The subject of the posthuman, of what it means to be or to cease to be human, is emerging as a shared point of debate at large in the natural and social sciences and the humanities.
This volume asks what classical learning can bring to the table of posthuman studies, assembling chapters that explore how exactly the human self of Greek and Latin literature understands its own relation to animals, monsters, objects, cyborgs and robotic devices.
With its widely diverse habitat of heterogeneous bodies, minds, and selves, classical literature again and again blurs the boundaries between the human and the non-human; not to equate and confound the human with its other, but playfully to highlight difference and hybridity, as an invitation to appraise the animal, monstrous or mechanical/machinic parts lodged within humans.
This comprehensive collection unites contributors from across the globe, each delving into a different classical text or narrative and its configuration of human subjectivity-how human selves relate to other entities around them. For students and scholars of classical literature and the posthuman, this book is a first point of reference.
Author(s): Giulia Maria Chesi, Francesca Spiegel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 480
City: London
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION: THE SUBJECT OF THE HUMAN
Section 1: Humanism and Post/humanism
Section 2: The heterogeneous self
Section 3: Becoming- animal
Section 4: Becoming- machine
Section 5: Disentangling technophobia
Section 6: Informatics of domination
Section 7: Post/humanism and anarchy
INTRODUCTIONS TO POST/HUMAN THEORIES
THE QUESTION OF THE ANIMAL AND THE ARISTOTELIAN HUMAN HORSE
FOUCAULT, THE MONSTROUS AND MONSTROSITY
HOW TO BECOME A CYBORG1
Cyborg: A short biography
Polymorphic information systems
Networks and nodes
Embodied knowledge: Material-semiotic actors
ANDERS, SIMONDON AND THE BECOMING OF THE POSTHUMAN
Posthuman as pharmakon
Promethean shame and the obsolescence of man
Double alienation and the becoming of the technical individual
Against naïve posthuman ontologies
PART I DE/HUMANIZATION AND ANIMALS
CHAPTER 1 ODYSSEUS, THE BOAR AND THE ANTHROPOGENIC MACHINE1
I. Audience expectations and the analogical worldview
II. The anthropogenic machine at work
III. Cross-species entanglements
CHAPTER 2 WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A DONKEY (WITH A HUMAN MIND)? PSEUDO-LUCIAN’S ONOS
Becoming a donkey
Lucius’ relationship with human and non-human animals
Suffering animals
A donkey’s life with a human mind
Concluding words
CHAPTER 3 QUAM SOLI VIDISTIS EQUI: FOCALIZATION AND ANIMAL SUBJECTIVITY IN VALERIUS FLACCUS
Introduction
The Promethean vulture
The cavalry of Ariasmenus
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 ANIMALITY, ILLNESS AND DEHUMANIZATION: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ILLNESS IN SOPHOCLES’ PHILOCTETES1
Illness as hyper-awareness of one’s corporeal reality
Identity loss: Becoming animal
Identity loss: From civilized man to ‘primitive’
Identity loss: The house-keeper, the baby and the slave
Ultimate identity loss: Bodily annihilation
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5 THE IMPERIAL ANIMAL: VIRGIL’S GEORGICS AND THE ANTHROPO-/THERIOMORPHIC ENTERPRISE1
Domestication station
Domestication nation
Conquest and quarantine
CHAPTER 6 ANIMALS, GOVERNANCE AND WARFARE IN THE ILIAD AND AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS
A sheepish subject
The Shepherd of the people: The leader and his flock
Martial herding
Prey-predators
Gender: The bull and the cattle
Aeschylus’ Persians : The shattered flock
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7 THE SOVEREIGN AND THE BEAST: IMAGES OF ANCIENT TYRANNY
PART II THE MONSTROUS
CHAPTER 8 TYPHOEUS OR COSMIC REGRESSION (THEOGONY 821–880)
CHAPTER 9 DEMONIC DISEASE IN GREEK TRAGEDY: ILLNESS, ANIMALITY AND DEHUMANIZATION
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Sophocles, Trachiniae and Philoctetes
Euripides, Hippolytus and Orestes
Conclusions: The νόσοςas ἀμορφία
CHAPTER 10 THE SPHINX AND ANOTHER THINKING OF LIFE
CHAPTER 11 WHEN ROME’S ELEPHANTS WEEP: HUMANE MONSTERS FROM POMPEY’S THEATRE TO VIRGIL’S TROJAN HORSE
Elephants’ human community
Elephants as the symbol of imperial power
Elephants, the Trojan Horse, and the origins of Latin literature
CHAPTER 12 THE MONSTROSITY OF CATO IN LUCAN’S CIVIL WAR 9
Introduction
Fracturing of the subject
Affinities and alienation
Virtus after the vir
Conclusions
CHAPTER 13 WHY CAN’T I HAVE WINGS? ARISTOPHANES’ BIRDS
Introduction
Avian technology
Wings as demerit goods
Ornithomania
PART III BODIES AND ENTANGLEMENTS
CHAPTER 14 THE SEER’S TWO BODIES: SOME EARLY GREEK HISTORIES OF TECHNOLOGY
CHAPTER 15 FLUID CYPRESS AND HYBRID BODIES AS A COGNITIVELY DISTURBING METAPHOR IN EURIPIDES’ CRETANS
The temple and the cypress
Fluid cypress
No ordinary metaphor
The body and the temple
CHAPTER 16 BODY POLITICS IN THE ANTIQUITATES ROMANAE OF DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS
Introduction
The distinctiveness of the Antiquitates Romanae
The Fable of the Belly and the Body’s Members
Menenius Agrippa before the senate
Menenius Agrippa before the seceders
CHAPTER 17 THE MYTH OF IO AND FEMALE CYBORGIC IDENTITY
The girl-heifer in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Suppliant Maidens
Conclusions
CHAPTER 18 COSMIC, ANIMAL AND HUMAN BECOMINGS: A CASE STUDY IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Harmonic compounds: Philolaus’ becomings
Philolaus’ cosmic, animal and human becomings
CHAPTER 19 POSTHUMANISM IN SENECA’S HAPPY LIFE: ‘ANIMALISM’, PERSONIFICATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY IN ROMAN STOICISM ( EPISTULAE MORALES 113 AND DE VITA BEATA 5–8)
Introduction: The two cyborgs of Roman Stoicism
Four arguments from Ep. 113
Four arguments and three tropes in The Happy Life
How the virtues became posthuman: The ei-cuius clause of Ep. 113
Conclusion: The part of play in Roman philosophy
CHAPTER 20 HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANS: SIMEON THE STYLITE
Becoming-plant (Theodoret, RH 26.5)
Becoming- mountain, becoming-insect (Theodoret, RH 26.10)
Becoming-icon (Theodoret, RH 26.11)
Becoming-column (Theodoret, RH 26.12)
Becoming-human (Theodoret, RH 26.1, 23, 28)
Becoming-worm (Antonius, LS 5–8, 17–18)
Becoming flesh: Concluding reflections
PART IV OBJECTS, MACHINES AND ROBOTIC DEVICES
CHAPTER 21 ASSEMBLAGES AND OBJECTS IN GREEK TRAGEDY
Ruinous materials in Aeschylus’ Oresteia
Material assemblages in Euripides’ Andromache
Bodystuff in Sophocles’ Trachiniae
CHAPTER 22 HYBRIS AND HYBRIDITY IN AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS: A POSTHUMANIST PERSPECTIVE ON XERXES’ EXPEDITION
The bridging of the Hellespont and supra-humanity
Infra-humanity at Salamis
Epilogue
CHAPTER 23 MALFUNCTIONS OF EMBODIMENT: MAN/WEAPON AGENCY AND THE GREEK IDEOLOGY OF MASCULINITY
CHAPTER 24 AENEID 12: A CYBORG BORDER WAR
Arma uirumque
Wounding
Virgil’s ideological chimera
CHAPTER 25 THE PRESENCE OF PRESENTS: SPEAKING OBJECTS IN MARTIAL’S XENIA AND APOPHORETA
Earlier voices
Who gets to speak and why
Entangled voices
Conclusion
CHAPTER 26 AUTOMATOPOETAE MACHINAE: LAWS OF NATURE AND HUMAN INVENTION (VITRUVIUS 9.8.4–7)
CHAPTER 27 PANDORA AND ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGY TODAY
Pandora as a fusion of the organic and the technical
Pandora as a hybrid of machine and organism
Pandora and robotic technology today
Conclusions
CHAPTER 28 ART, LIFE AND THE CREATION OF AUTOMATA: ON PINDAR, OLYMPIAN 7.50–53
‘Like living and moving beings’
Sane mentality and the straight road
CHAPTER 29 STAYING ALIVE: PLATO, HORACE AND THE WRITTEN TEXT
Introduction
Plato and the immortality of Socrates
Horace and the intertextual continuum
Conclusion
CHAPTER 30 BEYOND THE BEAUTIFUL EVIL? THE ANCIENT/FUTURE HISTORY OF SEX ROBOTS
CONCLUSIONS
I
II
III
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
