{"product_id":"laughing-on-the-brink-of-jan-miernowski-9798855800005","title":"Laughing on the Brink of Humanity: An Exercise in Epihumanism","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStretching from antiquity to AI, a provocative study of the joyless laughter that emerges at the boundary of the human and the inhuman.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat does it mean to be human? And, more precisely, what does it mean to be human now, with both humanism and the humanities in crisis? In answer to these questions, \u003ci\u003eLaughing on the Brink of Humanity\u003c\/i\u003e seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation-a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity-in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science-the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jan Miernowski\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798855800005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e State University of New York Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/02\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 291\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.87lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.66d","brand":"Jan Miernowski","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46907334721791,"sku":"9798855800005","price":36.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_2ff243b7-d3b6-4c58-b2f3-b76f55703804.jpg?v=1748773025","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/laughing-on-the-brink-of-jan-miernowski-9798855800005","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}