A groundbreaking, multidisciplinary collection that rethinks our present moment and anticipates the key concepts that will shape and direct the twenty-first century.

Contemporanea is a nascent lexicon for the twenty-first century edited by seasoned philosophers and authors Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa. The collection showcases perspectives from a range of noteworthy thinkers in philosophy, ecology, and cultural studies, as well as artists, from across the globe, including Slavoj Zizek, Timothy Morton, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, and Vandana Shiva, who each describe what they anticipate will be the concepts shaping the trajectory of this century—everything from the world state to the nuclear taboo, automation to Teslaism, plant sexuality to arachnomancy, and ecotrauma to resonances, to name a few.

This century, as the editors explain, has to date grounded itself in the debris of the preceding century, whose revolutions and struggles failed to transform our time: post-colonialism, post-fascism, and post-liberalism have morphed into neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and neofascism, often combined in a previously unimaginable mix. And, just as the political developments at the beginning of the twenty-first century revived and reshuffled those of the preceding epoch, so too have philosophical trends sought to breathe fresh life into the stillborn -isms of the past—realism, vitalism, logicism, materialism, empiricism, criticism—adding the adjective “new” and sometimes “radical” before them. To articulate a different future, another language is needed. And, to develop another language, one needs to develop fresh concepts, including the concepts proposed in this collection.

Contributors
Mieke Bal, Claudia Baracchi, Amanda Boetzkes, Erik Bordeleau, Anita Chari, Emanuele Coccia, Valentina Desideri, Roberto Esposito, Filipe Ferreira, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Claire Fontaine, Graham Harman, Yogi Hale Hendlin, Ranjit Hoskote, Cymene Howe, Daniel Innerarity, Joela Jacobs, Ken Kawashima, Sabu Kohso, Bogna Konior, Brandon LaBelle, Anna Longo, Artemy Magun, Michael Marder, Michael Marder, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Timothy Morton, Mycelium, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bahar Noorizadeh, Kelly Oliver, Uriel Orlow, Richard Polt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Tomás Saraceno, Vandana Shiva, Anton Tarasyuk, Anaïs Tondeur, Giovanbattista Tusa, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Santiago Zabala, Zahi Zalloua, Slavoj Žižek

Michael Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His past books include Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life and Philosophy for Passengers (MIT Press).

Giovanbattista Tusa is a philosopher and video artist based at the Nova University of Lisbon in Portugal, where he coordinates the research program X-CENTRIC FUTURES. He is a coauthor, with Alain Badiou, of The End.

CONTENTS
1 THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: OVERTURE 1
Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa

REMNANTS
2 ANAMNESIA 9
3 NECROBIOSIS 15
4 DISRUPTION 21
5 SEA RUINS 25
6 DUMP 31

SENSORIA
7 IMAGING 37
8 ACOUSTICS 51
9 RESENTMENT/RESSENTIMENT 57
10 MADNESS 67
11 BODY: “WE DON’T YET KNOW WHAT A BODY IS FOR” 79
12 RESONANCE 83

MATERIALITIES
13 THE EMPRESS: ON ABUNDANCE = GENEROSITY + GENERATIVITY 95
14 ARCHIPELAGO 99
15 PLASTIC IS PLASTIC 107
16 LIQUIDITY (OR YOU CAN’T BE ALONE IN A LIQUIDITY POOL) 113
17 PLACENTA, THE COMPANION OF THE DEPTHS 121

ECOPOIESIS
18 REGENERATION 129
19 NATURE 137
20 ANIMALS 143
21 INTERSPECIES 153
22 PLANT SEXUALITY 163
23 ARACHNOMANCY 175

PRAXES
24 WORLD STATE 193
25 THE NUCLEAR TABOO AND THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 197

26 PRIVACING 201
27 ON PEACE (DIMLY LIT) 207
28 LABOR-POWER (ARBEITSKRAFT; 労働力) 213
29 INSTITUTION 225
30 POLITICAL MANNERISM 231
31 AMBIGUITY 241
32 PARRHESIA 247

TECHNICS
33 WIRED BRAIN 259
34 AUTOMATION 263
35 TESLAISM: ECONOMICS AT THE END OF THE END OF THE FUTURE 273
36 BAYESIAN PROBABILITY 289
37 EXONET 293

TEMPORALITIES
38 ECOTRAUMA 303
39 LULLABY: PROTOTYPES OF FUTURE EVIL 309
40 HAUNTING: PLANT GHOSTS AND CHRONO-GARDENING 317

41 FUTURITIES 325
42 ANARKHÍA: THE RETURN OF AIR 333
43 DÉFAILLANCE: OF PHILOSOPHY 337

CONTRIBUTORS 345