Product Description: Are totems merely a thing of the distant past? Or might it be that our sleek new machines are producing totemic forces which we are only beginning to recognize? This book asks to what degree today's media technologies are haunted by a Freudian ghost, functioning as totems or taboos (or both)...read more

Product Description: What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind—like art, empathy, or technology—fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive “human error” may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions...read more

Product Description: Can love really be considered another form of technology?Dominic Pettman says it can-although not before carefully redefining technology as a cultural challenge to what we mean by the humanin the information age. Using the writings of such important thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Bernard Stiegler as a springboard, Pettman explores the techtonicmovements of contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the language of eros...read more

Product Description: Applying Jean Baudrillard's question "What are you doing after the orgy?" to the postmillennial climate that informs our contemporary cultural moment, this book argues that the imagination of apocalyptic endings has been an obsessive theme in post-Enlightenment culture...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)