Posthumanism and the Ends of Technology

Abstract

To pose the question of posthumanist technology today, it is insufficient to reiterate the question as posed by Heidegger in the years immediately following the Second World War. In this chapter, it is argued that only by moving beyond the anthropocentric limits of Heidegger’s position, does it become possible to engage critically with both the place and the potential of technical ensembles within the giant cybernetic system we know as the Anthropocene. To do this, it is necessary first of all to analyze the process of instrumentalization as the deracinating essence of our technological modernity that seems hell-bent on global catastrophe. The coincidence of instrumentality and causality that begins with Aristotle determines just what can and, more importantly, cannot be counted as an entity deserving of ethical consideration. Indeed, the truism that posits the existence of an internal principle unique to biological organisms that governs the organization of living forms of matter still prevails to this day and remains fundamental as to how we think of ourselves as human beings today, a normative process of identification that is repeatedly fed back to us in the form of our worst collective nightmares. This principle, it is argued, serves an entirely ideological function, propping up an unfounded distinction between living and nonliving forms of organization on the basis that the organization of living beings retains as its condition the potential to be profoundly unpredictable. Whereas the metaphysical concept of life only ever drags us back to the impossibility of genetic origin and to the ghost in the machine that is all that remains of humanism, the potential for novelty definitive of metastable forms of organization – including all forms of living being – has no need of magical donations of vitality. And potential, above all else, is the primary concern of both the posthuman and the technological insofar as it concerns the chance of a future in the making.