posthumanism: lecture for foar 701: 'research paradigms

–Johnny Appleseed

“The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is

announced to thought from the vantage of the end of

man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a

telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in

the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since

always.” Jacques Derrida

1FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

– N. Katherine Hayles

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who

regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the

ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman

that embraces the possibilities of information technologies

without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and

disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates

finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands

human life is embedded in a material world of great

complexity, one on which we depend for our continued

survival.

FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 2

FOAR701: Research paradigms (2017)

Posthumanism*

3

Greg DowneyDepartment of Anthropology

Faculty of Arts

Macquarie University

[email protected]

@gregdowney1

* includes material by Prof. Nicole Anderson.

mailto:[email protected]

Getting to the post-human

Multiple different ways to

reach this theoretical frame.

Our readings stress the

route from French theory

and transhumanism.

FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR7014

–Johnny Appleseed

‘We need to understand that five hundred

years of humanism may be coming to an

end, as humanism transforms itself into

something that we must helplessly call

posthumanism. ’ Ihab Hassan


The ‘let down’ of

modernity

What do you do when the ‘end

of history’ turns out not to be

the end?

Exhaustion of progress.

…like a failed millenarian

movement.


‘Post-human’

After ‘human’

Dethroning anthropocentricity

Transcending human nature

Apocalyptic imagination

Voluntary extinction


Critique of

presentism and

anthropocentrism

From evolutionary perspective.

From ecological perspective.

From inter-species perspective.

From other cultural perspective.

From ‘big history’ perspective.

From animal rights and deep

ecology activism.


–Johnny Appleseed

The transcendental structures described

after the phenomenological reduction are

not those of that intra-mundane being

called “man.” They are not essentially

linked with society, culture or language, or

even with man’s “soul” or his “psyche.”

And just as, according to Husserl, a

consciousness can be imagined without

soul (seelenloses), so can – and a fortiori –

a consciousness be imagined without man.

(38)

Jacques Derrida


Derrida - Critique ‘The ends of man’

• In crucial European philosophic texts, still finds privileging of ‘human’ & un-

deconstructed centre, the ‘shepherd of Being’:

‘Despite the criticism of anthropologism, “humanity” is still, here, the name of the

being to which transcendental telos, determined as Idea (in the Kantian sense), or

as Reason, is announced. ’ (43).

• Move beyond ‘anti-humanism,’ to work from within and expand this

perspective. Critique of ‘anthropologism’ in prominent thinkers was overlooked

because their language recaptured their radicalism.

e.g., Heidegger insisting Dasein was not ‘human being.’

• ‘Man’s’ essence is relative to its end (mortality): eschato-teleological situation

(44).

• ‘Man’ of humanism is unsustainable in the face of disunity and diversity.

• Irony that Derrida so concerned with historical context (‘there is only context’) but

doesn’t provide any.


What is the ‘Post-human’?

1) a being that functions to representationally reconceive or challenge current humanistic ideologies about what it means to be human (posthumanist); or

2) a future being, one whose ‘capacities radically exceeds those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards’ (transhumanist) (Bostrom 2003, 5).

* taken from Nicole Anderson11FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

For transhumanist, problematising of ‘human being’ is not

an intellectual exercise but an historical fact as humans

self-engineer into the future.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 12

Examples

Cochlear implants

Cognition enhancing drugs

Downloaded consciousness


–Johnny Appleseed

principles of extropianism:

perpetual progress, self-

transformation, practical

optimism, intelligent

technology, open society

(information and democracy),

self-direction, and rational

thinking.

Max More

From Ferrando (2013: 27)


Transhumanism and

posthumanism

‘Transhumanism’ is the practice

of trying to improve human

beings through technological

enhancement. (Nick Bostrom)

Why should evolution stop with

current existence?


–Johnny Appleseed

The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a

collection of heterogenous components, a

material-informational entity whose

boundaries undergo continuous

construction and reconstruction.Katherine Hayles (1999)


To what degree has ‘human’ life

been premised upon relations

with machines or other

species…?

Have we always

been ‘post-human’?


–Johnny Appleseed

“By the late twentieth century, our

time, a mythic time, we are all

chimeras, theorized and fabricated

hybrids of machine and organism;

in short, we are cyborgs.”

― Donna J. Haraway


The artefact that stand out

hide the interpenetration

of human and technology

that is ever-present…

e.g.: contemporary athletes.

Why are some technological

‘enhancements’ unethical?

Transcendental

posthumanisme.g., Ray Kurzweil and Hans

Morevec


‘The Singularity will allow us to

transcend these limitations of our

biological bodies and brains. We

will gain power over our fates. Our

mortality will be in our own hands.

We will fully understand human

thinking and will vastly extend and

expand its reach. By the end of the

century, the nonbiological portion of

our intelligence will be trillions of

trillions of times more powerful than

unaided human intelligence’.

Ray Kurzweil (2005)


Transcendental

posthumanism

• ‘Posthuman possibility space’

includes the transcendence of

carbon-based life.

Singularity.

• Kurzweil: ‘law of accelerating

returns.’

Scientists polled on date of

human-level AI: average = 2040.

• ‘Being’ is a form of information

that can be transferred to new

media.

• Creates possibility of extended

life? immortality? Extinction?


‘Utopic posthumanism’ Essentially positive


Other-than-humanism Displacing anthropocentrism


Other-than-

(hu)manism

• Recognising the agency of non-

human life and of objects.

(Including negative agency such

as environment feedback loops.)

• ‘New materialism’ coming out of

feminism.

• ‘Multi-species’ and animal

research.

• Return to discussion of

evolutionary and ecological

models, including in

Anthropocene environments.

• ‘Agency’ is not ‘impunity.’


Other-than-

humanism

• In anthropology, ‘ontological

turn’ toward considering the

realities of other people and

objects.

• ‘New animism’ as some

researchers turn to animism

for essential insight.

• Complexity of ‘human being’

in light of scientific facts:

microbiome, macrobiome,

domestication, commensal

species…

• No more ‘nature’?


Human life dependent on a

web of other lives, often

obscured.

56 billion farmed lives taken

each year.

But is consciousness

necessarily ‘human’?

Reason, sentience, autonomy, self,

self-presence, awareness… are

these universal and singular?

Will a form other-than-human have

similar being?

If so, how do we recognise it?


But is consciousness

necessarily ‘human’?

And to recognise the historically

contextual nature of everything

– including consciousness – is

to recognise that even

consciousness will be

superseded.

*as an anthropologist, I’m comfortable

with that…


Critical posthumanism

Challenges and critiques

the humanist ideals

encapsulated in, and

perpetuated by, these

utopic versions.

They argue that humans

are a negotiated position

within a system, and

therefore heteronymous,

fluid and hybrid


* taken from Nicole Anderson

Critical posthumanism

Catherine Waldby: posthumanism is ‘a general

critical space in which the techno-cultural forces

which both produce and undermine the stability

of the categories of ‘human’ and ‘non-human’,

can be investigated’ (2000, 43).

Katherine Hayles: deconstructs the ‘radical

breaks’ with human history that the utopic

versions convey, by arguing that posthumanism

‘exists in a relation of overlapping innovation

and replication’ (what Hayles calls ‘serieation’)

(2003, 134)

Others include: Cary Wolfe, RosI Braidotti,

Judith/Jack Halberstam


* taken from Nicole Anderson

‘Dark posthumanism'

Big (posthuman) History

‘Holocene extinction event’

Artificial transcendence (AI)

Voluntary extinction movement


Key components:

• Opposing

anthropocentrism.

• ‘Anthropocene’ as

historically unfolding.

• Aligned towards

anticipating future.

• Inter-species relations

(‘companion species’).

• Experimental and

speculative work.


Assumptions

• Ontology: strong sense of

dynamism and capacity for

future change; ’new

materialism’; technological

determinist (good & bad).

• Epistemology: attempt to

grapple with human limits on

knowledge; forms of knowledge

other-than and beyond human.

• Methodology: critical,

ecological, post-structuralist,

deconstruction. Interdisciplinary.


Variants of posthumanism

• Transhumanism – (beliefs about the future of humanity; utopic): Nick Bostrom, Joel

Garreau, Aubrey de Grey, Kevin Warwick (interface implant), Stelarc (third ear), Steve

Mann (wearable computing), Marvin Minsky, Max More, Zoltan Istvan, science fiction,

Humanity+.

• Singularitarianism – Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky.

• Cyborg theory – (academic theory): Donna Harraway, Katherine Hayles, Anne

Balsamo, Neil Harbisson (antenna implant), Marco Donnarumma, Allucquère Rosanne

Stone.

• Dark transhumanists – (dystopic): Hugo de Garis, Nick Land, Michael Anissimov

(white supremacist?), Aldous Huxley, ’neo-reactionaries’ & eugenicists.

• Animal Studies/Multi-species ethnography – Eduardo Kohn, Eben Kirksey, Anna

Tsing, Rebecca Cassidy, Holly Mullin, STS.

• Critical philosophy of transhumanism – Andy Miah, Jean Baudrillard, Jaron Lanier,

Catherine Waldby, Cary Wolfe, RosI Braidotti, Judith/Jack Halberstam.


Critiques of post humanism

• Transhumanists still privilege liberal (or even capitalist)

values.

• Excessive focus on Western traditions; other alternatives

to Western idea of ‘the human’ available.

Racist? Transcendence of Western ‘human’?

Ethnocentric?

• Overly optimistic/pessimistic? (Is the paradigm more of

a moral-ethical assertion?)

• A distinctive paradigm or just a set of concerns about

the future and nature of ‘humanity’ implicit in social

theory?


Thanks for your

attention!

Bibliography online at iLearn

Photos public domain at Pixabay

or as indicated.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 38

References

• Badmington, N. (2003). Theorizing posthumanism. Cultural Critique, (53), 10-27.

• Bostrom, N. (2005). A history of transhumanist thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology,

14(1), 1-25.

• Derrida, J. (1968). The ends of man. State University of New York Conference Center.

• Ferrando, F. (2013). Posthumanism, transhumanism, antihumanism, metahumanism, and new

materialisms. Existenz, 8(2), 26-32.

• Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.

• Hassan, I. (1977). Prometheus as performer: Toward a posthumanist culture?. The Georgia

Review, 31(4), 830-850.

• Hayles, N.K., 2008. How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and

informatics. University of Chicago Press.

• Miah, A. (2008). A critical history of posthumanism. In Medical enhancement and posthumanity

(pp. 71-94). Springer Netherlands.

• Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? (Vol. 8). U of Minnesota Press.

• Zaner, R. M. (1972). Discussion of Jacques Derrida,"The Ends of Man". Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research, 32(3), 384-389.

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