Topic “Posthuman Age”
For many, after the era of a so-called post-modern age, that of a posthuman one seems to have emerged. Due to an ever-increasing entanglement of the human domain with various fields of the technological, for those who postulate that post-human era an entirely new epoch of history has begun. It is conceived as an epoch marked by an encompassing integration of the human and the technological and through that, leading not just to a new historical epoch to be added to all those others already passed by but to a new kind of history – the posthuman.
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Featured Articles
Konsum(t)räume. Die Warenwelt als Technotop
The phenomenon of consumption is based on the industrial production of both material and symbolic a-bundance. Until the 20th century, consumption was socially and regionally limited. Consumption in this traditional setting clearly had a status expressing function. The industrialization of the production of goods caused an expansion of material artefacts which could not have been imagined before and revolutionized the public and the private sphere. The civic concept of the city was replaced by a concept defining the public sphere as a warehouse, highly dependent on technical support. The conceptualization of the city as a sphere of consumption can be described as a distribution of electric lights. Electricity, advertising and brands sha-ped the technotopical ,format’ of the modern consumer mindset as spatial concept.
Editorial notes
Nach nunmehr eineinhalb Jahren erscheint es uns als inhaltlich Verantwortlichen für das E-Journal sinnvoll, eine Bilanz der bislang veröffentlichten Beiträge zu ziehen. Die Vielfalt und Qualität der uns erreichenden und nach Peer Review veröffentlichten Beiträge bestärkt uns in der Ansicht, grundsätzlich den richtigen Weg zu verfolgen. Bei der Gründung des E-Journals im Sommer 2009 war nicht absehbar, ob und wie die diskutierende virtuelle Community auf einen so offenstehenden Begriff wie ‘Spaces’ in Verbindung mit dem Hinweis auf sozialkonstruktivistische erkenntnisleitende Interessen reagieren würde. Uns hat die Breite der eingehenden Beiträge überrascht. Sie reichen von konkreten historischen Analysen über Fallstudien zu ‘Räumen’ bis zu theoretischen Überlegungen und umfassen vom Tagungsbericht über den Nachruf, vom Essay bis zum wissenschaftlichen Aufsatz ganz unterschiedliche Textformate …
Beyond Humanisms
In the first part of this paper a short history of Western humanisms (Socrates, Pico della Mirandola, Descartes, Kant) is presented. As far as these humanisms rest on a fixation of the ‘humanum’ they are metaphysical, although they might radically differ from each other. The second part deals with the present debate on trans- and posthumanism in the context of some breath-taking developments in science and technology.
Angeletics, a theory of messengers and messages, intends to give an answer to the leading question of this paper, namely: ‘what does it mean to go beyond humanisms?’ The conclusion exposes briefly an ethics of hospitality and care from an angeletic perspective.
Raum als Schicksal? Geografie, Territorium und Landschaft bescheren seinen Bewohnern unterschiedliche Infrastrukturen, Sicherheitszonen und Lebenschancen
Space is a fundamental category for any form of power. It is also a medium of social relations, articulated as physical and symbolic distance. The production and control of space is thus crucial to any execution of power, representing its potency, reproducing its social order, and neutralizing and naturalizing its objectives through planning processes that lead to a specific physical layout. Any claim to power and property manifests and institutionalizes itself in the act of territorialization. Infrastructure is a prominent practice of the organization of space. It formed a specific understanding of boundaries, zone of security and means of separation: interior/exterior, private/public, legal/illegal.
There have been many voices claiming, that the decisive borders of today’s social order can no longer be defined in space thanks to the impact of new media and the advent of the information and telecommunications revolution. This is seemingly true but geography still matters like Carl John A. Agnew said in the early eighties. So a closer look inspired especially by Carl Schmitt and his famous remarks post WK II in Der Nomos der Welt bears witness not only a massive fragmentation of the landscape but also the production of hermetic spaces and territorial and legal islands.
No Place (No) Where – Voyages on Crossing Lines
This article elaborates on the notion of place that is not linked to a specific destination or goal, but an experience through the act of wandering and wondering, actions and interactions, but most importantly through the use of one’s own individual senses.
Migratory Homes: Redesigning Group Identity, Prototyping Social Change
This paper describes Migratory Homes, two collaborative projects that investigate the notion of home/land and belonging in conditions of displacement. The fundamental question that Migratory Homes asks is “how can the disparate identities that constitute mixed societies collectively and equally participate in the creation of a common ‘home/land’ that would be co-designed, co-produced, and co-owned”? Through iterative engagements with conditions of everyday materiality, and by activating processes of co-design as research, Migratory Homes attempt to prototype conditions for social change.
Die Macht des geografischen Raums – Auch nach gut hundert Jahren sind Halford J. Mackinders Aussagen zum „geografischen Drehpunkt der Geschichte“ von überraschend politischer Relevanz
The English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder ended his famous 1904 article, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” with a disturbing reference to China. He posited that the Chinese, should they expand their power well beyond their borders, “might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom.” Leaving aside the sentiment’s racism, which was common for the era, nearly a hundred years ago Mackinder’s statement gives us a surprising view of enormous political actuality in geopolitics, which was denied for a couple of decades in Western Europe, especially in Germany.
