technology and to foster its more intrinsic progressive possibilities.These narratives are explored through the statements expressed by a series of groups, who are particularly active in relation to technology. The thesis investigates the ways in which Internet communities responded to the first laws which aimed to regulate the Internet. These were proposed by the Clinton administration in the US. The 'posthuman philosophy', a current of thought which believes in evolving humans into posthumans by using advanced technology, is also analysed in the accounts, offered by the Extropy group and the magazine Mondo 2000. The notion that the technology of CMC is inherently self-regulating and democratic is criticised in relation to 'cyberevolutionism', a popular discourse which sees the Internet as a self-regulating organism. Finally, the thesis argues that gender is the subject of much controversy in Internet culture

Financial Capital and the Money of the Common: The Case of Commoncoin

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGED NATURE OF MONEY THROUGH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES WITH A SPECIFIC CASE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY BASED IN THE NOTION OF PRODUCTION OF THE COMMO

Introduction: Inflections of Technoculture'

Introduction to special issue of anglistica on technology and culture from a feminist and postcolonial perspective

Introduction. Inflections of Technoculture: Biodigital Media, Postcolonial Theory and Feminism

This special issue of Anglistica aims at highlighting the blind spots between digital media properties and the questions posed by post-colonial subjects. Drawing on fields of inquiry as diverse as television and radio, cinema and cyberspace, new materialism and xenogenesis, the contributions help outline a composite theoretical framework trying to interrogate postcolonial ontologies and economies with regard to processes of inclusion/exclusion, the creation of borders, gendered and racial performance in a globalized world.\ud \ud The contributors are mostly former doctoral students from the PhD program in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at L'Orientale, and the Media and Communication department at Goldsmiths College, London, which makes this issue the result of an especially fruitful exchange between the two groups

Quantitative Evaluation of Bacteria Adherent and in Biofilm on Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube-Coated Surfaces

Biofilm is a common bacterial lifestyle, and it plays a crucial role in human health, causing biofilm-mediated infections. Recently, to counteract biofilm development, new nano-structured biomaterials have been proposed. However, data about the antibacterial properties of nano-structured surfaces are fragmentary and controversial, and, in particular, the susceptibility of nano-structured materials to colonization and biofilm formation by bacterial pathogens has not been yet thoroughly considered. Here, the ability of the pathogenic Streptococcus mutans and Pseudomonas aeruginosa to adhere and form biofilm on surfaces coated with single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) was analyzed. Our results showed that the surfaces of SWCNTs-coated glass beads (SWCNTs-GBs) were colonized at the same extent of uncoated GBs both by S. mutans and P. aeruginosa. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that single wall SWCNTs-coated surfaces are not suitable to counteract bacterial adhesion and biofilm development

Introduction to Eurocrisis, Neoliberalism and the Common

This introduction frames the articles collected in the special section as the outcome of a process of ‘self-education’ taking place in the Italian free university network UniNomade 2.0 between 2010 and 2013. The open seminars and conferences orga- nized by UniNomade 2.0 took as their object of inquiry the concept of the Common, while the articles selected focus in particular on the sovereign debt crisis of the European Union (Eurocrisis) following the global financial crisis of 2008. The intro- duction thus summarizes the overall approach of contemporary ‘post-operaist’ authors such as Toni Negri, Christian Marazzi, Maurizio Lazzarato, Andrea Fumagalli and Stefano Lucarelli, and Carlo Vercellone to the new role of financial capital, the transformation of money, the material constitution of Europe, the role played by the relationship between debtors and creditors, and the possibilities opened by the concept of Commonfare for struggles against austerity