Notes: Lyotard introduced the term “postmodern” from the arts into philosophy and social sciences. Lyotard wrote “Simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” Lyotard presented postmodern ways of knowing as critical of “official” grand narratives or teleological views of human history. Although the book has certainly been influential, Lyotard actually considered The Postmodern Condition to be his worst book.

Notes: In her influential book, Katherine Hayles explores the complexities of embodiment and the posthuman in literature and culture. Hayles describes the posthuman as treating the body as the original prosthesis and consciousness as the thinking mind itself, but she also pushes back against this view, writing that the “human being is first of all embodied being, and the complexities of this embodiment mean that human awareness unfolds in ways very different from those of intelligence embodied in cybernetic machines” (p. 283-4). Drawing from Donna Haraway, Hayles also argues that “Cyborgs actually exist” ( p. 114), noting the number of people living with medical technology integrated into their bodies and even more integrating with cybernetics on such a regular basis as to become an extension of their bodies.

Notes: This book was my constant companion as a Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa. This was my handbook for, well, setting up and running a school library. The index also provides the Junior Color Code classification scheme and basic Dewey Decimal Classification scheme. Through cataloging the library collection, I ended up memorizing much of the Dewey Decimal classes and subclasses.

Available for download through ERIC.

Notes: Haraway challenges the “cultural fantasy” of human exceptionalism, at times even ruffling the feathers of fellow environmental feminist thinkers, who themselves are certainly not immune to anthropocentrism and the fantasy of human exceptionalism that “humanity alone is not a spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (p. 11). Haraway spends much of the book considering the various and complex relationships between humans and dogs -- as companion species, as “purebred” biocapital, and in sport. But she also discusses cloning and bioethics, the fraught relationship between science and lab animals, and chicken farming and avian flu.

View Haraway's 2003 Companion Species Manifesto Lecture from the European Graduate School on YouTube.

Notes: This is probably one of the most challenging reads on my shelf. Two of the theories presented in this text that resonated with me are the rhizome model and becoming-animal. The rhizomatic model of knowledge is non-hierarchical with multiple entry and exit points, and is in contrast to the arborescent, which is hierarchical. In library science, organization systems are arborescent, so a book can only be assigned one classification number. This makes sense when you consider the practical limitations when these systems were developed. A print book can only exist in one physical space, so a specific classification number is needed to help the user locate the book. But, human knowledge is not inherently hierarchical (or arborescent), and digital technologies now allow for a rhizomatic approach to information organization. Electronic resources can exist in multiple “spaces” simultaneously.

Read online at Open Library or download from LibCom.org. John David Ebert also provides a great overview and discussion of A Thousand Plateaus on YouTube.

Notes: Sharon Salzberg is a practitioner and teacher of Buddhist meditation and one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. Loving-kindess (mettā in Pali, maitrī in Sanskrit) meditation exists in partnership with insight (vipassanā in Pali, vipaśyanā in Sanskrit), particularly in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Where insight meditation seeks to cultivate wisdom and mindfulness, loving-kindness meditation seeks to cultivate compassion, good will, and, well, love and kindness, toward all living beings (including oneself!). Salzberg provides a great introduction in this seminal work, drawing from Buddhist teachings, folk stories, and personal anecdotes.

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: The Dhammapada is one of the most widely read Buddhist scriptures and is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form. The Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka Nikaya, a division of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. This translation of the Dhammapada has gotten some negative reviews because Cleary’s own commentary and other quotes and notes are interspersed throughout the text. But, this was the first version of the Dhammapada I had access to, and it really resonated with me at the time and remains a very important book on my shelf.

The Dhammapada is available to download from the BuddhaNet ebook Library or to read online at Access to Insight or Project Gutenberg.

Notes: Marshall McLuhan was a prescient scholar and media theorist. He is perhaps best known for his maxim “The medium is the message.” The book title “The Medium is the Massage” was a misprint, but McLuhan liked it as a portmanteau of "mass age." This is an awesome little book with graphic design by Quentin Fiore is presented in a collage style and the ideas are still relevant over 50 years later.

Available to read and download through the Internet Archive. The audio adaptation is also available for free download courtesy the Marshall McLuhan estate at MarshallMcLuhan.com.

Notes: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women is actually a collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. Haraway describes simians, cyborgs, and women as “odd boundary creatures” (p. 2) and as such, have something to tell us. She examines the history of primatology and primate behavior sciences, and argues that our conception of “nature” is a social construct. This work is a significant contribution to feminist theory and science and technology studies.

Available to read online or download from Internet Archive.

Notes: Of course, the specific texts Johnson examined in the early 2000s would be dated now, but his thesis is still compelling. Rather than popular culture becoming “dumbed down,” Johnson examines the multitudinous ways that media and pop culture are becoming more complex. One particular thought experiment from the book that I still reference is “Imagine a society in which video games are the favored media of creative expression. How would such a society view print books?”

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: W. J. T. Mitchell is an American academic well known for his work in image studies, media theory, and visual culture. In The Last Dinosaur book, Mitchell presents dinosaurs as cultural constructs and modern totems, writing “No one has ever seen a dinosaur, but everyone knows what they look like” (p. 48).

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: At just over 100 pages, this is one of my favorite introductory texts to anarchist political thought. Berkman provides a thoughtful and plain-language outline of anarchist thought and ideals. Berkman was a Russian-American author and leader of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century. This volume was originally published in 1929 under the name What Is Communist Anarchism? and was reissued in 1936 as Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism.

Read online at Open Library or download from LibCom.org or The Anarchist Library.

Notes: Norman Fairclough is an English linguist and one of the founders of critical discourse analysis. He notes early in the book that linguists like to joke that a language can be defined as a “dialect with an army and a navy” (p. 21). Fairclough argues that there is not an external relationship “between” language and society, but an internal and dialectical relationship. Language is part of society; linguistic phenomena are social phenomena, and social phenomena are (in part) linguistic phenomena. Fairclough provides analysis of political and cultural power through both textual and verbal discourse.

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu discusses the intersections of language, power and politics. Bourdieu argues that language is not only a means of communication, but also a means for expressing and maintaining power, writing that, “Quite apart from the literary (and especially the poetic) uses of language, it is rare in everyday life for language to function as a pure instrument of communication” (p. 66). For example, raising a common language to the status of official or national language established a de facto monopoly on influence and power, and competency in the “official” language is conflated with the ability to speak.

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: Classic text on general semantics, the study of meaning, or what Hayakawa calls the relationship between the map and the territory. In engaging prose, Hayakawa discusses the role of language in daily life, and how language has the power to shape our thinking.

Available to read online though Open Library.

Notes: Everyone should spend some time learning to identify their local flora and fauna. It's like a mini-game for real life.

Available to read online at Open Library.

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Notes: This is a fascinating deep dive into several famous (and controversial) photographs, including Roger Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855), photographs from the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse during the Iraq War, and Walker Evans’ Great Depression era photography for the Farm Security Administration, particularly those of Floyd Burroughs' cabin in Hale County, Alabama. As the title may suggest, Morris challenges the assumption that “seeing is believing,” and examines how assumptions and biases can influence how documentary photographs are viewed and interpreted.

Vox has a video on YouTube with Morris discussing Roger Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855), which is also featured in the book.

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Notes: "Will no doubt be lapped up by the new breed of media brat."—Time Out

One of my first forays into the world of media theory and applying different critical lenses to my analyses, such as semiotics, feminist theory, genre study, and postmodernism.

Available to read online through Open Library.

Notes: Said traces the hidden, but pervasive, connection between Western imperialism and culture, specifically through British literature and novels of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Said compares the role of empire in literature and culture to servants in a grand household “novels, whose work is taken for granted but scarcely ever more than named, rarely studied” (p. 63).

Available to read online through Open Library.

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Available to read online at Internet Archive.

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Available to read online at Open Library.

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Available to read online at Open Library or listen to the audiobook on LibriVox.

Notes: Edward Said introduces the term “Orientalism” to describe Western depictions and portrayals of the East (or Orient), particularly the Middle East. Said further presents Orientalism as Western scholarship and study of the Eastern world and inextricably linked to the history and legacy of imperialism. Said’s work has been influential in literary theory, cultural criticism and area studies, and is a foundational work in the area of postcolonial studies.

Available to read online through Open Library.