The Digital Logic of Death : Confronting Mortality in Contemporary Media

**This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.** In __The Digital Logic of Death__, Steven Pustay skillfully makes visible the immensely important but often overlooked role that moving images play in shaping our understanding of mortality. This relationship, he argues, is made all the more urgent by the technologies of the digital age, which have profoundly altered our ability to represent and contemplate death through moving images, resulting in an entirely new cultural logic of death. To draw out this new logic, Pustay presents accessible readings of otherwise dense and difficult philosophical approaches to death – such as those found in existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory – by reading them through the lens of contemporary media. From art-house films like __Irréversible__ and __The Fountain__ to blockbusters like the Matrix trilogy, from television commercials for M&M's to pay-cable dramas like __The Sopranos__ and __Breaking Bad__, from first-person shooters like __Bioshock__ to indie-games like __LIMBO__, Pustay shows how moving images have shifted our understanding of death in general and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular. This book is open access and available on (http://www.bloomsburycollections.com) www.bloomsburycollections.com . It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. In The Digital Logic of Death , Steven Pustay skillfully makes visible the immensely important but often overlooked role that moving images play in shaping our understanding of mortality. This relationship, he argues, is made all the more urgent by the technologies of the digital age, which have profoundly altered our ability to represent and contemplate death through moving images, resulting in an entirely new cultural logic of death. To draw out this new logic, Pustay presents accessible readings of otherwise dense and difficult philosophical approaches to death such as those found in existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory by reading them through the lens of contemporary media. From art-house films like Irrversible and The Fountain to blockbusters like the Matrix trilogy, from television commercials for M&M's to pay-cable dramas like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad , from first-person shooters like Bioshock to indie-games like LIMBO , Pustay shows how moving images have shifted our understanding of death in general and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular. In The Digital Logic of Death, Steven Pustay skillfully makes visible the immensely important but often overlooked role that moving images play in shaping our understanding of mortality. This relationship, he argues, is made all the more urgent by the technologies of the digital age, which have profoundly altered our ability to represent and contemplate death through moving images, resulting in an entirely new cultural logic of death. To draw out this new logic, Pustay presents accessible readings of otherwise dense and difficult philosophical approaches to death - such as those found in existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory - by reading them through the lens of contemporary media. From art-house films like Irreversible and The Fountain to blockbusters like the Matrix trilogy, from television commercials for M&M's to pay-cable dramas like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, from first-person shooters like Bioshock to indie-games like LIMBO, Pustay shows how moving images have shifted our understanding of death in general and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular. This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: The Digital Logic of Death 12 Knowing Death 12 Showing Death 15 1 The Trauma of Digital Death 20 In Effigie, In Absentia 20 The Jouissance of Death (Witnessing) 23 The Pornography of Death (Representing) 30 The Sublimity of Death (Simulating) 43 Time Destroys Everything 58 2 The Digital Path to Death 64 Death in Digital Games 64 Re-animation 67 Compossibility 71 Recurrence, Subjectivity, Contemplation 74 The Path to Death 83 After the Game is Before the Game 89 3 The Potential of Digital Death 100 Possibilistic to the Limit 100 Anxiety and Angst (Possibility and Authenticity) 103 Being-toward-Death (Potentiality, Resoluteness, Immanence) 115 Split Subjectivity (Potentiality, Reflection, Ecstasis) 125 The Road to Awe 133 4 The Event of Digital Death 144 The One or the Multiple 144 Cyborgs, Androids, and Immortal Machines 148 Being as Multiplicity (Axiomatic vs. Problematic) 157 Death as Event (Consistency and Inconsistency) 164 Everything That Has a Beginning Has an End 173 Conclusion: The Fractal Logic of Life 178 The Micro and the Macro 178 Notes 185 Bibliography 207 Index 214 "In The Digital Logic of Death , Steven Pustay skillfully makes visible the immensely important but often overlooked role that moving images play in shaping our understanding of mortality. This relationship, he argues, is made all the more urgent by the technologies of the digital age, which have profoundly altered our ability to represent and contemplate death through moving images, resulting in an entirely new cultural logic of death. To draw out this new logic, Pustay presents accessible readings of otherwise dense and difficult philosophical approaches to death ? such as those found in existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory ? by reading them through the lens of contemporary media. From art-house films like Irrv̌ersible and The Fountain to blockbusters like the Matrix trilogy, from television commercials for M&M's to pay-cable dramas like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad , from first-person shooters like Bioshock to indie-games like LIMBO , Pustay shows how moving images have shifted our understanding of death in general and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular."-- Provided by publisher

In The Digital Logic of Death, Steven Pustay skillfully makes visible the immensely important but often overlooked role that moving images play in shaping our understanding of mortality. This relationship, he argues, is made all the more urgent by the technologies of the digital age, which have profoundly altered our ability to represent and contemplate death through moving images, resulting in an entirely new cultural logic of death. To draw out this new logic, Pustay presents accessible readings of otherwise dense and difficult philosophical approaches to death – such as those found in existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory – by reading them through the lens of contemporary media. From art-house films like Irréversible and The Fountain to blockbusters like the Matrix trilogy, from television commercials for M&M's to pay-cable dramas like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, from first-person shooters like Bioshock to indie-games like LIMBO, Pustay shows how moving images have shifted our understanding of death in general and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular.