Bleak Joys : University of Minnesota Press : 9781517905538 : 1517905532 : 29 Oct 2019 : A philosophical and cultural distillation of the bleak joys in today's ambivalent ecologies and patterns of life Bleak Joys develops an understanding of complex entities and processes?from plant roots to forests to ecological damage and its calculation?as aesthetic. It is also a book about ?bad? things, such as anguish and devastation, which relate to the ecological and technical but are also constitutive of politics, the ethical, and the formation of subjects. Avidly interdisciplinary, Bleak Joys draws on scientific work in plant sciences, computing, and cybernetics, as well as mathematics, literature, and art in ways that are not merely illustrative of but foundational to our understanding of ecological aesthetics and the condition in which the posthumanities are being forged. It places the sensory world of plants next to the generalized and nonlinear infrastructure of irresolvability?the econo