andrew.pilsch.comAndrew Pilsch

Andrew Pilsch See Content Related To: All Research Teaching Blog Close All About I am an Associate Professor at Texas A&M in the English Department . My current research project is a media archaeology of computer bugs. My first book focuses on the rhetoric of transhumanism . I am broadly interested in rhetorical constructions of fate and human destiny in response to the radical technological changes of the digital. My research and pedagogical work touches on facets of digital rhetoric, digital humanities, emerging media, and technical communications. View my ORCID Profile View my Amazon Author Page View my Google Scholar Profile View my Dotfiles Transhumanism Published Book My first book project (published by University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2017 ) explores the rhetoric of the transhumanism movement with regards specifically to its Utopian content. Order Transhumanism on Amazon! Transhumanism: Evolutionary Futurism and the Human Technologies of Utopia Order Transhumanism on Amazon! This project develops the rhetorical mode of “evolutionary futurism” and the rhetoric of the transhumanist movement. While transhumanism is usually dismissed by scholars of rhetoric, technology, and culture as a fringe movement with limited scope, my project instead argues that “transhumanism” is a name for a much more pervasive rhetorical mode that considers technology as a vector for evolutionary change operating on society, consciousness, and biology. I call this rhetorical mode “evolutionary futurism,” and, in tracing this formation throughout 20th and 21st century culture, I suggest that transhumanism, rather than a fringe movement of renegade scientists and philosophers, is actually a postmodern form of Utopia in line with Fredric Jameson’s discussion of the concept in Postmodernism . My book then traces the rhetorical, Utopian mode I call “evolutionary futurism” through a number of important moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. Chapters Summaries The first chapter considers the origin of evolutionary futurism in continental modernism. Specifically, the chapter traces out the reception of Nietzsche’s übermensch as a figure for radical evolution rather than enlightened self-interest. Theosophist P.D. Ouspensky and Futurist Mina Loy are considered as guides for this particular uptake of Nietzsche. The second chapter explores evolutionary futurist rhetoric in pre-WWII American science fiction during the “superman boom,” my term for the period immediately before and during the start of the war in which John W. Campbell solicited a considerable mass of stories about genetically evolved superhumans for his magazines. Concomitant to this publishing fad, SF fan culture also became intersted in actualizing this evolutionary futurist in its calls for an evolved “fannationalism.” The third chapter is about the role of suffering and hedonism in an evolutionary futurism. Questioning the dominant transhuman rhetorical mode in which evolving beyond the human will be blissful, I explore the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit who first coined the term “transhuman” in its modern usage, as a model for an evolutionary vanguard not tied to dubious notions of winner-take-all evolution. The fourth chapter asks after aesthetics and evolutionary futurism. In the realm of high art, I consider the impact of Natasha Vita-More’s manifesto for transhuman art and the work of Arakawa and Gins, who adopt principles of evolutionary futurist rhetoric to art and architecture. I juxtapose this aesthetic with the “transhuman inaesthetic,” my term for the often bland and beige futurism of transhumanists such as Raymond Kurzweil and Zoltan Istvan. Finally, I conclude by arguing that this inaesthetic blinds many transhumanists to the evolutionary futurist aspects of online “low art” movements, such as meme culture. The book concludes by discussing accelerationism and xenofeminism as recent examples of imagining an evolutionary futurist vanguard politics. CV View my CV. Associate Professor of English Department of English Texas A&M University Sorry, you need Javascript on to email me. https://andrew.pilsch.com Professional Experience Associate Professor Texas A&M University 2018-Present Assistant Professor Texas A&M University 2015-2018 Assistant Professor Arizona State University 2012-2015 Fixed-Term Lecturer Pennsylvania State University 2011-2012 Graduate Teaching Fellow Pennsylvania State University 2005-2011 Education PhD, English Pennsylvania State University May 2011 Dissertation: Transhumanism: Evolutionary Logic, Rhetoric, and the Future Committee: Richard Doyle (Director), Jeffrey Nealon, Mark Morrisson, Robert Yarber. MA, English Pennsylvania State University May 2007 BS, Computer Science Georgia Institute of Technology May 2005 BS, Science Technology & Culture Georgia Institute of Technology May 2005 Current Book Projects Immutability: The World According to Software Bugs Six Chapter Manuscript, In-Progress – This project is a media archeology of the computer bug. While numerous works explore computer hacking, my project is interested in accidental computer failure: unintended consequences that can have dangerous and far-reaching effects. I uncover that the accident is integral to software while mitigating this accidental nature has radically altered the landscape of contemporary culture. Planned chapters trace the software accident through the early mathematical foundations of computing, the 1990s emergence of home computing and the Internet, the collapse of post-structural thought and the related rise of infrastructure studies, recent changes in programming practices resulting from big data, and current discussions about the programmatic nature of reality itself. Publications Books Humans at Work in the Digital Age: Forms of Digital Textual Labor 14-Chapter Edited Collection, Co-Edited with Shawna Ross, Routledge (2019) – This edited collection explores the roots of twenty-first century cultures of digital textual labor, mapping the diverse physical and cognitive acts involved, and recovering the invisible workers and work that support digital technologies. Table of Contents Online at Routledge Transhumanism: Evolutionary Futurism and the Human Technologies of Utopia Six-Chapter Manuscript, University of Minnesota (2017) – This book explores the rhetorical history of “evolutionary futurism,” a twentieth century Utopian rhetorical mode associating advancing telecommunications technologies with biological evolution to suggest near-future radical shifts in human existence and cognition. Tracing this rhetoric of transhumanism, chapters explore the evolutionary futurism of theosophy, 1940s science fiction, Raymond Kurzweil, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In addition to a theoretical introduction, the book also contains an extended discussion of contemporary digital aesthetics as transhuman vectors of evolutionary overcoming. Prizes: 2017 Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Book Prize Reviews: Modernism/Modernity (25.1) , Configurations (26.4) , Contemporary Political Theory , Science Fiction Studies (46.1) Articles & Chapters *“Events in Flux: Software Architecture, *Detractio , and the Rhetorical Infrastructure of Facebook” Computers & Composition 57, Special Issue “Composing Algorithms: Writing (with) Rhetorical Machines” (forthcoming September 2020). “Polynesian Paralysis: Tiki Culture and the Aesthetics of American Empire.” Chapter in The Year’s Work in Cocktail Culture: The Shaken and the Stirred . Eds. Stephen Schneider and Craig N. Owens. (Under with Indiana UP in “The Year’s Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory” series; forthcoming 2020). “Life During Wartime: Science Fiction during and after World War II.” Chapter in The Cambridge History of Science Fiction eds. Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link. (2018). “The Ethos of Mr. Robot .” Present Tense 7.1 ...