Human Error: Species-Being and Media Machines

334 Pages·2011·5.459 MB·English

by  Dominic Pettman

HUMAN ERROR
Cary Wolfe, SerieS editor
14 Human Error: Species-Being
and Media Machines
Dominic Pettman
13 Junkware
Thierry Bardini
12 A Foray into the Worlds of Animals
and Humans, with
A Theory of Meaning
Jakob von Uexküll
(continued on page 319)
HUMAN ERROR
Species-Being and
Media Machines
Dominic Pettman

University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Parts of chapter 1 appeared previously as “Bear Life: Tracing an Opening
in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man,” in Mind the Screen: Media Concepts
According to Thomas Elsaesser, ed. Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters, and
Wanda Strauven, 153–65 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2008), and “Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog’s Anthropological Machine,”
Theory and Event 12, no. 2 (2009). Chapter 3 first appeared in “After the
Beep: Answering Machines and Creaturely Life,” boundary 2 37, no. 2
(Summer 2010): 133–53.
Copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pettman, Dominic.
Human error : species-being and media machines / Dominic Pettman.
p. cm. — (Posthumanities ; v. 14)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-7298-1 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-7299-8
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Animals (Philosophy). 3. Technology—
Philosophy. I. Title.
BD450.P467 2011
128—dc22
2010032723
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator
and employer.
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Merritt. The most marvelous of creatures.
This page intentionally left blank
. . . the human being, this wonderful, terrible and yet
miraculous entity of atomic being, of language, of
expression, of perception and imperception, of dull
drowsing, of calculations in sesterces, of desires, of
enigmas, this creature indivisible yet divided into
an infinite number of individual parts, individual
abilities, individual spheres, divided into organs and
living-zones, into substances, into atoms, multiplied
over and over again; all this multiplicity of being, this
maze of human particles, not even well composed,
this creaturely thicket, as earthly in its reality as earth’s
stony ribs, earthly as death’s skeleton, this underbrush
of bodies, limbs, eyes, and voices, this thicket of the
half-created and the unfinished which issues from
chance lust and is forever sprouting out, one from the
other, indiscriminately coupled in constantly renewed
lust, carelessly commingled, copulated, interwoven,
ramified, continuing to branch out and renew itself
while constantly withering, so that what was withered,
dried-up and faded might fall back to the earth.
—Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil
The humans are dead.
—The Flight of the Conchords
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Human Element 1
1. Bear Life: Tracing an
Opening in Grizzly Man 37
2. Zooicide: Animal Love
and Human Justice 59
3. After the Beep: Answering
Machines and Creaturely Life 111
4. The War on Terra: From Political
Economy to Libidinal Ecology 129
Conclusion: Human Remains 195
Notes 215
Bibliography 279
Filmography / Videography 293
Index 297