Lecture slides for FOAR701: 'Research Paradigms' on 'Posthumanism,' based in readings in cultural studies for Masters of Research course. Topics including posthumanism, transhumanism, inter-species relations, cyborg theory, and relevance for social and cultural theory.

1. –Johnny Appleseed
“The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is
announced to thought from the vantage of the end of
man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a
telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in
the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since
always.” Jacques Derrida
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2. – N. Katherine Hayles
If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who
regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the
ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman
that embraces the possibilities of information technologies
without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and
disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates
finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands
human life is embedded in a material world of great
complexity, one on which we depend for our continued
survival.
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3. FOAR701: Research paradigms (2017)
Posthumanism*
3
Greg Downey
Department of Anthropology
Faculty of Arts
Macquarie University
greg.downey@mq.edu.au
@gregdowney1
* includes material by Prof. Nicole Anderson.

4. Getting to the
post-human
Multiple different ways to
reach this theoretical frame.
Our readings stress the
route from French theory
and transhumanism.
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5. –Johnny Appleseed
‘We need to understand that five hundred
years of humanism may be coming to an
end, as humanism transforms itself into
something that we must helplessly call
posthumanism. ’ Ihab Hassan
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6. The ‘let down’ of
modernity
What do you do when the ‘end
of history’ turns out not to be
the end?
Exhaustion of progress.
…like a failed millenarian
movement.
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7. ‘Post-human’
After ‘human’
Dethroning anthropocentricity
Transcending human nature
Apocalyptic imagination
Voluntary extinction
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8. Critique of
presentism and
anthropocentrism
From evolutionary perspective.
From ecological perspective.
From inter-species perspective.
From other cultural perspective.
From ‘big history’ perspective.
From animal rights and deep
ecology activism.
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9. –Johnny Appleseed
The transcendental structures described
after the phenomenological reduction are
not those of that intra-mundane being
called “man.” They are not essentially
linked with society, culture or language, or
even with man’s “soul” or his “psyche.”
And just as, according to Husserl, a
consciousness can be imagined without
soul (seelenloses), so can – and a fortiori –
a consciousness be imagined without man.
(38)
Jacques Derrida
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10. Derrida - Critique ‘The ends of man’
• In crucial European philosophic texts, still finds privileging of ‘human’ & un-
deconstructed centre, the ‘shepherd of Being’:
‘Despite the criticism of anthropologism, “humanity” is still, here, the name of the
being to which transcendental telos, determined as Idea (in the Kantian sense), or
as Reason, is announced. ’ (43).
• Move beyond ‘anti-humanism,’ to work from within and expand this
perspective. Critique of ‘anthropologism’ in prominent thinkers was overlooked
because their language recaptured their radicalism.
e.g., Heidegger insisting Dasein was not ‘human being.’
• ‘Man’s’ essence is relative to its end (mortality): eschato-teleological situation
(44).
• ‘Man’ of humanism is unsustainable in the face of disunity and diversity.
• Irony that Derrida so concerned with historical context (‘there is only context’) but
doesn’t provide any.
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11. What is the ‘Post-human’?
1) a being that functions to representationally reconceive or
challenge current humanistic ideologies about what it means
to be human (posthumanist); or
2) a future being, one whose ‘capacities radically exceeds those
of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human
by our current standards’ (transhumanist) (Bostrom 2003, 5).
* taken from Nicole Anderson
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12. For transhumanist, problematising of ‘human being’ is not
an intellectual exercise but an historical fact as humans
self-engineer into the future.
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13. Examples
Cochlear implants
Cognition enhancing drugs
Downloaded consciousness
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14. –Johnny Appleseed
principles of extropianism:
perpetual progress, self-
transformation, practical
optimism, intelligent
technology, open society
(information and democracy),
self-direction, and rational
thinking.
Max More
From Ferrando (2013: 27)
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15. Transhumanism and
posthumanism
‘Transhumanism’ is the practice
of trying to improve human
beings through technological
enhancement. (Nick Bostrom)
Why should evolution stop with
current existence?
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16. –Johnny Appleseed
The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a
collection of heterogenous components, a
material-informational entity whose
boundaries undergo continuous
construction and reconstruction.Katherine Hayles (1999)
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17. To what degree has ‘human’ life
been premised upon relations
with machines or other
species…?
Have we always
been ‘post-human’?
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18. –Johnny Appleseed
“By the late twentieth century, our
time, a mythic time, we are all
chimeras, theorized and fabricated
hybrids of machine and organism;
in short, we are cyborgs.”
― Donna J. Haraway
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19. The artefact that stand out
hide the interpenetration
of human and technology
that is ever-present…
e.g.: contemporary athletes.
Why are some technological
‘enhancements’ unethical?

20. Transcendental
posthumanism
e.g., Ray Kurzweil and Hans
Morevec
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21. ‘The Singularity will allow us to
transcend these limitations of our
biological bodies and brains. We
will gain power over our fates. Our
mortality will be in our own hands.
We will fully understand human
thinking and will vastly extend and
expand its reach. By the end of the
century, the nonbiological portion of
our intelligence will be trillions of
trillions of times more powerful than
unaided human intelligence’.
Ray Kurzweil (2005)
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22. Transcendental
posthumanism
• ‘Posthuman possibility space’
includes the transcendence of
carbon-based life.
Singularity.
• Kurzweil: ‘law of accelerating
returns.’
Scientists polled on date of
human-level AI: average = 2040.
• ‘Being’ is a form of information
that can be transferred to new
media.
• Creates possibility of extended
life? immortality? Extinction?
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24. ‘Utopic posthumanism’ Essentially positive
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25. Other-than-humanism Displacing anthropocentrism
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26. Other-than-
(hu)manism
• Recognising the agency of non-
human life and of objects.
(Including negative agency such
as environment feedback loops.)
• ‘New materialism’ coming out of
feminism.
• ‘Multi-species’ and animal
research.
• Return to discussion of
evolutionary and ecological
models, including in
Anthropocene environments.
• ‘Agency’ is not ‘impunity.’
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27. Other-than-
humanism
• In anthropology, ‘ontological
turn’ toward considering the
realities of other people and
objects.
• ‘New animism’ as some
researchers turn to animism
for essential insight.
• Complexity of ‘human being’
in light of scientific facts:
microbiome, macrobiome,
domestication, commensal
species…
• No more ‘nature’?
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28. Human life dependent on a
web of other lives, often
obscured.
56 billion farmed lives taken
each year.

29. But is consciousness
necessarily ‘human’?
Reason, sentience, autonomy, self,
self-presence, awareness… are
these universal and singular?
Will a form other-than-human have
similar being?
If so, how do we recognise it?
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30. But is consciousness
necessarily ‘human’?
And to recognise the historically
contextual nature of everything
– including consciousness – is
to recognise that even
consciousness will be
superseded.
*as an anthropologist, I’m comfortable
with that…
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31. Critical posthumanism
Challenges and critiques
the humanist ideals
encapsulated in, and
perpetuated by, these
utopic versions.
They argue that humans
are a negotiated position
within a system, and
therefore heteronymous,
fluid and hybrid
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* taken from Nicole Anderson

32. Critical posthumanism
Catherine Waldby: posthumanism is ‘a general
critical space in which the techno-cultural forces
which both produce and undermine the stability
of the categories of ‘human’ and ‘non-human’,
can be investigated’ (2000, 43).
Katherine Hayles: deconstructs the ‘radical
breaks’ with human history that the utopic
versions convey, by arguing that posthumanism
‘exists in a relation of overlapping innovation
and replication’ (what Hayles calls ‘serieation’)
(2003, 134)
Others include: Cary Wolfe, RosI Braidotti,
Judith/Jack Halberstam
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* taken from Nicole Anderson

33. ‘Dark posthumanism'
Big (posthuman) History
‘Holocene extinction event’
Artificial transcendence (AI)
Voluntary extinction movement
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34. Key components:
• Opposing
anthropocentrism.
• ‘Anthropocene’ as
historically unfolding.
• Aligned towards
anticipating future.
• Inter-species relations
(‘companion species’).
• Experimental and
speculative work.
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35. Assumptions
• Ontology: strong sense of
dynamism and capacity for
future change; ’new
materialism’; technological
determinist (good & bad).
• Epistemology: attempt to
grapple with human limits on
knowledge; forms of knowledge
other-than and beyond human.
• Methodology: critical,
ecological, post-structuralist,
deconstruction. Interdisciplinary.
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36. Variants of posthumanism
• Transhumanism – (beliefs about the future of humanity; utopic): Nick Bostrom, Joel
Garreau, Aubrey de Grey, Kevin Warwick (interface implant), Stelarc (third ear), Steve
Mann (wearable computing), Marvin Minsky, Max More, Zoltan Istvan, science fiction,
Humanity+.
• Singularitarianism – Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky.
• Cyborg theory – (academic theory): Donna Harraway, Katherine Hayles, Anne
Balsamo, Neil Harbisson (antenna implant), Marco Donnarumma, Allucquère Rosanne
Stone.
• Dark transhumanists – (dystopic): Hugo de Garis, Nick Land, Michael Anissimov
(white supremacist?), Aldous Huxley, ’neo-reactionaries’ & eugenicists.
• Animal Studies/Multi-species ethnography – Eduardo Kohn, Eben Kirksey, Anna
Tsing, Rebecca Cassidy, Holly Mullin, STS.
• Critical philosophy of transhumanism – Andy Miah, Jean Baudrillard, Jaron Lanier,
Catherine Waldby, Cary Wolfe, RosI Braidotti, Judith/Jack Halberstam.
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37. Critiques of post humanism
• Transhumanists still privilege liberal (or even capitalist)
values.
• Excessive focus on Western traditions; other alternatives
to Western idea of ‘the human’ available.
Racist? Transcendence of Western ‘human’?
Ethnocentric?
• Overly optimistic/pessimistic? (Is the paradigm more of
a moral-ethical assertion?)
• A distinctive paradigm or just a set of concerns about
the future and nature of ‘humanity’ implicit in social
theory?
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38. Thanks for your
attention!
Bibliography online at iLearn
Photos public domain at Pixabay
or as indicated.
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39. References
• Badmington, N. (2003). Theorizing posthumanism. Cultural Critique, (53), 10-27.
• Bostrom, N. (2005). A history of transhumanist thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology,
14(1), 1-25.
• Derrida, J. (1968). The ends of man. State University of New York Conference Center.
• Ferrando, F. (2013). Posthumanism, transhumanism, antihumanism, metahumanism, and new
materialisms. Existenz, 8(2), 26-32.
• Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.
• Hassan, I. (1977). Prometheus as performer: Toward a posthumanist culture?. The Georgia
Review, 31(4), 830-850.
• Hayles, N.K., 2008. How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and
informatics. University of Chicago Press.
• Miah, A. (2008). A critical history of posthumanism. In Medical enhancement and posthumanity
(pp. 71-94). Springer Netherlands.
• Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? (Vol. 8). U of Minnesota Press.
• Zaner, R. M. (1972). Discussion of Jacques Derrida,"The Ends of Man". Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 32(3), 384-389.