Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them - from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, this book develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Speculative ReproductionBiotechnologies and Ecologies in Thick TimeAstrida NeimanisEveryone loves me, Frida and the Abortion that fetus So Much Larger Than Life. Everyone loves that one. irrigation channelsthese waters as thick as blood (There is another painting I did, I called it “Roots.”) You the golden beets the potato bugs We are eating our young. Signed,—Frida Kahlo, Posthuman Gardener1 [End Page 108]IntroductionBirth has never been a “natural” matter. In the (...) context of proliferating new reproductive biotechnologies, we might be tempted to reconstitute a past when ushering new lives into this world only ever happened “naturally.” Yet reproduction has always been more than a simple question of fertilization, gestation, and delivery, whereby bodies might enact some natural biological destiny.2 Every reproduction is what we might call, after Donna Haraway, a “naturalcultural” one: that is, an inextricable entanglement of “natural” forces, matters, and processes, with “cultural” systems, values, and institutions (Haraway 2004, 2, 212–18) that together constitute a birthing ecology. Every human reproduction is thus not only a birthing of a human body, but also an event within certain conditions of possibility—a reaffirmation of, challenge to, and/or intervening otherwise in the structures, institutions, cultures, and ecologies of human and more-than-human bodies and technologies. On this view, a failure to birth, a decision not to birth, or a direction of one’s reproductive body or matter toward other kinds of births (not necessarily of one’s “own” child) are also “reproductions” within birthing ecologies. This is not at all to say that the reproductions we facilitate are always deliberate political choices or purposeful acts of compliance/subversion, even if in some cases they might be. Rather, it is to underline that all births are a co-configuration of naturalcultural bodies in context. What is birthed is also the affirmation of certain kinds of births, certain kinds of life, and certain value systems according to which life and reproduction are understood. Within this frame, we might also understand birth as the creation or reproduction of certain social and cultural imaginaries within which our values are oriented. Concomitant with such naturalcultural reproductions, then, might also be a speculation about what other sorts of births and birthing ecologies are possible—ones that might engender values and relations in which the technologies and naturecultures of reproduction can be imagined anew.In this paper, I contrast two very different versions of a reproductive imaginary—both birthed through the matter of our reproductive tissues, and both worth our consideration in the present moment. The first is the birthing of a neoliberal, individualistic reproductive imaginary of commodification and amnesiac bioscientific progress. Using terminology unpacked in more detail below, we might call this an autologous imaginary, where reproduction is disentangled from any obligation to other bodies in a polity of mutual care and concern. This imaginary promotes an erasure of the thick past of bodies and labors that produce reproductive tissues, and is focused primarily on preservation of the self and direct kin. This is what we find in dominant contemporary biobanking trends that divert human reproductive matter (here, [End Page 109] embryos, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cord blood) in the service of speculative “biological venture capital[ism]” (Waldby and Mitchell 2006, 123).In contrast, I consider a different kind of contemporary birthing imaginary, wherein one invests one’s reproductive matter in the service of both human and more-than-human reproductive ecologies. Drawing on two different artworks, I suggest that these creative interventions offer alternative “speculative reproductions.” Like contemporary biobanking regimes, these artworks speculate on what new kinds of bodies the reinvestment of reproductive matter (in this case, amniotic fluid and menstrual blood) might engender. Unlike the neoliberal regimes, however, these artworks confirm rather than repudiate a feminist ethics of corporeal generosity, and in fact, extend this ethics even further, through an imaginary of what I call posthuman gardening. Here, the literal resowing and reseeding of one’s reproductive matter establishes an extended, more-than-human birthing ecology that includes not only human bodies, but ecological bodies of various kinds. In this productive troubling of our commonplace Western and humanist understandings of the spacetimes of birth, we... (shrink)

A consensus is building that our planet has entered the so-called age of the Anthropocene—a post-Holocene epoch defined by the significant impact of humans on geological, biotic and climatic planetary processes. On the one hand, there is good reason to exercise caution in relation to this concept of the “Age of Man.” At a time when immoderate anthropogenic impact poses a serious threat to ecological integrity and balance, calling an epoch after ourselves does not necessarily demonstrate the humility we may (...) need to espouse. Moreover, discourses of the Anthropocene risk overwriting important differences among human.. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch out the way our bodies are engaged while commuting in order to elucidate several key aspects of the bodily experience of “in-between-ness.” I discover that within the rhythm and movement of the in-between, our bodies can open to a specific kind of conceptual creativity—an insight that I unfold in reference to the unanticipated innovation and transformation that accompanies other bodily experiences of in-between-ness more generally. This sketch, however, also demands that I reflect on phenomenological methodology, (...) and our ontological presuppositions about the “things” that we intend to “go back to.” I conclude by suggesting that while Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic ontology helps us explain the findings of my phenomenological sketch of commuting, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology can help to flesh out (quite literally) Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that all the work happens in “the logic of the AND” ( A Thousand Plateaus 25). While the method I call on in this paper is decidedly phenomenological, the conclusions I reach invite me to explore further the promise of a more “rhizomatic phenomenological” practice. (shrink)

Responding to Rosi Braidotti's call for more ‘conceptual creativity’ in thinking through contemporary feminist subjectivity, this paper proposes the figuration of the body of water. It begins with a critical materialist enhancement of Adrienne Rich's concept of a politics of location, followed by a schematised description of the various ‘hydro-logics’ in which our bodies partake. The ways in which these logics already inform diverse modes of feminist scholarship are then explored. The objective of this paper is to locate, at the (...) confluence of these discourses and descriptions, an invigorated figuration of the feminist subject as body of water. This subject is posthumanist and material, both real and aspirational. Most importantly, she is responsively attuned to other watery bodies—both human and more-than-human—within global flows of political, social, cultural, economic and colonial planetary power. (shrink)

In the dominant “climate change” imaginary, this phenomenon is distant and abstracted from our experiences of weather and the environment in the privileged West. Moreover, climate change discourse is saturated mostly in either neoliberal progress narratives of controlling the future or sustainability narratives of saving the past. Both largely obfuscate our implication therein. This paper proposes a different climate change imaginary. We draw on feminist new materialist theories—in particular those of Stacy Alaimo, Claire Colebrook, and Karen Barad—to describe our relationship (...) to climate change as one of “weathering.” We propose the temporal frame of “thick time”—a transcorporeal stretching between present, future, and past—in order to reimagine our bodies as archives of climate and as making future climates possible. In doing so, we can rethink the temporal narratives of climate change discourse and develop a feminist ethos of responsivity toward climatic phenomena. This project reminds us that we are not masters of the climate, nor are we just spatially “in” it. As weather-bodies, we are thick with climatic intra-actions; we are makers of climate-time. Together we are weathering the world. (shrink)

Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man about the life and death of Timothy Treadwell invites us to consider the relation between Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal and phenomenological accounts of lived embodiment. In this paper I begin with a general account of becoming-animal and suggest that this concept is helpfully elucidated by considering the ways in which some aspects of Deleuze and Guattari’s practice can be understood as a rhizomatic phenomenology of our lived experience that in part extends the (...) work of Merleau-Ponty. What emerges between the two philosophies is the possibility of bodily "molecularity" as a mode of lived embodiment. I argue that this molecularity is what enables the potential interpermeation of bodies across their differences, such as occurs in the event of becoming-animal. Alphonso Lingis’s descriptions of our becoming-animal as lived experience serve here as an evocative source for clarifying this proposition further. I conclude by returning to Herzog’s film to consider the risks and consequences of becoming-animal--not only for the human who becomes, but also for the animal who, as Deleuze and Guattari note, is no less transformed. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch out the way our bodies are engaged while commuting in order to elucidate several key aspects of the bodily experience of “in-between-ness.” I discover that within the rhythm and movement of the in-between, our bodies can open to a specific kind of conceptual creativity—an insight that I unfold in reference to the unanticipated innovation and transformation that accompanies other bodily experiences of in-between-ness more generally. This sketch, however, also demands that I reflect on phenomenological methodology, (...) and our ontological presuppositions about the “things” that we intend to “go back to.” I conclude by suggesting that while Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic ontology helps us explain the findings of my phenomenological sketch of commuting, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology can help to flesh out Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that all the work happens in “the logic of the AND”. While the method I call on in this paper is decidedly phenomenological, the conclusions I reach invite me to explore further the promise of a more “rhizomatic phenomenological” practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider climate change as a systemic respiratory crisis, and explore how breath can function as a mode of witnessing climate catastrophe. We build on feminist environmental humanities methodologies of embodied attunement to advance a more-than-human witnessing of climate change. We suggest that a feminist “conspiratorial” witnessing of breath(lessness) can afford an embodied, situated, empathetic and systemic mode of witnessing. In this approach, the witness (e.g., “the human”) is part of what is witnessed (the climate crisis). As (...) such, breathing climate catastrophe can reveal the intimate, visceral and personal violences of global climate change, and develop empathetic approaches to climate injustice. Nevertheless, as breath’s social and multispecies differentiation reveals, no-one can witness the entirety of climate catastrophe with their own bodies. We thus advocate for collective, more-than-individual modes of knowing, such as science, art and critical analysis, to augment our own sensorial experiences of witness. (shrink)

This article explores the ‘lack of meaning’ in contemporary society as a consequence of Western dualist thought paradigms and ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’ following the colloquial murder of God. The article then explores processual and new materialist approaches in the understanding of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal solidarity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justification of the processual approach in understanding the enfleshed (...) self, the article employs John Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s critical posthumanism, and contextualizes these considerations with Erich Fromm’s ethical distinction of being and having. (shrink)

The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as (...) justification or understanding, are distinctively valuable. We will call the general question of why knowledge is valuable the value problem. (shrink)

"First published as Metaphilosophy volume 45, nos. 4-5, except for 'Luck as risk and the lack of control account of luck,' first published in Metaphilosophy volume 46, no. 2 "--Title page vers.

Assistive technology is widely used in contemporary special needs education. Our interest is in the extent to which we can conceive of certain uses of AT in this educational context as a form of extended cognition. It is argued that what is critical to answering this question is that the relationship between the student and the AT is more than just that of subject-and-instrument, but instead incorporates a fluidity and spontaneity that puts it on a functional par with their use (...) of the student’s biological cognitive traits. It is claimed that AT use in special needs education offers an especially plausible case of extended cognition for just this reason. It is further maintained that understanding AT in this fashion has some important philosophical and practical ramifications, including how we should conceive of mainstream education, given that this is increasingly conducted within highly technologically-embedded environments. (shrink)

The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as (...) justification or understanding, are distinctively valuable. We will call the general question of why knowledge is valuable the value problem. (shrink)

In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)

In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)

This chapter presents some rather different ideas about the organization of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than fixed functional specialization, it emphasizes adaptability of neural coding to fit a behavioral context. In particular, it presents both neuroimaging and single-unit electrophysiological evidence to suggest that, in selected regions of the prefrontal cortex, neurons adapt their properties to code just that information of relevance to current behavior. This adaptation is a major contributor to the achievement of cognitive focus and control. Although this adaptive (...) coding model recognizes important regional specializations within the prefrontal cortex, it suggests a perspective on these that is rather different from that presumed in the traditional divide-and-conquer approach. (shrink)

In this essay I look at The Birth of Tragedy in order to explore two related issues. First, beginning with Nietzsche’s own later critical look back at the book, I argue that in lamenting both the influence of Schopenhauer, and the inclusion of an extended discussion of contemporary German culture, Nietzsche underplayed the interdependence of these elements and his analysis of tragedy and its significance in the book. Second, I argue that to understand Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian concept of tragedy we may (...) begin from the perspective of the term's common usage, attending to phenomena often labelled tragic, and glimpsing what holds sway just beneath their surfaces. Ultimately, although Nietzsche's expressed understanding of tragedy in these early years drew heavily on Schopenhauerian pessimism, it nevertheless exceeded that influence. (shrink)