From the Publisher
Although the body has been the focus of much contemporary cultural
theory, the models that are typically applied neglect the most
salient characteristics of embodied existence--movement, affect,
and sensation--in favor of concepts derived from linguistic theory.
In "Parables for the Virtual" Brian Massumi views the body and
media such as television, film, and the Internet, as cultural
formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation beyond
the reach of the reading techniques founded on the standard
rhetorical and semiotic models.
Renewing and assessing William James''s radical empiricism and
Henri
Bergson''s philosophy of perception through the filter of the
post-war French philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault,
Massumi links a cultural logic of variation to questions of
movement, affect, and sensation. If such concepts are as
fundamental as signs and significations, he argues, then a new set
of theoretical issues appear, and with them potential new paths for
the wedding of scientific and cultural theory. Replacing the
traditional opposition of literal and figural with new distinctions
between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, "Parables
for the Virtual "tackles related theoretical issues by applying
them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the
digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan''s acting career. The
result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science,
and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and
multi-faceted argument.
"Parables for the Virtual" will interest students and scholars of
continental and Anglo-American philosophy, cultural studies,
cognitive science, electronic art, digitalculture, and chaos
theory, as well as those concerned with the "science wars" and the
relation between the humanities and the sciences in general.
From the Jacket
"Have you been disappointed by books that promise to bring ''the body'' or ''corporeality'' back into culture? Well, your luck is about to change. In this remarkable book Brian Massumi transports us from the dicey intersection between movement and sensation, through insightful explorations of affect and body image, to a creative reconfiguration of the ''nature-culture continuum.'' The writing is experimental and adventurous, as one might expect from a writer who finds inventiveness to be the most distinctive attribute of thinking. The perspective Massumi unfolds will have a major effect on cultural theory for years to come."--William Connolly, Johns Hopkins University