What does it mean to be human? And, more precisely, what does it mean to be human now, with both humanism and the humanities in crisis? In answer to these questions,
Laughing on the Brink of Humanity seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation—a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity—in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science—the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.
Laughing on the Brink of Humanity seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation—a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity—in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science—the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.
Sobre o autor
Jan Miernowski is the Douglas Kelly Professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Warsaw. He is the author ofLa Beauté de la haine: Essais de misologie littéraire and the editor of
Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism in Dialogue.
Língua Inglês ● Formato EPUB ● Páginas 304 ● ISBN 9798855800012 ● Editora State University of New York Press ● Publicado 2024 ● Carregável 24 meses ● Moeda EUR ● ID 9418540 ● Proteção contra cópia Adobe DRM
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