ABSTRACT
This chapter explores new theorizations of the effects of living in an increasingly technologically mediated world. Although tool use is as old as humanity, the unprecedented ubiquity of intelligent machines, social media, and digital technology in the West has led theorists to consider anew questions of aesthetics, agency, and even what it means to be human today. After an overview of how these subjects have been handled by older theorists, this chapter looks in depth at the concepts and frameworks of three contemporary theorists: Jacques Rancière, whose theory of “the distribution of the sensible” has reinvigorated the concept of the aesthetic by highlighting its latent political dimension; Bruno Latour, whose background in science studies led him to formulate actor-network-theory before adapting his method of non-critique into a grammar of modes of existence; and N. Katherine Hayles, whose early studies of how scientific paradigms are represented in literature led her to postulate cybernetics as the starting point of our collective journey toward becoming “posthuman.” The concepts discussed in these sections are then applied to readings of three non-theory texts: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Gwyneth Jones’s Proof of Concept, and Ryan Coogler’s film Black Panther.
