Book launch of the first English translation of Günther Anders’s The Obsolescence of the Human (1956). The translator, Dr Christopher John Müller (Macquarie University, Sydney), will be in conversation with Dr Kurt Borg (Malta).
Date: 5pm, 1 December
Venue: Arts Lecture Theatre, University of Malta
After the event drinks and nibbles will be served in the foyer of the Old Humanities Building.
Abstract:
With this first English translation of influential German philosopher Günther Anders’s 1956 masterpiece of critical theory, The Obsolescence of the Human, a new generation of readers can now engage with his prescient and haunting vision of a “world without us” dominated by technology.
Looking at technological events such as the detonation of the nuclear bomb and the arrival of televisions in our living rooms, Anders advances a warning of what humanity looks like in a world where it has surrendered all agency. He outlines the new emotional landscapes that shape our relationship to increasingly capable technology, including Promethean shame, the human sense of unease our own superior technological innovations can instil. Confronting the growing gap between what we can collectively create and what we can individually comprehend, Anders speculates on the trajectory of a developing technological world that rapidly exceeds our ability to control or even foresee its negative consequences.
The Obsolescence of the Human prefigures contemporary posthumanist discourse and is eerily predictive of current debates around automation, global warming, and artificial intelligence. Providing new ways to conceptualize the intersection of technology and emotion, it offers groundbreaking frameworks for future-oriented ethics. Radical in both its stylistic experimentation and its theoretical insights, this new translation presents a cautionary tale regarding the human capacity to usher in its own destruction.
Bionotes:
Christopher John Müller is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies & Media at Macquarie University, Sydney. His work focuses on the intersection of technology and emotion, with a special interest in the dynamics of shame, laughter, and humour. He is the author of Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence.
Kurt Borg is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Policy, Politics and Governance at the University of Malta. His interests include continental philosophy and political theory, particularly the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. He has published work on the ethics and politics of trauma, the essay and public happiness.
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