In: FRAME 25.1 (2012) - Issue title: Narrating Posthumanism (original) (raw)

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

The Story of Humanity and the Challenge of Posthumanity

History of the Human Sciences, 2019

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. One the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal.

A Typology of Posthumanism: A Framework for Differentiating Analytic, Synthetic, Theoretical, and Practical Posthumanisms

Sapient Circuits and Digitalized Flesh: The Organization as Locus of Technological Posthumanization (second edition), 2018

The term ‘posthumanism’ has been employed to describe a diverse array of phenomena ranging from academic disciplines and artistic movements to political advocacy campaigns and the development of commercial technologies. Such phenomena differ widely in their subject matter, purpose, and methodology, raising the question of whether it is possible to fashion a coherent definition of posthumanism that encompasses all phenomena thus labelled. In this text, we seek to bring greater clarity to this discussion by formulating a novel conceptual framework for classifying existing and potential forms of posthumanism. The framework asserts that a given form of posthumanism can be classified: 1) either as an analytic posthumanism that understands ‘posthumanity’ as a sociotechnological reality that already exists in the contemporary world or as a synthetic posthumanism that understands ‘posthumanity’ as a collection of hypothetical future entities whose development can be intentionally realized or prevented; and 2) either as a theoretical posthumanism that primarily seeks to develop new knowledge or as a practical posthumanism that seeks to bring about some social, political, economic, or technological change. By arranging these two characteristics as orthogonal axes, we obtain a matrix that categorizes a form of posthumanism into one of four quadrants or as a hybrid posthumanism spanning all quadrants. It is suggested that the five resulting types can be understood roughly as posthumanisms of critique, imagination, conversion, control, and production. We then employ this framework to classify a wide variety of posthumanisms, such as critical, cultural, philosophical, sociopolitical, and popular (or ‘commercial’) posthumanism; science fiction; techno-idealism; metahumanism; neohumanism; antihumanism; prehumanism; feminist new materialism; the posthumanities; biopolitical posthumanism, including bioconservatism and transhumanism (with specialized objective and instrumental typologies offered for classifying forms of transhumanism); and organizational posthumanism. Of particular interest for our research is the classification of organizational posthumanism as a hybrid posthumanism combining analytic, synthetic, theoretical, and practical aspects. We argue that the framework proposed in this text generates a typology that is flexible enough to encompass the full range of posthumanisms while being discriminating enough to order posthumanisms into types that reveal new insights about their nature and dynamics.