Radical Botany - Plants and Speculative Fiction

Antónia Szabari, Natania Meeker

Summary

“Succeeds beautifully in discovering and entwining an entire tradition of speculative botany that will reshape plant studies and posthumanist theory.” —Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times 
 
Science Fiction & Technoculture Studies Book Prize Winner 
 
Radical Botany excavates a tradition in which plants participate in the effort to imagine new worlds and envision new futures. Modernity, the book claims, is defined by the idea of all life as vegetal. Meeker and Szabari argue that the recognition of plants’ liveliness and animation, as a result of scientific discoveries from the seventeenth century to today, has mobilized speculative creation in fiction, cinema, and art. 
 
Plants complement and challenge notions of human life. Radical Botany traces the implications of the speculative mobilization of plants for feminism, queer studies, and posthumanist thought. If, as Michael Foucault has argued, the notion of the human was born at a particular historical moment and is now nearing its end, Radical Botany reveals that this origin and endpoint are deeply informed by vegetality as a form of pre- and posthuman subjectivity. 
 
The trajectory of speculative fiction which this book traces offers insights into the human relationship to animate matter and the technological mediations through which we enter into contact with the material world. Plants profoundly shape human experience, from early modern absolutist societies to late capitalism’s manipulations of life and the onset of climate change and attendant mass extinction. 
 
A major intervention in critical plant studies, Radical Botany reveals the centuries-long history by which science and the arts have combined to posit plants as the model for all animate life and thereby envision a different future for the cosmos.

Available since: 12/03/2019.

Print length: 304 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Python for Beginners - 2 Books...

Eric Lutz Mark Matthes

Are you new to software development? Are you curious about learning what artificial intelligence is? Do you want to master the Python programming language?
Well, this book is your best choice!
There may be a lot of different languages that you can work with when it comes to the coding, but none are going to provide you with the benefits that you are working with. This language is so popular and used so often that there are a few different operating systems that already have some version of Python found on them for you to use. This can make it easier to get some of the coding done that you would like and will ensure that you will get the best benefits out of it in no time.
This audiobook covers: What is Python and its historyWhy learn PythonGetting started with PythonVariables and operatorsBasic operatorsData types in PythonFunctions and modulesDefining your functionsWorking with your module Working with files Using a "for loop" to write and read text files
...and so much more!
This guidebook is going to take the Python language to the next level and look at some of the more advanced features that you can enjoy with this kind of writing, but when you look at some of the codes - even some of these that are more advanced than what you may have worked with in the past - you will find that it is easy to write some codes that have a lot of power, and even easy to complete your projects.

Show book

Ultimate Web Automation Testing...

Vitaly Skadorva

Elevate Your Web Testing with Practical Insights and Advanced Techniques.
 
Book Description
Dive into the world of automated web testing with “Ultimate Web Automation Testing with Cypress.” From foundational concepts to advanced techniques, the book equips professionals with the skills to seamlessly integrate Cypress into their workflow. Starting with setup and basic tests, it progresses to cover end-to-end, component, API, and data-driven testing with practical examples and best practices. Further, it explores advanced topics like custom commands, plugins, Cypress Cloud, Smart Orchestration and Flaky Test Management. The book also unveils the integration with GitHub, GitLab, and Cucumber, and concludes with CI/CD implementation using Docker and Jenkins Pipelines, along with effective reporting techniques.
 
By the end, you will have a profound understanding of Cypress, empowering you to excel in web application testing and advance your careers in the competitive software testing industry.
 
Table of Contents
1. Getting Started with Cypress Testing
2. Setting Up the Development Environment
3. Writing Your First Test
4. End-to-End (E2E) Testing
5. Component Testing
6. API Testing
7. Data-Driven Testing
8. Advanced Cypress Techniques
9. Cypress Cloud, Smart Orchestration, and Flaky Test Management
10. Integrating with GitHub, GitLab, and Cucumber
11. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
12. Reporting and Test Results
13. Conclusion
Index

Show book

White Blood - A History of Human...

Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver

White Blood is a history of human milk and tells the story of how babies have been fed from antiquity to modern times and why it matters. 'Breast is Best' is the popular mantra, but there is a perennial debate about the pros and cons of 'breast and bottle'. White Blood explores this vital question, which has implications for the health and wellbeing of mothers, their young, families, communities and even countries. Starting in Ancient Greece and Rome, where human milk was thought to be blood diverted from the womb to the breast and there whitened and vivified, it lets the voices of those concerned with the care of newborn infants, and those who followed them, speak across the centuries of how they were, and should best be, nourished.

Show book

Harness It - Renewable Energy...

Michael Ginsberg

Following an overview of the technical and historical development of the electric grid in the U.S. and Europe, this guide reviews hydropower, solar photovoltaics, wind energy, fuel cell, and battery technologies. The author also presents models for the connection of these renewable energy sources from large-scale to on-site and community power/microgrids. The models are explained through case studies in the developed and developing worlds that explore how technical evaluations are conducted, policy incentives implemented, and project finance applied.Considering the increasing importance of renewable energy for climate change mitigation, this book provides an overview of how renewable energy sources are integrated into the grid to promote better understanding among students and business professionals in the utility sector and across industries. Most literature on grid interconnection is highly technical, assuming an in-depth understanding of electrical engineering. With the rise of clean technologies and the diversity of interconnection models, this guide fills a gap in the existing literature by equipping non-technical business managers with the salient information they need to make critical decisions for their organizations.

Show book

The Sun - A Very Short Introduction

Philip Judge

The Sun, as our nearest star, is of enormous importance for life on Earth, providing the warm radiation and light which allowed complex life to evolve. The Sun plays a key role in influencing our climate, while solar storms and high-energy events can threaten our communication infrastructure and satellites. 
This Very Short Introduction explores what we know about the Sun—its physics, its structure, origins, and future evolution. Philip Judge explains some of the remaining puzzles about the Sun that still confound us, using elementary physics and mathematical concepts. Why does the Sun form spots? Why does it flare? As he shows, these and other nagging difficulties relate to the Sun's continually variable magnetism, which converts an otherwise dull star into a machine for flooding interplanetary space with variable radiation, high-energy particles, and magnetic ejections. Throughout, Judge highlights the many reasons that the Sun is important and why scientists engage in solar research.

Show book

The Beauty of the Beastly - New...

Natalie Angier

“An awe-inspiring tour of nature” from a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer (San Francisco Examiner).    Natalie Angier has taken great pains to learn her science from the molecule up. She knows all that scientists know—and sometimes more—about the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, and about the impact of female and male preferences on evolution. The Beauty of the Beastly takes the pulse of everything from the supple structure of DNA to the erotic ways of barn swallows, queen bees, and the endangered, otherworldly primate called the aye-aye.   Few writers have ever covered so many facets of biology so evocatively in one book. Timothy Ferris, author of the acclaimed Coming of Age in the Milky Way, says Angier is “one of the strongest and wittiest science writers in the world today.”   “Like Alan Lightman or Lewis Thomas,” writes Nobel laureate David Baltimore, “she draws from science a meaning that few scientists see, and her writing takes on an unusual dimension of artistry.” And Sherwin Nuland, author of How We Die, believes that “Natalie Angier is in the tradition of the great nature writers.”   “A gold mine.” —The New York Times   “From cockroaches to cheetahs, DNA to elephant dung, Angier gives us intimate and dramatic portraits of nature that readers will find rewarding.” —Publishers Weekly

Show book