Abstract
This essay contextualizes the Dantean figure of Ulysses, as conceived by Yuri M. Lotman, and draws this key figure of modernity into a network of mutually interconnected discourses: primarily transhumanist visions of the human future in space, which nevertheless arise from the specifically modern epistemic dimension of “restlessness,” and intertwine with post-war astronautics, cyborg visions of human re-engineering, and revolutionary considerations of speculative realism. The key is Lotman’s emphasis on Ulysses as a figure of “energy of thought”; in this regard, the essay shows how the original poetic “decision,” embodied by the Ulysses figure, advocates implicit cruelty in the name of the future (treated as an inevitable fate), and how this decision generates a logical and progressively unfolding series of “inhuman” images of man situated in the universe as an event of saturation of matter with merciless intelligence.
Funding source: GAČR 22-17984S: Focal Images: Violence and Inhumanism in Contemporary Art and Media Culture
Award Identifier / Grant number: GAČR 22-17984S
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Research funding: The study was funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), project No. 22-17984S: Focal images: Violence and Inhumanism in contemporary art and media culture.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: from semiotic odysseys to artistic tele-machinations
- The structural human and semiotic animal: between pride and humiliation
- Tomás Saraceno: semiotic regimes of posthuman temporalities
- To be is not to inhabit: Yuri M. Lotman’s Ulysses and his transhumanist context
- Transhumanism: the friendly face of the overhuman and the comic book Superman
- The impatient gaze: on the phenomenon of scrolling in the age of boredom
- Behavioral capital: gaming and monetization in post-marxist perspective
- The inhumanity of people living in Slovak Roma settlements: on the creation of the focal images
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: from semiotic odysseys to artistic tele-machinations
- The structural human and semiotic animal: between pride and humiliation
- Tomás Saraceno: semiotic regimes of posthuman temporalities
- To be is not to inhabit: Yuri M. Lotman’s Ulysses and his transhumanist context
- Transhumanism: the friendly face of the overhuman and the comic book Superman
- The impatient gaze: on the phenomenon of scrolling in the age of boredom
- Behavioral capital: gaming and monetization in post-marxist perspective
- The inhumanity of people living in Slovak Roma settlements: on the creation of the focal images