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' 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, digital culture, and chaos theory, as well as those concerned with the 'science wars' and the relation between the humanities and the sciences in general.
0 有用 Xinwei 2011-07-03 01:14:38
牛逼
8 有用 清露 2020-08-13 16:00:45
我来反驳一下食菠萝的短评,其实翻译的挺好的(除了关于Affect, emotion, feeling等词译得不够精确),觉得翻得不好是因为你本来就读不懂………
0 有用 sumi 2023-11-26 07:09:08 美国
degen, 加上Libet实验完全误读也算是跨学科传统手艺了
0 有用 废物 2022-07-27 00:59:34
马苏米这胡扯海扯,感觉只学了德勒兹与加塔利的文风,并没有得到其洞见。
0 有用 Ying 2012-04-30 14:08:43
作为研究affect theory的必读书目,对他这种毁人大脑的写法只有无语,弄懂了的部分真心佩服,不懂的部分也不打算去费事了。