Posthuman Agency in the Digitally Mediated City: Exteriorization, Individuation, Reinvention: Annals of the American Association of Geographers: Vol 107, No 4 Skip to Main Content Log in  |  Register Cart Home All Journals Annals of the American Association of Geographers List of Issues Volume 107, Issue 4 Posthuman Agency in the Digitally Mediat .... Search in: This Journal Anywhere Advanced search Annals of the American Association of Geographers Volume 107, 2017 - Issue 4 Submit an article Journal homepage 3,482 Views 52 CrossRef citations to date Altmetric Methods, Models, and GIS Posthuman Agency in the Digitally Mediated City: Exteriorization, Individuation, Reinvention Gillian Rose Department of Geography, Open UniversityView further author information Pages 779-793 Received 01 Aug 2016 Accepted 01 Oct 2016 Published online: 15 Mar 2017 Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1270195 CrossMark   Translator disclaimer Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Get access /doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2016.1270195?needAccess=true Abstract Accounts by geographers of the ways in which urban spaces are digitally mediated have proliferated in the last few years. This significant body of work pays particular attention to the production of urban space by software and digital hardware, and geographers have drawn on various kinds of posthumanist philosophies to theorize the agency of the technological nonhuman. The agency of the human, however, has been left undertheorized in this work, often appearing in the form of excessive resistance to the agency granted to the digital. This article contributes to understanding the digital mediation of cities by theorizing a specifically posthuman agency; that is, a human agency both mediated through technics and diverse. Drawing on the philosophy of Stiegler as well as a range of feminist digital scholarship, the article conceptualizes posthuman agency as always already coconstituted with technologies. Posthumans are simultaneously individuated and exteriorized in that coconstitution, and this permits agency understood as reinvention. The article also insists that such sociotechnical agency is differentiated, particularly in terms of the spatialities and temporalities through which it is organized. It concludes by arguing that geographers must reconfigure their understanding of digitally mediated cities and acknowledge the inventiveness and diversity of urban posthuman agency. 过去数年来, 地理学者对于城市空间透过数码中介的方式已提出诸多的阐述。此一显着的研究工作, 特别关注由软件和数码硬件所生产的城市空间, 而地理学者已运用各种后人类哲学, 对科技的非人类能动性进行理论化。但人类的能动性却被此一研究工作遗落, 鲜少受到理论化, 并经常以极度反抗赋予数码能动性的形式出现。本文特别理论化同时透过科技中介和多样的人类能动性, 对于理解数码中介的城市作出贡献。本文运用斯蒂格勒的哲学, 以及女权主义数码研究的范畴, 将后人类的能动性概念化为总是已与科技共同构成。后人类在该共同构成中同时具体化与形象化, 并使得能动性可被理解为再创造。本文同时坚称, 此般社会科技能动性是差异化的, 特别是就组织该能动性的空间性与时间性而言。本文于结论中主张, 地理学者必须重组他们对于透过数码中介的城市之理解, 并认识到城市后人类能动性的创造性与多样性。 Durante unos pocos años recientes han proliferado los recuentos de los geógrafos acerca de los modos como los espacios urbanos son mediados digitalmente. Tan importante cuerpo de trabajo pone singular atención a la producción de espacio urbano por software y equipos digitales, y los geógrafos se han apoyado en varias clases de filosofías poshumanistas para teorizar la agencia de lo tecnológico no humano. La agencia de lo humano, sin embargo, ha sido soslayada en ese trabajo, sin suficiente teorización, apareciendo con frecuencia en la forma de excesiva resistencia a la agencia asignada para lo digital. Este artículo contribuye a la comprensión de la mediación digital de las ciudades teorizando una agencia específicamente poshumana; esto es, una agencia a la vez mediada por medios técnicos, y diversa. Con base en la filosofía de Stiegler lo mismo que en una gama de erudición digital feminista, el artículo conceptúa la agencia poshumana como ya co-constituida desde siempre con tecnologías. Los poshumanos son simultáneamente individuados y exteriorizados en esa co-constitución, lo cual permite que la agencia sea entendida como reinvención. El artículo insiste también en que tal agencia sociotécnica es diferenciada, particularmente en términos de las espacialidades y temporalidades a través de las cuales está organizada. En el artículo se concluye arguyendo que los geógrafos deben reconfigurar su entendimiento de las ciudades mediadas digitalmente y reconocer la inventiva y diversidad de la agencia urbana poshumana. Key Words: differencedigitalfeministposthumanStiegler 关键词：: 差异数码女权主义后人类斯蒂格勒。 Palabras clave: diferenciadigitalfeministaposhumanoStiegler Acknowledgments I would like to thank the OpenSpace Work in Progress Group at The Open University for their robust feedback on an early version of this article, as well as the article's referees. Notes 1. Smart cities are those in which digital technologies are deployed to achieve economic growth (through innovating new products and markets), environmental sustainability (by encouraging more efficient use of resources), and openness (by enabling greater citizen participation in city governance). At least, these are the claims made on behalf of the smart city by its advocates. 2. For Stiegler's scathing critique of contemporary art practice, see Crowley (2013). 3. Kinsley (2014) does acknowledge this aspect of Stiegler's work. 4. It is interesting to note here a connection to the work of Rancière, unsurprisingly, as both Stiegler and Rancière are deeply influenced by Foucault (Crowley 2013). For Rancière, framings of time and space dictate who (and what) is visible and audible, where and when. Power, he argued, resides in the hierarchies embedded in such framing; and “politics,” for him, “is made possible by subjects transfiguring, transforming, appropriating space for the manifestation of dissensus” (Dikec 2015, 98). Rancière located the agency of that transfiguring anywhere, with anyone because, as he insists in his book The Emancipated Spectator (Rancière 2009), everyone is always constantly learning about the world, and becoming human through that learning: “the human animal learns everything in the same way … as it learnt to venture into the forest of things and signs that surrounding it, so as to take its place among human beings: by observing and comparing one thing with another, a sign with a fact, a sign with another sign” (10). In an approach similar to Stiegler's, this is not learning in the sense of gaining more and more knowledge; it is learning as an orientation in the world. “We also learn and teach, act and know, as spectators who all the time link what we see to what we have seen and said, done and dreamed” (Rancière 2009, 17). 5. Stiegler's account does not therefore assume that all human bodies always have similar kinds of posthuman agency (Moore 2013). Nor, in his logic, is such agency exclusive to them: Other, entirely nonhuman entities could also be capable of invention, though as Jöns (2006) suggested, posthumans perform it most intensely. 6. I would also emphasize that there are multiple forms of power in the digitally mediated city, in contrast to the somewhat binary accounts of corporations or governments and citizens that appear in some geographical accounts (see also Buscher et al. 2016). 7. This suggests that geographers interested in the mediation of cities should study the practices in which all of these are embedded, not just the “resistant” (Rodgers, Barnett, and Cochrane 2014). Additional information Notes on contributors Gillian Rose GILLIAN ROSE is Professor in the Department of Geography, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. E-mail: Gillian.Rose@open.ac.uk. Her research interests include digital visualizations of cities, contemporary visual culture, and visual methodologies. Log in via your institution Loading institutional login options... Access through your institution Log in to Taylor & Francis Online Log in Shibboleth Log in to Taylor & Francis Online Username Password Forgot password? 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