Accountable MetaphorsThe Transhuman Poetics of Failure in Tao Lin’s "Taipei"

  1. Miriam Fernández-Santiago 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Granada
    info

    Universidad de Granada

    Granada, España

    ROR https://ror.org/04njjy449

Revista:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Año de publicación: 2021

Volumen: 43

Número: 1

Páginas: 20-38

Tipo: Artículo

Otras publicaciones en: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Resumen

Tao Lin’s novel Taipei (2013) can be described as a picture of transhuman existence in the current digital world. However, its poetics of failure does not seem to adjust to the typically utopian visions that have often been related to transhumanism. Instead, the novel’s aesthetic approach resists diverse forms of transhumanist universalism in ways that are closer to the theoretical premises of critical posthumanism and agential materialism. In this article, I analyze Lin’s use of accountable metaphors and poetic failure in Taipei as a means to resist uncritical claims to transhumanist, universalist aesthetics.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • BAILES, Sara Jane. 2011. Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure. London and New York: Routledge.
  • BARAD, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Half Way: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke UP.
  • CASCONE, Kim. (2000) 2004. “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.” In Cox and Warner 2004, 392-98.
  • CHANG, Ian. 2013. “Dramatizing the Effects of the Virtual Life.” Frieze 160, January 11. [Accessed May 5, 2020].
  • CLAPP, Jeffrey and Emily Ridge, eds. 2015. Security and Hospitality in Literature and Culture: Modern and Contemporary Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge.
  • COX, Christopher and Daniel Warner, eds. 2004. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York: Continuum.
  • DIÉGUEZ, Antonio. 2017. Transhumanismo. La búsqueda tecnológica del mejoramiento humano. Barcelona: Herder.
  • DINNEN, Zara. 2013. “Digital Metaphors: Editor’s Introduction.” Alluvium 2 (6). [Accessed April 4, 2017].
  • FERRANDO, Francesca. 2013. “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations.” Existenz 8 (2): 26-32.
  • GRADY, Kendall. 2011. “The Naked Eye: Toward an Object-Oriented Ontology in the Literature of Tao Lin.” Masters of Media (blog), September 15. [Accessed May 4, 2017].
  • HARAWAY, Donna. 1985. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs.” Socialist Review 80: 65-107.
  • HAYLES, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P.
  • HERBRECHTER, Stefan. 2013. Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. London: Bloomsbury.
  • HSU, Stephanie. 2016. “Tao Lin’s Taipei as an Aesthetic Experiment in Autistic Jouissance.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 27 (3): 191-212.
  • KRMPOTIC, Milo J. 2014. “ALT-LIT. Encuentros y desencuentros con la última generación literaria.” Qué Leer 197: 34-37.
  • KURZWEIL, Ray. 2005. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking.
  • LIN, Tao. 2013a. Taipei. New York: Vintage.
  • LIN, Tao. 2013b. “Staying up All Night with an Adderall’d Tao Lin.” Interview by Rachel R. White. Vulture, June 5. [Accessed May 16, 2017].
  • LIN, Tao and Mira Gonzalez. 2015. Selected Tweets. Ann Arbor, MI: Short Flight/Long Drive Books.
  • MCDOUGALL, Aislinn C. 2019. “What is Cyber-Consciousness? Digital Intermediation between Consciousness and Computer through Postmodern Tension in Tao Lin’s Taipei.” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings 7 (1): 1-27.
  • MOORE, Jennifer. 2011. “‘No Discernible Emotion and No Discernible Lack of Emotion’: On Tao Lin.” The Offending Adam 53. [Accessed April 10, 2017].
  • MORRELL, Andrew. 2014. “Who is Alt Lit?” The DePaulia, June 2. [Accessed March 19, 2020].
  • PEPPERELL, Robert. (1995) 2003. The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain. Bristol: Intellect.
  • SANSOM, Ian. 2013. “Taipei by Tao Lin.” Review. Guardian, July 4. [Accessed April 10, 2017].
  • TERESZEWSKI, Marcin. 2013. The Aesthetics of Failure: Inexpressibility in Samuel Beckett’s Fiction. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
  • THOMSEN, Mads Rosendahl. 2013. The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900. London: Bloomsbury.
  • WEIZENBAUM, Joseph. 1976. Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.
  • WILLEMS, Brian. 2015. “Hospitality and Risk Society in Tao Lin’s Taipei.” In Clapp and Ridge 2015, 227-40.