Expansionism, Extremism, and Exceptionalism in Life
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5012921 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Antonia Walford (University College London), Donnacha Kirk (University College London) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 341-358 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/22011919-4215334 |
| OpenAlex | W2783694683 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
This article explores how taking physical cosmology and the entities that populate its fringes on their own terms might prompt anthropology to rethink what and how it thinks of life. Physical cosmologists work with inanimate matter that lies at the frontier of existential possibility, positing scales and concepts that seem to negate commonsense notions of life and nonlife. Although a common reaction in anthropology when faced with such infinite, nonhuman, and abstract landscapes is to try to crowbar "everyday life" back in, we argue that conceptual space needs to be made for another style of engagement between anthropology and physical cosmology. Taking the Boltzmann Brain as an example of life not only beyond the human but also beyond life as we know it, we start to flesh out a different sort of speculative, transdisciplinary endeavor
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Everyday life · Existentialism · Expansionism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophy · Race, Genetics, and Society
The invention of modern science
Art And Agency
Prospect
Anthropology and Nature
Reassembling the Social
How Forests Think
Being Alive
The Gift
Being Alive
The Self of the Scientist, Material for the Artist
Sounding the Limits of Life
Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective
We Have Never Been Modern
Thinking Through Things
The view from nowhere
The Force of Things
The Image of Objectivity
Otherness and the Actor Network
Re-Enchantment Cosmologies
Exchanging Perspectives
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
Situated Knowledges
Extreme
The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography
| Highly cited | No |
|---|