A New Way of Coming-To-Be

Abstract

Western culture has a long tradition of grappling with the awkward fact that we begin as weak and dependent beings. The technological possibilities of modern science make it possible to realize the human dream of conscious self-creation, including on the level of the body, and to fashion oneself as a new being. A rapid development of science and technology that we have been witnessing recently has not only had an enormous and comprehensive influence on human existence, but also changed the very concept of what the “human” means, paving the way for ideas of transhumanity. In our chapter, we inquire into selected exemplifications of interplays between technology, medicine, and art, and their impact on the embodied self. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, we first analyze the natural beginning of human life and the new possibilities of exercising agency in self-creation as a novel, biotechnologically-underpinned way of coming-to-be. Then, we take a closer look at extensions of the embodied self and the experiential world achieved in contemporary art projects, whereby we focus on the work of Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas. Finally, we address the idea of collective consciousness as one of the visions of transhumanity.

Myth has long proved a useful source of counterfactuals, for how things might otherwise be but are not.

James Mumford [1, p. IX]

Anna Alichniewicz and Monika Michałowska contributed equally to this work.