{"product_id":"the-persistence-of-the-human-consciousness-meta-body-and-survival-in-contemporary-film-and-literature-9789004323629","title":"The Persistence of the Human: Consciousness, Meta-body and Survival in Contemporary Film and Literature","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRecent narrative fiction and film increasingly exploit, explore and thematize the embodied mind, revealing the tenacity of a certain brand of humanism. The presence of narratively based concepts of personal identity even in texts which explore posthuman possibilities is strong proof that our basic understanding of what it means to be human has, despite appearances, remained mostly unchanged. This is so even though our perception of time has been greatly modified by the same technology which both interrupts and allows for the rearrangement of our experience of time at a rate and a level of ease which, until recently, had never been possible.  Basing his views on a long line of philosophers and literary theorists such as Paul Ricoeur, Daniel Dennett and Francisco Varela, Escobar maintains in The Persistence of the Human that narrative plays an essential role in the process of constituting and maintaining a sense of self. It is narrative’s effect on the embodied mind which gives it such force. Narrative projects us into possible spaces, shaping a temporary corporeality termed the “meta-body,” a hybrid shared by the lived body and an imagined corporeal sense. The meta-body is a secondary embodiment that we inhabit for however long our narrative immersion lasts – something which, in today’s world, may be a question of milliseconds or hours. The more agreeable the meta-body is, the less happy we are upon being abruptly removed from it, though the return is essential.   We want to be able to slip back and forth between this secondary embodiment and that of our lived body; each move entails both forgetting and remembering different subject positions (loss and recuperation being salient themes in the works which highlight this process). The negotiation of the transfer between these states is shaped by culture and technology and this is something which is precisely in flux now as multiple, ephemeral narrative immersion experiences are created by the different screens we come into contact with.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction  1 The Human, Consciousness and Its Temporality  Humanism  Human Freedom  What Makes One Human?  Consciousness  Daniel Dennett on Consciousness: The Human as Virtual Machine  Temporality, Consciousness and Ethics  Immersion and Framing: The Experience of Film and Literature  Embodied Drafts   2 Testing the Human: Trauma, Memory and Consciousness  Trauma and the Temporality of the Self  Memento  The Spectral Past Self  Memory, Identity and Ethics  Rendering Pain Visible in Memento   3 The Phantom Limb: Specters, Trauma, and Meta-body  Meta-body  The Body Artist  Projecting the Self into a Different Emptiness  Erasing the Self  You are Made out of Time  Recovering the Self  The Bird and the Strand of Hair  Sous le sable  Water Time Lets Fall Its Drop Meta-body in Sous le sable Naissance des fantômes  4 Survival: Human and Posthuman The Temporality of the Paralyzed Body Starting with “I” Correcting the Past  Destroying the Self to Save It  Posthuman Consciousness  Parfit on Transpersonal Survival  Postpersonal Identity  The Absent Machine  The Machine Speaks  Involuntary Immortality  The Recuperative Project  Self-possession   Conclusion  Pain and the Clean Slate  The Other Penetrating \/ Occupying the Self   Bibliography  Index","brand":"Brill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53210689536343,"sku":"9789004323629","price":104.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-persistence-of-the-human-consciousness-meta-body-and-survival-in-contemporary-film-and-literature-9789004323629","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}