‘Encircled by Minute, Evilly-Intentioned Airplanes’: The Uncanny Biopolitics of Robotic Bees

Cettl, Franciska

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-34540-2_12

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This line with Cary Wolfe's statement; he suggests that posthumanism aim to disorder the traditional thought that goes back on re-modelling the human exceptionalism, or the central agency of the human species or the normative human incarnation. (Wolfe, as stated in Cettl, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Being Posthuman Through Biopolitics in Neal Shusterman’s Unwind

Gumilang

Retnaningdyah

2022

TELL

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This paper explores the concept of posthumanism through biopolitics. Although the goal of biopolitics is to manage the social population, this ideology promotes the oppression of the subject. Shusterman reveals this concept through his novel, Unwind. This novel not only presents the oppression of the subject of the regulation but also shows that the regulation creates a new norm in society that lead them to become posthuman. In other words, the regulation tries to modify humanity into a new form. Using the Foucauldian theory, this paper argues that biopolitics could be a factor for humans to transform into a new type of humanity—posthuman. The result finds that biopolitics in the novel leads to the two types of posthuman; the first is that posthuman emerging human with technology to enhance human being; the second is about reconsideration position of humans. The idea of posthuman might make people resist oppression and embrace other existence as equal beings as humans. This would create better humanity for human beings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…By knowing this idea, posthuman not only try to decentralize human; but posthuman also tries to share the idea of all-life matter and propose the new concept of humanity. (Cettl, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Being Posthuman Through Biopolitics in Neal Shusterman’s Unwind

Gumilang

Retnaningdyah

2022

TELL

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“…When referring to the 19th century entomology observing insect societies as complex and almost technological [91], Franciska Cettl writes "It could be argued that Shelley anticipated this coming discourse by positioning the electrically animated creature-as-insect as not quite fully organic but negotiating the unstable boundary with the machinic and technological." [96]. Cettl speaks of Mary Shelley's reference to insects in Frankenstein [97], a reference where other critics have recognised the treatment of the insect as radically other [98].…”

Section: B Cyborgs Insects and Cyborg Insects In Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this folding of the agency of the organic swarm into the agency of the digital network raises the key biopolitical question-of who can possibly control these uncannimedia and for what purposes exactly-which is already anticipated in Jünger's novel." [96], [101].…”

Section: B Cyborgs Insects and Cyborg Insects In Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cyborg Insects: Bug or a Feature?

2022

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Cyborg insects are a major part of the vision of future interactions of the living world and technology, including but not limited to the Internet of Living Things (IoLT). They are crawling or flying insects with additional electronic circuitry allowing remote control of their movement and collection of sensory data. In this critical review, we survey the historical development of cyborg insects engineering, from the first backpacks on insects used for communication and sensing, to different methods of control and actuation of insects' locomotion. We review the suggested applications of cyborg insects ranging from military use to agriculture, pointing out the problematic connotations of swarms and cyborgs in these contexts. We address the applications and the narratives around engineered insects from the perspective of philosophy, economy, law, and politics. We add perspectives on emancipatory potential of cyborg technology and where the future of it could lie.INDEX TERMS Cyborg insects, Internet of living things, Internet of things.

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“… 2 For an analysis of the ‘uncanny’ Anthropocene cultural (bio)politics of robot bees in science fiction read as technocultural entities haunted by their living referents, see Cettl (2020). …”

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confidence: 99%

Replacing cheap nature? Sustainability, capitalist future-making and political ecologies of robotic pollination

Nimmo

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article undertakes a critical examination of emergent technologies involving the use of robots to carry out crop pollination in the context of declining populations of bees and other insect pollinators. It grasps robotic pollination research and development as a future-making practice, which imagines and partially materialises one possible future by inscribing a specific ontology in the present which is geared to enact that future. Unpacking this, the article traces how artificial pollination reframes pollination ecology around a productivist ontology and inscribes a web of meanings around nature, technology and economy which point to a future where insect pollinators are largely absent or extinct. It argues that this effectively backgrounds alternative futures in which structural transformations of agriculture and the world food system are able to mitigate and avert pollinator decline and biodiversity loss, and also reveals the deep rationale of artificial pollination. While invoking notions of sustainability and food security, robotic pollination defines these in highly anthropocentric, economistic and self-referential terms, as a matter of enabling the reproduction of agro-industrial capital accumulation. Drawing upon the political ecology of Jason W Moore, the article situates robotic pollination as a future-making project in relation to capitalist strategies of accumulation through the appropriation of ‘Cheap Nature’, to show how the automation of pollination would enact a shift in the composition of agro-industrial capital, with systemic consequences inimical to both ecological sustainability and sustained accumulation. In this respect, robotic pollination is a case study in the propensity of capital to invest in the making of sustainable futures only insofar as sustainability equates to the reproduction of capital within the web of life.

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‘Encircled by Minute, Evilly-Intentioned Airplanes’: The Uncanny Biopolitics of Robotic Bees

Cited by 3 publications

References 13 publications

Being Posthuman Through Biopolitics in Neal Shusterman’s Unwind

Being Posthuman Through Biopolitics in Neal Shusterman’s Unwind

Cyborg Insects: Bug or a Feature?

Replacing cheap nature? Sustainability, capitalist future-making and political ecologies of robotic pollination

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