Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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Merleau-Ponty and Marx on Nature and Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Arts & Genomics, Karl Marx, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Interrogating Western philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty pinpoints the original meaning of the concept of Nature. "In Greek, the word 'nature' comes from the verb φύω, which alludes to the vegetative; the Latin word comes from nascor, 'to be born', 'to live'; it is drawn from the first, more fundamental meaning."
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Consumer Culture and Naming the Animals, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Consumer Culture, New American Studies, Roland Barthes

In his famous essay "Myth Today," published in 1957, Roland Barthes added a second dimension to the semiotic analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure, to the insight of the Swiss linguist that language is a social institution. Barthes added a social theory of culture to the social theory of language.
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Richard Rorty on Radicalism, Liberalism, and Poetic Language

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Jacques Derrida, Language, Polysexuality, Richard Rorty

I was very impressed reading something that Richard Rorty wrote about revolutionaries in his essay "The Contingency of Community" ( in the book "Contingency, irony, and solidarity"). Rorty argues very cogently for a kind of “impossible” deconstructive synthesis of radicalism and liberalism.
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Star Trek, Marx and Time Travel

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Karl Marx, Star Trek, Time Travel

Alan Shapiro - Star guest of the next Transmediale - on new computers, 1968 and anarchism. Interview in the Berlin daily newspaper "Neues Deutschland," January 5, 2010
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