Book Launch and Round Table: Communicating Human and Non-Human Otherness. Urban Culture, Technology and Post-Humanism | Snob Bookshop (Lisbon)

Date: 10/04/2025

Time: 18:30

Place: Snob Livraria & Editora, Lisboa

Organization: Passeio (CECS) | LIHAM – Limiares Humano/Animal/Máquina (Grupo de Investigação 2i/CEHUM)

Presenters: João Oliveira Duarte | João Maia

 

Synopsis: The recent book “Communicating Human and Non-Human Otherness”, edited by Helena Pires (CECS/Universidade do Minho), Zara Pinto-Coelho (CECS/Universidade do Minho) and Luísa Magalhães (CEFH – Centro de Estudos Filosóficos e Humanísticos/Universidade Católica Portuguesa), launched in December 2024, is part of the “Palgrave Studies in Otherness and Communication” series and explores a series of ways of communicating and reinventing otherness. Based on a bold approach that focuses on both human and non-human alterities, such as plants, rivers and digital and technological environments, the book features a series of essays written by a diverse and international group, including artists and researchers. Following a post-humanist and post-phenomenological framework, the meaning of becoming other is expanded through a new paradigm that combines 1) a theoretical-essayistic mode, supported by illustrative cases, with 2) the description of artistic processes and literary production. At this event, the book and its themes will be presented and discussed through the eyes of philosophers João Oliveira Duarte (University of Lisbon) and João Maia (University of Coimbra).

 

Biographical Notes:

 

João Oliveira Duarte

João Oliveira Duarte has a degree in Philosophy from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, a Master’s in Philosophy from Universidade Nova and completed his PhD in Art History at the same institution in 2023. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at ESAP. He has published several essays in various national and international magazines. He recently published a book on the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini and was awarded the PEN prize for the first work of 2017. Together with Ricardo Gil Soeiro, Igor Furão and Maria João Cantinho, he organized a volume on post-humanism and participated in the edition of a volume on the relationship between artistic practices and the city. He was part of a research project funded by the FCT on the relationship between the city, art and philosophy. He is currently co-organizing a meeting on the literary and filmic work of Marguerite Duras. He also writes literary criticism for the press and Colóquio-Letras.

 

João Maia

João Maia has a PhD in Contemporary Studies from the University of Coimbra, with a thesis entitled “Transhumanism and posthumanism – political decoding of a contemporary problematic”. He is an associate researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Coimbra (CEIS20) and a collaborating researcher at the Center for Humanistic Studies at the University of Minho (CEHUM), in the scientific research project LIHAM – Human/Animal/Machine Thresholds, coordinated by Professor Cristina Álvares. He is also the author of publications and scientific communications in the fields of historical theory, philosophical anthropology and cultural studies. One of his main areas of study has been the relationship between memory, popular culture and history.