Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twentieth-first Century

(Paperback)

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As we face the compounded crises of late capitalism, environmental catastrophe and technological transformation, who are the thinkers and the ideas who will allow us to understand the world we live in McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: design, environment, technology and introduces us to the thinking of nineteen major writers. Each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. The authors include: Sianne Ngai, Kodwo Eshun, Lisa Nakamura, Hito Steyerl, Yves Citton, Randy Martin, Jackie Wang, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Achille Mbembe, Deborah Danowich and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eyal Weizman, Cory Doctorow, Benjamin Bratton, Tiziana Terranova, Keller Easterling, Jussi Parikka. Wark argues that we are too often told that expertise is obtained by specialisation. Sensoria connects the themes and arguments across intellectual silos. They explore the edges of disciplines to show how we might know the world: through the study of culture, the different notions of how we create such things, and the impact that the machines that we devise have had upon us. The book is a vital and timely introduction to the future both as a warning but also as a road map on how we might find our way out of the current crisis.

Reviews

A provocative and compelling exploration of our digital world as it crashes towards ecological disaster. Counter-intuitive, insightful, and imaginative, Capital is Dead is a timely reminder that there are things worse than capitalism - and we may just be living through them -- Nick Snricek, co-author of Inventing the Future * [in praise of Capital is Dead] *
a playbook for the Anthropocene, a set of moves and strategies extracted from an unexpected canon of texts formed by a mash-up of the Soviet avant-garde and the Californian high-tech imaginary. * Radical Philosophy [in praise of Molecular Red] *
A very imaginative, historically smart, politically generative thesis . that I think we urgently need. -- Donna Haraway, author of A Cyborg Manifesto * [in praise of Molecular Red] *
A wonderful book . informative and moving . a great recovery of an instructive life and literary effort. The book makes the case for a kind of political vision and action we need to recognize and enact. A true pleasure to read. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy * [in praise of Molecular Red] *
Wark is a fine aphorist ... Playful, angry, depressed, celebratory, this is a book for anyone not convinced that there is no alternative to the way we live now. -- Observer * [In Praise of The Beach Beneath the Streets] *
McKenzie Wark opens her introduction to Sensoria by asking, 'What is the point of scholarship' Wark's answer is that scholarship 'is about the common task of knowing the world'. This seems a sound definition as well as a worthwhile project for humanity in the twenty-first century. -- J.J. Charlesworth * ArtReview *

Author Bio

McKenzie Wark is the author of Capital is Dead, General Intellects and Molecular Red among other books. She teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.