Anthropologies of Entanglements: Media and Modes of Existence

Media and human modes of existence are always already intertwined and interdependent. The notion of the anthropocene has further stimulated a new examination of ideas about human agency and responsibility. Various approaches all emphasize relational concepts and the situatedness and embodiment of human-and also non-human-existences and experiences. Their common interest has shifted from any so-called ’human nature’ to the multitude of cultural, topographical, technical, historical, social, discursive, and media formats with which human existences are entangled.

This volume brings together a range of thinkers from international backgrounds and puts these important reflections and ideas in the spotlight. More specifically, the volume explores the concept of ＂anthropomedial entanglements.＂ It fosters an understanding of human bodies, experiences, and media as being immanently entangled and mutually constituting, prior to any possible distinction between them. The different contributions thus open up a dialogue between empirical case studies and media-historical research on the one hand and the conceptual work of media and cultural philosophies and aesthetics on the other hand.

Christiane Voss is Professor of Philosophy of Audiovisual Media at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Important publications include Die Relevanz der Irrelevanz (2021), together with Lorenz Engell, Der Leihkörper (2013), and Narrative Emotions (2003).

Lorenz Engell is Professor of Media Philosophy at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, where he was the founding dean of the Faculty of Media from 1996-2000 and co-director of the International Research Center for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy (IKKM) from 2008-2020.

Tim Othold is a research associate and coordinator at the DFG post-graduate program for ＂Media Anthropology＂ at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. He has published on media philosophical approaches to digital culture, the internet of things, games, and the concept of remnants and remainders.