Disclaimer: This essay was originally published at TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
How pervasive is racism, sexism, and colonialism? According to The Collective for Radical Death Studies, even death can be affected by these issues. In this collective composed by death care professionals, death practitioners, students and scholars of Death Studies, death is approached from a political perspective, so that these professionals can remove the remnants of racism, oppression, and colonialism from both Death Studies as a field of science but also in funerary practices.
At a first sight, some may think this is an exaggerated focus for a discussion, but…
Disclaimer: This essay was originally published on TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
Warning: This text contains spoilers from WandaVision and Avengers: End Game.
Released on January 15th, the series WandaVision takes place right after Avengers: End Game, the latest Avenger film that became famous not just for its high concentration of Marvel characters but because many people died — more exactly half of the universe. Wanda Maximoff or Scarlet Witch, however, wasn’t obliterated by the “blip” triggered by Thanos. But her brother Pietro (Quicksilver) and boyfriend Vision weren’t as lucky.
Avengers: End Game was already dark enough because fans were forced…
Disclaimer: This text was originally published in TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
The 20th century was marked by a turning point in the way we, human beings, relate to technology. Since the First Industrial Revolution until the advent of personal computers and the internet, we have watched almost one hundred years of technological revolutions that culminated into the creation of color TV, the atom bomb, the modernist vanguards and postmodernism. We have seen Marinetti writing about speed and the man-machine, as well as we have seen DuChamp taking an urinal to the museum and Jimi Hendrix burning his electric guitar on…
Disclaimer: This is the translated version of the article available here.
Published in 2010, Gore Capitalism was written by the Mexican transfeminist philosopher Sayak Valencia. Transfeminism, in the sense adopted by Valencia, means a transversal, intersectional feminism that embraces all currents of feminism and not only, but also those that deal with transexuality.
Holding a PhD from University of Madrid, Valencia became known for making a critical analysis of capitalism in a combination of feminism and pop culture while using the term “gore” from horror movies where human limbs and gut explode on the screen.
Valencia’s argument, in this sense…
Disclaimer: This essay was originally published on TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
A new year, a new edition of Big Brother Brazil. But this is not another criticism against reality shows, but rather an analysis about loneliness and isolation, two words that became even heavier in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic. But these aren’t new topics either, as pointed by the French historian Georges Minois in his book Histoire de la solitude et des solitaires.
The author is already well known for titles such as History of the Future and History of Suicide, but in this case Minois presents us a…
Disclaimer: Article originally published at TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
Created in 2014, the collective Laboria Cuboniks reunites artists, writers, and programmers dedicated to discuss the theme of xenofeminism: a movement in constant transformation and definition of political models that encompass the present time and the future of technology and science, as well as gender issues. Connected to contemporary philosophical branches such as the left-wing accelerationism, anarcho-transhumanism and speculative realism, xenofeminism even coined the “Communist Manifesto of the 21st century” by cultural commentators such as Mark Fisher.
In spite of all the provocative ideas that the movement brings to contemporary philosophy…
Disclaimer: This essay was originally published at TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
DNA tests are becoming increasingly more accessible and popular, even here in Brazil. After the success of companies such as 23andMe and MyHeritage in the US, now Brazil has similar companies such as Genera and Multigene, which offer DNA tests from R$199. I decided to do mine and so I bought the full package offered by Genera in spite of my skepticism about some results, which include global ancestry, relative search, health and wellbeing (nutrition, sports performance, ageing), heritages and reaction to certain medicine.
How the transhumanist pursuit for endless youth ends up enforcing beauty standards and social inequality
Disclaimer: this text was originally published by Tab UOL, in Portuguese.
Cosmetics, surgical procedures, genetic treatments, 100 pills per day: anything goes with Transhumanism. Patients are turned into consumers and unaccessible health services are fetishized.
The legend says that, in the future, the world will be divided between two kinds of people: those who can live inderterminadely and those who die.
An ideological and philosophical movement, transhumanism seeks to find ways to transcend human condition through technologies such as bioengineering, robotics, nanotechnology or even artificial intelligence. The final goal is to augment our bodies and minds, being it through enhanced performance or, ultimately, through the radical extension of life. North American authors are among some of the most known enthusiasts and researchers.
One could…
Disclaimer: This essay was originally published on Tab UOL, in Portuguese.
Born in 1919, James Lovelock turned 100 last year, when he also released his most recent book, Novacene: The coming age of hyperintelligence. In this work, the English scientist recollects his long life journey, one filled with impressive facts — among the anecdotes, there is this one in which he recalls a dinner at the Hawking’s residency, when he had the opportunity to hold baby Stephen in his arms. But this is not by far the most curious fact about Lovelock. …
Disclaimer: This article was originally published on TAB UOL, in Portuguese.
Remember when 2020 started with Trump sending bombs to Iran and we were sharing memes about a Third World War? Nobody imagined 2020 would be what it happened to be and, now that it’s gone, we try to believe that nothing can’t get worse. But, hold on, January already began with the US capitol being invaded by pro-Trump rioters who didn’t accept the defeat of the current president. …
Lidia Zuin
Brazilian journalist, MA in Semiotics and PhD candidate in Visual Arts. Head of innovation and futurism at UP Lab. Cyberpunk enthusiast and researcher.
