
During the workshop, we will talk about everything from sex robots, to non-binary accounts of sexuality and post-gender theories. Please contact Prof. Sorgner, if you are interested in attending and/or participating in the event the event: www.sorgner.de
Will sexual identity be nothing more than a myth, a fictional narrative, in posthuman times? What does sex mean, if it exists independently of reproduction, and maybe also independent of living organisms? Is it still sex, if humans are intimate with robots? Why has sex been associated solely with living organism? If evolution has provided the strategy of mating on behalf of the reproduction of the species, whereby sexual pleasure was a side-effect, could we envisage, or detect an ongoing evolutionary and experimental transition toward an inter-species, hybrid, non-binary quality of sexual attraction independent of any reproductive goals? Is ‘body’ pure embodiment (in anything that can host it)? Is a computer with sensors, which is an embodied robot, an entity with a body?
Are instincts such as shame, love, narcissism, passion formed by cultural selection or are they engrained in organisms as such? How would women (cross-culturally encouraged to protect their bodies from sexual pleasure) re-define sex away from its ‘history’, and closer to the condition of the cyborg? Is the binary distinction between men and women at all feasible, given that the distinction is closely connected to that of sexual attraction as well as reproduction?
Keynote speaker:
Maurizio Balistreri: https://www.senzalinea.it/giornale/intervista-a-maurizio-balistreri-autore-di-sex-robot-lamore-al-tempo-delle-macchine/
Trudy Barber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8LQFdeNiSw
Organizers:
Brunella Antomarini
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Where?:
John Cabot University, Via della Lungara, 233, 00165 Roma RM
When?:
Saturday the 1st of February 2020 from 10 am until 6 pm.
Sponsorship:
The event is sponsored by the Department of History and the Humanities of John Cabot University Rome: https://www.johncabot.edu/
By the way, there is a new high class book series dedicated to Posthuman Studies:
https://schwabe.ch/produkttypen/reihen/posthuman-studies/
The oldest publishing house in the world, Schwabe publishing (founded 1488), deeply rooted in the humanist tradition, embraces the intellectual engagement with one of the most significant debates of our time: Posthuman Studies: From Critical Posthumanism to Transhumanism. The series explicitly targets the international audience. All books will be peer-reviewed, copyedited, and internationally distributed. Please submit your manuscipt to Prof. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, if you want it to be considered for this book series: www.sorgner.de
Here you find some more information about this newly launched high-class book series:
http://beyondhumanism.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Flyer_Call-for-Manuscripts_Final_low.pdf
Please also consider the following book series dedicated to the topic “Beyond Humanism”:
https://www.peterlang.com/view/serial/BEYHU
If you merely wish to publish a paper, please consider submitting it to the “Journal of Posthuman Studies” which was launched by Penn State University Press in 2017. It is the first academic journal explicitly deDicated to the posthuman:
http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JPHS.html