Francesca Ferrando (2019): Philosophical Posthumanism. Theory in the New Humanities, Series Editor: Rosi Braidotti, Preface by Rosi Braidotti). Bloomsbury Academic (27 June, 2019), Hardcover, 296 pages, ISBN-10: 1350059501, ISBN-13: 978-1350059504 (original) (raw)
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The review of Francesca Ferrando, Philosophical Posthumanism
JSRNC, 2021
What makes Philosophical Posthumanism a generous and creative work is Francesca Ferrando's 'appreciation of the paradoxical structure of the posthuman condition itself', as put by Rosi Braidotti (p. xi). The book attempts to explain this paradoxical structure around three main questions, corresponding to the three parts: '(1) What is Philosophical Posthumanism? (2) Of which "human" is the posthuman a "post"? (3) Have humans always been posthuman?' (p. 1). Ferrando then lists 237 guiding questions (but the reader can nd more in the text) and addresses them throughout the following 30 dense chapters. To position philosophical posthumanism within other 'isms' utilizing the concept of 'human', Ferrando deals with a range of themes from transhumanism and antihumanism to arti cial intelligence, bioengineering, and ecology. Considering that religion and nature scholars have also been addressing similar questions for the last couple of decades, I believe this book may help to better integrate posthuman aspirations with the nexus of religion, nature, and culture. At the very beginning of the book, Ferrando de nes philosophical posthumanism as 'an onto-epistemological approach, as well as an ethical one, manifesting as a philosophy of mediation, which discharges any confrontational dualisms and hierarchical legacies; this is why it can be approached as a post-humanism, a postanthropocentrism, and a post-dualism' (p. 22). The very emphasis on approaching philosophical posthumanism as a post-humanism, a post-anthropocentrism, and a post-dualism continues throughout the book. Underlying the importance of an 'awareness of the limits of previous humanistic, anthropocentric, and dualistic assumptions: from epistemology to ontology, from bioethics to an existential inquiry' (p. 55), the author deconstructs these assumptions. While the rst part of the book primarily focuses on the dimensions of post-humanism and post-anthropocentrism, the third part gives priority to post-anthropocentrism and post-dualism. The second part bridges these two through a questioning of the sociopolitical, economic, and symbolic construction of the 'human' and the 'scienti c' framing of the Homo sapiens. The rst part traces the genealogy of posthumanism, paying attention to its connections with postmodernism, transhumanism, and antihumanism. The reader learns that the literature around the concepts of posthuman and posthumanism has been accumulating since Ihab Hassan's postmodern critique titled 'Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Critique?' that was published in 1977 (p. 25). By classifying Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman (1999) as an example of critical posthumanism, and Donna Haraway's 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs' (1985) as a
Review of book by Francesca Ferrando (2019) Philosophical Posthumanism published
Il Capitale Culturale. Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage
Francesca Ferrando’s recent book on Philosophical Posthumanism, published by Bloomsbury Academic, does not posit itself in only the philosophical field: it reaches out to the broader realm of humanities and cultural studies. Considering the current development of posthuman studies and its theoretical potential in reconfiguring the paradigm in humanities, Ferrando decides to scrutinize its major concepts and the various modes of their development, offering an overall compendium on this new and exciting interdisciplinary field and implementing order in its understanding.
The posthuman : philosophical posthumanism and its others
2013
As Rosi Braidotti in "Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming" (2002), puts it: Postmodernity is notoriously the age of proliferating differences. The devalued "others" which constituted the specular complement of the modern subjectwoman, the ethnic or racialized other and nature or 'earth-others'-return with a vengeance. They are the complement to the modern subject, who constructed himself as much through what he excluded. (174) Posthumanism may arise once the need for such a "vengeance" has been fulfilled, and the voices of subjectivities who have been historically reduced to the realm of the "Other", have been regained. 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 9. 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 10 , historically formulated by one specific subject, which finally appeared in its embodied vestiges, as: Western, white, male, heterosexual, propertied and abled, among other specific terms. 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 taken into account. Posthumanism is indebted to the reflections developed out of the "margins" of such a centralized human subject, which emphasized the human as a process, more than as a given, inherently characterized by differences and shifting identities: Women's and Gender Studies, Gay 9 Such a genealogical location of the posthuman is already pointed out by William Spanos in his pioneer text "End Of Education: Toward Posthumanism", published in 1993. 10 Note that the notion of "Discourse" is intended here not only in the foucaultian use of the term as a way of constituting knowledge, social practices and power relations (Foucault 1976), but also as the phallogocentric logos (Irigaray 1974), and the symbolic order (Kristeva 1974).
Francesca Ferrando’s Vision of Philosophical Posthumanism
2019
Francesca Ferrando’s book Philosophical Posthumanism1 dose not comprise exactly what the title suggest. It is much more than that—it is a concise and very interesting compendium, full of the most current problems concerning of what philosophy in the 21st century is. It is a scientifi c work and, at the same time, a textbook for contemporary philosophy. I would describe this work a few others titles, like: Philosophy after the 20th century, Post-Philosophy of the 21st century, Lectures on Planetary Humanities, Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. This book is extremely important because there have been many misunderstandings about the term posthumanism and about how much it is related and how much it overlaps with another extremely popular term—transhuman-
Introducing Post- and Transhumanism
Scientific and technological advances have questioned predominant doctrines concerning the human condition. Transhumanism and posthumanism are among the most recent and prominent manifestations of this phenomenon. Debates on trans- and posthumanism have not only gained a considerable amount of academic and popular attention recently, but have also created a widespread conceptual confusion. This is no surprise, considering their recent dates of origin, their conceptual similarities, and their engagements with similar questions, topics, and motifs. Furthermore, trans- as well as posthumanism frequently question their relationship to humanism and reconsider what it means to be human. In this regard both movements are streaming beyond humanism. What this means, however, is far from clear and shall be subject of discussion in this volume.
Book review of Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction
Journal of Evolution and Technology (JET), 2015
As post- and transhumanism have become ever-hotter topics over the past decade or so, their boundaries have become muddled by misappropriations and misunderstandings of what defines them, and especially what distinguishes them from each other. This edition of essays by various experts, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner, goes a long way to resolve these issues. The introductory essay by the two editors – both of whom are philosophers – is alone worth the book’s purchase price. They give a very straightforward and understandable synopsis of what defines posthumanism, transhumanism, and the posthuman; and they also give thumbnail sketches of the major differences between them. Basically, transhumanists believe in improving the human species by using any and every form of emerging technology. Technology is meant in the broad sense here: it includes everything from pharmaceuticals to digital technology, genetic modification to nanotechnology. The posthuman is the state that transhumans aspire to: a state in which our species is both morally and physically improved, and maybe immortal – a species improved to the point where we perhaps become a different (and thus “posthuman”) species altogether.
Sage Research Methods Foundations, 2019
Posthumanism is an umbrella term for a cluster of related ontological, epistemological and theoretico-methodological developments across the social sciences, arts and humanities. These are linked by a commitment variously to problematise, critique, deconstruct, reject or supersede the entrenched intellectual legacy of humanist discourse and the Enlightenment conception of the human being as an autonomous, exceptional and rational agent at the organising centre of the world. Posthumanist scholars have pointed out that this paradigmatic modern and occidental vision of the human as a transcendent and self-knowing sovereign actor simultaneously inscribes the nonhuman world as a relatively passive context or stage for human thought and action. This way of thinking has in turn has been linked to the current global ecological crisis, which posthumanists have read as material critique of humanism’s anthropocentrism and a demonstration of its unintended consequences played out on a global scale. In response, the various strands of posthumanist thought posit a post-anthropocentric ontology in which humans are but one fragmentary actor among manifold others in a materially heterogeneous living world, irreducible to human beings and to human linguistic, conceptual and socio-cultural constructs. In this vision, human beings are neither autonomous of nonhuman entities nor unproblematically self-knowing, unitary or rational, but are instead seen as constituted – both from within and without – through perpetually unfolding relations with multiple other agents and forces which transgress and confound the imagined boundaries of the human individual, the human self and the human social domain. Scholarly work within the orbit of posthumanism is engaged in working through the implications of this for the onto-epistemological assumptions that underpin many modern disciplines and fields, and in exploring the possibilities of modes of thought, knowledge and action which take nonhumans seriously and do not uncritically privilege and centre some overarching notion of the human.