Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (Posthumanities)

320 Pages·2010·2.25 MB·English

by  Jussi Parikka

Insect Media
Cary Wolfe, Series Editor
11 Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology
Jussi Parikka
10 Cosmopolitics II
Isabelle Stengers
 9 Cosmopolitics I
Isabelle Stengers
 8 What Is Posthumanism?
Cary Wolfe
 7 Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic
John Protevi
 6 Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times
Nicole Shukin
 5 Dorsality: Thinking Back through Technology and Politics
David Wills
 4 Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy
Roberto Esposito
 3 When Species Meet
Donna J. Haraway
 2 The Poetics of DNA
Judith Roof
 1 The Parasite
Michel Serres

An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as “Insect Technics: Intensities of
Animal Bodies,” in An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze/
Guattari, ed. Bernd Herzogenrath (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2008), 339–62; reprinted with permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Parts
of chapter 2 were previously published in “Politics of Swarms: Translations between
Entomology and Biopolitics,” Parallax 14, no. 3 (2008): 112–24; permission to reprint
is granted by Taylor and Francis, Ltd. Chapter 7 is a revision of “Insects, Sex, and
Biodigitality in Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s Teknolust,” Postmodern Culture 17, no. 2
(January 2007).
Copyright 2010 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,
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publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parikka, Jussi, 1976–
Insect media : an archaeology of animals and technology / Jussi Parikka.
p. cm. — (Posthumanities ; v. 11)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-6739-0 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-6740-6
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Swarm intelligence. 2. Insects—Behavior—mathematical models.
3. Bionics. I. Title.
Q337.3.P36 2010
595.709—dc22
2010035074
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 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
INTRODUCTION Insects in the Age of Technology ix
1 NINETEENTH-C ENTURY INSECT TECHNICS 1
The Uncanny Affects of Insects
2 GENESIS OF FORM 27
Insect Architecture and Swarms
3 TECHNICS OF NATURE AND TEMPORALITY 57
Uexküll’s Ethology
4 METAMORPHOSIS, INTENSITY, AND DEVOURINGSPACE 85
Elements for an Insect Game Theory
Intermezzo 113
5 ANIMAL ENSEMBLES, ROBOTICAFFECTS 121
Bees, Milieus, and Individuation
6 BIOMORPHS AND BOIDS 145
Swarming Algorithms
7 SEXUAL SELECTION IN THE BIODIGITAL 169
Teknolust and the Weird Life of SRAs
EPILOGUE Insect Media as an Art of Transmutation 195
Notes 207
Index 271
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Even if I do not particularly enjoy insects, working with this book was a
joy. I had already had the chance to work with the underbelly of media
theory with my earlier virus-related project and my more recent book on
“spam cultures,” but Insect Media gave me the opportunity to elaborate
and continue theoretical and media archaeological ideas that were giv-
ing glimpses of their insectoid faces.
Nothing is possible without creative surroundings and a network of
people with both intelligence and instinct who generously offer advice
and support. Institutionally, this book started while I was finishing my
Ph.D. thesis for the Department of Cultural History at the University
of Turku in Finland, and my background in the department is still very
much visible in this book. I have an obsession to “historicize,” although
I never felt like being a proper historian. I thank warmly many former
colleagues and the excellent e-library collections that allowed me to
find quirky sources from the nineteenth century (and earlier) and that
supported me in my academic perversions. Via the Department of
Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, I moved to Anglia Ruskin
University in Cambridge, where innovative colleagues ensured a good
working atmosphere while I adjusted to the peculiarities of the British
higher education system. A warm thank you to all of you who made me
feel welcome and offered support with this project.
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viii Acknowledgments
While Anglia Ruskin’s Department of English, Communication, Film,
and Media was my primary everyday context, through a range of other
people and institutions I was able to obtain important feedback and tips
that (in)formed my budding ideas into a book. In no particular order, I
thank Milla Tiainen, Pasi Väliaho, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, Ilona Hongisto,
Teemu Taira, Olli Pyyhtinen, Matthew Fuller, Michael Goddard, Joss
Hands, Sean Campbell, Eric Kluitenberg, Charlie Gere, Seb Franklin,
Thomas Elsaesser, Jukka Sihvonen, Trond Lundemo, Juri Nummelin,
Erkki Huhtamo, Alan Winfield, Craig Reynolds, Steven Shaviro, Tony
D. Sampson, Floris Paalman, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Garnet Hertz,
Gary Genosko, Tina Kendall, Tanya Horeck, and Sarah Barrow. I hope I
did not forget too many; as always, there is a swarm.
Without the supportive feedback of Douglas Armato at the University
of Minnesota Press and Cary Wolfe’s supportive and perceptive role as
the series editor for Posthumanities, I would have been lost. Thanks
also to Danielle Kasprzak for responding to my endless questions so
promptly. I also thank the anonymous referees for critical but affirmative
and encouraging comments.
Financially, I thank the Finnish Cultural Foundation for a six-month
research grant during the early phases of research.
A special and warm thank you goes as always to Milla: we hate insects
and spiders together but love things material, not least cultural theory.
INTRODUCTION
Insects in the Age of Technology
...cultural and technical phenomena providing a fertile soil, a good soup, for
the development of insects, bacteria, germs, or even particles. The industrial
age defined as the age of insects....
—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
There is an entire genealogy to be written from the point of view of the
challenge posed by insect coordination, by “swarm intelligence.” Again and
again, poetic, philosophical, and biological studies ask the same question:
how does this “intelligent,” global organization emerge from a myriad of
local, “dumb” interactions?
— Alex Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit
FROM CYBORGSTO INSECTS
First, a practical exercise. Pick up an entomology book; something such
as Thomas Eisner’s For the Love of Insects from a couple of years back
will do fine, or an older book from the nineteenth century, like John
Lubbock’s On the Senses, Instincts, and Intelligence of Animals with Special
Reference to Insects (1888) suits the purpose as well. However, do not read
the book as a description of the biology of those tiny insects or solely as
an excavation of the microcosmic worlds of entomology. Instead, if you
approach it as media theory, it reveals a whole new world of sensations,
perceptions, movements, stratagems, and patterns of organization that
work much beyond the confines of the human world.
Of course, in a way this has already been done. Some years ago the
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