What are the parameters that define a posthuman knowing subject, her scientific credibility and ethical accountability? Taking the posthumanities as an emergent field of enquiry based on the convergence of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, I argue that posthuman knowledge claims go beyond the critiques of the universalist image of ‘Man’ and of human exceptionalism. The conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing (...) matter. This implies that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness. Two related notions emerge from this claim: firstly, the mind-body continuum – i.e. the embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind – and secondly, the nature-culture continuum – i.e. ‘naturecultural’ and ‘humanimal’ transversal bonding. The article explores these key conceptual and methodological perspectives and discusses the implications of the critical posthumanities for practices in the contemporary ‘research’ university. (shrink)

A consensus is building that our planet has entered the so-called age of the Anthropocene—a post-Holocene epoch defined by the significant impact of humans on geological, biotic and climatic planetary processes. On the one hand, there is good reason to exercise caution in relation to this concept of the “Age of Man.” At a time when immoderate anthropogenic impact poses a serious threat to ecological integrity and balance, calling an epoch after ourselves does not necessarily demonstrate the humility we may (...) need to espouse. Moreover, discourses of the Anthropocene risk overwriting important differences among human.. (shrink)

이 글의 목적은 포스트휴머니즘에서 제기하는 낙관적 행복론과 향상의 윤리를 비판적으로 검토하는 것이다. 좀더 구체적으로 본다면, 이 글은 기술적 수단을 통해 감정을 제어하고, 인간의 덕성을 개선하여 행복에 도달하려는 ‘도덕적 향상’의 정당성에 의문을 제기한다. “포스트휴머니즘이 상정하는 ‘행복한 삶’, ‘행복한 세상’은 전통적 행복론과 어떤 차이가 있는가?”, “포스트휴머니즘의 맥락에서 전통적 인간 가치로서의 행복은 어떤 중요성을 지닐 수 있는가?”, “인간 가치와 도덕성이 흔들리는 위기의 시대에 포스트휴머니즘은 강력하고 확실한 도덕적 대안으로 작동할 수 있을까?”, “기술적 수단을 통해 향상된 포스트휴먼은 진정한 행복에 도달할 수 있을까?” 이러한 문제의식 아래 (...) 포스트휴머니즘의 행복론을 비판하기 위한 일종의 우회적 접근으로 행복 개념에 대한 기원적 탐색, 즉 쾌락적 행복과 자기실현적 행복의 특징을 살펴본다. 다음으로는 포스트휴머니즘의 행복론을 정서적 측면의 향상과 덕목 향상의 측면에서 고찰하면서, 도덕적 향상과 행복과의 연관성을 도출한다. 마지막으로는 앞선 논의를 기반으로 포스트휴머니즘이 상정하는 행복의 성격과 행복을 실현하는 주체의 문제, 행복에 이르기 위한 절차적 한계 등을 중심으로 포스트휴머니즘의 행복론을 비판적으로 고찰하면서, 인간 향상 기술을 통해 행복에 도달할 수 있다는 포스트휴머니즘의 전략에 문제가 있음을 보여줄 것이다. 결론적으로 기술적 수단을 통한 감정의 제어는 자기실현적 측면에서 행복의 본질을 위협하고, 도덕적 향상은 인간을 도덕적으로 향상시키지 못하며, 결국 진정한 의미에서 인간을 행복하게 하지 못한다는 점을 강조할 것이다. (shrink)

Posthuman, all-too-human -- The posthuman condition -- Posthuman subjects -- Posthuman knowledge production -- The critical posthumanities -- How to do posthuman thinking -- On affirmative ethics -- The inexhaustible.

We imagine posthumans as humans made superhumanly intelligent or resilient by future advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Many argue that these enhanced people might live better lives; others fear that tinkering with our nature will undermine our sense of our own humanity. Whoever is right, it is assumed that our technological successor will be an upgraded or degraded version of us: Human 2.0. Posthuman Life argues that the enhancement debate projects a human face onto an empty (...) screen. We do not know what will happen and, not being posthuman, cannot anticipate how posthumans will assess the world. If a posthuman future will not necessarily be informed by our kind of subjectivity or morality the limits of our current knowledge must inform any ethical or political assessment of that future. Posthuman Life develops a critical metaphysics of posthuman succession and argues that only a truly speculative posthumanism can support an ethics that meets the challenge of the transformative potential of technology. (shrink)

Posthuman Urbanism explores what it means to live in an urban environment with reference to posthuman theory. The book argues that contemporary science and technology offers radically different ways for changing the way we live in city spaces today. It will be of interest to students and academics in Cultural Studies, Urban Studies, Critical Geography, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Architecture and Anthropology.

The Posthuman Child combats institutionalised ageist practices in primary, early childhood and teacher education. Grounded in a critical posthumanist perspective on the purpose of education, it provides a genealogy of psychology, sociology and philosophy of childhood in which dominant figurations of child and childhood are exposed as positioning child as epistemically and ontologically inferior. Entangled throughout this book are practical and theorised examples of philosophical work with student teachers, teachers, other practitioners and children (aged 3-11) from South Africa and (...) Britain. These engage arguments about how children are routinely marginalised, discriminated against and denied, especially when the child is also female, black, lives in poverty and whose home language is not English. The book makes a distinctive contribution to the decolonisation of childhood discourses. Underpinned by good quality picturebooks and other striking images, the book's radical proposal for transformation is to reconfigure the child as rich, resourceful and resilient through relationships with (non) human others, and explores the implications for literary and literacy education, teacher education, curriculum construction, implementation and assessment. It is essential reading for all who research, work and live with children. (shrink)

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments-such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems- with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human (...) as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations. The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the 'posthuman condition', and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike. (shrink)

Beginning with a critical examination of the humanist assumptions of critical ethnography, this article interrogates and surfaces problems with the ontological and epistemological orientations of this research methodology. In drawing on exemplar empirical data from an arts‐based project, the article demonstrates the limitations in the humanist‐based qualitative research approach and advances a postdualist, postrepresentationalist direction for critical ethnography called entangled ethnography. Using data from a larger study that examined the perspectives of racialized mad artists, what is demonstrated (...) in this inquiry is that the entanglement of bodies, objects, and meaning‐making practices is central to working with the ontologically excluded, such as those who find themselves in various states of disembodiment and/or corporeal and psychic distribution. We propose the redevelopment of critical ethnography, extended by entanglement theory (a critical posthuman theory), and suggest that for it to be an inclusive methodology, critical ethnography must be conceptualized as in the process of becoming and always in regeneration, open to critique, extension, and redevelopment. (shrink)

In recent years, Rosi Braidotti has proposed to explore the “intersectionality” of natural, social and technological determinations in order to provide a non-dualistic theoretical framework for what she defines as the “critical posthumanities.” In this paper, I polemically engage with Braidotti’s theoretical project by reconstructing the methodological principle through which she endeavors to disentangle the dualisms presupposed by anthropocentrism and humanism. I will argue that the upshot of this methodological procedure is a hypostatization of subjective structures into reality (...) which in turn facilitates an ontological transposition of the political concept of inclusiveness. In highlighting the formal procedure of inclusion by which the posthuman subject conceptualizes difference, this article provides a set of objections to Braidotti’s methodology by evaluating it in terms of the Marxian critique of speculative abstractions. (shrink)

This special issue of ‘Sophia’ aims to reflect upon future evolutions of religions and their related narratives and imaginaries from a critical and generative understanding of our ancient sources. Bodies are locations of creative power and symbolic proliferation. Cyborgian, transhuman, and posthuman embodiments are going to generate visions of the divine in tune with such an epistemic shift, by addressing questions such as: can God be represented as a cyborg? Could robots and avatars be prophets? Is internet a suitable (...) setting for a posthuman theophany? This special issue articulates within the frame of a relational ontological perspective, according to which the notion of the divine evolves, as much as human and non-human persons do. In this evolutionary scenario, the representation of the divine realm may shift from era to era, adapting to new natural-cultural formations. This special issue argues that the posthuman paradigm shift will be followed by a symbolic turn in religious imaginaries as well. (shrink)

In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non- humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring specifically to controversial developments in mHealth applications, this paper critically diverges from posthuman accounts of human/non-human assemblages. Indeed, we argue that, rather than ‘dissolving’ the human subject, the power of assemblages lie in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. In outlining this (...) claim, we propose a turn from the posthuman to the inhuman as a way of understanding the contemporary landscape of (digital) health. (shrink)

Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book's ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book's posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the (...) lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material). Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine "I", who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death's material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning "I"'s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject. (shrink)

This collection reconsiders the notion of life and conceptualizes those forms of life which have been excluded from modern philosophy, such as post-Anthropocene life, the life of non-human animals and the life of inorganic objects"-- Provided by publisher.

Philosophical Posthumanism is a recent area of scholarship which Francesca Ferrando has introduced in her eponymous book. The author situates the subject as one closely related to Critical Posthumanism and Cultural Posthumanism. She also discusses its close relatives such as Transhumanism and its forebears such as Antihumanism and Poststructuralism. The present article is a discussion of Ferrando’s text, tracing its lineages and relating it to the ideas of thinkers such as Frederich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and Sri Aurobindo.

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk (...) fascinated itself with—in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…”. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; (2) to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned “technocratic” environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field—that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene “means” is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central “apocalyptic” strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama’s millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of “sustainability” as catastrophe management—with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) “crisis” rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological “arms race.” But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the so-called developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene and the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science—like technology—must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It is precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism. (shrink)

Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality critically reads the intersubjective theories on educational relations and uses a posthuman approach to ascribe agency relationally to humans and nonhumans alike. The book introduces the concept of ‘educational relationality’ and contains examples of nonhuman elements of technology and animals, putting educational relationality and other concepts into context as part of the philosophical investigation. Drawing on educational and posthuman theorists, it answers questions raised in ongoing debates regarding the roles of students and teachers (...) in education, such as the foundations of educational relations and how these can be challenged. The book explores educational relations within the field of philosophy of education. After critically examining intersubjective approaches to theories of educational relations, anthropocentrism and subject-centrism are localized as two problematic aspects. Post-anthropocentrism and intra-relationality are proposed as a theoretical framework, before the book introduces and develops a posthuman theory of educational relations. The analysis is executed through a diffractive reading of intersubjective theories, resulting in five co-concepts: impermanence, uniqueness-as-relationality, proximity, edu-activity, and intelligibility. The analysis provided through educational examples demonstrates the potential of using the proposed theory in everyday practices. Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, early childhood education, research methodology and curriculum studies. (shrink)

This book investigates transdisciplinary, arts-based approaches to developing innovative and pertinent higher education pedagogy. Introducing timely critical thinking strategies, the author addresses some of the key issues facing educators today in an increasingly complex digital, technological and ecological world. The author combines emerging ideas in the New Materialism and Posthumanism schools of thought with arts-based teaching and learning, including Practice-as-Research, for Social Science contexts, thus exploring how this approach can be used to productively create new pedagogical strategies. Drawing on (...) a rich repertoire of real-life examples, the volume suggests transferrable routes into practice that are suitable for lecturers, researchers and students. This practical and innovative volume will appeal to researchers and practitioners interested in Posthuman and New Materialist theories, and how these can be applied to the educational landscape in future. (shrink)

Speciesism is a concept that was derived to name forms of discrimination and oppression against nonhuman animals that could be compared to racism and sexism. The concept was formulated in strong terms by Richard Ryder, Peter Singer, and Tom Regan that made it a powerful tool for social and political movements. The discourse on speciesism has been amplified and changed by a set of newer writings in the last few decades that take a more ethological, critical theory, and deconstructive (...) bent. This paper outlines some of the conditions for an antispeciesism based on posthumanism. As humanism itself is the most virulent form of speciesism, no robust antispeciesism can be developed without continued challenge to humanism. (shrink)

The present paper takes a critical posthumanist lens to study the consequences of rapid urbanisation of the Chinese landscape as presented in the short story ‘Good Hunting’, by Ken Liu. One of the main characters in the story is Yan, a huli jing (fox-spirit), whose ability to switch between her fox and human forms is severely impaired by the loss of remnant nature in China, and the subsequent erosion of the qi from the soil. It is not just the (...) natural landscape that undergoes a transformation during urbanisation – the remnants of nature do not remain untouched by this process. Beings like Yan, who continue to inhabit the place that used to be their home, do not remain the same that they were pre-urbanisation. The city changes them, moulds them in ways hitherto inconceivable, and they undergo this transmogrification of their bodies and their self in order to survive. The article draws out the historical relationship between urban spaces and (post)human bodies, with a specific focus on the Chinese body, drawing parallels between the ideals associated with the city and juxtaposing them with what it means to be posthuman. The paper also interrogates Yan’s status as a liminal entity before and after Hong Kong’s transformation, and her use of liminality as a survival strategy. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the common assumption that good care is necessarily human care. It looks to disruptive fictional representations of robot care to assist its development of a theory of posthuman care that jettisons the implied anthropocentrism of ethics of care philosophy but retains care’s foregrounding of entanglement, embodiment and obligation. The essay reads speculative representations of robot care, particularly the Swedish television programme Äkta människor (Real Humans), alongside ethics of care philosophy and critical posthumanism to highlight their synergetic (...) critiques of neoliberal affective economies and humanist hierarchies that treat some bodies and affects as more real than others. These texts and discourses assist me in proposing a theory of care that regards vulnerability as the normative effect of posthuman vital embodiment, as opposed to an anomalous state that can be overcome or corrected via neoliberal practice. (shrink)

Antigone’s afterlives in Ireland have always enacted critical gestures of social protest and mourning that expose the fundamental fragility of human rights caught up in the symbolic conflict between oppressors and oppressed. This paper seeks to explore the scope of rereading certain Irish figurations of Antigone – the exemplary text of European humanism – through a posthumanist lens that unveils new and radical understandings of modern injustices, legal fissures, and capitalist insinuations of an “inhuman politics” against proletarian minorities in (...) twentieth-century Irish society in transnational contexts. The possibilities of a posthumanist theorization of Antigone at the intersection with gender, class, and human rights, reflect the connecting threads, political, aesthetic, and critical, between two texts: an early twentieth-century anonymous poem titled “The Prison Graves” dedicated to Irish human rights activist and revolutionary Roger Casement and an unpublished play-version of Antigone by Aidan C. Mathews in 1984, dedicated to René Girard. Written and produced as a critique of systematic institutional violence and neoliberal capitalist oppression during the epoch of the anti-revolutionary zeitgeist, the myth of Antigone shifts its dialectic from the nationalist nostalgia of “The Prison Graves” to the play-version of the Cold War era to reciprocate a counter-protest against the passing of the Irish Justice Bill. Antigone is reimagined as a hypochondriac resident of the slums of the proletariat and a member of a degenerate acting troupe. Her classical (mythical), aristocratic (white, European, Western) figure has become a posthuman commodity: a proletarian actor now, she performs the same role for millennia in a post-nuclear contaminated prison state in Thebes/Dublin. Peteokles is a bourgeois-turned-rebel mediary; Polyneikes is remembered as a communist terrorist who has been airbrushed from the records of the police state; a bibliophile Ismene religiously reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, and the Chorus is the real state oppressor. (shrink)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun (2021) philosophizes on how in the current technologically saturated culture, the gradual evolution of the empathetic humanoids has, on one hand, problematized our normative notions of cognitive and affective categories, and on the other, has triggered an order of emotional uncanniness due to our reliance on hyperreal real objects for receiving solace and companionship. The novel may be conceived to be a commentary on the emerging discourse in the domain of cognitive and emotional (...) computing that aspires to transform the inner life and social relationships of the human community. The novelty of the paper lies in its ability to showcase how Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) creates a rupture in the existing research and literary narrative by critiquing the theoretical underpinnings of emotional computing that optimistically foresees a future where simulated empathetic minds will be able to decode the complexities of the human emotions. It discusses how literature turns into an apt tool to reflect on the limitations of the programmed machines to decode the elusiveness of the human mind that defies the one-to-one correlation between words, multiple connotations, and their underlying emotions. Through the lenses of the fictional narrative, the paper foregrounds how the concept of the social robot designed to offer empathy, care, and companionship turns into a failed project. The paper draws on critical perspectives from disposability theory, posthuman affect, and immaterial bodies to foreground the noncodified feature of affective experientialities that emerge as a result of the interface between humans and nonanimate beings. (shrink)

Since 2007, Tomás Saraceno has been developing a project that aims to break out of the anthropocentric understanding of communication and coexistence with other animal organisms. In this article, I point out the importance of using modern visualization technologies to analyze and investigate the structure of communication frameworks and their modalities in the animal world, specifically using the example of spiders. The visualization of what is normally invisible to the eye and inaudible to the ear rearticulates the realm of the (...) visible and the audible, which Saraceno then uses for art-critical purposes, with the aim of forming a new type of posthuman attunement to the environment and other animal species. The condition for outlining and articulating Saraceno’s artistic vision is the use of the latest technologies of visualization, which operate on the principle of digital and algorithmic code. They synthesize different planes of affectivity and transform, modulate, and combine the different modes of signs into a single technical-organic complex: they offer new ways of seeing and feeling the world. Thus, hybrid ecology in Saraceno’s case does not imply a return to primordial ways of life, but on the contrary, it forms a semiosphere attuned to a specific plane of consistency that enfolds distinct modes of signs and develops them into an expression of hitherto unsuspected variants of life. (shrink)

Novels and short stories written since the last decades of the nineteenth century and employing discourses of technology have contributed to shaping the idea of the “posthuman condition” in the West to such a degree that some critics already feel entitled to announce the Age of the Posthuman. This essay interrogates some of the embarrassingly quixotic proposals of posthumanism, taking H. G. Wells's Time Machine, William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as paradigmatic texts exploring patterns of mutation, (...) virtuality, and bioengineering. In their concern for the apocalyptic and their sometime depiction of the glorious moment of Herculean victory over classical “human” man, these novels articulate the Western self's undaunted desire for the perfect Other, implying critical and even ironic gestures that question the propagation of a “new” human condition or the idea of absolute boundaries of the human. (shrink)

This article discusses the role that algorithmic thinking and management play in health care and the kind of exclusions this might create. We argue that evidence‐based medicine relies on research and data to create pathways for patient journeys. Coupled with data‐based algorithmic prediction tools in health care, they establish what could be called health care algorithmics—a mode of management of healthcare that produces forms of algorithmic governmentality. Relying on a critical posthumanist perspective, we show how healthcare algorithmics is contingent (...) on the way authority over bodies is produced and how predictive health care algorithms can reproduce inequalities of the worlds from which they are made, centreing possible futures on existing normativities regulated through algorithmic biopower. In contrast to that, we explore posthuman speculative ethics as a way to challenge understanding of ‘ethics’ and ‘care’ in healthcare algorithmics. We suggest some possible avenues towards working speculative ethics into health care while still being critically attentive to algorithmic modes of management and prediction in health care. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have (...) shaped and developed new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

The hierarchical human-centric paradigm has been criticized by various movements of posthuman philosophy because this paradigm forgets and dismisses nonhuman beings and entities: animals, n...

This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical dialogue we are discussing flaws within the very concept of dialogue, how dialogue is challenged in encounters between people with severe disabilities and their helpers, and we are proposing a (...) new interpretation of dialogue in a posthuman area. To illuminate what might be at stake in relations where power is clearly imbalanced we use Pierre Bourdieus theory of the gift when asking ourselves: “How can we understand dialogue when there apparently is one dominant giver and one receiver unable to return the gift?” Discussing this question, we draw on Rosi Braidotti and her Posthuman Critical Theory to see if we can find new grounds to build dialogue on. (shrink)

Ever since TIME magazine's 1983 'Man of the Year' was the PC, we have been led to believe that our domestic spaces have been colonized by digital technology. Too little attention has been paid to the domestic spaces and inhabitants impacted by this, and critical posthumanism has been captured by a picture of humanity overly indebted to digital technologies and their largely male progenitors. By applying feminist theory to posthumanism, this work recovers the plethora of sophisticated human-technology mediations associated (...) with the home and practiced primarily by women, the elderly, infants, the disabled and across cultures globally, challenging dominant, contemporary visions of a future humanity. Authors Dennis M. Weiss and Colbey Emmerson Reid look at various iterations of the posthuman and assert the need for alternative, feminist readings that emphasize different standpoints from which to assess people, places, and products. Chapters address the impact of posthumanism on design theory and look at familiar domestic objects, with different attributes from those typically affiliated with technology and the future, such as clothing, textiles, ceramics, furniture and wallpaper. They reveal their unhomely, extra-human qualities and offer a much-needed perspective on domestic spaces and practices, revivifying the home as a site of species transformation and pushing beyond traditional understandings of person, mothering, families and care-giving to highlight a range of critically-overlooked mediated materialisms and embodiments affiliated with domestic space. By focusing on the neglected intersection of the posthuman with the home and exploring domestic posthuman design, Designing the Domestic Posthuman offers a vision of a future humanity that retains identity, integrity and considers our relationship to others, to the world and things in it. This book widens the lens of critical focus in posthumanism, feminist philosophy and design and presents an alternative, inclusive design framework for the future. (shrink)

Autopoietic theory is increasingly seen as a candidate for a radical theory of law, both in relation to its theoretical credentials and its relevance in terms of new and emerging forms of law. An aspect of the theory that has remained less developed, however, is its material side, and more concretely the theory’s accommodation of bodies, space, objects and their claim to legal agency. The present article reads Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems in a radical and material manner, linking it (...) on the one hand to current post-structural theorisations of law and society, and on the other hand extending its ambit to accommodate the influx of material considerations that have been working their way through various other disciplines. The latter comprises both a materialisation of the theory itself and ways of conceptualising the legal system as material through and through. This I do by further developing what I have called Critical Autopoiesis, namely an acentric, topological, post-ecological and posthuman understanding of Luhmann’s theory, that draws on Deleuzian thought, feminist theory, geography, non-representational theory, and new material and object-oriented ontologies. These are combined with some well-rehearsed autopoietic concepts, such as distinction, environment and boundaries; Luhmann’s earlier work on materiality continuum; more recent work on bodies and space; as well as his work on form and medium in relation to art. The article concludes with five suggestions for an understanding of what critical autopoietic materiality might mean for law. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of person‐centred care (PCC) in nursing, there is no general agreement on the assumptions and the meaning of PCC. We sympathize with the work of others who rethink PCC towards relational, embedded, and temporal selfhood rather than individual personhood. Our perspective addresses criticism of humanist assumptions in PCC using critical posthumanism as a diffraction from dominant values We highlight the problematic realities that might be produced in healthcare, leading to some people being more likely to be (...) disenfranchised from healthcare than others. We point to the colonial, homo‐ and transphobic, racist, ableist, and ageist consequences of humanist traditions that have influenced the development of PCC. We describe the deep rooted conditions that structurally uphold inequality and undermine nursing practice that PCC reproduces. We advocate for the self‐determination of patients and emphasize that we support the fundamental mechanisms of PCC enabling patients' choice; however, without critical introspection, these are limited to a portion of humans. Last, we present limitations of our perspective based on our white*‐cisheteropatriarchy** positionality. We point to the fact that any reimagining of models such as PCC should be carefully done by listening, following, and ceding power to people with diversity dimensions*** and the lived experience or expertise that exists from diverse perspectives. We point towards Black, queer feminism, and critical disabilities studies to contextualize our point of critique with humanism and PCC to amplify equity for all people and communities. Theory and philosophy are useful to understand restrictive factors in healthcare delivery and to inform systematic strategies to improve the quality of care so as not to perpetuate the oppression of groups of people with diversity dimensions. *We purposely capitalize Black and use lower case for white to decentre whiteness and as an intentional act of antiracism (see White Homework a podcast series by Tori W. Douglas). **Cisheteropatriarchy describes people with intersecting identities of dominant social groups; cisgender is the gender identity that aligns with the gender you were assigned at birth, hetero means heterosexual, and patriarchy refers to structural systems of power based on maleness where women are often excluded and hold less power. ***With diversity dimensions, we refer to subjective lived experience and material realities of people that exist outside the ‘dominant minorities' of white‐cisheteropatriarchy, meaning groups of people in society who historically and currently hold more power and through this, structurally dominate the norms and possibilities of living for other people. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, there have been advocates for the rationalizing efficiency of enlightened sovereigns, bureaucrats, and technocrats. Today these enthusiasms are joined by calls for replacing or augmenting government with algorithms and artificial intelligence, a process already substantially under way. Bureaucracies are in effect algorithms created by technocrats that systematize governance, and their automation simply removes bureaucrats and paper. The growth of algorithmic governance can already be seen in the automation of social services, regulatory oversight, policing, the justice system, and (...) the military. However, there have also always been justified democratic and economic criticisms of autocracy, bureaucracy, technocracy, and algorithmic governance. Bureaucrats, technocrats, and algorithms embody biases that tend to serve the interests of elites, and all require transparency and democratic accountability, oversight individual citizens are ill equipped to exercise. As state apparatuses are increasingly automated, mechanisms for collective action and democratic oversight also need to be automated. Algorithms and cyborg citizenry will enable a posthuman democracy. Democratically accountable algorithmic governance, enabled by artificial intelligence and human enhancement, can automate bottom-up citizen surveillance, inform debate, aggregate decision making, and ensure the efficient working of the gradually withering state. As paid work disappears and we transition to a postcapitalist economy with a universal basic income, market mechanisms can be replaced with democratic planning. Indeed, only algorithmic governance can secure our future against accelerating threats from technological innovation. (shrink)

The Dark Posthuman: Dehumanization, Technology, and the Atlantic World explores how liberal humanism first enlivened, racialized, and gendered global cartographies, and how memory, ancestry, expression, and other aspects of social identity founded in its theories and practices made for the advent of the category of the posthuman through the dimensions of cultural, geographic, political, social, and scientific classification. The posthuman is very much the product of world-building narratives that have their beginnings in the commercial franchise and are fundamentally rooted in (...) science, governance, and economics around the hegemonic appropriation of environments and commodification of bodies that initially fuelled white settler life worlds and continue to be operational in the way we conceive of these worlds as continuous ontological formations. The want has always been for ownership of any of these dimensions of being without regard to condition, to not remain stranded as the subsidiary of another's being, to another's claim to humanity, and finally, to escape the suffocating confines of an instrumental ontology that suggests a subcategory of humanity without rights onto itself. The Dark Posthuman distinguishes the posthuman's place within both the liberal and neoliberal imaginary and reveals how its appearance first entrenched itself through the avarice of English settler colonialism, and subsequently, through the paranoia of American slavery. This same figure of the posthuman played a crucial role in the functional adaptation of Cold War behavioural cybernetics, and thereafter, in the fetishization of technology within the era of global financialization. The shadowing of this arrangement during and beyond the long duration of humanity's domination of this world becomes the structural web work of this book. Stephanie Polsky is an interdisciplinary writer and academic working in the areas of Media Studies and Visual Culture. Her work explores the confluence of power around race and gender as technologies of governance. She has lectured widely in media and cultural studies, critical theory, and visual culture at a number of prestigious institutions including Goldsmiths University, Regent's University London, University of Greenwich, and Winchester School of Art. Most recently she has worked at California College of the Arts in Critical Studies and Diversity Studies. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MA in Media Studies from the University of Sussex. Her books include The End of the Future: Governing Consequence in the Age of Digital Sovereignty (Academica Press, 2019), Ignoble Displacement: Dispossessed Capital in Neo-Dickensian London (Zero Books, 2015), and Walter Benjamin's Transit: A Destructive Tour of Modernity (Academica Press, 2009). (shrink)

The essays in this issue of JMP are devoted to critical engagement of my book, The Anticipatory Corpse. The essays, for the most part, accept the main thrust of my critique of medicine. The main thrust of the criticism is whether the scope of the critique is too totalizing, and whether the proposed remedy is sufficient. I greatly appreciate these interventions because they allow me this occasion to respond and clarify, and to even further extend the argument of my (...) book. In this response essay, I maintain that the regnant social imaginary of medicine is the regnant social imaginary of our time. It is grounded in a specific ontotheology: where ontology is a power ontology; where material is malleable to the open-ended organization of power and dependent only on working out the efficient mechanisms of its enactment; where ethically it is oriented only to the immanent telos of utility maximization in the short run, and ultimately to some posthuman future in the long run. This ontotheology originates in the anticipatory corpse and is ordered toward some god-like posthuman being. The entire ontotheology finds enactment through the political economy of neoliberalism. This social imaginary constantly works to insulate itself from other social imaginaries through the use of its institutional power, through marginalization, circumscription, or absorption. The modern social imaginary of neoliberal societies marginalizes and politically isolates other social imaginaries, or transforms them into something acceptable to the neoliberal imaginary. Yet, these other social imaginaries could influence the larger social imaginary in novel ways, sometimes through withdrawal and sometimes through challenges. These other practices—again, usually practices ordered according to different ontological and teleological purposes—might serve as a source of renewal and transformation, but only if the practitioners of these other social imaginaries understand the ontotheological powers that they are up against. (shrink)

According to Wai Chee Dimock, scholars of American literature should study it in a bigger historical context than the one beginning in 1776 or even 1620, freeing themselves in this way from the narrow-minded nationalism that has so often drawn a border around their research. To view American literature in light of the longer durée of ancient civilizations is to see Henry David Thoreau reading the Bhagavad Gita, Ralph Waldo Emerson the Persian poet Hāfez, and rediscover in these and other (...) extensive sympathies the kinship of American literature with world literature. Dramatically expanding the tracts of space-time across which literary scholars might draw valid links between author and author, text and text, and among author, text, and the wide world beyond, the perspective of deep time holds the additional promise, for Dimock, of reinvigorating “our very sense of the connectedness among human beings” and of dissuading us, thereby, from the wisdom of war.1 At the very least we might hope that American soldiers wouldn't look idly on, as they did on 14 April 2003, as the cultural treasures of the Iraqi National Library—which are the treasures of all humankind—were looted and burned. (shrink)

Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law. With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors, and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which (...) states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law - international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law - create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics - including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict, and the impact of science and technology - it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume. This book's posthuman engagement with central international legal debates, prefaced by the leading scholar in the field of posthuman theory, provides a perfect resource for students and scholars in international law, as well as critical and socio-legal theorists, and others with interests in posthuman thought, technology, colonialism and ecology. (shrink)

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to itself (...) or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”. (shrink)

Arts-Based Thought Experiments is a highly visual offering that engages visual arts, photography, poetry, creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction. In this novel book, the authors lean deeply into concepts of the imaginary, and through artful experiments with thought, trouble the tensions between the human, the posthuman and the more than human. In the Anthropocene, with its intractable challenges and cataclysms, engaging posthuman positions when thinking of learning in socioecological terms is paramount to human survival. In this sense, the arts (...) offer creative and critical thought for the possibilities of a post-Anthropocene earth. Contributors are: Raoul Adam, Marilyn Ahearn, William Boyd, Euan Boyd, Adrienne Brown, Shae L. Brown, Teresa Carapeto, Philemon Chigeza, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, David Ellis, Katie Hotko, Marianne Logan, Ferdousi Khatun, Alexandra Lasczik, Yaw Ofosu-Asare, Maia Osborn, Marie-Laurence Paquette, Jemma Peisker, Ziah Peisker, Adrienne Piscopo, David Rousell, Benjamin Ryan, Billy Ryan, Lisa Siegal, Helen Widdop Quinton, Thilinika Wijesinghe and Tracy Young. (shrink)

This article analyzes selected short stories in Cecelia Ahern’s thirty-narrative collection Roar to see how the perspectives of posthuman and postfeminist critique can be incorporated via the common dystopic umbrella into the mainstream female readership of romance literature. The dystopic worlds created by Ahern in Roar portray inequality and power imbalances with regard to gender and sex. The protagonists are mostly middle-aged women whose family and personal lives are either regulated by dystopic realities or acquire a “dystopic” dimension, the solutions (...) to which are provided by, among other tropes, “posthuman” transformations. Roar introduces other-than-human elements, mostly corporeal alterations, in which the female bodies of Ahern’s characters become de-formed and re-formed beyond androcentric systems of value. The article raises the question of whether feminist and, to some extent, “posthuman” approaches, need to be popularized in such an abridged way as Ahern does in her volume. The answer depends upon the identification of the target audience and their expectations. Ahern’s Roar represents popular literature intended to be sold to as many readers as possible, regardless of their education, state of knowledge, etc. Viewed from that perspective, what some critics could perceive as the collection’s structural weaknesses constitutes its utmost marketing asset. The essay argues that despite not being a structurally innovative work of art, Ahern’s book fulfils the basic requirements of the popular fiction genre, intermittently providing some extra, literary gratification and popularizing rudimentary elements of the posthuman and postfeminist thought. (shrink)

This article uses a Lacanian framework both to map types of posthuman discourse that shape the debates around science, technology and the fate of the human, and to advocate a more psychoanalytic framing of these debates. It identifies three dominant posthumanisms: ‘doomsday’, ‘celebratory’ and ‘critical’. The first adopts an apocalyptic tone in the defence of a supposedly natural human essence; the second unthinkingly embraces the promise of new technologies for augmenting human potential; the third draws on the critique of (...) humanism to balance the first two tendencies. The article then proposes a ‘fractal’ reading of both Freud and Lacan which updates psychoanalysis for the online world today. Finally, the article aligns each of the types of posthumanism with one of Lacan's ‘four discourses’: ‘doomsday’ posthumanism with the discourse of the hysteric, ‘celebratory’ posthumanism with that of the master, and ‘critical’ posthumanism with that of the analyst, thereby putting psychoanalysis at the centre of the posthuman rather than its margins. (shrink)

Within the context of neoliberal healthcare, nurses and other health professionals face working conditions that leave them perpetually feeling inadequate, as though they are not enough. They are consistently expected to achieve more with less resources. In such an environment, mere professionalism proves wholly insufficient, enforcing norms of altruism and kindness. Professionals must transcend this disciplinary tool and embody a ‘more‐than‐professional’ approach. This study, informed by critical posthumanism, employs three mythical archetypes—the Medusa, the Witch and the Siren—to illuminate potential (...) avenues for resistance against prevailing trends in healthcare. Drawing on the perspectives of Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici and Jacques Rancière, we introduce a process of resistance for healthcare professionals pushing back against the challenges of crumbling healthcare systems. Cixous' feminist reimagining of Medusa symbolizes intensified embodied sensory experiences, emphasizing the power of irony, laughter and writing in highlighting the daily struggles faced by healthcare workers. Federici's depiction of the Witch exposes clandestine alliances among healthcare workers and patients, akin to a pact with the devil, countering the individualistic, alienating approach to care provision and resisting neoliberal pressures. The Witch archetype embodies resistance grounded in creativity against the commodification of public healthcare. Finally, Rancière's ‘politics of the Siren' offers a strategy for disrupting entrenched hierarchies from the underworld. Like Sirens, healthcare workers and patients can subversively transform their silence into songs of resistance, simultaneously operating from beneath the surface of accountability measures. Our intention is to showcase the emergence of posthuman ‘professionals’ who adapt by forging new modes of social relations in response to neoliberal constraints, straying from conventional, apolitical notions of ‘professionalism’. Drawing lessons from mythical figures of resistance offers a fresh understanding of subversion as a catalyst for social and political transformation within the healthcare sector. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one (...) of the sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

Virtual Futures explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between (...) humans and machines. Virtual Futures brings together diverse fields such as cyberfeminism, materialist philosophy, postmodern fiction, computing culture and performance art, with essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa (to name a few). The collection heralds the death of humanism and the ride of posthuman pragmatism. The contested zone of debate throughout these essays is the notion of the posthuman, or the possibility of the cyborg as the free human. Viewed by some writers as a threat to human life and humanism itself, others in the collection describe the posthuman as a critical perspective that anticipates the next step in evolution: the integration or synthesis of humans and machines, organic life and technology. This view of technology and information is heavily influenced by Anglo American literature, especially cyberpunk, Pynchon and Ballard, as well as the materialist philosophies of Freud, Deleuze, and Haraway, Virtual Futures provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology. (shrink)

Posthumanist film and television is both a vehicle for reflection on discrimination and prejudice and a means of gratifying in fantasy deeply imbedded human impulses towards prejudice. Discrimination lies at the heart of posthuman narratives whenever the posthuman coalesces around an identifiable group in conflict with humans. We first introduce the idea of prejudice as a form of psychological defense, contrasting it with other accounts of prejudice in the philosophical literature. We then apply this notion to number of posthumanist film (...) and television narratives. An adequate account of prejudice tells us about posthumanism in film—the significance of posthumanist thinking, speculation and fantasy. It helps account for the proliferation of television series and films about people who—being at one time dead, still dead or partially dead, or only sometimes dead, or have powers and appetites we do not have—are borderline creatures: not fully us, but still near to us. (shrink)

Erin E. Edwards’ "The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous" offers a unique study of the critical and creative potential of the corpse in the context of (primarily) American modernist literature and other media. Dead bodies, oftentimes “radically dehumanized” (p. 1) and depicted en masse in direct relation to atrocities of colonialism, slavery and World War I, populate modernist literature and art. While many literary theorist whose work focuses on American modernism (as Edwards herself notes), looks at death and (...) corpses through the critical lens of studies on mourning, loss and trauma (e.g. Moglen 2007) and are clearly anchored in the traditional idea of the human subject, Edwards grounds her own “necrocentric perspective” (p. 14) in (feminist) posthumanist theorising. For her, “the corpse in American modernism is involved in a trenchant re-examination of who – and what – counts as human and as ‘alive’ in the early twentieth century” (p. 2). (shrink)

As a rejection and continuous reframing of theoretical humanism, critical posthumanism questions and imagines the human condition in the current context, aligning it with nonhuman and more than human entities, past and future. While this philosophical approach has been referenced in many academic disciplines since the 1990s, it has been gradually garnering interest among nursing scholars, leading to questions such as what it means to be human and what it means to be a nurse in the here and now. (...) As a deeply ethical and political project, posthumanism, which we associate with poststructuralist concepts of power and resistance, questions the formation of posthuman subjects who more accurately reflect complex times, characterized by capitalistic commodification of life—human and nonhuman. In this article, we aim to explore how the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of critical posthumanism, specifically through Rosi Braidotti's works, can be useful to understand a posthuman subjectivity that favors affirmative actions aimed at actualizing our world in becoming. Through examples in nursing practice, education, and research, we will explore not only how critical posthumanism allows us to frame transformations in the current situation that we are embedded in as nurses and more generally as beings but also how these examples allow us to move beyond critique to the actualization of affirmative actions that correspond to the creation of new worlds. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's early works criticize the development of modern democratic institutions as creating a surveillance society, which functions to control bodies by making them feel watched and monitored full time. His later works attempt to recover private space by exploring subversive techniques of the body and language. Following Foucault, pragmatists like Richard Shusterman and Richard Rorty have also developed very rich approaches to this project, extending it deeper into the literary and somatic dimensions of self-stylizing. Yet, for a debate centered (...) on the re-creation of the vision of the self, these discussions have yet to fully engage—even while they set the conditions for this engagement with—issues of posthuman technologies, such as AI, robotics, and genetic engineering. These certainly will constitute the primary engine of public institutional surveillance in the years to come. With this surveillance, the two spheres of private self-fashioning and public institutions will continue to evolve in relation to one another. As they do so, democratic society will change considerably. Perhaps Rorty's own normative and linguistic ideal of conversational maintenance may provide something of a democratic limit case on any future posthuman self-fashioning. (shrink)