The review of Francesca Ferrando, Philosophical Posthumanism (original) (raw)

2021, JSRNC

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