What If Culture Was Nature All Along

Download What If Culture Was Nature All Along full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online What If Culture Was Nature All Along ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

What if Culture was Nature all Along?

Author : Vicki Kirby
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474419305
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What if Culture was Nature all Along? by : Vicki Kirby

Download or read book What if Culture was Nature all Along? written by Vicki Kirby and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New materialisms argue for a more science-friendly humanities, ventilating questions about methodology and subject matter and the importance of the non-human. However, these new sites of attention - climate, biology, affect, geology, animals and objects - tend to leverage their difference against language and the discursive. Similarly, questions about ontology have come to eclipse, and even eschew, those of epistemology. While this collection of essays is in kinship with this radical shake-up of how and what we study, the aim is to re-navigate what constitutes materiality. These efforts are encapsulated by a rewriting of the Derridean axiom, 'there is no outside text' as 'there is no outside nature.' What if nature has always been literate, numerate, social? And what happens to 'the human' if its exceptional identity and status is conceded quantum, non-local and ecological implication?

Quantum Anthropologies

Author : Vicki Kirby
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822350734
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Quantum Anthropologies by : Vicki Kirby

Download or read book Quantum Anthropologies written by Vicki Kirby and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-10 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Quantum Anthropologies, the renowned feminist theorist Vicki Kirby contends that some of the most provocative aspects of deconstruction have yet to be explored. Deconstruction’s implications have been curtailed by the assumption that issues of textuality and representation are specific to the domain of culture. Revisiting Derrida’s claim that there is “no outside of text,” Kirby argues that theories of cultural construction developed since the linguistic turn have inadvertently reproduced the very binaries they intended to question, such as those between nature and culture, matter and ideation, and fact and value. Through new readings of Derrida, Husserl, Saussure, Butler, Irigaray, and Merleau-Ponty, Kirby exposes the limitations of theories that regard culture as a second-order system that cannot access—much less be—nature, body, and materiality. She suggests ways of reconceiving language and culture to enable a more materially implicated outcome, one that keeps alive the more counterintuitive and challenging aspects of poststructural criticism. By demonstrating how fields, including cybernetics, biology, forensics, mathematics, and physics, can be conceptualized in deconstructive terms, Kirby fundamentally rethinks deconstruction and its relevance to nature, embodiment, materialism, and science.

New Materialism and Theology

Author : Sam Mickey
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004520309
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis New Materialism and Theology by : Sam Mickey

Download or read book New Materialism and Theology written by Sam Mickey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juxtaposing theological inquiry with the philosophical movement of new materialism, Sam Mickey reflects on questions of human embodiment, nonhuman agency, technological innovation, and possible futures for humankind. New Materialism and Theology opens several pathways for thinking about what really matters.

Prospecting Ocean

Author : Stefanie Hessler
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262356244
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Prospecting Ocean by : Stefanie Hessler

Download or read book Prospecting Ocean written by Stefanie Hessler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the entanglement of industry, politics, culture, and economics at the frontier of ocean excavations through an innovative union of art and science. The oceans are crucial to the planet's well-being. They help regulate the global carbon cycle, support the resilience of ecosystems, and provide livelihoods for communities. The oceans as guardians of planetary health are threatened by many forces, including growing extractivist practices. Through the innovative lens of artistic research, Prospecting Ocean investigates the entanglement of industry, politics, culture, and economics at the frontier of ocean excavation. The result is a richly illustrated study that unites science and art to examine the ecological, cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic reverberations of this current threat to the oceans. Prospecting Oceans takes as its starting point an exhibition by the photographer and filmmaker Armin Linke, which was commissioned by TBA21–Academy, London, and first shown at the Institute of Marine Science (CNR-ISMAR) in Venice. Linke is concerned with making the invisible visible, and here he unmasks the technologies that enable extractions from the ocean, including future seabed mining for minerals and sampling of genetic data. But the book extends far beyond Linke's research, presenting the latest research from a variety of fields and employing art as the place where disciplines can converge. Integrating the work of artists with scientific, theoretical, and philosophical analysis, Prospecting Ocean demonstrates that visual culture offers new and urgent perspectives on ecological crises.

Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance

Author : Travis Brisini
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040226930
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance by : Travis Brisini

Download or read book Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance written by Travis Brisini and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance presents a novel approach for readers to engage with new materialist performance as a method of qualitative inquiry and as a means of combating the anthropocentric loneliness of modern life. It offers a theoretical and practical examination of how we are fundamentally entangled with a more-than-human world through practices the authors call “naturecultural performances.” The book features a collaborative body of arts-based research by three scholars working at the intersections of performance studies, new materialism, environmental studies, and qualitative inquiry. The result is an interdisciplinary body of theoretical scholarship, including a wide array of landscapes, plants, animals, minerals, and other more-than-human agencies. The book also presents practical examples and case studies of naturecultural performances, showcasing the diverse ways in which the concept of “natureculture” can be applied in research and creative practice. This book will be of interest to faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, performance practitioners, and anyone else interested in exploring or creating work based on their own fundamental relationships with the more-than-human world.

What’s Wrong with Antitheory?

Author : Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350096121
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What’s Wrong with Antitheory? by : Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Download or read book What’s Wrong with Antitheory? written by Jeffrey R. Di Leo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antitheory has long been a venerable brand of theory and – although seemingly opposite – the two impulses have long been intertwined. Antitheory is the first book to explore this vexed relationship from the 20th century to the present day, examining antitheory both in its historical context and its current state. The book brings together leading scholars from a wide range of Humanities disciplines to ask such questions as: · What is antitheory? · What does it mean to be against theory in the new millennium? · What is the current state of post-theory, the alleged deaths of theory, and the critique of critique?

Scale Theory

Author : Joshua DiCaglio
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452966494
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Scale Theory by : Joshua DiCaglio

Download or read book Scale Theory written by Joshua DiCaglio and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering call for a new understanding of scale across the humanities How is it possible that you are—simultaneously—cells, atoms, a body, quarks, a component in an ecological network, a moment in the thermodynamic dispersal of the sun, and an element in the gravitational whirl of galaxies? In this way, we routinely transform reality into things already outside of direct human experience, things we hardly comprehend even as we speak of DNA, climate effects, toxic molecules, and viruses. How do we find ourselves with these disorienting layers of scale? Enter Scale Theory, which provides a foundational theory of scale that explains how scale works, the parameters of scalar thinking, and how scale refigures reality—that teaches us how to think in terms of scale, no matter where our interests may lie. Joshua DiCaglio takes us on a fascinating journey through six thought experiments that provide clarifying yet provocative definitions for scale and new ways of thinking about classic concepts ranging from unity to identity. Because our worldviews and philosophies are largely built on nonscalar experience, he then takes us slowly through the ways scale challenges and reconfigures objects, subjects, and relations. Scale Theory is, in a sense, nondisciplinary—weaving together a dizzying array of sciences (from nanoscience to ecology) with discussions from the humanities (from philosophy to rhetoric). In the process, a curious pattern emerges: attempts to face the significance of scale inevitably enter terrain closer to mysticism than science. Rather than dismiss this connection, DiCaglio examines the reasons for it, redefining mysticism in terms of scale and integrating contemplative philosophies into the discussion. The result is a powerful account of the implications and challenges of scale, attuned to the way scale transforms both reality and ourselves.

Spectrality and Survivance

Author : Marija Grech
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1786614170
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (866 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Spectrality and Survivance by : Marija Grech

Download or read book Spectrality and Survivance written by Marija Grech and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of the Anthropocene is founded on the premise that traces of human activity on the earth will remain legible in the geological strata for millions of years to come, showing evidence of an anthropogenic ‘signature’ inscribed in the rock by the human species. Spectrality and Survivance shows how embedded in this understanding of the Anthropocene is a speculative and specular gesture that transforms the notion of the future into an anthropocentric reflection of the present, prohibiting any true engagement with the possibility of a non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocenic world. In this volume, Marija Grech develops an alternative conceptual paradigm from which to think the Anthropocene beyond any limited notion of human language, human thought, human systems of meaning, or even a human world. Grech considers how the geological trace of the Anthropocene might be said to ‘survive’ outside of the possibility of any human readership, and how the very survival of the human in and beyond the Anthropocene might necessitate such thought.

New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment

Author : Clara Fischer
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319723537
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (197 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment by : Clara Fischer

Download or read book New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment written by Clara Fischer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite several decades of feminist activism and scholarship, women’s bodies continue to be sites of control and contention both materially and symbolically. Issues such as reproductive technologies, sexual violence, objectification, motherhood, and sex trafficking, among others, constitute ongoing, pressing concerns for women’s bodies in our contemporary milieu, arguably exacerbated in a neoliberal world where bodies are instrumentalized as sites of human capital. This book engages with these themes by building on the strong tradition of feminist thought focused on women’s bodies, and by making novel contributions that reflect feminists’ concerns—both theoretically and empirically—about gender and embodiment in the present context and beyond. The collection brings together essays from a variety of feminist scholars who deploy diverse theoretical approaches, including phenomenology, pragmatism, and new materialisms, in order to examine philosophically the question of the current status of gendered bodies through cutting-edge feminist theory.

Futures of Life Death on Earth

Author : Philippe Lynes
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1786609967
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (866 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Futures of Life Death on Earth by : Philippe Lynes

Download or read book Futures of Life Death on Earth written by Philippe Lynes and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life on earth is currently approaching what has been called the sixth mass extinction, also known as the Holocene or anthropocene extinction. Unlike the previous five, this extinction is due to the destructive practices of a single species, our own. Up to 50% of plant and animal species face extinction by the year 2100, as well as 90% of the world’s languages. Biocultural diversity is a recent appellation for thinking together the earth’s biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, the related causes of their extinctions and the related steps that need to be taken to ensure their sustainability. This book turns to the work of Jacques Derrida to propose a notion of ‘general ecology’ as a way to respond to this loss, to think the ethics, ontology and epistemology at stake in biocultural sustainability and the life and death we differentially share on earth with its others. It articulates an appreciation of the ecological and biocultural stakes of deconstruction and provokes new ways of thinking about a more just sharing of the earth.

Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama

Author : Fraunhofer Hedwig Fraunhofer
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474467466
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama by : Fraunhofer Hedwig Fraunhofer

Download or read book Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama written by Fraunhofer Hedwig Fraunhofer and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguing that existing modernisation theories have been unnecessarily one-sided, Hedwig Fraunhofer offers a rewriting of modernity that cuts across binary methodologies - nature and culture, mind and matter, epistemology and ontology, critique and affirmative writing, dramatic and postdramatic theatre. She specifically reworks the biopolitical exclusions that mark modern western epistemology, leading up to modernity's totalitarian crisis point.Fraunhofer reveals the performativity of theatre in its double sense - as theatrical production and as the intra-activity of a dynamic system of multiple relations between human and more-than-human actors, energies and affects. In modern theatre, public and private, human and more-than-human, materiality and meaning collapse in a common life.

Fates of the Performative

Author : Jeffrey T. Nealon
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452965382
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Fates of the Performative by : Jeffrey T. Nealon

Download or read book Fates of the Performative written by Jeffrey T. Nealon and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful new examination of the performative that asks “what’s next?” for this well-worn concept From its humble origins in J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory of the 1950s, the performative has grown to permeate wildly diverse scholarly fields, ranging from deconstruction and feminism to legal theory and even theories about the structure of matter. Here Jeffrey T. Nealon discovers how the performative will remain vital in the twenty-first century, arguing that it was never merely concerned with linguistic meaning but rather constitutes an insight into the workings of immaterial force. Fates of the Performative takes a deep dive into this “performative force” to think about the continued power and relevance of this wide-ranging concept. Offering both a history of the performative’s mutations and a diagnosis of its present state, Nealon traces how it has been deployed by key writers in the past sixty years, including foundational thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, and Judith Butler; contemporary theorists such as Thomas Piketty and Antonio Negri; and the “conceptual poetry” of Kenneth Goldsmith. Ultimately, Nealon’s inquiry is animated by one powerful question: what’s living and what’s dead in performative theory? In deconstructing the reaction against the performative in current humanist thought, Fates of the Performative opens up important conversations about systems theory, animal studies, object-oriented ontology, and the digital humanities. Nealon’s stirring appeal makes a necessary declaration of the performative’s continued power and relevance at a time of neoliberal ascendancy.

The Somatechnics of Life and Death

Author : Elizabeth Stephens
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000361063
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Somatechnics of Life and Death by : Elizabeth Stephens

Download or read book The Somatechnics of Life and Death written by Elizabeth Stephens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is ‘life’ and how do we define its boundaries? Is life immeasurable or are there levels of ‘liveliness’? How should we relate to entities that are not technically alive at all? As the world becomes increasingly technologized, questions about what counts as ‘life’ and ‘living’ have become a key field of inquiry in contemporary philosophical and arts discourse. As Mel Chen acknowledges in Animacies (2012), the "continued rethinking of life and death’s proper boundaries" has increasingly been recognized as a priority in twenty-first-century North American, European and Australasian critical theory. Indeed, the contributors of this volume go as far as to argue that the question of life has become the central problematic of recent feminist biopolitics, alongside discussions of scientific ethics and technological/organic power relationships. This volume explores points of intersection and divergence between critical conceptions of time and technology, drawing on a range of perspectives and approaches to examine our mediated and material embodied entanglements with key questions about life and death. It is a significant new contribution to the study of corporeality in gender studies and feminism, and will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of philosophy, gender studies, literary theory, and politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies.

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism

Author : Stefan Herbrechter
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031049586
Total Pages : 1233 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism by : Stefan Herbrechter

Download or read book Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism written by Stefan Herbrechter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 1233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an on-going historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism’s impact across disciplines and areas of study.

Ahab Unbound

Author : Meredith Farmer
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452961093
Total Pages : 613 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ahab Unbound by : Meredith Farmer

Download or read book Ahab Unbound written by Meredith Farmer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Captain Ahab is worthy of our fear—and our compassion Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab is perennially seen as the paradigm of a controlling, tyrannical agent. Ahab Unbound leaves his position as a Cold War icon behind, recasting him as a contingent figure, transformed by his environment—by chemistry, electromagnetism, entomology, meteorology, diet, illness, pain, trauma, and neurons firing—in ways that unexpectedly force us to see him as worthy of our empathy and our compassion. In sixteen essays by leading scholars, Ahab Unbound advances an urgent inquiry into Melville’s emergence as a center of gravity for materialist work, reframing his infamous whaling captain in terms of pressing conversations in animal studies, critical race and ethnic studies, disability studies, environmental humanities, medical humanities, political theory, and posthumanism. By taking Ahab as a focal point, we gather and give shape to the multitude of ways that materialism produces criticism in our current moment. Collectively, these readings challenge our thinking about the boundaries of both persons and nations, along with the racist and environmental violence caused by categories like the person and the human. Ahab Unbound makes a compelling case for both the vitality of materialist inquiry and the continued resonance of Melville’s work. Contributors: Branka Arsić, Columbia U; Christopher Castiglia, Pennsylvania State U; Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt U; Christian P. Haines, Pennsylvania State U; Bonnie Honig, Brown U; Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt U; Pilar Martínez Benedí, U of L’Aquila, Italy; Steve Mentz, St. John’s College; John Modern, Franklin and Marshall College; Mark D. Noble, Georgia State U; Samuel Otter, U of California, Berkeley; Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College; Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College; Russell Sbriglia, Seton Hall U; Michael D. Snediker, U of Houston; Matthew A. Taylor, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ivy Wilson, Northwestern U.

Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism

Author : David Harris
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527564576
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism by : David Harris

Download or read book Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism written by David Harris and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the prodigious output of one of the most influential proponents of social theory, Professor Karen Barad. Her work attracts a wide readership in feminist theory and politics, philosophy and science studies, and she pursues a particular interdisciplinary approach—“diffraction”—to pursue links and connections between these disciplines. Her new terminology, including terms like “intra-action”, has been widely explored and applied. She shows how these terms have been developed from her interest in quantum theory, especially the work of Niels Böhr. This book is an “immanent critique”, exploring the processes by which different academic concerns and schools have been connected and treated as examples of a very general account of how the whole universe works, which Barad terms “agential realism”. There is no intention here to reject or dismiss these arguments, to replace them with a rival account, or to adopt some detached “objective” stance, although any alternatives which occur during the process are acknowledged and briefly discussed. The main objective in this book is to consider the consistency of Barad’s arguments and how they have been used in actual discussions. Some of the supporting work, by other authors like Haraway, Kirby, Schrader and Ziarek, is also considered in six chapters covering the quantum world, animals and machines as nonhuman agents, social relations as intra-actions, diffraction as a method, and general philosophical underpinnings.

Signs in the Dust

Author : Nathan Lyons
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190941278
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Signs in the Dust by : Nathan Lyons

Download or read book Signs in the Dust written by Nathan Lyons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern thought is characterized by a dichotomy of meaningful culture and unmeaning nature. Signs in the Dust uses medieval semiotics to develop a new theory of nature and culture that resists this familiar picture of things. Through readings of Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, and John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), it offers a semiotic analysis of human culture in both its anthropological breadth as an enterprise of creaturely sign-making, and its theological height as a finite participation in the Trinity, which can be understood as an absolute 'cultural nature'. Signs in the Dust then extends this account of human culture backwards into the natural depth of biological and physical nature. It puts the biosemiotics of its medieval sources, along with Félix Ravaisson's philosophy of habit, into dialogue with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis that is emerging in contemporary biology, to show how all living things participate in semiosis, so that that a cultural dimension is present through the whole order of nature and the whole of natural history. It also retrieves Aquinas' doctrine of intentions in the medium to show how signification can be attributed in a diminished way to even inanimate nature, with the ontological implication that being as such should be reconceived in semiotic terms. The phenomena of human culture are therefore to be understood not as breaks with a meaningless nature, but instead as heightenings and deepenings of natural movements of meaning that long precede and far exceed us. Against the modern divorce of nature and culture, Signs in the Dust argues that culture is natural and nature is cultural, through and through.