Open access monographs

[Sigi Jottkandt <sigij AT openhumanitiespress.org>]

Hi all,

We are delighted to announce the latest book in the Critical Climate
Change series:

Minimal Ethics, by Joanna Zylinska

Life typically becomes an object of reflection when it is seen to be
under threat. In particular, humans have a tendency to engage in
thinking about life (instead of just continuing to live it) when being
confronted with the prospect of death: be it the death of individuals
due to illness, accident or old age; the death of whole ethnic or
national groups in wars and other forms of armed conflict; but also of
whole populations, be they human or nonhuman. Even though Minimal
Ethics for the Anthropocene is first and foremost concerned with
life—understood as both a biological and social phenomenon—it is the
narrative about the impending death of the human population (i.e.,
about the extinction of the human species), that provides a context
for its argument. “Anthropocene” names a geo-historical period in
which humans are said to have become the biggest threat to life on
earth. However, rather than as a scientific descriptor, the term
serves here primarily as an ethical injunction to think critically
about human and nonhuman agency in the universe.

Freely available at http://openhumanitiespress.org/minimal-ethics.html

Joanna Zylinska is Professor of New Media and Communications at
Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of four books—most
recently, Life after New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process (with
Sarah Kember; MIT Press, 2012) and Bioethics in the Age of New Media
(MIT Press, 2009)—she is also a translator of Stanislaw Lem's major
philosophical treatise, Summa Technologiae (University of Minnesota
Press, 2013).Together with Clare Birchall, Gary Hall and Open
Humanities Press, she runs the JISC-funded project Living Books about
Life, which publishes open access books at the crossroads of the
humanities and the sciences. Zylinska is one of the Editors of Culture
Machine, an international open-access journal of culture and theory,
and a curator of its sister project, Photomediations Machine. She
combines her philosophical writings and curatorial work with
photographic art practice.

All best,
Sigi, David and Gary
Open Humanities Press

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