Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention

Accounts by geographers of the ways in which urban spaces are digitally mediated have proliferated in the last few years. This significant body of work pays particular attention to the production of urban space by software and digital hardware, and geographers have drawn on various kinds of posthuma...

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Main Author: Rose, G
Format: Journal article
Published: Taylor and Francis (Routledge) 2017
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author Rose, G
author_facet Rose, G
author_sort Rose, G
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description Accounts by geographers of the ways in which urban spaces are digitally mediated have proliferated in the last few years. This significant body of work pays particular attention to the production of urban space by software and digital hardware, and geographers have drawn on various kinds of posthumanist philosophies to theorize the agency of the technological nonhuman. The agency of the human, however, has been left undertheorized in this work, often appearing in the form of excessive resistance to the agency granted to the digital. This article contributes to understanding the digital mediation of cities by theorizing a specifically posthuman agency; that is, a human agency both mediated through technics and diverse. Drawing on the philosophy of Stiegler as well as a range of feminist digital scholarship, the article conceptualizes posthuman agency as always already coconstituted with technologies. Posthumans are simultaneously individuated and exteriorized in that coconstitution, and this permits agency understood as reinvention. The article also insists that such sociotechnical agency is differentiated, particularly in terms of the spatialities and temporalities through which it is organized. It concludes by arguing that geographers must reconfigure their understanding of digitally mediated cities and acknowledge the inventiveness and diversity of urban posthuman agency.
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spelling oxford-uuid:7312c5f6-85ed-4eff-9058-e9ab1388006f2022-03-26T19:54:08ZPosthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinventionJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:7312c5f6-85ed-4eff-9058-e9ab1388006fSymplectic Elements at OxfordTaylor and Francis (Routledge)2017Rose, GAccounts by geographers of the ways in which urban spaces are digitally mediated have proliferated in the last few years. This significant body of work pays particular attention to the production of urban space by software and digital hardware, and geographers have drawn on various kinds of posthumanist philosophies to theorize the agency of the technological nonhuman. The agency of the human, however, has been left undertheorized in this work, often appearing in the form of excessive resistance to the agency granted to the digital. This article contributes to understanding the digital mediation of cities by theorizing a specifically posthuman agency; that is, a human agency both mediated through technics and diverse. Drawing on the philosophy of Stiegler as well as a range of feminist digital scholarship, the article conceptualizes posthuman agency as always already coconstituted with technologies. Posthumans are simultaneously individuated and exteriorized in that coconstitution, and this permits agency understood as reinvention. The article also insists that such sociotechnical agency is differentiated, particularly in terms of the spatialities and temporalities through which it is organized. It concludes by arguing that geographers must reconfigure their understanding of digitally mediated cities and acknowledge the inventiveness and diversity of urban posthuman agency.
spellingShingle Rose, G
Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title_full Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title_fullStr Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title_full_unstemmed Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title_short Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: exteriorization, individuation, reinvention
title_sort posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city exteriorization individuation reinvention
work_keys_str_mv AT roseg posthumanagencyinthedigitallymediatedcityexteriorizationindividuationreinvention