1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824624903321

Autore

Tierney Matt

Titolo

Dismantlings : Words against Machines in the American Long Seventies / / Matt Tierney

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, NY : , : Cornell University Press, , [2019]

©2019

ISBN

1-5017-4677-4

1-5017-4656-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (233 pages)

Collana

Cornell scholarship online

Disciplina

973.92

Soggetti

Technology - Social aspects - United States - History - 20th century

Radicalism - United States - History - 20th century

American literature - 20th century - History and criticism

Technology in literature

United States Civilization 1970-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: For the Sake of Survival -- 1. Luddism -- 2. Communion -- 3. Cyberculture -- 4. Distortion -- 5. Revolutionary Suicide -- 6. Liberation Technology -- 7. Thanatopography -- Conclusion: American Carnage and Technologies of Tomorrow -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Permissions -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

"For the master's tools," the poet Audre Lorde wrote, "will never dismantle the master's house." Dismantlings is a study of literary, political, and philosophical critiques of the utopian claims about technology in the Long Seventies, the decade and a half before 1980. Following Alice Hilton's 1963 admonition that the coming years would bring humanity to a crossroads-"machines for HUMAN BEINGS or human beings for THE MACHINE"-Matt Tierney explores wide-ranging ideas from science fiction, avant-garde literatures, feminist and anti-racist activism, and indigenous eco-philosophy that may yet challenge machines of war, control, and oppression.Dismantlings opposes the language of technological idealism with radical thought of the Long



Seventies, from Lorde and Hilton to Samuel R. Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin to Huey P. Newton, John Mohawk, and many others. This counter-lexicon retrieves seven terms for the contemporary critique of technology: Luddism, a verbal and material combat against exploitative machines;communion, a kind of togetherness that stands apart from communication networks; cyberculture, a historical conjunction of automation with racist and militarist machines; distortion, a transformative mode of reading and writing; revolutionary suicide, a willful submission to the risk of political engagement; liberation technology, a synthesis of appropriate technology and liberation theology; and thanatopography, a mapping of planetary technological ethics after Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Dismantlings restores revolutionary language of the radical Long Seventies for reuse in the digital present against emergent technologies of exploitation, subjugation, and death.