Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Dying: in psychology, dying refers to the process of approaching death and the associated psychological and emotional experiences. The study of dying encompasses coping mechanisms, grief, and existential considerations. See also Death._____________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 Dying - Dictionary of Arguments
Braidotti I 111 Dying/Braidotti: (…) posthuman vital politics shifts the boundaries between life and death and consequently deals not only with the government of the living, but also with practices of dying. >Post-humanism/Braidotti, >Death/Braidotti. Most of these are linked to inhuman(e) social and political phenomena such as poverty, famine and homelessness, which Zillah Eisenstein aptly labelled as ‘global obscenities’ (1998)(1). Vandana Shiva (1997)(2) stresses the extent to which bio-power has already turned into a form of ‘biopiracy’, which calls for very grounded and concrete political analyses. Thus, the bodies of the empirical subjects who signify difference (woman/native/earth or natural others) have become the disposable bodies of the global economy. Capitalism: Contemporary capitalism is indeed ‘bio-political’ in that it aims at controlling all that lives, as Foucault argues, but because Life is not the prerogative of humans only, it opens up a zoe-political* or post-anthropocentric dimension. >Life, >Anthropocentrism, >Post-anthropocentrism, >Humans/Braidotti. Braidotti I 130 (…) we need to think more rigorously about ways of dying, in the posthuman context of necropolitics on the one hand and the new forensic social sensibility on the other. How would a vitalist and materialist understanding of death work? Death is not a human prerogative, especially in the era of ‘disappearing’ nature. Having reached the antipodes of the rationalist idea of human stewardship of nature, the environmental question is how to prevent species extinction. This is a bio-political issue: which species are allowed to survive and which to die? >Biopolitics, >Death. And what are the criteria that would allow us to decide? Posthuman theory stresses the point that in order to develop adequate criteria, we need an alternative vision of subjectivity to support this effort and make it operational. >Posthumanism/Braidotti, >Subjectivity/Braidotti. We should start by itemizing the different socially distributed and organized ways of dying: violence, diseases, poverty; accidents; wars and catastrophes. The persistence of political violence and notions of ‘just wars’ is part of this conversation, as is the analysis of the ways in which critical philosophers have dealt with death (Critchley, 2008)(3). >War, >Violence. *[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. Eisenstein, Zillah. 1998. Global Obscenities. Patriarchy, Capitalism and the Lure of Cyberfantasy. New York: New York University Press. 2. Shiva, Vandana. 1997. Biopiracy. The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Boston, MA: South End Press. 3. Critchley, Simon. 2008. The Book of Dead Philosophers. London: Granta._____________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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