Please Note: This option is on offer in 2026-27. Not all options are available in every year and some course content might change.

Rethinking Subjectivity: Technology, Ecology, Critique (Michaelmas Term)
Convenors: Prof. Nikolaj Lübecker

Over the last twenty years, ecological and technological developments have prompted a rethinking of human subjectivity: in the age of the Anthropocene and an increased hybridisation of technology and biology, we are no longer sure about the limits of the human subject. As Rosi Braidotti therefore writes: ‘We need a subject position worthy of our times’ (Posthuman Knowledge (2019)). These seminars interrogate what such a subject position might look like through the study of literature, film and philosophy. Most of the material discussed will be recent, but we may also go back to earlier texts that can inspire new approaches to the present challenges. Topics and names discussed may include: general ecology, cybernetics, technocritical studies, the world brain, cyborgs, contagion, posthumanism, and transhumanism; Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze, Ursula le Guin, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Vilém Flusser, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, and Alain Resnais.