Gnosis in Cyberspace? Body, Mind and Progress in Posthumanism. In: Journal of Technology and Evolution 14 (August 2005, E-Journal) (original) (raw)
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Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2023
Posthumanism Posthumanism pramod k. nayar Varieties of posthumanism in literature and popular culture received sustained attention, as expected, in 2022. Human-nonhuman relationships, whether in terms of the human-animal or human-artificial-being relationship; issues of care for/of the nonhuman; theological debates around posthumanism, especially with regard to rituals, practices of belief, and the 'digital afterlife'; and the different genealogies of the posthuman, were themes that informed a large number of essays and books. This chapter aims for a comprehensive survey of the year's work and is organized around six sections that seek to summarize the major contributions to work in posthumanism: 1. Theorizing Posthumanism; 2. Literary Posthumanisms; 3. Popular Posthumanisms; 4. Posthumanism and the Disciplines; 5. The Nonhuman; and 6. Posthumanism after the Pandemic.
Body, Soul and Cyberspace - Cyborgs, Clones and Simulations
French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1989, p.259) suggested in the mid-1980s that the ‘life or the afterlife of cinema depends on its struggle with informatics’. He predicted that digital technologies would have a dramatic impact on the technological and aesthetical development of cinema. That ‘struggle’ is evident in contemporary science fiction cinema, but it reflects not just our connection to technology, but also to religion and spirituality. My proposed paper will look at how this struggle is unfolding with regards to human self-identity, postmodern spirituality and the relationship with our world. In this context, I will investigate why contemporary science fiction rather than destroying religious sentiments, do heavily trade ‘in religious goods and thus provide a new space, a cyberspace, for religious imagination.’ (Caputo, 2001, p.68) I will further argue that over the last two decades we can observe a gradual shift from a largely dystopian treatment of machines, artificial intelligence and virtual realities to a more ambiguous portrayal that shows the opportunities as well as the dangers of virtual worlds. John Caputo had suggested that the very nature of virtual realities – in that they challenge our perception of what is real and provide a sense of something beyond – is deeply religious. This paper will therefore explore the spiritual concepts that are explicitly and implicitly played out in contemporary science fiction cinema. For example, whereas The Matrix largely relies on Judaeo-Christian symbolism – Neo as the Messiah, his girlfriend Trinity, Zion as the last remaining human city and so on – Avatar seems to draw heavily on a naturalistic, pagan spirituality. The latter is, however, also very postmodern and adapted to a cyber-universe. It is thus not surprising that so many viewers are drawn towards the basic mythic and spiritual concepts presented in a hyper-modern, technologically enhanced, cyber-world such as Pandora in Avatar. Part of this development is – as I will argue – that spirituality becomes more ‘materialistic’. We can find this ‘material’ spirituality for instance in the electronic-organic networks and the ‘Tree of Souls’ in Avatar. On the one hand nature here is mysterious and spiritual, but on the other hand it can also be measured with scientific methods. I therefore argue that what we find in contemporary science fiction is often a synthesis of spiritual and material aspects. As a consequence ideas of belief and religiosity also become progressively linked to a materialistic dimension. Yet, while spirituality becomes increasingly materialistic, we run the risk of turning the body into something mystical and ephemeral. Within virtual worlds, the body at times only remains ‘as a heavily charged trace object of a remotely remembered […] sense of the encompassing unity of natural physicality, the sense of simultaneous physical and social containment that came from a fated/unalterable relationship to one’s body.’ (Csicsery-Ronay, 2002, p.75) The statement indicates the social relationships that are linked to the body. As a consequence, it becomes clear that body and soul are by no means independent and that by making the body disposable and open to endless modifications as suggested in some of the post-humanist debates, we risk losing a sense of wholeness that identifies us as human beings. It becomes evident that the ‘encompassing unity’ is a crucial aspect of the soul which needs embodiment as much as transcendence. This is reflected by Anderson, who describes human life as ‘the spiritual saga of the creaturely soul: limited, but also expressed through physical embodiment; distressed, but also inspired through the power of spirit; mortal, but also graced with the promise of immortality through the promise of God.’ (1998, p.188) The use of religious concepts immerged in high-tech narratives reflect our own struggles with the notions of embodiment, power and mortality in a world of (almost) endless possibilities. This is why particularly the shift in our relation with technology as outlined above highlights an underlying need for spiritual meaning.
Call for Papers / Proposals (Philosophy) 2017 - LIMITS AND BOUNDARIES OF THE POSTHUMAN
The term " posthumanism " was used for the first time in the critical sense that entered then common language by Ihab Hassan in 1977. In its almost four decades of existence, posthuman theory has witnessed several evolutions, transformations and refinements, not least because this concept does not name an homogeneous and compact field, but is rather a " discourse " in the Foucauldian sense, a multiplicity of different streams, heterogeneous and fragmented, held together by a basic idea: the notion that old humanism is over. This issue of " Lo Sguardo " intends to attempt a sort of assessment of the last four decades, in order to analyse the limits and boundaries of the concept of posthuman. The leading thread of this issue is thus the question: what is still alive and topical, today, in the question of the posthuman? What themes and trends have progressively run out, and what instead have come to the foreground? How did the questions, and most importantly the answers, to the problem of the posthuman evolve? The question of technology, that is of the hybridization between human and machine, is still for many the most " showy " trait of the posthuman, both in popular culture and for the common understanding within academia; and yet the triumphalism of a certain posthumanism – and above all of its transhumanist deviations – alienated a number of scholars, starting precisely with one of the " mothers " of posthuman theory, Donna Haraway. The fact remains that the levels of technology's intimacy and intrusion into the human have, if anything, enormously increased sinceA Cyborg Manifesto (1983), and so have also the oppositions to it (Habermas, Fukuyama), and this keeps raising inexhaustible ontological, ethical and aesthetic questions (decisive are here Bostrom's reflexions).
Pensamiento y Cultura, 2012
“Uncritical Posthumanism” celebrates the continuation of the human by non-human means (for example, a new techno-bio body) as well as the creation of a reality by “unreal” means. Posthumanists attempt to make the body more self-contained and energy-efficient, developing the interaction of body-technology and consciousness-digitality, biotechnology or bioinformatics. The mutual interference of body, consciousness and reality creates a new space of “Virtual Reality.” Critical Posthumanism attempts to disentangle the common characteristics of human reality and posthuman Virtual Reality and establishes communicative links between both by sticking to the conviction that simulation should never win over reality. Critical Posthumanism attempts to locate the human in the posthuman. This article analyzes the common points of Virtual Reality, biotechnology, and globalization by reflecting on the notion of the narrative. The existence of Virtual Reality, the gene-code, and globalization is due to the desire to elude any narrative and to express reality “directly.” Gene technology tries to grasp not a certain – temporally definable – stage of the entire process of generation, but the gene itself, as the essential quantity of generation that has no real place in generation itself. Globalization “globalizes” the globe and represents it as something that is neither the “real world” nor its narration but rather a new sphere that we have to accept as such. Critical Posthumanism defines the subtle differences between a Virtual Reality in the sense of a technological narrative and an existential Virtual Irreality that interprets the virtual in a more “human” fashion.
2021
In recent years, ideas of post-and transhumanism have been popularized by novels, TV series, and Hollywood movies. According to this radical perspective, humankind and all biological life have become obsolete. Traditional forms of life are inefficient at processing information information and inept at crossing the high frontier: outer space. While humankind can expect to be replaced by their own artificial progeny, post-humanists assume that they will become an immortal part of a transcendent superintelligence. Krüger's award-winning study examines the historical and philosophical context of these futuristic promises by Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Frank Tipler, and other posthumanist thinkers.
Longing for Transcendence: Cyborgs and Trans- and Posthumans
Technology is transforming the human body into a cyborg by making it a part of cyber networks. Transhumanists and posthumanists argue that technology will enable humans to overcome bodily limitation by reaching a technological immortality. The authors discuss recent literature on anthropological approaches and ethical implications about this technological promise. They suggest that the “Body of Christ” metaphor—by emphasizing embodiment, sacramentality, difference, and solidarity—can guide our reflection on corporeality and on the human because this metaphor refers not just to the human body of Jesus Christ but also to the Eucharist, the church, and the eschatological Body of Christ in creation.
Online Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2014
Following the studies analyzing the phenomena of religiosity that new technologies create (O. Krüger, D. Noble, H. Campbell), this paper questions the ways in which the Internet is understood as a salvation means. This media, closely linked to the idea of spiritual unity of humanity as a higher stage of evolution, inspired technological innovations underpinned by eschatological concerns. These expectations are related to the way the mind works and how increasing it through techno-sciences. The former are motivated by a quest for immortality by getting rid of the body, transferring the human spirit into the machine. Thus, predictive softwares, such as the Global Consciousness Project, the WebBot Project or Google Brain, have been designed mixing global consciousness, the anticipation of the future and apocalypse. What is the meaning of the phenomenon of spiritual reappropriation of the Internet? How do we move from a technological link to a spiritual connection that would supposedly transcend humanity? Most importantly, what links could be found between predictive softwares and the willingness to disembody man to make him immortal? Based on an analysis of the canonical sources of cyberculture and a study of communities following anticipations of predictive softwares, this paper analyzes the uses of belief in global consciousness when linked to Internet-assisted divination. First, it shows that the development of these softwares reveals a certain secularization of the discourses around global consciousness, while scientific positivism emerges from then. Then, it enlightens us about the role of techno-sciences in the building of lived utopias.
Posthumanities: The Dark Side of “The Dark Side of the Digital”
The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2016
In What is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe insists "the nature of thought itself must change if it is to be posthumanist." 1 Our argument, made manifest by this special issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing, is that it is not only our ways of thinking about the world that must change if they are to be posthumanist, or at least not simply humanist; our ways of being and doing in the world must change too. In particular, we view the challenge to humanism and the human brought about by the emergence of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics, bioscience, pre-emptive, cognitive, and contextual computing, as providing us with an opportunity to reinvent, radically, the ways in which we work, act, and think as theorists. In this respect, if "posthumanism names a historical moment in which the decentering of the human by its imbrication in technical, medical, informatics, and economic networks is increasingly impossible to ignore," 2 then it generates an opportunity to raise the kind of questions for the humanities we really should have raised long before now, but haven't because our humanist ideas, not just of historical change and progression (i.e. from human to posthuman, to what comes after the human), 3 but of the rational, liberal, human subject, and the associated concepts of the author, the journal, and copyright that we have inherited with it, continue to have so much power and authority. Our use of disruption in this context thus goes beyond the usual definitions of the term. This includes those characterizations of technological disruption associated with Clayton Christensen and his colleagues at the Harvard Business School, and with the rhetoric of Silicon Valley. It is not our intention to try to sustain and develop the current system for creating, performing and circulating humanities research and scholarship, its methodologies, aesthetics, and institutions, by emphasizing the potential of disruptive technologies to generate innovations that are capable of facilitating the production of a new "digital" humanities, or even "posthuman Humanities studies." 4 As the title of this special issue indicates, rather than helping the humanities refresh themselves with what Joseph Schumpeter