Evolution is seen to be entering a bio-technological phase. Nietzsche's affirmation that "man is something that must be overcome" no longer has a rhetorical ring given the means at our disposal at the end of the twentieth century. "Viroid Life" boldly challenges existing explanations of these changes inherited from modernity, arguing that they have exhausted their usefulness and new models are needed to guide us in mapping through the future.
Exploring and critically examining the new realities of artificial life that confront us, "Viroid Life" brings together the tradition of Nietszchean thought with new work in exploratory biology and machinic thinking. Offering insights from Darwin to Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord and the Situationist movement, Pearson provides a brave starting point for any inquiry on the future of the "human."

Keith Ansell Pearson is Senior Lecturer and Director of Graduate Research at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Nietzsche contra Rousseau and An Introduction to Nietzsche as a Political Thinker.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Loving The Poison; Chapter 2 Towards the Overhuman; Chapter 3 Dead Or Alive; Chapter 4 Nietzsche Contra Darwin; Chapter 5 Viroid Life; Chapter 6 Timely Meditations On the Transhuman Condition;