Machinology

With a beautiful yellow cover, Insect Media comes out as a Polish translation: Owady i media! The translation is published by the Krakow based press Księgarnia Akademicka and the “Interpretations” series focusing on cultural studies, performance studies and new historicism. The series has published books such as Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “Postdramatic Theatre”, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s “Transformative Power of Performance”, Judith Butler’s “Antigone’s Claim”, Thierry Bardini’s Junkware and Freddie Rokem’s “Performing History”. A massive thanks to the series editors and the translators professor Małgorzata Sugiera and Dr. Mateusz Borowski for their work on the translation!

Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (2010, University of Minnesota Press) is part of the trio of books that came out in English between 2007 and 2015, including also Digital Contagions (2007, 2nd. new edition with a preface by Sean Cubitt in 2016, Peter Lang Publishing) and A Geology of Media (2015, University of Minnesota Press). Insect Media won the 2012 Anne Friedberg Award for Innovative Scholarship (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, SCMS). Eugene Thacker kindly wrote about the book: “With Insect Media, Jussi Parikka offers a theory of media that challenges our traditional views of the natural and the artificial. Parikka not only understands insects through the lens of media and mediation, he also unearths an insect logic at the heart of our contemporary fascination with networks, swarming, and intelligent agents. Such a project requires the ability to interweave cultural theory with a deep understanding of the sciences—something for which Parikka is well-suited. Most importantly, Insect Media reminds us of the non-human aspect of media, communication, intelligence. Insect Media is a book that is sure to create a buzz.”

Some earlier reviews of Insect Media:

Theory & Event
Mute Magazine
Rhizome
WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly [PDF]