Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This article explores the contemporary politics of global violence through an examination of the particular challenges and possibilities facing Palestinians who seek to defend their communities against an ongoing settler-colonial project (Zionism) that is approaching a crisis point. As the colonial dynamic in Israel/Palestine returns to its most elemental level – land, trees, homes – it also continues to be a laboratory for new forms of accelerated violence whose global impact is (...) hard to overestimate. In such a context, Palestinians and international solidarity activists find themselves confronting a quintessential 21 st century activist dilemma: how to craft a strategy of what Paul Virilio calls “popular defense” at a time when everyone seems to be implicated in the machinery of global violence? I argue that while this dilemma represents a formidable challenge for Palestinians, it also helps explain why the Palestinian struggle is increasingly able to build bridges with wider struggles for global justice, ecological sustainability, and indigenous rights. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Contemporary French philosopher Michel Serres has out-of-the-rut thoughts about many things, including media. This article focuses on his understanding of the genealogy of media, the notion of exo-Darwinism, and his forward-looking attitude toward new technologies. An alternative, counterintuitive take on human nature is revealed as the discussion proceeds. This article also touches upon what is irreplaceable about humans in an age when artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving.

V skladu z avtorjevim širšim projektom prikazati ključno vlogo animacije za mišljenje ne le vseh oblik, pač pa tudi vseh vidikov filma, skuša prispevek razdelati teorijo gledalstva »lastno« animaciji, se pravi, kinu, filmu, filmu »kot takemu«, kot obliki animacije – filmske animacije. Prispevek se opira na to, kar avtor imenuje »skrivna zgradba filmske animacije«, izhajajoč pri tem iz avtorjeve obravnave Gorkijeve označitve kina kot »kraljestva senc«, ki ga tvorijo nedomačnost, vrnitev smrti kot prikazni, neskončno žalovanje, melanholija in skrivna inkorporacija. Prispevek (...) razširja njegov pojem gledalstva [spectatorship] v prikaznost [spectreship]. To prikaznost razume kot nekaj kar hkrati preganja in je preganjano, skrivnostna inkorporacija in skrivnostno inkorporirano. Prispevek tako povezuje delo Jacquesa Lacana s to animatično derridajevsko teorijo filmske animacije kot vrste prikazni, prikaznološkosti [hauntologcal], in avtorjev poziv ne le k psihoanalizi, pač pa tudi k analizi psihe filmske animacije – analizi prikazni, ki nastopa v filmski animaciji in kot filmska animacija. Tako prispevek ne povezuje le Lacanovega animatičnega dela s področjem filmske animacije, in narobe, temveč kaže, da je to delo vselej že prisotno, tu v tisti hiši prikazni, tisti grobnici, kjer Derrida in Lacan drug drugega animatično, šifrirano preganjata, četudi jima druga takšna prikazen, Jean Baudrillard, animatično sledi kot senca. (shrink)

The connections between forms of code and coding and the many crises that currently afflict the contemporary world run deep. Code and crisis in our time mutually define, and seemingly prolong, each other in ‘infinite branching graphs’ of decision problems. There is a growing academic literature that investigates digital code and software from a wide range of perspectives –power, subjectivity, governmentality, urban life, surveillance and control, biopolitics or neoliberal capitalism. The various strands in this literature are reflected in the papers (...) that comprise this special issue. They address topics ranging from social networks, mass media, financial markets and academic plagiarism to highway engineering in relation to the dynamics and diversity of crises. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this essay is to highlight and explore some of the underlying themes connecting codes and codings and the production and apprehension of ‘crisis’. We analyse how the ever-increasing intermediation of contemporary life by codes of various kinds has been closely shadowed by a proliferation of crises. We discuss three related aspects of the coupling of code and crisis (signification, performativity and excess) running across these seemingly diverse topics. We and the other contributors in this special issue seek to go beyond the restricted (and often restricting) understanding of code as the language of machines. Rather, we view code qua programs and algorithms as epitomizing a much broader phenomenon. The codes that we live, and that we live by, also tell us about the ways in which the ‘will to power’ and the 'will to knowledge' tend to be enacted in the contemporary world. (shrink)