Autorentext

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University and founding director of its Centre for the Humanities. She has studied and practiced Continental philosophy in several continents: first at high school in Italy, then as a BA student at the Australian National University, and later as a graduate student at the Sorbonne in Paris and more recently at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and the European University Institute in Florence. She is the author of Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, now in its second edition.

Klappentext

Rosi Braidotti's nomadic theory outlines a sustainable modern subjectivity as one in flux, never opposed to a dominant hierarchy yet intrinsically other, always in the process of becoming, and perpetually engaged in dynamic power relations that are both creative and restrictive. Nomadic theory offers an original and powerful alternative for scholars working in cultural and social criticism and has, over the past decade, crept into continental philosophy, queer theory, and feminist, postcolonial, techno-science, media and race studies, as well as architecture, history and anthropology. This collection provides a core introduction to nomadic theory and Braidotti's innovative formulations, which playfully engage with Deleuze, Foucault, Irigaray, and a host of political and cultural issues.Arranged thematically, the essays begin with concepts like sexual difference and embodied subjectivity and follow with technoscience, feminism, postsecular citizenship, and the politics of affirmation. Braidotti develops a distinctly positive critical theory that rejuvenates the experience of political scholarship. Inspired but not confined by Deleuzian vitalism, with its commitment to the ontology of flows, networks, and dynamic transformations, she emphasizes affects, imagination, and creativity and the politics of radical immanence. Incorporating ideas from Nietzsche and Spinoza as well, Braidotti establishes a critical-theoretical framework equal parts critique and creation. Ever mindful of the perils of defining difference in terms of denigration and the related tendency to subordinate sexualized, racialized, and naturalized others, she explores the eco-philosophical implications of nomadic theory, feminism, and the irreducibility of sexual difference and sexuality. Her dialogue with techno-science is crucial to nomadic theory, which deterritorializes the established understanding of what counts as human, as well as our relationship to animals, the environment, and changing notions of materialism. Keeping her distance from the near-obsessive focus on vulnerability, trauma, and melancholia in contemporary political thought, Braidotti promotes a politics of affirmation that could become its own generative life force.

Inhalt

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction11. Transposing Differences2. Meta(l)morphoses: Women, Aliens, and Machines3. Animals and Other Anomalies4. The Cosmic Buzz of Insects25. Matter-Realist Feminism6. Intensive Genre and the Demise of Gender7. Postsecular Paradoxes38. Complexity Against Methodological Nationalism9. Nomadic European Citizenship410. Powers of Affirmation11. Sustainable Ethics and the Body in Pain12. Forensic Futures513. A Secular PrayerNotesBibliographyIndex