The Debate on Immortality: Posthumanist Science vs. Critical Philosophy

At different times Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse argued that immortality is a condition of overcoming misery and achieving complete human freedom. Their arguments were made before “practical immortality” had become a concrete scientific project. The difference between what was then and what is now scientifically possible alters the ethical and political value of the idea of immortality. Had the first generation of critical theorists occupied the present historical moment, they would have realized that science harnessed to the demand for limitless life would not solve the kind of ethical and existential problems they hoped it would. I argue that the scientific struggle against human finitude is driven by the same egocentric concern for money and self-maximization that early critical theory diagnosed as the main psychological pathology caused by capitalism. Finitude, I conclude, is the price human beings must pay if they are to live free and meaningful lives.     

Afterlives of the Dead: Uncovering Graves and Mishandling Corpses in Nineteenth-Century China

The late imperial Chinese state made a concerted effort to regulate the bodies of the dead. The statutes and substatutes of the Qing Code not only specified how and when corpses were to be buried, but they also criminalized the exposure, manipulation, alteration, and destruction of dead bodies. Through an examination of legal cases related to the crime of “uncovering graves” (fazhong ), this article explores the uses and abuses of corpses in early nineteenth century China. It argues that dead bodies presented a unique problem for the state. On the one hand, laws related to uncovering graves were intended to keep corpses in their proper places. Once a corpse was buried, it was supposed to be fixed—ritually, materially, and spatially. Unfortunately, this ideal could never be fully realized, since corpses were always in motion. They decomposed; they shifted in the earth; they were exposed by soil erosion; and they were subjected to degradation over time. Moreover, they were disturbed, moved, manipulated, gathered, divided, circulated, and even consumed medicinally by others. In other words, many corpses had interesting and eventful social lives. This article explores some of these lives in an effort to illuminate how the state attempted to manage and control intractable bodies during the nineteenth century.     

The strath report: britain confronts the H‐Bomb, 1954–1955

Late in 1954, the British government convened a secret committee of civil servants to explore the implications of the hydrogen bomb for Britain in a nuclear war. Headed by William Strath, this small and secret cadre of experts thought through the destruction that would follow a thermonuclear attack on the UK. This paper examines the recently declassified “Strath Report” and its ramifications. Drawing on intelligence assessments, technical analysis and economic predictions, its conclusions were profoundly pessimistic. Its portrayal of widespread devastation and the likely collapse of civil society shocked politicians and government officials, and led not only to massive revisions in the UK's plans for war but to official attempts to suppress public discussion of thermonuclear weapons and civil defence.     

Introduction

Previous scholarly research has relied upon participant observation and indirect measures such as southern Democrats in positions of power to determine the presence and success of the Conservative Coalition in congressional committees. These measures are used in turn to ascertain the relationship between Conservative Coalition committee success and subsequent Conservative Coalition floor success. A more realistic measure of CC committee success, constructed from previously unavailable committee roll call votes, reveals the Conservative Coalition appears at approximately the same rate as it does on the floor and is slightly more successful in committee. A portion of the variation in the Conservative Coalition committee success rate is explained by a regression model utilizing a measure of CC committee strength and two measures of committee chair influence as independent variables. The analysis reveals the strongest predictor of CC committee success is the willingness of the chair to join the CC followed by the size of the coalition.