Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Life: Life is the state of being characterized by growth, metabolism, homeostasis, adaptation, reproduction, and response to stimuli. Living organisms are made up of cells, which are the basic units of life._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Rosie Braidotti on Life - Dictionary of Arguments
Braidotti I 131 Life/Braidotti: One’s view on death depends on one’s assumptions about Life. In my vitalist materialist view, Life is cosmic energy, simultaneously empty chaos and absolute speed or movement. It is impersonal and inhuman in the monstrous, animal sense of radical alterity: zoe* in all its powers. For „zoe“ see >Terminology/Braidotti. >Vitalism/Braidotti. This does not mean that zoe, or life as absolute vitality, is not above negativity, because it can hurt. Zoe is always too much for the specific slab of enfleshed existence that constitutes single subjects. The human is a step down for pure intensity, or the force of the virtual. It is a constant challenge for us to rise to the occasion, to be ‘worthy of our times’, while resisting them, and thus to practise amor fati affirmatively. It is quite demanding to catch the wave of life’s intensities in a secular manner and ride on it, exposing the boundaries or limits as we transgress them. No wonder that most of us, as George Elliot astutely observed, turn our back on that roar of cosmic energy. We often crack in the process of facing life and just cannot take it anymore. Braidotti I 132 I want to stress instead the productive differential nature of zoe*, which means the productive aspect of the life-death continuum. It does not deny the reality of horrors, but rather to re-work it so as to assert the vital powers of healing and compassion. This is the core of posthuman affirmative ethics in a contemporary Spinozist mode (Braidotti, 2011b)(1). Braidotti I 138 Vitalism/Christianity: My vitalist brand of materialism could not be further removed from the Christian affirmation of Life or the transcendental delegation of the meaning and value system to categories higher than the embodied self. Quite the contrary, it is the intelligence of radically immanent flesh that states with every single breath that the life in you is not marked by any master signifier and it most certainly does not bear your name. The awareness of the absolute difference between intensive or incorporeal affects and the specific affected bodies that one happens to be is crucial to affirmative posthuman ethics. >Vitalism, >Posthumanism/Braidotti. *[The] vitalist approach to living matter displaces the boundary between the portion of life - both organic and discursive - that has traditionally been reserved for anthropos, that is to say bios, and the wider scope of animal and non-human life, also known as zoe. 1. Braidotti, Rosi. 2011b. Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Braidotti I Rosie Braidotti The Posthuman Cambridge, UK: Polity Press 2013 |
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