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Rourke, Daniel. 2019. the Practice of Posthumanism: Five Paradigmatic Figures for Human Mutation

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Rourke, Daniel. 2019. the Practice of Posthumanism: Five Paradigmatic Figures for Human Mutation Rourke, Daniel. 2019. The Practice of Posthumanism: Five Paradigmatic Figures for Human Mutation. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26601/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] The Practice of Posthumanism: Five Paradigmatic Figures for Human Mutation Daniel Rourke Goldsmiths, University of London Submitted in fulfilment of a PhD in Art 2019 0 Declaration of Authorship I, Daniel Rourke, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. 14th January 2019 1 Acknowledgements With special thanks to Edgar Schmitz for being a great mentor and friend. Thanks also to Andrea Phillips, Yve Lomax, John Chilver, Kristen Kreider, and Michael Newman for their support and guidance, as well as Sarah Kember and John Russell for their thorough examination of the thesis in December 2017. Love to Holly Pester and my family for their unwavering generosity and understanding. This thesis would not have been possible without the minds of Holly Pester, Kyoung Kim, Zara Dinnen, Rob Gallagher, Morehshin Allahyari, Maria Fusco, Adrian Rifkin, Rosa Menkman, Nick Briz, Linda Stupart, Michael Connor and countless others who have enriched my intellectual and creative life over the past years. 2 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 ABSTRACT 5 INTRODUCTION 8 Human(ism) Remains 9 Boundary Claims 16 Breakdown 22 Chapter One: The Phantom Zone 26 Chapter Two: Crusoe’s Island 27 Chapter Three: The Thing 28 Chapter Four: The Collapse of the Hoard & Portfolio of Work / Conclusion 28 CHAPTER ONE: THE PHANTOM ZONE 30 Paraspace 30 Paradigm 35 The Postnatural 39 Post Production 46 Image Things 49 The Datamosh 55 CHAPTER TWO: CRUSOE’S ISLAND 62 Auto-Appellation 62 3 The Shipwreck of Enlightenment 68 Colonial Equivocation 77 Thermodynamic Equivocation 82 CHAPTER THREE: THE THING 92 Becoming Alien 92 Becoming World 98 To Human is Err 103 Becoming Imitation 106 Thingly Theory 110 CHAPTER FOUR: KIPPLE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE HOARD 119 Kipple and 119 Junk and Trash and Garbage and Waste and 123 The Object and The Collection and 125 The Hoard and The Hoarder and 131 PORTFOLIO OF WORK / CONCLUSION 135 BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 4 Abstract Post-humanism is best understood as several overlapping and interrelated fields coming out of the traditions of anti-humanism, post-colonialism, and feminist discourse. But the term remains contested, both by those who wish to overturn, or even destroy, the ‘humanism’ after that decisive hyphen (post-humanists), and those engaged in the project of maximising their chance of merging with technologies, and reaching a supposed point of transition, when the current ‘human’ has been augmented, upgraded, and surpassed (transhumanists). For both those who wish to move beyond ‘humanism’, and those who wish to transcend ‘the human’, there remains a significant, shared, problem: the supposed originary separations, between information and matter, culture and nature, mankind and machine, singular and plural, that post-humanism seeks to problematise, and transhumanism often problematically ignores, lead to the delineation of ‘the human’ as a single, universalised figure. This universalism erases the pattern of difference, which post-humanists see as both the solution to, and the problem of, the human paradigm. This thesis recognises this problem as an ongoing one, and one which – for those who seek to establish posthumanism as a critical field of enquiry – can never be claimed to be finally overcome, lest the same problem of universalism rear its head again. To tackle this problem, this thesis also enters into the complex liminal space where the terms ‘human’ and ‘humanism’ confuse and interrupt one another, but rather than delineate the same boundaries (as transhumanists have done), or lay claim over certain territories of the discourse (as post-humanists have done), this thesis implicates itself, myself, and yourself in the relational becoming posthuman of which we, and it, are co-constituted. My claim being, that critical posthumanism must be the action it infers onto the world of which it is not only part, but in mutual co-constitution with. The Practice of Posthumanism claims that critical posthumanism must be enacted in practice, and stages itself as an example of that process, through a hybrid theoretical and practice-based becoming. It argues that posthumanism is necessarily a vibrant, lively process being undergone, and as such, that it cannot be narrativized or referred 5 to discursively without collapsing that process back into a static, universalised delineation once again. It must remain in practice, and as such, this thesis enacts the process of which it itself is a principle paradigm. After establishing the critical field termed ‘posthumanism’ through analyses of associated discourses such as humanism and transhumanism, each of the four written chapters and hybrid conclusion/portfolio of work is enacted through a ‘figure’ which speaks to certain monstrous dilemmas posed by thinkers of the posthuman. These five figures are: The Phantom Zone, Crusoe’s Island, The Thing, The Collapse of The Hoard, and The 3D Printer (#Additivism). Each figure – echoing Donna Haraway – ‘resets the stage for possible pasts and futures’ by calling into question the fictional/theoretical ground upon which it is predicated. Considered together, the dissertation and conclusion/portfolio of work, position critical posthumanism as a hybrid ‘other’, my claim being that only through representing the human as and through an ongoing process (ontogenesis rather than ontology) can posthumanism re-conceptualise the ‘norms’ deeply embedded within the fields it confronts. The practice of critical posthumanism this thesis undertakes is inherently a political project, displacing and disrupting the power dynamics which are co-opted in the hierarchical structuring of individuals within ‘society’, of categories within ‘nature’, of differences which are universalised in the name of the ‘human’, as well as the ways in which theory delineates itself into rigid fields of study. By confounding articulations of the human in fiction, theory, science, media, and art, this practice in practice enacts its own ongoing, ontogenetic becoming; the continual changing of itself, necessary to avoid a collapse into new absolutes and universals. 6 This is no fantasy... no careless product of wild imagination. No, my good friends. The opening lines of Superman, 1978 1 1 Richard Donner, Superman, Film (Warner Bros., 1978). 7 Introduction Those who theorise the posthuman, post/human, or post-humanism – to name but three of its designations – enter into a complicated relationship with the concept they confront. Post-humanism is best understood as several overlapping and interrelated fields coming out of the traditions of anti-humanism, post-colonialism, and feminist discourse. But the term remains contested, both by those who wish to overturn, or even destroy, the ‘humanism’ after that decisive hyphen, and those who are too busy engaging in maximising their chance of merging with technologies, and becoming ‘post’, to spend time questioning how the ‘human’ of humanism is constituted in the first place. This thesis also enters into the complex liminal space where the terms ‘human’ and ‘humanism’ confuse and interrupt one another, but rather than delineate the same boundaries, or lay claim over certain territories of the discourse, I intend for this text to implicate itself, myself, and yourself (the reader) in the relational becoming post-human of which we, and it, are co-constituted. This thesis stages itself as an example of posthumanism in practice. It argues that posthumanism is necessarily a vibrant, lively process being undergone, and as such, that it cannot be narrativized or referred to without collapsing that process back into a static, universalised delineation once again. It must remain in practice, and as such, this thesis enacts the process of which it itself is the primary paradigm. But here I am getting ahead of myself. In order to understand the territories this thesis will cross into, I must first lay out a series of terms, and more importantly, ways of relating those terms in order for the critical stance I take towards posthumanism and its precursors to become clear. This introduction retains a more discursive mode of address than the proceeding chapters, relying on referring to key concepts, thinkers, and questions of which the remaining thesis will approach more intimately. There are contradictions at play in this approach, which I argue are also inherent in many of the posthumanist texts I converse with. It is important once again to re-iterate the key research question of this thesis as situated somewhat between the ‘vibrant’ process I argue posthumanism must be, and the detached, epistemologically normative critical mode the writing this introduction takes. For my argument is that critical posthumanism ‘in 8 practice’ must be the action it infers onto the world of which it is not only part, but in mutual co-constitution with. I work from the basis of R.L. Rutsky’s claim that posthumanism is ‘a kind of permanent cultural revolution, a performative process that continually re-conceptualizes, or changes, itself.’ 2 This thesis proposes itself as a principle example of the mode of practice by which posthumanism must be, not only understood, but acted, entered into, and self-reflective of. This practice in practice enacts the ongoing, ontogenetic becoming; the changing of itself, necessary to avoid a collapse into new absolutes and universals.
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