Miah - Becoming Posthuman

8/13/2019 Miah - Becoming Posthuman

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BECOMING POSTHUMAN

Beyond Posthumanism?

Professor Andy Miah

[email protected]

@andymiah

Faculty of Business & Creative Industries

BECOMING POSTHUMANinal lecture



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Where did we begin? – Political, social, and (moral)philosophical

implications of posthumanism

• Joanna Zylinska „ethics of cultural studies‟

(2005)

• Communication of science through media

• Question found in centuries of philosophicalthought (see Fukuyama)

– Different ways of characterising the human

• Transhumanism, cyborgology, posthumanism



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• What is posthumanism? – Fetish for the new (though Posthumanism

has been around as a formal area ofscholarly inquiry since 1990s)

• The new is characterised byspeculation

– eg. We may imagine a future wherepeople are genetically modified to avoidall suffering brought about by biologicaldysfunction, but such a future may

require an overwhelming burden ofhealth surveillance throughout life

– Consequence of a leisure society

• Where enhancement is seen as anecessity, rather than just a luxury



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Paul Virilio (humanist)

– Speed is characteristic of these times

– Suspicious of modern/postmodern

– Globalisation or virtualisation? – We are not fragmented communities

– We retain „grand narratives‟, such as a concern for

justice



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Paul Virilio – Critiquing the „Art of Technology‟

• Immediacy and instantaneity

• Loss of orientation

– The Transplant Revolution

• Collapse of the distinction bw the human bodyand technology

• Concern for „neo-eugenics‟

– Critique of Stelarc for becoming the last manbefore automation

– Rejects Cybersex: technological replacement ofemotions



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• What is the status of the posthuman?

– Is the posthuman ontologically transitory?

• What happens after AI?

• What happens after athletes are geneticallymodified?

• Does the sky fall or does it just challenge our

imagination in a very difficult way?



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Let‟s imagine that world

– Genetically modified, surgically enhanced,

super-intelligent, forever young, politically

superficial, communicatively reductionistic,

• Not so different from present day

• Why have technological futures been

characterised as dystopian?



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Status of posthuman remains the same

• Being human is not affected by thesetendencies

– We do not become unhuman, subhuman orinhuman

– We do not lose our rationality or consciousness

– We retain many of our characteristics

– We still feel emotion, care about others



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• It does, however, create new burdens – Responsibility towards ecosystem health

– Patenting human genes

– Rationing health care resources

• But we are used to this.

• We remain human, despite thesethings

– But this still begs the question „what is human‟ – Is it intelligence? Is it morality? Is it our capacityto feel and articulate emotion?

– These are all good arguments

» (defining the posthuman requires definingthe human)



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Once posthuman, can we then everturn our backs on technology? – The implication being that, even if it is not

wholly explained by technology, that the

posthuman is constitutively technological – But, posthumanism is more than

technology, even if technology isconstitutive of the posthuman

• Our view of the world changes through

technology – Technology also become a way of

returning to nature - environmentaltechnology



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• What comes after the posthuman?

– Does it reveal a linearity towards

something?

– Is posthumanity necessarily „after‟?

– Is posthumanism a reaction to high-

technology and its infiltration of culture

• Seeking a return to the natural

– Posthumanism has been used in a way to

counter our acceptance of technology• It instils fear

– Cf. Fukuyama

• But this is merely its untheorised,

superficial articulation, where it has

been used in a same way as…



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• “Monsters, aliens and others still

function as important monitors

and mediators of understandings

of what it means to be

post/human” (Graham 2003).



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• Perhaps becoming posthuman

entails becoming comfortable

with this kind of future/present

– Relinquishing us from the ties of

the „natural‟

• Even though we have always

tampered with nature



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• It would be superficial to concludethat we are still human, but alsoinadequate to argue we areposthuman

– Are we in limbo?

– We have already contested thedefinition of humanness

– At most, we can conclude that there aremany ways of being human and, as

individuals, we appropriate thesedifferent ways in different contexts

• We are not always representing theposthuman

• But posthumanism acknowledgediversity



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


• But if there is no clear definition of

being human, then posthumanness

might be an acceptance of this

– Different ways of being human• Gray‟s definition of the cyborg

– Which is why it is primarily an ideology

and not a statement about the human use

of technology



BECOMING POSTHUMAN


FINAL DEBATE

We are alreadyposthuman.

Agree or disagree?

Documents

Miah - Becoming Posthuman