SHOW CASE: Abstracts - Issue 2, Vol. 1

Alien Resurrection and Becoming-Cyborg: "1 is Too Few"

Donna Haraway's seminal conceptualization of the Cyborg opens up many possibilities for envisioning a type of becoming that is itself all about possibilities. My reading of the posthuman here explores, not so much the merging of technology and humanity, but a Deleuzian/Guattarian affirmation of a human becoming that focuses on promise in the difficulties of what is new.

The film Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet – Director, Joss Whedon – Writer, 1997) is used here primarily as a strand of thought that illustrates this reading. Lt. Ellen Ripley, as a figure heavily burdened with repetition, and the android character of Call come together in this film to form an assemblage of a posthuman cyborgian transgression based in opposition, molecular force, and anomalous affirmation in the context of a fictionalized future filled with militaristic and patriarchal entropy.

By intercutting specific clips from the film to accompany my text, this multimedia exploration of "Becoming-Cyborg" serves as an example of how an arts education can use cinema to flex the creativity of production, and the production of creativity, as an engaging mode of thought and embodiment.

Becoming Anomolous: Thinking Curriculum at Far From Equilibrium States

The 'mutant' has achieved cultural ubiquity as a way of thinking the contemporary political and ethical complexities of difference. In such motion picture serials as the 'X-Men', television dramas as 'Heroes', the mutant has become a powerful concept for imagining the post-human. In part, the image of the mutant intervenes with Nietzsche's contention that the world is overdetermined by 'human-all-too-human' perspectives. As I will attempt to develop, the anthropocentric bias Nietzsche critiques forecloses on a 'swarm' of ontological possibilities available for conceptualizing the post-human. This essay will question 'What political and ontological forces of becoming are created by the anomaly?', and further, 'What is the affirmative significance of the mutant body for modern curriculum theorizing?'.

<coolness>: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

Social networking software seems to have made producers out of consumers. When users create blogs, Facebook accounts or personal websites, however, they work within prescribed technical borders. This paper explores the technological affordances of New Media networking tools, and focuses on the cultural significance of the term 'Cool'. Recent debates about the Internet and Cool have privileged the role of content, often ignoring the context of online production. Analyses of New Media should consider how Cool is created in a digital era. Websites are not innately Cool; Hypertext appears Cool because it privileges modes of pastiche and bricolage.

B(l)arney Or(l)an Act: Posthuman Identity in Art