Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science
fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that literally means a
person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept
addresses questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species
communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of
interdisciplinarity. Posthumanism is not to be confused with transhumanism and
narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of
materiality. Posthumanism
In critical theory, the posthuman is a speculative being that represents or
seeks to re-conceive the human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism,
which critically questions Renaissance humanism, a branch of humanist
philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which
the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free
will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman
position recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, and
understands the world through heterogeneous perspectives while seeking
to maintain intellectual rigour and a dedication to objective observations.
Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives
and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical
theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable
one; in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but
rather one who can "become" or embody different identities and understand the
world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives.
Critical discourses surrounding posthumanism are not homogeneous, but in
fact present a series of often contradictory ideas, and the term itself
is contested, with one of the foremost authors associated with posthumanism,
Manuel de Landa, decrying the term as "very silly." Covering the ideas of, for
example, Robert Pepperell's The Posthuman Condition, and Hayles's How We
Became Posthuman under a single term is distinctly problematic due to these
contradictions. The posthuman is roughly synonymous with
the "cyborg" of A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. Haraway's conception of
the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg
that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the
salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the
"beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be
taken up in critical theory. Following Haraway, Hayles, whose work
grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, asserts that liberal humanism
- which separates the mind from the body and thus portrays the body as a "shell"
or vehicle for the mind - becomes increasingly complicated in the late
20th and 21st centuries because information technology put the human
body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be conscious of information
technological advancements while understanding information as
"disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally replace the human
body but can only be incorporated into it and human life practices.
Transhumanism = Definition =
According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being
"whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be
no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."
= Methods = Posthumans could be completely synthetic
artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or
uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively
profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some
examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced
nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies
such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension
therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory
enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.
= Posthuman future = As used in this article, "posthuman"
does not necessarily refer to a conjectured future where humans are
extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other species who
speciate from one another, both humans and posthumans could continue to exist.
However, the apocalyptic scenario appears to be a viewpoint shared among a
minority of transhumanists such as Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec, who
could be considered misanthropes, at least in regards to humanity in its
current state. Alternatively, others such as Kevin Warwick argue for the
likelihood that both humans and posthumans will continue to exist but
the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their
abilities. Recently, scholars have begun to speculate that posthumanism provides
an alternative analysis of apocalyptic cinema and fiction, often casting
vampires, werewolves and even zombies as potential evolutions of the human form
and being. Many science fiction authors, such as
Greg Egan, H.G Wells, Bruce Sterling, Frederik Pohl, Greg Bear, Charles
Stross, Neal Asher, Ken MacLeod and authors of the Orion's Arm Universe,
have written works set in posthuman futures.
= Posthuman god = A variation on the posthuman theme is
the notion of a "posthuman god"; the idea that posthumans, being no longer
confined to the parameters of human nature, might grow physically and
mentally so powerful as to appear possibly god-like by present-day human
standards. This notion should not be interpreted as being related to the idea
portrayed in some science fiction that a sufficiently advanced species may
"ascend" to a higher plane of existence—rather, it merely means that
some posthuman beings may become so exceedingly intelligent and
technologically sophisticated that their behaviour would not possibly be
comprehensible to modern humans, purely by reason of their limited intelligence
and imagination. See also
Biohacking Biopunk
Kardashev scale Nanopunk
Postcyberpunk Technological singularity
References External links
Nichols, Steve. "The Posthuman Manifesto."
Dixon, Dougal. Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future.
Pepperell, Robert. The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the
brain. Rahimi, Sadeq. Identities without a
Reference: Towards a Theory of Posthuman Identity., M/C: A Journal of Media and
Culture , Vol. 3, No. 3, June 2000. Nedkova, Iliyana; Byrne, Chris. Designer
Bodies: Towards the Posthuman Condition, Art Research Communication.
(French) Babin, Dominique. PH1. Manuel d'usage et d'entretien du post-humain.
Flammarion.. Bostrom, Nick.(2005) In Defence of
Posthuman Dignity, Bioethics, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 202–214.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2005.00437.x Nalesnik, Daniel. "Posthumanity:
Changing Our Species." (French) Serge Venturini. Éclats d’une
poétique du devenir post-humain, 2000-2007,, Éditions L'Harmattan, coll.
« Poètes des cinq continents », Paris, 2007 ISBN 978-2-296-03301-6. [1]
Elhefnawy, Nader Nikolai Fedorov and the Dawn of the Posthuman in The Future
Fire. Seidel, Asher. Inhuman Thoughts:
Philosophical Explorations of Posthumanity. Review by C. L'Hôte, Ph.D.
in Metapsychology, Jan 6th 2009. Hiller, James P.. A Superluminal
Transmission, Short Story. Ferrando, Francesca. Humans, Cyborgs,
Posthumans, TED.