Braidotti 2006

Braidotti, Rosi. Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Malden: Polity, 2006.

"The much celebrated phenomenon of globalization and its technologies accomplishes a magician's trick: it combines the euphoric celebration of new technologies, new economy, new lifestyles, new generations of both human and technological gadgets, new wars and new weapons with the complete social rejection of change and transformation. In a totally schizophrenic double pull the consumerist and socially enhanced father in the new is supposed not only to fit in with, but also actively to induce, the rejection of in-depth changes. The potentially innovative, de-territorializing impact of the new technologies is hampered and tuned down by the reassertion of the gravitational pull of old and established values." (2)

schizo logic of capitalism: "reasserts individualism as the unquestionably desirable standard, while it reduces it to brand names and to logos" (3)

"A hierarchical fantasy of vertical perfectibility, the technologically mediated quest for immortality and for disciplined and acquiescent subjects, has gained widespread currency. In opposition to this master narrative, which corresponds to what Donna Haraway calls 'the informatics of domination', I want to stress the relevance of a materialist, nomadic philosophy of becoming, as an alternative conceptual framework, in the service of a sustainable future." (3-4)

"Nomadic subjectivity involves a materialist approach to affectivity and a non-essentialist brand of vitalism." (4)

"This project consists in transposing the ethical implications of nomadic subjectivity. The subject of postmodernity is caught between humanistic expectations of decency and dignity and the growing evidence of a post-human universe of ruthless power-relations mediated by technology. I will reposition the subject adminst the 'new' master narratives that aim at restoring traditional, unitary visions of the self in the neo liberal model, so as to be able to passionately pusue the quest for alternatives. I will concede from the outset that the non-unitary subject is ever prone to pressures that pull him or her in many potentially contradictory directions at once: nothing is played out in advance. Nomadic subjectivity is a contested space of mutations that follow no technological directives and no moral imperatives. What kind of ethics is possible for such a subject is the question this book attempts to address as an open challenge." (4)

transpositions -- from music and from genetics; "an intertextual, cross-boundary or transversal transfer, in the sense of a leap from one code, field or axis into another, not merely in the quantitative mode of plural multiplications, but rather in the qualitative sense of complex multiplicities. IT is not just a matter of weaving together different strands, variations on a theme (textual or musical), but rather of playing the positivity of difference as a specific theme of its own. As a term in music, transposition indicates variations and shifts of scale in a discontinuous but harmonious pattern. It is thus created as an in-between space of zigzagging and of crossing: non-linear, but not chaotic; nomadic, yet accountable and committed; creative but also cognitively valid; discursive and also materially embedded -- it is coherent without falling into instrumental rationality." (5)

McClintock, genetic transposition

"Transposable concepts are 'nomadic notions' that weave a web connecting philosophy to social realities; theoretical speculations to concrete plans; concepts to imaginative figurations." (7)

"the notion of transposition describes the connection between the text and its social and historical context, in the material and discursive sense of the term. The passion that animates this book is a concern for my historical situation" (7) -- "I am seeking modes of representation and forms of accountability that are adequate to the complexities of the real-life world I am living in." (7)

"transpose nomadically from philosophical theory to ethical practice" (7) -- interested in understanding the present

"An eco-philosophy of belonging and of transformations" (8)