Philosophical Posthumanism

Francesca Ferrando

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350059498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Humanisme en philosophie

The notion of 'the human' is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term 'posthuman' provides an alternative. The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the "posthuman" umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human. Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.

Part One

What Is Philosophical Posthumanism?

1

Premises

The twenty-first century has ushered in a redefinition of the body by cybernetic and biotechnological developments; the concept of “human” has been broadly challenged, while “posthuman” and “transhuman” have become terms of philosophical and scientific enquiry. Physicality no longer represents the primary space for social interaction, as the growing issue of internet addiction seems to suggest. Human cloning has approached bioethical disputes, and surrogate motherhood is deconstructing natural conception. The semantic demarcation between humans and cyborgs¹ has blurred. On the one side, electronic pacemakers, high-tech prostheses, and plastic surgery have become accepted practices of body reconfiguration. On the other, in a pioneer experimentation² toward technological enhancement, a growing number of people have implanted RFIDs under their skin. Are these scenarios inducing a paradigm shift in the ontological and epistemological perception of the human? Is this shift “posthuman”? Philosophical Posthumanism is flourishing in an era which has been, and still is, generating a proliferation of “post-s”: from post-modern to post-postmodern, from postcolonial to post-capitalist, from post-feminist to post-racial, from post-democracy to the hyperbolic post-truth, and so on. We shall locate the posthuman within this need for “post-s”—an urgency to express something which seems to escape each and every singular “post,” and which should be investigated, more generally, through the significance of the “post” itself. Where does this easiness on the use of the “post” come from? There are many traditions of thought which could be held responsible for this tendency: the integral deconstruction of fixed categories invested by postmodernity; the epistemological impact of quantum physics; and the increased role of technology in the formation of human identity,³ with a lead to hybridization as a constitutive technology of the self.⁴ Philosophical Posthumanism reflects upon the broader signification of technological developments, but it does not exhaust its analysis there. Actually, considering that a large number of the population worldwide is still engaged in the attempt of surviving, if Philosophical Posthumanism was reduced to a reflection on the technological kinship of the human revisited in its specific technical endeavors, such a preference would confine it to a classist and techno-centric academic movement.⁵ In fact, the posthuman turn cannot be accounted only in relation to the human or to technology, but it should be engaged per se.

How to define Philosophical Posthumanism? Philosophical Posthumanism is an onto-epistemological approach, as well as an ethical one, manifesting as a philosophy of mediation,⁶ which discharges any confrontational dualisms and hierarchical legacies; this is why it can be approached as a post-humanism, a post-anthropocentrism, and a post-dualism. Historically, it can be seen as the philosophical approach which suits the informal geological time of the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). While Philosophical Posthumanism focuses on decentering the human from the center of the discourse, the Anthropocene marks the extent of the impact of human activities on a planetary level, and thus stresses the urgency for humans to become aware of pertaining to an ecosystem which, when damaged, negatively affects the human condition as well. Posthumanism exceeds the particular tradition of Western academic thought, and it can be traced and enacted in different cultures as well as in different modes.⁷ In a similar way, it should be noted that Posthumanism is not only an academic perspective but a transhistorical attitude which has been a part of human cultures, trans-spaces, and eras. Hybrid representations can be traced as early as the upper paleolithic age—for instance, the lion-headed figurine of the Hohlenstein-Stadel (Germany), which is determined to be about 32,000 years old, is the oldest known zoomorphic sculpture that has been found in the world till present (Hahn 1993). Hybrid imageries have been part of the human symbolic heritage since the very beginning of recorded civilization; highlighted as cultural and ontological metaphors by Postmodernism,⁸ they developed a further significance within Posthumanism and the rise of biotechnological cultures (think, for instance, of genetic chimeras). On one side, due to genetic engineering and nanotechnology, life itself has become more and more of a “biotechnological assemblage” (Waldby 2000); on the other, the environmental concerns of posthuman ethics, which invest in recycling policies and sustainability, spontaneously delve into such tradition. This book will deal mostly with a contemporary Western philosophical genealogy of the posthuman; this location, far from essential, shall be seen as a part of an ongoing choral process unraveling the global genealogies of the posthuman. It is important to emphasize this non-reducibility of sources so as not to fall into any parochial or culturally biased foundational myth. Before delving into the meanings and possibilities of the posthuman approach, we should also mention its species-specific epistemological premises. In the economy of knowledge, humans are both subjects and objects⁹ : even when trying to avoid anthropocentric positions, humans are still communicating specific and situated human understandings in a human language to other human beings. Posthumanism shares with humanism the fact that it is still enacted by human beings, but accesses such an epistemological standpoint through the feminist policies of situating the self,¹⁰ and also by acknowledging the self as plural and relational. Posthumanism postulates a specific self-awareness,¹¹ which recognizes its own embodied location without placing it at the top of any epistemological hierarchy.¹² Andy Miah, in “A Critical History of Posthumanism” (2008), underlines this aspect, as he states: “A crucial premise of posthumanism is its critical stance towards the idea that humans are a superior species in the natural order” (77). In the following, he clarifies, “In this sense, the ‘post’ of posthumanism need not imply moving beyond humanness in some biological or evolutionary manner. Rather, the starting point should be an attempt to understand what ha s been omitted from an anthropocentric worldview” (ibidem). From a philosophical posthumanist perspective based on mediation, we can interpret Posthumanism as both a reflection on what has been omitted from the notion of the human and a speculation about the possible developments of the human species. The two perspectives are connected: the speculative aspect relies upon a critical understanding of what the notion of the human implies. A critical revision of the human is necessary to the development of a posthumanist agenda.¹³

2

From Postmodern to Posthuman

What does Posthumanism mean? The term “Posthumanism” may refer, more specifically, to Critical Posthumanism, Cultural Posthumanism, and Philosophical Posthumanism. In this chapter, we will present and explain each movement; within the book, the term “Posthumanism” will be implemented to include them all. Where does Posthumanism come from? Posthumanism came along within and after Postmodernism, generated out of the radical deconstruction¹ of the “human,” which began as a philosophical as well as a political project in the late 1960s and turned into an epistemological one in the 1990s. Posthumanism is a “post” to the notion of the “human,” located within the historical occurrence of “humanism” (which was founded on hierarchical schemata),² and in an uncritical acceptance of “anthropocentrism,” founded upon another hierarchical construct based on speciesist assumptions.³ Both the notion of the “human” and the historical occurrence of “humanism,” have been sustained by reiterative formulations of symbolic “others,” which have functioned as markers of the shifting borders of who and what would be considered “human”: non-Europeans, non-whites, women, queers, freaks, animals, and automata, among others, have historically represented such oppositional terms. As Rosi Braidotti puts it, in Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002): “Postmodernity is notoriously the age of proliferating differences. The devalued ‘others’ which constituted the specular complement of the modern subject—woman, the ethnic or racialized other and nature or ‘earth-others’—return with a vengeance” (174). Posthumanism may arise once the need for such a “vengeance” has been fulfilled, and the voices of the subjectivities which have been historically reduced to the realm of the “Other,” have been acknowledged. Posthumanism is inextricably related to the studies of the differences, referring to the fields of research which developed out of the deconstruction of the “neutral subject” of Western onto-epistemologies.⁴ The deconstruction enacted, within the historical and philosophical frame of Postmodernism, by feminist, black, gay and lesbian, postcolonial, and chicana theorists, together with differently abled activists and other outsiders, pointed out the partiality of the construction of the Discourse.⁵ In order to postulate a post- to the human, the differences which are constitutive to the human, and which have been historically erased by the self-claimed objectivity of hegemonic accounts, have to be acknowledged. Posthumanism is indebted to the reflections developed out of the “margins” of such a centralized human subject, because of their emphasis on the human as a process, more than a given, inherently characterized by differences and shifting identities.

When was the term “posthuman” coined? The genealogical trace between the posthuman and the postmodern is not only an epistemological and historical affiliation. The terms “posthuman” and “Posthumanism” first appeared within postmodern literature. In particular, literary theorist Ihab Hassan, was among the first to use it in the article “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture?” (1977), to then develop it in The Postmodern Turn (1987), where he pointed out some crucial aspects within this specific linguistic asset: “I see a pattern that many others have also seen: a vast, revisionary will in the Western world, unsettling/resettling codes, canons, procedures, beliefs—intimating a post-humanism?” (XVI). The pattern Hassan defines as a “post-humanism” resonates with the contemporary urgency to express something which seems to escape each and every singular “post,” debated previously. Hassan thus foresaw how the postmodern investigation could turn into a Posthumanism. Referring to Postmodernism, he stated: “On some deeper level of its transformations, it still reaches for something larger, something other, which some call posthumanism” (XVII). Throughout the text, Hassan highlighted some key aspects of Posthumanism, such as investing in a post-dualistic approach,⁶ and calling for an inclusive notion of the human, which would result in a “posthuman vision”: “The cardinal question of course remains: how in practice to found a human or posthuman vision—call it inclusively human—or an anxious order of knowledge?” (82) Although the term “inclusive”—which, in order to in-clude, consequently ex-cludes others—can still be criticized,⁷ Hassan outlined some of the focal points of Posthumanism, such as: the further deconstruction of the human, an openness through the possibilities of the “post,” and a post-dualistic approach which proceed through recognitions, instead of assimilations.

What is Critical Posthumanism? The specific take on the posthuman developed within the field of literary criticism is sometimes referred to as Critical Posthumanism. A text which was crucial to the development of this approach was How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999) by Katherine Hayles. Her criticism of disembodied narratives within cybernetic and informatic literature paved the way for a posthumanist approach rooted within feminist and postmodern practices.⁸

What is Cultural Posthumanism? The posthumanist turn, as enacted within the field of literary theory in the 1990s, was also embraced by cultural studies, producing a specific take on the posthuman, which has been defined as Cultural Posthumanism.⁹ A crucial contribution to it was given by cyborg theory, inaugurated by the success of “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” (1985), where Donna Haraway problematized notions of human fixity and introduced the inquiry into the hybrid in positive and generative terms: “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organi sm; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics” (50). Haraway was also a main influence in the development of an academic field which became focal within Cultural Posthumanism, which is animal studies (for instance, Haraway 1989, 1991, 1996a, 2003, 2007). It has to be noted, though, that animal studies per se do not necessarily imply a posthumanist approach, as Cary Wolfe notices in What is Posthumanism? (2010), in which he exposes the risks of an uncritical type of pluralism, which thus becomes “incorporation.”¹⁰ Which movements go under the umbrella term “posthuma...