|
|
|
books
| book details |
On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience
By (author) Abou Farman
|
|
| on special |
normal price: R 1,120.95
Price: R 1,064.95
|
| book description |
An ethnographic exploration of technoscientific immortality Immortality has long been considered the domain of religion. But immortality projects have gained increasing legitimacy and power in the world of science and technology. With recent rapid advances in biology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, secular immortalists hope for and work toward a future without death. On Not Dying is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities—those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means—and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless. As secularism denies a soul, an afterlife, and a cosmic purpose, conflicts arise around the relationship of mind and body, individual finitude and the infinity of time and the cosmos, and the purpose of life. Immortalism today, Farman argues, is shaped by these historical and culturally situated tensions. Immortalist projects go beyond extending life, confronting dualism and cosmic alienation by imagining (and producing) informatic selves separate from the biological body but connected to a cosmic unfolding. On Not Dying interrogates the social implications of technoscientific immortalism and raises important political questions. Whose life will be extended? Will these technologies be available to all, or will they reproduce racial and geopolitical hierarchies? As human life on earth is threatened in the Anthropocene, why should life be extended, and what will that prolonged existence look like?
| product details |
Normally shipped |
Publisher | University of Minnesota Press
Published date | 21 Apr 2020
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 336
Dimensions | 216 x 140 x 38mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 0g
ISBN | 978-1-5179-0810-2
Readership Age |
BISAC | social science / death & dying
| other options |
Normally shipped |
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 1,398.95
Price | R 1,328.95
| on special |
|
|
|
To view the items in your trolley please sign in.
| sign in |
|
|
|
| specials |
|
The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller Learn how to recognise and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind.
|
With film rights snapped up by an Oscar winning Hollywood production company, rights sold in a world record 43 territories, and rave blurbs from David Baldacci, Lee Child and A.
|
The Thing at 52 is a beautiful picture book about friendship, loneliness and learning how to say goodbye.
|
|
|
|
