Neocybernetics and narrative / Bruce Clarke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clarke, Bruce, 1950- author.

Series:

Posthumanities ; 29.

Posthumanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Narration (Rhetoric).

Cybernetics in literature.

System theory in literature.

Physical Description:

xxi, 211 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2014]

Summary:

Neocybernetics and Narrative opens a new chapter in Bruce Clarke's project of rethinking narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates the potential of second-order systems theory to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. A pioneer of systems narratology, Clarke offers readers a synthesis of the neocy-bernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. Clarke declares the end of the era of the cyborg laid to rest as the ontology of technical objects is brought into differential coordination with operations of living, psychic, and social systems. The second-order discourse of cognition destabilizes the usual sense of cognition as conscious awareness, revealing the possibility of nonconscious and nonhuman forms of sentience. Book jacket.

Contents:

1.Systems, Media, Narrative: From the Trace to the Telepathic Imaginary

2.Communication and Information: Noise and Form in Michel Serres and Niklas Luhmann

3.Feedback Loops: Media Embedding and Narrative Time from Jimi Hendrix to Eternal Sunshine and Memento

4.Observing Aramis, or the Love of Technology: Objects and Projects in Gilbert Simondon and Bruno Latour

5.Mediations of Gaia: Ecology and Epistemology from Gregory Bateson and Felix Guattari to Avatar.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816691029

0816691029

9780816691005

0816691002

OCLC:

870529536