In the age of animal rights, artificial intelligence, drone warfare, and corporate personhood, we gradually find ourselves no longer the sole proprietors of what once seemed like the exclusive purview of the human condition. Thinking beyond the human is a chance to reflect critically on cognition, language, law, literature, war, and culture from the perspective of animals, machines, and complex systems.
In this course we will ask “What is it like to be a bat?” along with Thomas Nagel, analyze elephant paintings, simian and machine-generated poetry, contemplate the rhizome along with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, question the history of drone warfare with Manuel de Landa, consider the lobster with David Foster Wallace, ponder insect semiotics with Jakob von Uexküll and Franz Kafka, define life with Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, investigate information and systems theories with Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, and explore the inner lives of cyborgs with Donna Haraway and Isaac Asimov.
