Chris Danta
Biographic Data
| ID | 1007205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Danta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Danta |
| SIGNATURE | DANTA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2801-8117 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Dear AI Reader: Nonhuman Perspective and Evolutionary Thinking in the Human-Machine Relation
Many writers figure machines in evolutionary terms, as living and evolving organisms. The American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick observed in his 1972 speech “The Android and the Human” that in the last decade “our environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components—all this is in fact beginning more and more to possess . . . animation.” Already i…
J.M. Coetzee and the Aesthetics of Disgust
This article contends that we can learn much about how Coetzee tells stories by examining how he treats the subject of disgust. Coetzee represents disgust so often in his fiction, I argue, because disgust figures the subject's relation to the object as both embodied and contemplative. Staging scenes of disgust enables Coetzee to do two apparently contradictory things at once: (1) represent the immediacy of a focalizing character's physical reacti…
Earthbound in the Anthropocene
Panpsychism and speculative evolutionary aesthetics in Samuel Butler's 'The Book of the Machines
Panpsychism is ‘the theory or belief that there is an element of consciousness in all matter’. An ancient idea in Western philosophy that predates the earliest writings of the pre-Socratics, panpsychism is currently being revived in a number of different disciplines in the humanities. One reason for this resurgence of interest in panpsychism in the contemporary humanities is that panpsychism mitigates human exceptionalism by reconnecting us with …
Animal Fables after Darwin: Literature, Speciesism, and Metaphor
Eurydice’s Curse: J. M. Coetzee and the Prospect of Death
The prospect of death is one of J. M. Coetzeeâ s central and enduring concerns. As David Attwell observes in his biography, â The most trenchant of the purposes of Coetzeeâ s metafiction . . . is that it is a means whereby he challenges himself with sharply existential questionsâ . My claim in this essay is that Coetzee uses the act of writing existentially to orient himself and his readers to the prospect of death. I argue that Coetzee treats th…
Might sovereignty be devouring: Derrida and the Fable
“Might sovereignty be devouring?”Derrida and the Fable Chris Danta (bio) “I have a taste only for that taste, for what is written by tongues/languages, from mouth to ear, from mouth to mouth, or mouth to lips...” — Jacques Derrida in interview with Anne Berger “To love without wanting to devour must surely be anorexic.” — Jacques Derrida in interview with Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson I. Derrida and Orality Few would regard Jacques Derrida as…
Introduction: Fabled Thought: On Jacques Derrida's The Beast & the Sovereign
IntroductionFabled Thought: On Jacques Derrida’s The Beast & the Sovereign Matthew Chrulew (bio) and Chris Danta (bio) “In the beginning was the fable.” — Paul Valéry Jacques Derrida’s lectures on La bête et le souverain, given at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales from 2001-2003, comprise a remarkable set of reflections on sovereignty and its opposition and overlap with bestiality. Published in two volumes by Éditions Galilée, and …
Derrida and the Test of Secrecy
Jacques Derrida reads the biblical story of Genesis 22, in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, as a test of secrecy. Derrida follows Kierkegaard in presuming that Abraham not only does not but also cannot tell anyone about what God has commanded him to do. For Derrida, moreover, Abraham comes to embody the absolute right to non-response or secrecy constituting the modern institution of literature. In this essay, I criticize…
The future will have been animal: Dr Moreau and the aesthetics of monstrosity
In a note to his 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, H.G. Wells writes: “Strange as it may seem to the unscientific reader, there can be no denying that, whatever amount of credibility attaches to the detail of this story, the manufacture of monsters—and perhaps even quasi-human monsters—is within the possibilities of vivisection”. Wells has been proven right about the possibility of producing interspecies hybrids. Moreau is a late-Victorian …
The Political Animal
The Political Animal Chris Danta (bio) and Dimitris Vardoulakis (bio) There is an anecdote, or perhaps a fable, about the philosophers of the Platonic Academy attempting to define the human. After much debate, the members of the Academy arrived at a seemingly succinct and accurate definition: man is a wingless biped (dipous apteron). At that moment, Diogenes the cynic, who had been eavesdropping on their deliberations, suddenly threw in the philo…
Kafka's Mousetrap: The Fable of the Dying Voice
Kafka's Mousetrap:The Fable of the Dying Voice Chris Danta (bio) You're wrong to adopt a moral point of view. I adopt that of an animal. I am not a man among men. I am animal. —Georges Bataille in conversation with Maurice Heine We have made the louse in our image; let us see ourselves in his. —Michel Serres, The Parasite I. The Dying Voice Sometimes fiction acts in a gently prophetic way and by a strange coincidence a writer awakes one morning t…
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The Political Animal
The Political Animal Chris Danta (bio) and Dimitris Vardoulakis (bio) There is an anecdote, or perhaps a fable, about the philosophers of the Platonic Academy attempting to define the human. After much debate, the members of the Academy arrived at a seemingly succinct and accurate definition: man is a wingless biped (dipous apteron). At that moment, Diogenes the cynic, who had been eavesdropping on their deliberations, suddenly threw in the philo…
Kafka's Mousetrap: The Fable of the Dying Voice
Kafka's Mousetrap:The Fable of the Dying Voice Chris Danta (bio) You're wrong to adopt a moral point of view. I adopt that of an animal. I am not a man among men. I am animal. —Georges Bataille in conversation with Maurice Heine We have made the louse in our image; let us see ourselves in his. —Michel Serres, The Parasite I. The Dying Voice Sometimes fiction acts in a gently prophetic way and by a strange coincidence a writer awakes one morning t…
The future will have been animal: Dr Moreau and the aesthetics of monstrosity
In a note to his 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, H.G. Wells writes: “Strange as it may seem to the unscientific reader, there can be no denying that, whatever amount of credibility attaches to the detail of this story, the manufacture of monsters—and perhaps even quasi-human monsters—is within the possibilities of vivisection”. Wells has been proven right about the possibility of producing interspecies hybrids. Moreau is a late-Victorian …
Derrida and the Test of Secrecy
Jacques Derrida reads the biblical story of Genesis 22, in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, as a test of secrecy. Derrida follows Kierkegaard in presuming that Abraham not only does not but also cannot tell anyone about what God has commanded him to do. For Derrida, moreover, Abraham comes to embody the absolute right to non-response or secrecy constituting the modern institution of literature. In this essay, I criticize…
Might sovereignty be devouring: Derrida and the Fable
“Might sovereignty be devouring?”Derrida and the Fable Chris Danta (bio) “I have a taste only for that taste, for what is written by tongues/languages, from mouth to ear, from mouth to mouth, or mouth to lips...” — Jacques Derrida in interview with Anne Berger “To love without wanting to devour must surely be anorexic.” — Jacques Derrida in interview with Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson I. Derrida and Orality Few would regard Jacques Derrida as…
Introduction: Fabled Thought: On Jacques Derrida's The Beast & the Sovereign
IntroductionFabled Thought: On Jacques Derrida’s The Beast & the Sovereign Matthew Chrulew (bio) and Chris Danta (bio) “In the beginning was the fable.” — Paul Valéry Jacques Derrida’s lectures on La bête et le souverain, given at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales from 2001-2003, comprise a remarkable set of reflections on sovereignty and its opposition and overlap with bestiality. Published in two volumes by Éditions Galilée, and …
Animal Fables after Darwin: Literature, Speciesism, and Metaphor
Eurydice’s Curse: J. M. Coetzee and the Prospect of Death
The prospect of death is one of J. M. Coetzeeâ s central and enduring concerns. As David Attwell observes in his biography, â The most trenchant of the purposes of Coetzeeâ s metafiction . . . is that it is a means whereby he challenges himself with sharply existential questionsâ . My claim in this essay is that Coetzee uses the act of writing existentially to orient himself and his readers to the prospect of death. I argue that Coetzee treats th…
Panpsychism and speculative evolutionary aesthetics in Samuel Butler's 'The Book of the Machines
Panpsychism is ‘the theory or belief that there is an element of consciousness in all matter’. An ancient idea in Western philosophy that predates the earliest writings of the pre-Socratics, panpsychism is currently being revived in a number of different disciplines in the humanities. One reason for this resurgence of interest in panpsychism in the contemporary humanities is that panpsychism mitigates human exceptionalism by reconnecting us with …
Earthbound in the Anthropocene
J.M. Coetzee and the Aesthetics of Disgust
This article contends that we can learn much about how Coetzee tells stories by examining how he treats the subject of disgust. Coetzee represents disgust so often in his fiction, I argue, because disgust figures the subject's relation to the object as both embodied and contemplative. Staging scenes of disgust enables Coetzee to do two apparently contradictory things at once: (1) represent the immediacy of a focalizing character's physical reacti…
Dear AI Reader: Nonhuman Perspective and Evolutionary Thinking in the Human-Machine Relation
Many writers figure machines in evolutionary terms, as living and evolving organisms. The American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick observed in his 1972 speech “The Android and the Human” that in the last decade “our environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components—all this is in fact beginning more and more to possess . . . animation.” Already i…
Art (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Literature (8 works) · Law (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Fable (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Theology (4 works)