What Is Posthumanism?

Abstract

A book such as this ought to begin with a neat definition of “posthumanism”. However, it would be misleading to suggest that posthumanism is a neatly bounded category. Roden,¹ for instance, sees two distinct posthumanisms that he terms the “speculative” and the “critical”, which Simon² formulates as “critical” and “popular” posthumanism. This axis of critical and speculative/popular posthumanism roughly corresponds to the discursive realms this book will refer to as Post/Humanism and Transhumanism. The terrain of critical Post/Humanism may briefly be mapped by three modalities of posthumanist thought identified by Castree and Nash.³ Firstly, the, “posthuman as an incipient historical condition … [secondly] a set of ontological theses about the human that never was and never will be… [and thirdly] as a ‘both/and’ form of deconstructive reading”.⁴ The posthuman can be seen as either an “object of analysis” or as an “analytical-theoretical position”.⁵ Braun,⁶ McCracken⁷ and Panelli⁸ each offer further definitions and formulations. Indeed, if it were desirable to make any claims for what exactly Post/Humanism “is” or “does” then it would almost certainly hinge upon just such a blurring of categorical boundaries, whether between the natural and the artificial, the human and the machinic, fact and fiction, or critical theory and superhero comics. In fact, the boundary between critical Post/Humanism and popular/speculative Transhumanism remains inherently fuzzy. Nevertheless, this book will use Transhumanism to refer to the philosophy of human enhancement through technology. This deliberate pursuit of technological evolution would involve inviting technology into our bodies, resulting in Transhuman beings. The offspring of Transhumanity would eventually result in fully Post-Human beings; that is, humans so fully integrated with technology so as to be no longer recognisable as human. Though this may sound similar to Post/Humanism, Transhumanism’s use of the figure of the posthuman is distinguished by a markedly Enlightenment form of Humanism, premised on rationality and faith in progress. For the purposes of this book “Transhumanism” will also to refer to those techno-scientific practices that have been carried out in reality.