TABLE OF CONTENTS

Campus Map 3 Programme 4 Argument 12 Keynote Speakers 13 Table of Individual and Panel Abstracts 14 Abstracts by Authors 20 Speakers Index 174 Next BHC Conference 176

CONTACT

Agathe REYNAERT

David DOAT General Secretary, ETHICS Chair, Ethics & Transhumanism, ETHICS +33649220648 +33643660338

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2 CAMPUS MAP

3 PROGRAMME

Day 1 9 July 10.00-11.00 Registration Opening ceremony (Amphi Langeron), Pierre Giorgini, Chancellor, Aliocha Wald-Lasowski, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, David 11.00-11.30 Doat, Chairman of the “Ethics, Technology and Transhumanisms” chair of the Catholic University of Lille, and Stefan Sorgner, Director of the Beyond Humanism Network, John Cabot University 11.30-13.30 Plenary Session (Amphi Langeron), Francesca Ferrando, Stefan Sorgner, Jaime Del Val, Katherine Hayles / Chair: David Doat 13.30-15.00 Lunch break – Garden of the Faculty of Medicine 15.00-16.30 Keynote presentation (Amphi Langeron), Katherine Hayles, “Bio-Cyber-Evolution: Towards a Non-anthropocentric Ethics” / Chair: Jaime Del Val 16.30-17.00 Coffee break Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Gender I TV & Movies Continuités et ruptures Chair: Gerald Preher Chair: Stefan Gaillard Présidents : Gabriel Dorthe, Tiphaine Zetlaoui Lydia Kaye, Posthuman Forms: Art, Dennis M. Weiss, Televisual Thinking: Locating a Michel Saloff Coste, Ruptures et cultures. Future Performance and The Queer Body Critical Posthumanism in, on, and with our studies, prospective et trans-, post-humanisme Denise Blickhan, Medusa VII (or Gorging on Televisions Marc Roux, Pour un transhumanisme perpétuel (en External Minds) Anna Kruk, Image of Superhuman in Popular quoi la continuité nous est nécessaire) Culture: Film and Television Through Dominique Reniers, Le transhumanisme est-il un Technological Development mythe post-moderne ? Kerstin Borchhardt, In the Land of Gods and Julio Guillen, Du corps qui se délite dans sa Monsters: Utopian and Dystopian Concepts to substance… Overcome Classical Humanism in Kōbun Shizuno 17.00-18.30 and Hiroyuki Seshita “Godzilla Trilogy” Session 1 Pedrero Agustin Linares, Cinema as a Mirror of Posthumanism. 10 Cases Room 4 Room 5 War On Machines & Messiahs: Theology, Chair: Isabelle Boof-Vermesse Cybernetics & Superintelligence Qurratulaen Liaqat, Amra Raza, Posthuman Bio- Chair: Yunus Tuncel Politics: the Discourse of Drone in Gabor Ambrus, What are the Implications of the Contemporary Pakistani Fiction Frankenstein Complex? Per Wikberg, Aletta Eikelboom, Magdalena Virgil W. Brower, Do Androids Dream of Electric Granåsen, Samuel Huber, Björn Johansson, Gods? Decision Theory & the Simulation Judith van de Kuijt, Elisa Norvanto, Collin Hypothesis in Pascal & Bostrom (or, How Williams, An Environment for Experimentation Pascal’s God Might Save Humanity… But not the on Command and Control Way he/we “Thought”) 18.30-19.00 Coffee Break

4 Plenary session (Amphi Langeron): Christian Byk, “From Julian Huxley to current UNESCO research on trans- and posthumanism(s)” 19.00-20.00 Chair: Gabriel Dorthe 20.15-20.45 Plenary Art performance (Amphi Feron Vrau) by Denise Blickhan, Medusa VII (or Gorging on External Minds) / Introduction by Stefan Sorgner 20.45 Welcome dinner - Garden of the Faculty of Medicine

Day 2 10 July 9.00-9.45 Room 28 Posthumanist/Metahumanist artistic and body exercices: body intelligence and the swarming power of movement, with Jaime Del Val Optional Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Gender II Literature I Politique I Chair: Kerstin Borchhardt Chair: Jan Stasienko Président : Benjamin Bourcier Bettina Vitzthum, Sexdolls and Warmachines: Judith Rahn, Life Emerging From the Ocean Alain Loute, Intelligence artificielle et ethical Gender Dynamics in Artistic Depiction and Floor: Reimagining the Post- and Transhuman impact assessment : le point aveugle de la Actual Implementation of Artificial Humanity in African Literature spatialisation Stefan Gaillard, Jobke Visser, Pockets, Dresses Stefano Rozzoni, Arcadia in the Anthropocene: Pierre Bourgois, L’aspect militaire du and Identity - A Philosophical Reflection on Overcoming Binarisms Towards a New transhumanisme : une problématique singulière ? Clothing and Identity Posthuman Pastoral Criticism Julija Vidovic, Considérer l’opportunité d’un Barbara Strabel, Posthumanism Sex Neil McBride, The Poetry of Posthumanism instrument normatif sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle 10.00-11.30 Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 Session 2 Artificial Intelligence Philosophy of Trans/Posthumanism I Arts et nouvelles frontières Chair : David Doat Chair: Francesca Ferrando Président : Marc Roux Chaehyun Chong, Dasan’s Philosophy as a Model Anastasia Kriman, The Main Questions of Domenico Cambria, La description littéraire for AI and Human Co-evolution Philosophy Posed by Kant in the Perspective of comme trace de l’homme Ewa Zaborowska, Artificial Intelligence Risk of Posthumanism Aimeric Audegond, Transhumanisme et Benefits in the Transhumanism Era Alexander Thomas, On Progress and Reason: anthropotechnie dans l’art contemporain : Quand Stories of Gods, Animals and Humans l’appareillage technologique est au service de Alberto Micali, Nicolò Pasqualini, In Search of… l’exaltation du corps Pulse Culture: Mapping the Hybridative Zineb Majdouli, Yaël Pignol, Léa Robert, Post- Relations Between Human-Animals and Pulses humanisme musical. Analyse de la réception de la Peggy E. Reynolds, Post/Trans-Humanism: On création musicale robotisée the Aesthetics of Becoming

5 Room 7 Environment I Chair: Gabriel Dorthe

Chelsea Heikes, AnthropoThing: Beyond the Human Gaze Jane McQuitty, A Case Study of Advocacy for an Anthropogenic Ecology in Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Applying New Constructs in Conservation 11.30-12.00 Coffee break 12.00-13.30 Keynote presentation (Amphi Langeron): Dale Herigstad, Humans and screens are converging: Who moved? / Chair: Francesca Ferrando 13.30-15.00 Lunch break – Garden of the Faculty of Medicine Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Humans & Robots II: Love & Sex Literature II Politique II Chair: Alberto Micali Chair: Neil McBride Présidente : Julija Vidovic Scott Midson, Deus Sex Machina: Perfect Joseph Clark, Technological Democracy - a Tiphaine Zetlaoui, Le trans-posthumanisme au Relationshipsin Theology and Lovotics Posthumanist Reading of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise crible des institutions parlementaires Sangkyu Shin, The Posthuman condition and sex Gerald Preher, License to Kill: Driving and Hélène Jeannin, Le monde politico- Aura-Elena Schussler, Artificially Intelligent Empowerment in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Lover” économique : stratégies et réseaux d’influence Sexbots - a Posthumanist Ethical Approach to transhumanistes Technological Singularity Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 Economy Philosophy of Trans/Posthumanism II Corps et experimentation Chair: Richard Lewis Chair: Yasin Yesilyurt Président : Didier Cœurnelle Rafał Mazij, Posthuman Economy: Tyranny or Marcin Garbowski, The “Sphere of Ease” as the Sarah Markiewicz, Méta-humain : peut-on Utopia? Ultimate Objective of Transhumanism légalement s’augmenter pour le Plaisir ? 15.00-16:30 Abdelhafid Hafid, Social Media and Collective Simone Murru, Post-Human, all Too Post-Human: Guillaume Bagnolini, Médiatisation, éthique et Session 3 Intelligence. Digital Disobedience Affecting A Critique to Some of the Fundamental Concepts auto-expérimentation Moroccan Economy of Post-Humanism Salomé Bour, Guillaume Bagnolini, Le body-art, Jasmine Erdener, Posthuman Capitalism and Joël Patomälo, Postphenomenological premises une interrogation éthique sur les frontières ? Technological Accessibility in Foucault, Ihde, Haraway and Hayles’ works Yaëlle Amsallem, Aurélien Acquier, Ideology Francesca Ferrando, Posthumanism as a Post- Configuring Events: The 2002 NBIC Report as a Humanism, Post-Anthropocentrism and Post- Vehicle for the Integration of the Transhumanist Dualism Ideology into an Industry Room 7 Environment II Chair: Jonathan Hay Annukka Paajanen, Gene Banks for Endangered Species as a Solution to Environmental Issues: Managing the Unmanageable? Hee-Jong Woo, Expansion of Transhumanism - From Religion to Trans-animal 6 16.30-17.00 Coffee break Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Disability Gaming Le transhumanisme en débats Chair: David Doat Chair: David Roden Président : Marc Roux Thomas Tajo, Posthumanism and Transhumanism Jonathan Hay, Fully Optimized: The (post)human Loïc Laroche, Le post/transhumanisme dans les as Means: Towards a Goal of an Infinitely Open Art of Speedrunning médias: l’apparition et la diffusion du Concept of Humanity Adam Flamma, Post Humanistic Female transhumanisme dans la presse française Yasin Yeşilyurt, Technological Mohammed and Characters in Video Games - an Outline Didier Cœurnelle, Une mort trop douce. La Sameer Meike Robaard, Cyborg Incorporated: Body- théorie de la gestion de la terreur revisitée, Horror, Monstrous Techno-performativity, and transhumanisée et posthumanisée Cyborg Narrativity in David Cronenberg’s Olga Vinogradova, Discours éthiques engendrés Videodrome (1983) and eXistenZ (1999) par les contre-arguments et risques du progrès, de l’amélioration des hommes et de la société 17.00-18.30 du transhumanisme Session 4 Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 The Posthuman Shift in the Anthropocene: a Philosophy of Trans/Posthumanism III: Faire monde commun? Question of Space and Time Nietzsche Président : Pierre Bourgois Chair: Gerald Preher Chair: Stefan Lorenz Sorgner Guillaume Fauvel, L’effacement de la condition Paolo Missiroli, Notes for a Different Emir Özer, Nietzsche’s Posthuman Traces in politique des hommes à travers le Anthropocene in the Posthuman Shift Deleuze and Guattari transhumanisme : la perte du monde commun Ilaria Santoemma, A Time to Yearn and a Space to Thomas Steinbuch, “Bad Boy Nietzsche”? The Marie-Anne Torneberg, Rythmanalyse du post- Inhabit. Futurability vs Critical Posthumanism Literature of Alienation and the Politics of humanisme Spatiality Apartheid in the Late Writings: A Reply to Ivan Mara Magda Maftei, Emmanuel Picavet, Elisa Bosisio, The Ethics of Bodies in a Post- Soll and Sarah Kofman” Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : de la natural and Post-cultural Era fiction à la réalité des évolutions Angela Balzano, Reproducing the Future: for a Posthuman Care of the Otherness 18.30-19.00 Coffee Break Plenary session (Amphi Langeron): Works in the field and publication perspectives, Francesca Ferrando, Stefan Sorgner, David Roden, Christian Barth, Marc Roux & Didier Cœurnelle, 19.00-20.00 Vincent Calais, Stefan Gaillard Chair: David Doat

7

Day 3 11 July

9.00-9.45 Room 28 Posthumanist/Metahumanist artistic and body exercices: body intelligence and the swarming power of movement, with Jaime Del Val Optional Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Cognition Politics I: Democracy Écologies I : Nature et evolution Chair: David Doat Chair: Salomé Bour Président : Franck Damour Yvonne Foerster, Contemporary Neurocultures in Krisztian Szabados, Decontesting Liberty: Pierre-Emmanuel Boyer, Quel avenir pour nos the Light of Critical Posthumanism Transhumanism as a Thin Ideology vieux os ? Katarzyna Kaczmarek, Cognitive Human Jan-Philipp Reineke, Posthuman Identity Politics Emmanuel Brochier, La Nature dans les trans- Enhancement: Where do we Stand? Marcin Woźniak, Posthuman Voting et post-humanismes, et après Sabina Wantoch, A New Focus for Transhumanism: Psychedelics as Cognitive Technology to Resist Affective Capitalism and Subvert “the Individual” Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 Self I: Subjectivity Arts I: Bio Philosophie I : Normes anthropologiques Chair: Alberto Romele Chair: Scott Midson Présidente : Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Aleksandra Lukaszewicz Alcaraz, Allo-human Emma Pavans de Ceccatty, Reframing the Human Calabre 10.00-11.30 Persons? in Postnormal Times: Posthuman Ontologies in Bio Catherine Fino, Accueillir la variabilité des Session 5 Richard Lewis, A Cartography of the Complex Art Practices normes anthropologiques : l’apport de Posthuman Subject: A Method for Posthumanism Justyna Stępień, Transcoding Multispecies Georges Canguilhem and Transhumanism Borderlands in the Anthropocene. Nonhuman Lives Damien Caille, S’augmenter pour se Stavros Kousoulas, Drift, Naturally: A in Artistic Practices conserver : l’approche spinoziste d’une Transaffective Unfolding bionique antidualiste Michelle Dobré, Marouane Jaouat, Entre transhumanistes et non-transhumanistes : un différend terminologique ? Room 7 Religion I: Asia Chair: Jessica Lombard Kojiro Honda, Theology of Ancient Shinto-ism and Japanese Robot- culture Taeyeon Kim, Religious Transhumanist Vision in the Early 20th Century: Focused on a Case of New Religion (Cheondoism) in Korea Milan Kroulik, Buddhist Chanting as a Decentering of Subjectivity 11.30-12.00 Coffee break

8 12.00-13.30 Keynote presentation (Amphi Langeron): Leo Igwe, From Homo Faber to Fabricated Humans in Africa / Chair: Stefan Sorgner 13.30-15.00 Lunch break – Garden of the Faculty of Medicine Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Humans & Robots I: Contrasts Politics II: Norms & Rights Écologies II Chair: Marcin Garbowski Chair: Jonathan Steinbuch Président : Alberto Romele Jarno Hietalahti, Humanity and Monopoly of Fergal McHugh, The Ethics of Datafication and Franck Damour, Laudato Sì : un manifeste post- Humor. Imaging a Completely Different Sense of our Right to the Future Tense humaniste ? Humor Andrei Dirlau, Good Tech - Bad Tech. Who is to Gaëlle Le Dref, Le transhumanisme face à la Apolline Taillandier, Anthropomorphizing Decide Where we Draw the Line? catastrophe écologique de l’anthropocène Intelligence? Transhumanists, AI Visioneering and Anne-Cécile Lenoel, Catherine Pascal, the Posthumanist Imagination Transhumain, post humain, nouvelles équations, nouvelles frontières du méta corps? Renouveau et soma technique du corps ? Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 Self II: Algorithmic agents Arts II Philosophie II Chair: Jacques Printz Chair: Guillaume Bagnolini Présidente : Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Calabre Colbey Emmerson Reid, Televisual A.I. Erik Nyström, Technological Listening and Intra- Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, L’humanisme 15.00-16.30 Kaja Szurkowska, “Netflix and Chill” - Extended Faces of Sound décentré comme alternative au Session 6 Identity and the Hybridization of Human Manie Eagar, Emerging Technologies of Self in transhumanisme Experience in the Era of Algorithms and Social the Interzone: Immanent Selfhood, Identity and Benjamin Norguet, La cybernétique est-elle un Online Platforms Consciousness - Translative, Transformational, humanisme ? Shahin Nazar, The Algorithmically Extended Self: Transcendental, Trans/Posthuman… Salomé Bour, L’extropianisme et les Reconsidering the Design Ethics of the Jaime Del Val, BI R/Evolution: Body Intelligence fondements philosophiques du transhumanisme Choreography between Human- and Algorithmic and the swarming power of movement. Towards Agents an ethics-ecology of co-sensing and symbiotic affect in the age of Autonomous Algorithms Room 7 Religion II: Europe Chair: Didier Cœurnelle Aleksandar Talovic, Cortical Stack as Psyché Reengineered: the Status of Death in Transhuman Futurities Jessica Lombard, Why Transhumanism is not a Religion Chul Chun, The Age of Artificial Intelligence and Religious Imagination 16.30-17.00 Coffee break

9 Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Education & Learning Self III: Norms & Humanism Cerveau, individu et trans/posthumanisme Chair: Agnieszka Dytman-Stasieńko Chair: Stefan Gaillard Président: Vincent Calais Jaakko Jekunen, Desiring Production in the Art Stefan Sorgner, The Twist Robert M. Mebenga, Réflexions autour de Classroom: Towards Posthuman Art Education Sang Wook Yi, Jeongha Hwang, Sungook Hong, l’expérience du robot avec cerveau biologique with Deleuze and Guattari Artificial Intelligence, Lies, and Videotape Frédéric Tordo, Du Soi-cyborg au Moi-cyborg Kateryna Marchenko, How to Stop the Knowledge Alexandre Carbonneau, La neuro-augmentation Marathon? est-elle un horizon souhaitable ? Mbeutcha Josué, L’idée dominicaine de posthumanité ou la rénovation de l’individualité Fabrizio Defilippi, Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : entre exercices et passivité 17.00-18:30 Room 4 Room 5 Salle 6 Session 7 The Heritage of Epicurus: Case Studies on Body I Transcendances et vérités Critical Posthumanism (Philosophy, New Media Chair: Erik Nyström Présidente : Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Calabre and Critical Posthumanism) Yunus Tuncel, CRISPER, Posthuman Agency, and Jacques Printz, Vérité et/ou post-vérité dans Chair: Jan Stasienko the Ethics of Genetic Enhancement un monde où “Tout est lié” Anna Markopoulou, The Tetrapharmakos (Fourfold Jana Kadlecová, Umwelt Extended: Towards New Fanny Parise, L’émergence d’un troisième genre Cure) and the Sober Reasoning in Epicurus: A Approaches in the Study of the Technologically technologique Philosophical Paradigm Shift towards a Critical Modified Body Vincent Guérin, S’en remettre au “grand Autre” Posthumanism? numérique Evi Sampanikou, Towards a Philosophical Visual Culture: The Documentary “The Immortals at the Southern Point of Europe” (Yiorgos Moustakis - Nikos Labôt) and Critical Posthumanism Documentary Screening (75 minutes) 18.30-19.30 Coffee Break 19.30-22.30 Gala Dinner – Garden of the Faculty of Medicine Music Performance (Amphi Feron Vrau) with local guest composer and sound designer Antoine Boucherikha & video programmer Vincent Crauet / 22.30 Introduction by David Doat

10 Day 4 12 July Room 1 Room 2 Salle 3 Face Whose Anthropocentrism? Body II Chair: Salomé Bour Chair: Gabriel Dorthe Chair: Guillaume Bagnolini Agnieszka Dytman-Stasieńko, Jan Stasienko, Mitsuhiro Hayashi, The Ontological Pluralism of Orsola Rignani, Between the Middle Ages, the Delegating the Face. Facial Motion Capture as Posthuman Beings Contemporary, and the Future: (Towards) a Therapeutic Tool for Patients After Stroke. Andrea Rehberg, Who is the Anthropos of the Trans-Post-Humanist Body Practical Application of the Posthuman Anthropocene? Feminist Perspectives Beyond Daniel Grenz, From Architecture to Body- Approach to the Concept of the Face Humanism Building: A Transhumanist Approach to Jan Stasienko, Aldona Helska, Deepfakes and Kyoung-Min Lee, Beyond anthropocentricism Sustainable Design Politics of the Face. Sociocultural, Legal and George Themistokleous, The Informational Political Consequences of Algorithmic Pliability of the Body in New Media Construction of Physionomy and their Non- 10.00-11.30 human Esthetics Session 8 Room 4 Room 5 Room 6 Science-fiction Angels & Demons The Beyond Humanism Network Présidente : Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Calabre Chair: Jessica Lombard An open discussion on future developments Yannick Rumpala, De la technicisation des corps David Roden, From the Aesthetics of the & perspectives à la post-humanité ? Le cyberpunk comme Encounter to the Demonology of the Outside Francesca Ferrando, Stefan Sorgner, moment et espace de problématisation des Mattia Geretto, Angelic Nature, Human Nature Jaime Del Val transformations de la condition humaine and “Trans-/Posthuman Beings”. Ancient and Lucile Coquelin, La mythocritique New Paradigms for Understanding the transhumaniste de la série Black Mirror Differences Between Transhumanism and Sara Touiza, Cybernétique, posthumanisme et Posthumanism transhumanisme: dévoilement d’un monde Emily Bauman, Biopolitics and the Holy: Angelic cyborgien Transformations in Trans- and Post-Humanism 11:30-12:00 Coffee break 12.00-13.00 Closing remarks (Amphi Langeron), Board of the Beyond Humanism Network, Local organizer 13.00 Picnic lunch

11

ARGUMENT

This 11th Beyond Humanism Conference aims to intensify the debates between transhumanists and posthumanists on the impact of emerging technologies on our lifeworld. Transhumanism and posthumanism have many different meanings in the literature depending on the context, and the cultural and disciplinary background of the researchers who uses them. This diversity is both a richness and a source of misunderstanding. Even though there are a great variety of different conceptions of transhumanism and posthumanism, what all of them have in common is an active engagement with the impact of emerging technologies on our lifeworld, and a move away from a traditional humanist understandings of human beings. This is what the posthuman paradigm shift stands for. The 11th Beyond Humanism Conference aims to map the differences between transhumanism(s) and posthumanism(s), as well as their alternatives, but it also tries to investigate possibilities of convergent approaches. These endeavours might lead to the emergence of a new way of thinking. What would a critical transhumanism or a critical posthumanism look like? By being confronted with our current existential risks and our awareness of living in the anthropocene, we need to be open for new ways of thinking in order to prepare ourselves for successfully dealing with the challenges humanity is facing today. Is a non-anthropocentric and post-humanist transhumanism conceivable? What would be the proposal and concrete content of such a synthesis? Are transhumanism and posthumanism compatible with one another? These questions also call for the investigation of alternative ways of thinking which go beyond the limits of transhumanism and posthumanism, such as metahumanism, hyperhumanism, off-centred humanism… The proliferation of such alternatives to transhumanism and posthumanism must also be questioned here. Are radically different options possible, which would not focus on convergences between transhumanism and critical posthumanism but which could provide us with a different horizon within which we could consider our current condition? Maybe, the realm of art is needed for providing us with an initial stimulus for breaking out of the framework within which we are thinking. Consequently, artists of all kinds and on all media are strongly encouraged to get in contact with us, so that their works can also be considered for inclusion in this event. In addition to the need to clarify ongoing debates and the evolution of contemporary trends in our reflections on the future of humanity and our place in nature, the 11th BHC will also investigate how contemporary concerns are problematized within transhumanism, posthumanism, and their alternatives. These topics of interest give rise to a great plurality of possible proposals. The 11th BHC will provide a unique opportunity for debates, aesthetic experiences, playful interventions and more. We are open to receiving your suggestions which will provide all of us with alternative ways for thinking about and experiencing the world we live in. We are very much looking forward to getting together with you in the beautiful city of Lille.

12 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Katherine Hayles N. (Nancy) Katherine Hayles (born 16 December 1943) is a postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature. She is professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Program in Literature at Duke University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._Katherine_Hayles https://scholars.duke.edu/person/katherine.hayles

Dale Herigstad As Chief Interaction Officer of the global interactive marketing agency Possible Worldwide, London-based Dale Herigstad is a thought leader on the future of media consumption in a ‘many-screen’ world of increasingly rich media interfaces. With an extensive background in broadcast design, Dale pioneered a unique spatial approach to designing navigation systems for interactive TV and connected screens, blurring the lines between television, games and the Web with a concept he calls ‘New Television’. http://ideasondesign.net/speakers/speakers/dale-herigstad www.typotalks.com/speakers/dale-herigstad

Leo Igwe Leo Igwe was the Western and Southern African representative to IHEU, the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He has bravely worked to end a variety of human rights violations, including anti-gay hate, sorcery, witchcraft, ritual killing, human sacrifice, “untouchability”, caste discrimination, “child witch” superstition, and anti-blasphemy laws. He is presently enrolled in a three year research programme on “Witchcraft accusations in Africa” at the University of Bayreuth, in Germany.

https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/bio/igwe/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Igwe

13 TABLE OF INDIVIDUAL AND PANEL ABSTRACTS

ACQUIER Aurélien & AMSALLEM Yaëlle 21 Ideology configuring events: the 2002 NBIC Report as a vehicle for the integration of the transhumanist ideology into an industry AMBRUS Gabor, BROWER Virgil W. 22 Of Machines & Messiahs: Theology, Cybernetics & Superintelligence AUDEGOND Aimeric 25 Transhumanisme et anthropotechnie dans l'art contemporain : Quand l'appareillage technologique est au service de l'exaltation du corps BAGNOLINI Guillaume 26 Médiatisation, éthique et auto-expérimentation BARTHÉLÉMY Jean-Hugues 27 L’humanisme décentré comme alternative au transhumanisme BAUMAN Emily 28 Biopolitics and the Holy: Angelic Transformations in Trans- and Post-Humanism BLICKHAN Denise 29 MEDUSA VII (or gorging on external minds) BORCHHARDT Kerstin 30 In the land of gods and monsters: Utopian and dystopian concepts to overcome classical humanism in KŌbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita “Godzilla trilogy” BOUR Salomé 31 L’extropianisme et les fondements philosophiques du transhumanisme BOUR Salomé & BAGNOLINI Guillaume 32 Le body-art, une interrogation éthique sur les frontières ? BOURGOIS Pierre 33 L’aspect militaire du transhumanisme : une problématique singulière ? BOYER Pierre-Emmanuel 34 Quel avenir pour nos vieux os ? BROCHIER Emmanuel 35 La Nature dans les trans- et post-humanismes, et après ABDELHAFID Hafid 36 Social Media and collective intelligence. Digital disobedience affecting Moroccan economy CAILLE Damien 37 S’augmenter pour se conserver : l’approche spinoziste d’une bionique antidualiste CAMBRIA Domenico 38 La description littéraire comme trace de l’homme CARBONNEAU Alexandre 39 La neuro-augmentation est-elle un horizon souhaitable ? CHAEHYUN Chong 40 Dasan’s Philosophy as a model for AI and human co-evolution CHUN Chul 41 The Age of Artificial Intelligence and Religious Imagination CLARK Joseph 42 Technological Democracy – a Posthumanist reading of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise CŒURNELLE Didier 43 Une mort trop douce. La théorie de la gestion de la terreur revisitée, transhumanisée et posthumanisée COQUELIN Lucile 44 La mythocritique transhumaniste de la série Black Mirror DAMOUR Franck 47 Laudato Sì : un manifeste post-humaniste ?

14 DEFILIPPI Fabrizio 48 Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : entre exercices et passivité DEL VAL Jaime 49 BI r/evolution - Body Intelligence and the swarming power of movement. Ethics of co-sensing in the Age of Autonomous Algorithms (and Transspecies Manifesto) DIRLAU Andrei 50 Good Tech – Bad Tech. Who is to decide where we draw the line? DOBRÉ Michelle & JAOUAT Marouane 51 Entre transhumanistes et non-transhumanistes : un différend terminologique ? DYTMAN-STASIEŃKO Agnieszka & STASIEŃKO Jan 53 Delegating the face. Facial motion capture as therapeutic tool for patients after stroke. Practical application of the posthuman approach to the concept of the face EAGAR Manie 54 Emerging Technologies of Self in the Interzone: Immanent Selfhood, Identity and Consciousness - Translative, Transformational, Transcendental, Trans/Posthuman… ERDENER Jasmine 55 Posthuman Capitalism and technological accessibility FAUVEL Guillaume 56 L’effacement de la condition politique des hommes à travers le transhumanisme : la perte du monde commun FERRANDO Francesca 57 Posthumanism as a Post-Humanism, Post-Anthropocentrism and Post-Dualism FINO Catherine 58 Accueillir la variabilité des normes anthropologiques : l’apport de Georges Canguilhem FLAMMA Adam 59 Post humanistic female characters in video games - an outline FOERSTER Yvonne 60 Contemporary Neurocultures in the Light of Critical Posthumanism GAILLARD Stefan & VISSER Jobke 61 Pockets, dresses and identity – A philosophical reflection on clothing and identity GARBOWSKI Marcin 62 The “Sphere of Ease” as the Ultimate Objective of Transhumanism GERETTO Mattia 63 Angelic nature, human nature and “Trans-/Posthuman beings”. Ancient and new paradigms for understanding the differences between Transhumanism and Posthumanism GRENZ Daniel 64 From Architecture to Body-Building: A transhumanist approach to Sustainable Design GUÉRIN Vincent 65 S’en remettre au « grand Autre » numérique HAY Jonathan 66 Fully Optimized: The (post)human art of speedrunning HAYASHI Mitsuhiro 67 The Ontological Pluralism of Posthuman Beings HEIKES Chelsea (seah) 68 AnthropoThing: Beyond the Human Gaze HIETALAHTI Jarno 69 Humanity and Monopoly of Humor. Imaging a Completely Different Sense of Humor HONDA Kojiro 70 Theology of Ancient Shinto-ism and Japanese Robot-culture JEANNIN Hélène 71 Le monde politico-économique : stratégies et réseaux d’influence transhumanistes JEKUNEN Jaakko 72 Desiring Production in the Art Classroom: Towards Posthuman Art Education with Deleuze and Guattari

15 KACZMAREK Katarzyna 73 Cognitive human enhancement: Where do we stand? KADLECOVÁ Jana 74 Umwelt Extended: Towards new approaches in the study of the technologically modified body KAYE Lydia 75 Posthuman Forms: Art, Performance and The Queer Body KOUSOULAS Stravros 76 Drift, Naturally: A Transaffective Unfolding KRIMAN Anastasia 77 The main questions of philosophy posed by Kant in the perspective of posthumanism KROULIK Milan 78 Buddhist Chanting as a Decentering of Subjectivity KRUK Anna 79 Image of Superhuman in Popular Culture: Film and Television Through Technological Development LAROCHE Loïc 80 Le post/transhumanisme dans les médias: l’apparition et la diffusion du transhumanisme dans la presse française LE DREF Gaëlle 81 Le transhumanisme face à la catastrophe écologique de l’anthropocène LEE Kyoung-Min 82 Beyond anthropocentricism LENOEL Anne-Cécile & PASCAL Catherine 83 Transhumain, post humain, nouvelles équations, nouvelles frontières du méta corps ? Renouveau et soma technique du corps ?

LESOURD Serge, RENIERS Dominique & GUILLEN Julio 87 Transhumanisme : entre discours et jouissance LEWIS Richard 88 A Cartography of the Complex Posthuman Subject: A Method for Posthumanism and Transhumanism LINARES PEDRERO Augustin 89 Cinema as a Mirror of Posthumanim. 10 Cases LOMBARD Jessica 90 Why Transhumanism is not a Religion LOUTE Alain 91 Intelligence artificielle et ethical impact assessment : le point aveugle de la spatialisation LUKASZEWICZ ALCARAZ Aleksandra 93 Allo-human persons? MAFTEI Mara Magda & PICAVET Emmanuel 94 Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : de la fiction à la réalité des évolutions MAJDOULI Zineb, PIGNOL Yaël, ROBERT Léa 95 Post-humanisme musical. Analyse de la réception de la création musicale robotisée MARCHENKO Kateryna 97 How to stop the knowledge marathon? MARKIEWICZ Sarah 98 Méta-humain : peut-on légalement s’augmenter pour le plaisir ? MARKOPOULOU Anna & SAMPANIKOU Evi 99 The Heritage of Epicurus: Case Studies on Critical Posthumanism (Philosophy, New Media and Critical Posthumanism) MAZIJ Rafał 100 Posthuman Economy: Tyranny or Utopia? MBEUTCHA Josué 101 L’idée dominicaine de posthumanité ou la rénovation de l’individualité MC QUITTY Jane 102 A Case Study of Advocacy for an Anthropogenic Ecology in Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Applying New Constructs in Conservation 16 MCBRIDE Neil 103 The Poetry of Posthumanism MCHUGH Fergal 104 The ethics of datafication and our right to the future tense MEBENGAMBALA Robert 105 Réflexions autour de l’expérience du robot avec cerveau biologique MICALI Alberto & PASQUALINI Nicolo 106 In search of...pulse culture: Mapping the hybridative relations between human-animals and pulses MIDSON Scott 107 Deus Sex Machina: Perfect Relationships in Theology and Lovotics MURRU Simone 108 Post-human, all too post-human: A critique to some of the fundamental concepts of post-humanism NAZAR KERMANSHAHI Shahin 109 The Algorithmically Extended Self: Reconsidering the Design Ethics of the Choreography between Human- and Algorithmic Agents NORGUET Benjamin 110 La cybernétique est-elle un humanisme ? NYSTROM Erik 111 Technological Listening and Intra-Faces of Sound ÖZER Emir 112 Nietzsche’s Posthuman Traces in Deleuze and Guattari PAAJANEN Annukka 113 Gene Banks for Endangered Species as a Solution to Environmental Issues: Managing the Unmanageable? PARISE Fanny 114 L’émergence d’un troisième genre technologique PATOMÄLO Joel 115 Postphenomenological premises in Foucault, Ihde, Haraway and Hayles’ works PAVANS DE CECCATTY Emma 116 Reframing the human in postnormal times: posthuman ontologies in bio art practices PREHER Gerald 117 License to Kill: Driving and Empowerment in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Lover” PRINTZ Jacques 118 Vérité et/ou post-vérité dans un monde où « Tout est lié » QURRATULAEN Liaqat & AMRA Raza 119 Posthuman Bio-politics: The Discourse of Drone in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction RAHN Judith 120 Life Emerging from the Ocean Floor: Reimagining the Post- and Transhuman in African Literature REHBERG Andrea 121 Who is the anthropos of the anthropocene? Feminist perspectives beyond humanism REID Colbey Emmerson 122 Televisual A.I. REINEKE Jan-Philipp 123 Posthuman Identity Politics REYNOLDS Peggy E. 124 Post/Trans – Humanism: On the Aesthetics of Becoming RIGNANI Orsola 125 Between the Middle Ages, the Contemporary, and the Future: (Towards) a Trans-Post-Humanist Body ROBAARD Meike 126 Cyborg Incorporated: Body-Horror, Monstrous Techno-performativity, and Cyborg Narrativity in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and eXistenZ (1999) RODEN David 127 From the Aesthetics of the Encounter to the Demonology of the Outside

17 ROUX Marc 128 Pour un transhumanisme perpétuel (en quoi la continuité nous est nécessaire) ROZZONI Stefano 129 Arcadia in the Anthropocene: Overcoming Binarisms towards a new Posthuman Pastoral Criticism RUMPALA Yannick 132 De la technicisation des corps à la post-humanité ? Le cyberpunk comme moment et espace de problématisation des transformations de la condition humaine SALOFF COSTE Michel 134 Ruptures et Cultures. Future studies, prospective et trans-, post-humanisme

SANTOEMMA Ilaria, MISSIROLI Paolo, BALZANO Angela & BOSISIO Elisa 135 The Posthuman shift in the Anthropocene: a question of Space and Time SCHUSSLER Aura-Elena 139 Artificially Intelligent Sexbots—a Posthumanist Ethical Approach to Technological Singularity SHIN Sangkyu 140 The posthuman condition and sex SORGNER Stefan 141 The Twist SPECTOR Sam 142 Space travel, transhumanism, and the Anthropocene STASIENKO Jan, HELSKA Aldona 143 Deepfakes and politics of the face. Sociocultural, legal and political consequences of algorithmic construction of physionomy and their non-human esthetics STEINBUCH Thomas 144 “Bad Boy Nietzsche"? The Literature of Alienation and the Politics of Apartheid in the Late Writings: A Reply to Ivan Soll and Sarah Kofman STĘPIEŃ Justyna 145 Transcoding Multispecies Borderlands in the Anthropocene. Nonhuman lives in Artistic Practices STRABEL Barbara 146 Posthumanism Sex STREIP Katharine 147 William S. Burroughs, Sound and Posthumanism SUNGOOK Hong, YI Sang Wook, HWANG Jeongha 148 Artificial Intelligence, Lies, and Videotape SZABADOS Krisztian 149 Decontesting Liberty: Transhumanism as a Thin Ideology SZURKOWSKA Kaja 151 “Netflix and chill” – extended identity and the hybridization of human experience in the era of algorithms and social online platforms TAEYEON Kim 152 Religious Transhumanist Vision in the early 20th Century: Focused on a Case of New Religion (Cheondoism) in Korea TAILLANDIER Apolline 153 Anthropomorphizing intelligence? Transhumanists, AI visioneering and the posthumanist imagination TAJO Thomas 154 Posthumanism and Transhumanism as means: towards a goal of an infinitely open concept of humanity TALOVIC Aleksandar 155 Cortical Stack as Psyché Reengineered: the Status of Death in Transhuman Futurities THEMISTOKLEOUS George 156 The informational pliability of the body in new media THOMAS Alexander 157 On Progress and reason: stories of gods, animals and humans TORDO Frédéric 158 Du Soi-cyborg au Moi-cyborg

18 TORNEBERG Marie-Anne 159 Rythmanalyse du post-humanisme TOUIZA Sara 160 Cybernétique, posthumanisme et transhumanisme : dévoilement d’un monde cyborgien TUNCEL Yunus 161 CRISPER, Posthuman Agency, and the Ethics of Genetic Enhancement VIDOVIC Julija 162 Considérer l’opportunité d’un instrument normatif sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle VINOGRADOVA Olga 163 Discours éthiques engendrés par les contre-arguments et risques du progrès, de l'amélioration des hommes et de la société du transhumanisme VITZTHUM Bettina 164 Sexdolls and Warmachines: Gender Dynamics in Artistic Depiction and Actual Implementation of Artificial Humanity WANTOCH Sabina 165 A new focus for transhumanism: Psychedelics as cognitive technology to resist affective capitalism and subvert ‘the individual’ WEISS Dennis M. 166 Televisual Thinking: Locating a critical posthumanism in, on, and with our televisions

WIKBERG Per, EIKELBOOM Aletta, GRANÅSEN Magdalena, HUBER Samuel, JOHANSSON Björn, VAN DE KUIJT Judith,

NORVANTO Elisa & WILLIAMS Colin 167 An Environment for Experimentation on Command and Control for the Post- and Transhuman Era WOO Hee-Jong 168 Expansion of transhumanism – from religion to trans-animal WOZNIAK Marcin 169 Posthuman Voting YEŞILYURT Yasin 170 Technological Mohammed and Sameer ZABOROWSKA Ewa 171 Artificial intelligence risk or benefits in the transhumanism era ZETLAOUI Tiphaine 172 Le trans-posthumanisme au crible des institutions parlementaires

19

ABSTRACTS BY AUTHORS

20 ACQUIER Aurélien & AMSALLEM Yaëlle Ideology configuring events: the 2002 NBIC Report as a vehicle for the integration of the transhumanist ideology into an industry

In this paper, we explore how some forms of discourse can serve as a vehicles for ideologies that shape the development of organizational fields (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). To address these questions, we focus on the diffusion of the transhumanist ideology (Bostrom, 2003). While this idea appeared long ago and finds its roots in cybernetics and science fiction, transhumanism is now a global cultural phenomenon that far exceeds the number of persons who recognize themselves as transhumanists (Tirosh-Samuelson, 2012). This new spirit has played a key role to orient industrial developments towards a new organizational field: the nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science industry (NBIC). This emerging organizational field, with discoveries in robotic, nanotechnology, genomics, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and information technology is radically changing our society. We explore the report that represents a turning point in the diffusion of the transhumanist utopia into NBIC industries (Roco & Bainbridge, 2002). It was the result of the December 2001 workshop untitled “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance”. Three official reports analyzed the disruption the concept of NBIC convergence represented. They were decisive in legitimizing the concept of converging technologies in order to enhance human performance. We analyze the structure of the 2002 report on NBIC technologies through a combination of van Dijk approach of discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1995a, 2009) and historical methods. Our results reveal different central properties of the text. First the report generated legitimacy building through affiliation with key public scientific institutions in the U.S. and the replication of successful cognitive/discursive templates to legitimize new technological breakthrough. The report also gave birth to a new form of transhumanism based on human enhancement likely to happen within the next decades, and influenced by the cybernetic imagery and the Californian ideology. Finally, we also detected the heavy use of religious rhetoric, leading to the emergence of a new secular faith. Our main contribution is to take into account the transformational dimension of performativity that not only provides legitimation to the transhumanist ideology, but also turns that ideology into a new organizational field through NBIC technologies. To conceptualize that phenomenon, we shed some light on a specific type of event able to influence the development and adoption of ideas, therefore providing a new perspective to the institutionalization process. References Bostrom, N. 2003. The transhumanism FAQ: a general introduction: 56. no. Version 2.1., The World Transhumanist Association. DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W. W. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Collective rationality and institutional isomorphism in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 147–160. Roco, M. C., & Bainbridge, W. S. 2002. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: 482. Arlington,VA, US: NSF-DOC. Tirosh-Samuelson, H. 2012. Transhumanism as a secularist faith. Zygon®, 47(4): 710–734. van Dijk, T. A. 1995a. Discourse Semantics and Ideology. Discourse & Society, 6(2): 243–289. van Dijk, T. A. 2009. Critical Discourse Studies: a sociocognitive approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (Second Edition). SAGE Publications Ltd.

21 1 2 AMBRUS Gabor , BROWER Virgil W. 1) Charles University, Theology & Digital Culture 2) Charles University, Theology & Digital Culture Of Machines & Messiahs: Theology, Cybernetics & Superintelligence

In Algorithms to Live By (2016), MIT computer scientist, Scott Aaronson, is reported “surprised that computer scientists haven’t yet had more influence on philosophy [which] he suspects, ‘is just their failure to communicate what they can add to philosophy’s conceptual arsenal’” (Christianson & Griffiths, 190-1). This lamentable communicative failure between computer science and philosophy applies even more broadly to the contemporary lacuna between computer science and philosophy of religion...and, by consequence, theology. Kant and Hume arguably anticipated these problems while helping set modern science in motion. The colloquial cognitive rift that develops between religion and science since the Enlightenment does considerable damage to appreciations of both (a) the theological precursors to digital technological development and (b) the crucial importance to address the inevitable proliferation and incursion of datafied interconnected society into faith-based life and ‘religious’ phenomena. In The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), Ray Kurzweil finds untenable the subsequent division between logical positivism’s understanding of consciousness (associated with Wittgenstein and Descartes) and the defeatist failure of human understanding to account for it (e.g., Douglas Hofstadter). He suggests that neither positions are sufficient respectively, but both “are correct when viewed together.” It is underappreciated that this synthesis of the two positions has roots in comparative religion: “This reflects my Unitarian religious education in which we studied all the world’s religions, considering them ‘many paths to the truth’ (60-1). Kurzweil is describing what theologians and philosophers of religion refer to as ‘syncretism,’ which -- far from apostate naivete -- is confessed to be a crucial methodology by one who remains a pioneer at the forefront of posthuman technologies, cybernetics, AI, and algorithmic machine-learning. In similar syncretic ‘spirit’ -- regardless and cognizant of its homogenizing shortcomings -- this panel attempts to address these entanglements between theology and technology, from diffuse literary, philosophical, and critical perspectives. On the one hand, it resists any reductive ‘return to religion’ or religification of technology (e.g., as reported by Geraci in Apocalyptic AI). On the other, it yet accepts socio-critical assessments of what has been called ‘secular fundamentalism,’ i.e., technico-scientific society that naively believes itself (indeed, grounds and defines itself as) purified or indemnified from any stain of theological or religious ideas; described in different valences by diverse social critics ranging from Marcel Gauchet, Julia Kristeva, Steve Fuller, Mark C. Taylor, and Charles Taylor (to name just a few). It does so by engaging irreligious theological evocations or crypto-messianic motifs throughout modern thinkers such as Pascal, Saussure, Asimov, Derrida, Adrian Johnson and Nick Bostrom as they contribute to contemporary tele-technoscientific development, robotics, AI, posthumanist thinking, or collective cognitive unconscious. The primitive probability calculus initiated in the letters exchanged between Fermat and Pascal (further suggested by other Port Royal logicians) comes to influence Pascal’s own philosophical conceptions of salvation, belief, and the existence of god, which, over mathematical time, shapes contemporary algorithms and (wittingly or not) re-emerges in strategic preparations for an imminent “intelligence explosion.” The linguistic turn and its supplementary deconstructive critique of metaphysical or idealist conceptions of ‘life,’ speech, phonos, etc. sets the stage for ‘pro-grammatic’ codes that trace-themselves by, as, or through ‘writings’ beyond any agential capacities of mere humanist volition, reason, or even colloquial ‘living’. The momentous implications of these developments may open up a grand scenario in which a “return of religion” becomes possible only after the age of liberal humanism that perhaps even surpasses the confines of ‘religion,’ itself, as it exceeds the mere meatspace of human potencies.

AMBRUS Gabor: What Are the Implications of the Frankenstein Complex? The general tenor of the so-called “Frankenstein complex” is well-known to everybody from science fiction. A number of sci-fi pieces, either literary or cinematic, suggest that our technology, especially in the form of artificial intelligence, can go out of our control, in the course of which it can turn against us and even destroy us. Although this is the general tenor of the concept, it has a precise and specific meaning as formulated by the sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov: the Frankenstein complex is our fear that technology can supplant humanity or, in other words, it can make humanity obsolete. There is no question that the Frankenstein complex is “true” in the sense that such a fear exists; it is “real”. Nevertheless, the question remains whether this fear is a delusion which does more harm than good to humanity’s relationship with technology or it is well founded in the true nature of this relationship. Within the confines of this paper, I cannot answer this question with any confidence; by showing some of its implications, I only wish to make it clearer and raise the stakes of addressing it. To begin, both halves of

22 Asimov’s coinage, “Frankenstein” and “complex”, are a rather unfortunate choice to express what he means. On the one hand, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an individual scientist who creates an individual monster; the story’s gist is their deadlock of mutual hatred and destruction rather than the monster’s endeavour to supplant his creator. On the other hand, the term “complex” seems to decide the question in advance with reference to a potentially unfounded mental state. The term “complex” is a clear indication that the specific approach to technology described by Asimov enters a competition for a correct understanding of it with a disadvantage. For this approach has a powerful competitor. The Frankenstein complex is effectively challenged by what can be called the instrumental understanding of technology. The latter claims that technology always comes into use as a means to an end, either good or bad. The end of technology as an instrument is always pursued by human agents. Whatever end technology achieves, it always comes down to these agents’ intentions. It is therefore only these intentions that are good or bad, whereas technology itself is entirely neutral. Needless to say, the instrumental understanding of technology professes the empowerment of the human individual or individuals; it remains deeply rooted in liberal humanism. By contrast, the Frankenstein complex falls within the domain of religion. The idea that a created entity can gain autonomy from its creator and end up overcoming and even supplanting the latter corresponds with a possible interpretation of the Christian narrative (cf. Zizek’s reading of Hegel). Or, to put it even more simply, the sheer enormity of the notion that technology can seal the fate of humanity by not just destroying, but also supplanting it can find its counterparts solely in the sublime notions of religion. It is the religious character of the Frankenstein complex that places the destiny of technology within the largest possible context that is the course of world history. (Contrary to this tendency, the instrumental understanding of technology will always be premised upon the sphere of the human individual and the empirical reality of technological instruments.) Moreover, it is the Frankenstein complex, and not the instrumental view of technology, that identifies the problem of technology as a global political issue which transcends the negotiation between human agents.

BROWER Virgil W.: Do Androids Dream of Electric Gods? Decision Theory & the Simulation Hypothesis in Pascal & Bostrom (Or, How Pascal’s God Might Save Humanity...But Not the Way He/We ‘Thought’) This paper returns to Pascal as both a pioneer of (a) algorithmic mathematics, probability calculus, and decision theory and (b) religious belief and its accompanying theological assumptions. The latter are not dissociable from the former. It posits a posthuman theological interpretation of the “Anthropic Capture” problem in Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence (2014). Whereas Derrida once suggested that Rousseau and Freud were the silent masters of Claude Levi-Strauss, it is worth considering a similar theoretical dynamic between Pascal and Bostrom. Pascal does not get the credit he deserves as a primal thinker of machine- learning in intellectual history. He goes to great pains to prepare a machinic understanding of human thinking. He can barely begin thinking (penser) before thinking human thought as an interplay between proof, faith, belief, and the machine. A reported “friend” claims that, “Nothing comes of [seeking proofs (e.g., of god)].” Pascal replies: “The answer to that is ‘the Machine’.” Humans use ‘the machine’ for knowing proofs (Pensé 7). Faith, however, is an alleged belief beyond machinic ‘provability’ which can only be received by ‘the Machine,’ in order to believe something that it cannot know merely as machine. Pascal endeavors to optimize “the Machine...to prepare it and how to use reason for the search” [Pensées 11; 55]. Bostrom enframes moral uncertainty between “Pascalian wagers” and “Pascalian muggings” (Superintelligence 274). The former are “predicaments involving finite probabilities of infinite payoffs,” the latter, “extremely small probabilities of extremely large finite payoffs.” His Bayesian preference for the former must be redirected in an immanent critique of his own thinking of the dangers of “Anthropic capture.” This emerges as an “AI might assign substantial probability to...the hypothesis that it is living in a computer simulation...[and] might accordingly behave much as if it were certain that the simulation hypothesis is false, even if it assigned a fairly high probability to the simulation hypothesis being true. The AI would reason that it does not much matter how it acts if the simulation hypothesis is true, whereas its actions make a great difference if the hypothesis is false” (164-5). It is remarkable that Bostrom does not overtly draw the parallel that this is a virtual reiteration of Pascal’s wager for belief in god, but from the perspective of an AI’s suspected probability of its own simulation and, hence, its simulator(s); i.e., human being(s). For Pascal, the best wager/decision for humans is to believe in god. For Bostrom’s AI, the safer wager/decision is to believe in its simulation and, by consequence, the human coders that coded it(self). But whereas Pascalian believers are compelled to declare/live-out their belief to their fellow humans and, indeed, to god, godself, Bostrom’s AI must decide to keep its probabilistic belief secret and “live” “as if” unaware...lest its anxious human simulators, subsequently, decide to terminate it as a possible threat to human existence. A superintelligence would predict that humans would likely attempt to ‘stunt’ or completely terminate any AI displaying self-awareness of itself as a simulation. In an act of rational egoism, it would decide to ‘live’ as if unaware because it ‘believes.’

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24 AUDEGOND Aimeric Université de Picardie Jules Verne d'Amiens Transhumanisme et anthropotechnie dans l'art contemporain : Quand l'appareillage technologique est au service de l'exaltation du corps

L'art n'est pas en reste lorsqu'il s'agit d'imaginer comment la technologie pourrait permettre de dépasser les possibilités du corps ordinaire. Nous en avons pour preuves les multiples exemples en littérature, en cinéma ou dans l'histoire de l'art au sein desquels, par le biais de machines et de technologies, l'homme s'invente un corps nouveau (un outre-corps), imagine aller au-delà des facultés qui sont normalement les siennes. Puisant sa principale inspiration et stimulation créatrice dans le fantasme d'un corps hors-norme, les artistes ont participé symboliquement au développement de futurs instruments permettant l'amplification du potentiel corporel. Des machines à dessiner supplantant une partie de l'activité créatrice en passant par l'appareillage technologique du corps de l'artiste, l'histoire de l'art contemporaine aborde abondamment la relation de la machine au corps et du corps à la machine. Mais cette relation duale signifie-t-elle nécessairement une mise à mal du corps voire son abolition? Pressentie par K. Marx au sein de Grundrisse (1857-1858), théorisée entre autres par H. Arendt dans La condition de l'homme moderne (1958), la libération des tâches laborieuses par la machine semble avoir asservi l'homme aux lois du rendement et de la rentabilité. Toutefois, force est de constater que l'usage de la machine dans le domaine artistique dépasse la simple condamnation technophobe de la machine ou l'apologie technophile de ses usages. En effet, loin des discours posthumanistes annonçant le futur de l'humain sans l'humain, arguant l'idée que les prothèses et les développements technologiques qui l'accompagnent sont autant de preuves manifestes de l’obsolescence grandissante de nos corps, il nous faut nous intéresser au recours à la prothèse technologique, la machine, dans l'art comme moyen de célébrer le corps. S'il convient que pour une partie de la littérature scientifique, ces dernières ont fait de notre perception du corps celle d'une matière fragile, vulnérable, bon nombre d'artistes proposent un tout autre discours et empruntent une autre voie. En opposition à cette conception du corps inutile, improductif au regard de la puissance technologique, et dans un quasi renversement paradigmatique, machines et prothèses deviennent pour beaucoup d'artistes des objets et sujets d'une réhabilitation inattendue. Dans le sillage des tentatives artistiques de reconquête du corps et plutôt que de prophétiser la fin de celui-ci, il s'agira pour l'artiste autant de reconfigurer que de figurer le corps par le recours à la prothèse, la machine, la technologie. Dans un entre-deux, tenant à la fois à distance les fonctions utilitaires des artefacts destinés à assister les corps, tout en drainant une imagerie parfaitement mesurée, des artistes ont élaboré des objets techno- prothétiques destinés à célébrer le corps, à vanter sa force, sa sensibilité, sa préciosité, sa singularité. Cela passe par l'ajout d'appareillages technologiques qui, paradoxalement, ne permettent pas toujours une assistance, servant dans un élan kinesthésique tantôt à sonder le corps ou à éprouver une gestualité alternative (Hérubel, Horn, Bufano, etc.), à hybrider ou à aborder l'altérité des corps (Art Orienté Objet, Wodiczko, Stelarc, etc.), à réexplorer l’espace sensoriel d'une anatomie (Roca, Ribas, Harbisson, etc.).

25 BAGNOLINI Guillaume Centre d'éthique contemporaine, Laboratoire Epsylon, Université de Montpellier Médiatisation, éthique et auto-expérimentation

Le biohacker Aaron Traywick a été retrouvé mort le 29 avril 2018 dans un caisson d’isolation sensorielle a ̀ Washington. Traywick était connu pour ses pratiques d’auto-expérimentation de technologies biomédicales. Lors du congrès Body Hacking con a ̀ Austin en 2018, il s'injectera devant le public et en live sur Facebook un traitement non testé contre l'herpès. Cette injection n'était, bien entendu, pas approuvée par la Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Tristan Robert, un collègue de Traywick, avait déclaré au magazine Vice qu’« alors que beaucoup dans la scène du biohacking étaient en désaccord avec ses méthodes, aucun d'entre eux ne doutait de ses intentions. Il ne cherchait rien de moins qu'une révolution en biomédecine; la démocratisation de la science et l'ouverture des vannes pour la guérison globale ». L'auto-expérimentation corporelle n'est pas une pratique nouvelle. Dans l'histoire des sciences, il existe quelques exemples célèbres d'expérimentation sur soi-même de drogues ou d'objets techniques (par exemple, le cathéter que l'allemand Werner Forssmann, prix Nobel de médecine en 1956, s’insère avec l'aide de son équipe dans le cœur). Dans cette présentation, je reviendrai donc sur l'histoire de l'auto-expérimentation. Ensuite, je démontrerai, selon moi, le principal fait nouveau : l'auto- expérimentation s'expose, se médiatise notamment à travers les réseaux sociaux. Quelles sont les conséquences de cette médiatisation ? Je décrirai également les principaux enjeux éthiques. Certains auto-expérimentateurs arguent que « les gens meurent-ils et souffrent-ils inutilement à cause de ces comités et toutes ces règles ? [...] Et si les gens commencent à guérir ? »1. Il est vrai que certains progrès médicaux ont pu voir le jour grâce à des pratiques d'auto-expérimentation. Cependant, est-ce suffisant pour ne pas penser en termes éthiques ? Est-ce que l'auto-expérimentation ne correspond pas parfaitement aux attentes de la société de consommation ? Même au sein de la start-up Ascendance bio d'Aaron Traywick, tout le monde n'était pas en accord avec la position de son directeur. Lors d'une conférence de presse sur Facebook, Tristan Roberts et Andreas Stuermer (autre collaborateur de Traywick) indiquent que Traywick les aurait poussés à accélérer le processus de création de cette thérapie dans le but de le diffuser rapidement a ̀ la presse. Tristan Roberts ira même jusqu'à vouloir bannir de la communauté biohacker Traywick qui pour lui ne peut en faire partie, car il trompe ses investisseurs et ne correspond pas à l'esprit biohacker de partage et de collaboration. Il serait, selon lui, un pur produit du capitalisme2. Ainsi, nous pouvons nous demander qui est responsable ? Qui contrôle ? De plus, faut-il et peut-il y avoir un encadrement des pratiques d'auto- expérimentation ? Finalement, est-ce que ces pratiques n’entraînent pas la diffusion d'une vision faussée du vivant, des risques, des sciences et des techniques ? Je terminerai mon propos en questionnant les représentations et les valeurs transmises dans les discours et les pratiques.

1 Voir l'entretien de Zach Weissmueller avec Josiah Zayner http://reason.com/reasontv/2016/06/20/biohacking-the- genome-for-just-140. [consulté le 29/03/2019] 2 Voir la conférence de presse de Tristan Roberts et une partie de l'équipe d’Ascendance bio https://www.facebook.com/tristan.roberts.5/videos/vb.1496193187/10216300242367471/ [consulté le 29/03/2019] 26 BARTHÉLÉMY Jean-Hugues L’humanisme décentré comme alternative au transhumanisme

L’ouvrage La Société de l’invention (Paris, Éditions Matériologiques, 2018) a jeté les bases de ce qu’il nomme un humanisme décentré, version nouvelle de ce que mes travaux antérieurs avaient repéré dans l’œuvre de Gilbert Simondon sous le nom d’« humanisme difficile » (Barthélémy, 2006 et 2008). De même que Simondon opposait sa technophilie savante à ce qu’il nommait le « technicisme intempérant » (Simondon, 1958) de certains cybernéticiens, l’humanisme décentré qui hérite de lui s’oppose pour les mêmes raisons au transhumanisme. Ces raisons ressortissent d’abord, bien sûr, à la question de la capacité du transhumanisme à rester un humanisme au moment où il s’agit, dans le même temps et indissociablement, de transformer radicalement l’humanisme. L’humanisme décentré revendique cette double opération, par laquelle la culture et la technique seraient véritablement réconciliées. Mais l’enjeu est aussi celui, écologique - et là encore pressenti par Simondon -, de la pleine intégration de l’humain au vivant : La Société de l’invention a commencé de montrer en quoi le transhumanisme dans sa version dure, telle que l’incarne Ray Kurzweil, est difficilement compatible avec la vérité de l’évolutionnisme – l’évolution n’est pas qu’une « théorie » - comme, aussi bien, avec la priorité écologique qui caractérise notre temps. La communication soumise ici se propose de prolonger les réflexions critiques inaugurées par La Société de l’invention, en revenant d’une part sur les conditions à la fois biologiques et techno-langagières par lesquelles le primate est devenu humain, d’autre part sur la question des normes juridiques telle qu’elle doit aujourd’hui être repensée hors les valeurs éthiques et en lien avec la question éco-logique du système des besoins en souffrance. C’est ainsi que pourra être jugé le transhumanisme, à la fois sur le plan épistémologique de la réalisabilité de ses désirs de possibles, qui ont tendance à se prendre pour des réalités, et sur le plan normatif du faire-droit, qui pourrait bien relever des besoins en souffrance humains et non-humains tels que semble ne pas vouloir les penser le technicisme intempérant. Ce sera également l’occasion de dire en quoi le prétendu « transhumanisme » de Gilbert Hottois n’est pas un transhumanisme mais un humanisme technophile avec qui le dialogue est bien moins polémique, même si la vérité de l’évolutionnisme et la priorité écologique qui s’imposent aujourd’hui semblent ne pas venir nourrir cet humanisme. À l’instar de Bernard Stiegler, enfin, l’humanisme décentré refuse à la fois l’humanisme essentialiste classique et le transhumanisme, mais la « condition prothétique » qu’il veut penser est une double transcendance constitutive par interpénétration du langage et de la technique, cette dernière n’étant pas le tout de la prothèse en tant que « béquille de l’esprit » - contrairement à ce que soutient Stiegler, qui s’appuie sur Leroi-Gourhan tout en écartant le langage, et sans faire de la simple « coordination » langage-technique affirmée par ce dernier une mise en interface et interpénétration, ce que pourtant rendent aujourd’hui possible la paléoanthropologie et les neurosciences.

27 BAUMAN Emily Biopolitics and the Holy: Angelic Transformations in Trans- and Post-Humanism

Among the many early manifestations of the so-called “angel craze” in the 1990’s United States was the proliferation of a sub-genre known as angel self-help books. These were part of a larger trend towards the subjectification of empowered (often entrepreneurial) citizens that proposed self-sovereignty as the key to personal and social success. While most self-help books enshrine a separated and individualized cognitive power (positive thinking, habits of mind, etc.) as the special ingredient of this success, this genre was slightly different in hypostasizing this power in the form of one’s personal angel or angels. Get in touch with your angel/s, the argument went, and you will attain the personal empowerment you seek in your life as they broker deals and relationships with the angels of others on your behalf. In imagining an alternative invisible but immanent world of immaterial agents accessible to the individual through processes of “inner work,” that is, agents imagined as an effect as well as catalyst of self-sovereignty, these books opened up a space for new understandings of the self in relation to the inhuman. In the process they open up an interesting debate regarding this inhuman being, the angel. On the one hand in these books the human self is artificially transformed and strengthened through its relationship with this angelic subjectivity which appears to be exclusively owned by and hence an extension of one’s individual personhood. In this capacity the angel operates as a transhumanizing force, a spiritually bionic state that one can tap into proportional to one’s personal development as facilitated by the course of the books. On the other, as a separate substance, the angel asserts an ontological power heterogeneous to the human who would access it. She or he is heralded as possessing an intuitive knowingness beyond human reason, not so different from the way Aquinas formulated angelic intuition in the thirteenth century, perceiving things immediately and simultaneously. This paper will explore the tension between transhuman and posthuman forms of angelic being posed by this subgenre through analysis of a parallel encounter between the discourse of biopolitics and that of what Rudolf Otto calls the numinous or the “holy.” Understood as a kind of technology of the self, both regulating and mystifying experience, the angel may be viewed as a fantasy of the convergence of trans- and post-human doctrines and ontologies; at the same time the uncanny fissures within the self-help angel articulate a profound ambivalence and even queasiness about the status of life in a highly technologized society, and an attempt to absorb the otherness of these outside forces into a figure that is at once human and beyond.

28 BLICKHAN Denise Weimar (Germany) MEDUSA VII (or gorging on external minds)

Duration of the performance: 20 Minutes Material: Mixed Media The main theme of the iridescent multimedia performance cycle MEDUSA by Denise Blickhan is the voluntary and above all pleasurable approach to submission. The underlying conflicting emotional aspects are successively declined by means of speech and song acts. The ancient Medusa theme was taken up anachronistically: Once the beautiful innocent victim of a violent assault was then transformed by a female goddess into a monstrous offender and becomes ultimately the martial weapon of man. In the MEDUSA performance cycle, the diametrically opposed states of sacrifice and perpetration are presented as two sides of the same coin, unequivocal assignments of responsibility and guilt are blurring. To pose the challenge of sociotechnical manners, societal power structures, subjective feelings of powerlessness, female stereotypes of everyday life, pop culture and female archetypes, sexual power and powerlessness are addressed in a decidedly feminist way in MEDUSA and are perpetuating current sociocultural debates. A clear answer is not given, the presentation level remains at the unpleasant endurance of the contradictory. Dramaturgically, however, there is always a resolution of the conflict in form of unconditional submission to absolute narcissism through technology of self mirroring, her face being live transmitted on screen and distorted during the entire performance, perpetuating Stanley Kubricks 2001. A space Odyssey thematic of control through or of tools of humanity and their revealing potential of humanities self. The iridescent multimedia performance cycle MEDUSA by Denise Blickhan started in 2018 and covers seven variations in 2019 including the current version MEDUSA VII. The artistic core element is the distorted use of her voice, which aims to reproduce superficial stereotypes in the perception of the sexes by means of experimental shifts in the altitude, and refers ambiguously to an imbalance of power on an emotional level. In her performances, Denise Blickhan works closely with current technological phenomena of the perception of the self. Choregraphically she illustrates via her body and dances, via self-composed lyrics and via independently composed, produced and live sung songs, which are formally classifiable as dystopian pop songs, a complex zone of contemporary handling with digital technologies. The acoustic distortions are reflected in visual distortions by means of projections on reflecting objects. The prepared background with mirror objects becomes a stage which is expanded through colorful reflections into a large scaled iridescent installation with pseudo-holographic elements. MEDUSA VII is conceptually about the 'male gaze', a term of contemporary feminist debate in which the male 'staring' gaze, is unmasked as the suppressor of the female since centuries. The demand for a long overdue establishment of the 'female gaze' across the borders of our culture industry is growing in the digital age, while it still seems to be unclear how the 'female gaze' can be defined. In MEDUSA VII Denise Blickhan performs the personified 'female gaze' as a gloomy salvational concept of the male violent stare while inducing the implicit question, how we want to perceive and live female roles in our socio- technological future. Methodologically, Denise Blickhan transposes subjective intrapsychic images and complexes into cross- cultural archetypes, which, in analogy to pop songs, may be individually applied through their general character. She combines mythological images, symbols and contemporary cultural phenomena with the focus on current technological network phainomenons into a subjective autopsy of body and mind.

29 BORCHHARDT Kerstin In the land of gods and monsters: Utopian and dystopian concepts to overcome classical humanism in KŌbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita “Godzilla trilogy”

From 2017 to 2018 the first animated adaption of the almost legendary monster trash movie series “Godzilla” directed by KŌbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita was broadcasted on Netflix. Besides its title the plot of the “Godzilla trilogy” (#1 Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters 2017, #2 Godzilla: A City on the Edge of Battle 2018, #3 Godzilla: The Planet Eater 2018) was less fixed on the dinosaur like monster but on the human and posthuman (aliens, hybrids and machines) protagonists – especially on their relationships and their philosophical concepts to survive and find their place in an apocalyptical devastated world. Even so the animated trilogy received rather mixed receptions amongst experts and fans, it shows up with a wide range of post- and transhumanist as well as nihilistic, messianic, Darwinian and meta- anthropocentric perspectives on the relationship between human, technology, other species, the environment and the cosmological order. This paper aims to discuss these perspectives by analysing the movie-plot, characters and visual aesthetics against the theoretical backdrop of the philosophical, religious and mythological concepts included, which derive from transhumanist utopias/dystopias of the fusion of human and machine, criticism of religious fanatism and ideas of evolution, ecological adaption and a more or less balanced coexistence of species.

30 BOUR Salomé Université François-Rabelais de Tours Centre d’Éthique Contemporaine du Laboratoire Epsylon de l’Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier-III L’extropianisme et les fondements philosophiques du transhumanisme

Qu’est-ce que le transhumanisme ? Si ce mouvement international, qui regroupe en son sein de nombreux courants, faisant par exemple tantôt l’apologie de la singularité technologique, tantôt l’apologie de l’immortalité digitale, est devenu un objet de réflexion à part entière, il apparaît que ses fondements philosophiques restent encore trop peu étudiés. En effet, derrière les figures de Nick Bostrom et de David Pearce, fondateurs de la première Association Transhumaniste Internationale (WTA), connue sous le nom de Humanity+, se cachent notamment les travaux de Max More qui ont très fortement influencé l’orientation des conceptions actuelles du transhumanisme. Fondateur de l’extropianisme et créateur de la première mailing list qui a permis la diffusion des idées transhumanistes, ce philosophe britannique a élaboré les principes philosophiques pro-action à partir desquels le mouvement a pu se déployer. Articulés autour de la pensée critique, de la pensée créative ou innovante, de la collaboration et de la communication, les principes extropiens ont pour objectif premier de « libérer » la pensée en l’éloignant des dogmes et des peurs irraisonnées qui pourraient nuire à l’enrichissement des capacités de l’humanité et à son accession à la post-humanité. Cette rupture avec une façon de concevoir le progrès jugée archaïque s’appuie en particulier sur le rationalisme pancritique, qui forme l’épistémologie extropianiste. Aussi, l’optimisme dynamique des extropiens s’accorde avec une attitude et une démarche rationnelles. Dans cette perspective, les partisans de l’extropianisme ont à engager leur transformation intérieure et celle de l’ensemble de l’humanité rationnellement et en conscience, après un examen attentif de la totalité des enjeux qu’elles soulèvent. C’est pourquoi le rationalisme pancritique est au fondement de la démarche qui doit servir de guide à l’analyse éthique des projets extropiens visant à élever la condition humaine. Quel a été le rôle de Max More et de ses travaux dans l’émergence du mouvement transhumaniste ? Qu’est-ce que la philosophie extropianiste ? Le transhumanisme n’est-il vraiment que le fantasme infantile, immature, irrationnel de quelques individus effrayés par leur propre disparition et par la vie elle-même ? N’est-ce pas, au contraire, un mouvement intellectuel dont les bases sont plus solides qu’il n’y paraît ? Autrement dit, le transhumanisme est-il fondé sur un socle conceptuel, philosophique et éthique ou bien est-il superficiel et creux ? L’objectif de cette communication sera d’examiner des fondements du transhumanisme à partir des travaux de Max More et de la philosophie extropianiste. C’est à la lumière de ses principes et sa démarche scientifique et rationnelle qu’il s’agira de penser le mouvement transhumaniste afin de pouvoir en proposer la critique.

31 BOUR Salomé & BAGNOLINI Guillaume Université François-Rabelais de Tours Centre d’Éthique Contemporaine du Laboratoire Epsylon de l’Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier-III Le body-art, une interrogation éthique sur les frontières ?

Si les pratiques de hacking ont d’abord concerné le domaine de l’informatique en relation avec le développement de l’Internet, celles-ci ne se limitent plus à cela. En effet, il semble qu’il n’y ait qu’un pas entre le fait de bricoler un PC pour augmenter ses performances et bricoler le corps humain pour augmenter ses capacités physiques et cognitives. Aussi, ceux qu’on appelle les body hackers ont délibérément opté pour une « mise à jour » de leurs corps biologiques en y intégrant de nouvelles fonctionnalités, comme par exemple la biohackeuse transhumaniste britannique Lepht Anonym dont les implants sous-cutanés permettent de « sentir » les champs électromagnétiques. De nombreux body- hackers modifient leur corps avec une intention artistique. Ces pratiques de manipulation du vivant se situent à la frontière entre transhumanisme et art. C’est pourquoi elles nous invitent à nous interroger sur la notion d’espèce. Pour les bio-artistes, il s’agit moins de vouloir quitter une espèce donnée, homo sapiens, que de chercher à l’effriter dans un vivant plus général et acquérir ainsi un statut trans- spécifique dans lequel l’espèce n’est plus une dimension pertinente pour déterminer l’identité d’un individu. Les pratiques des bio-artistes nous amènent à nous poser plusieurs questions : que signifie vivre dans un monde sans espèces définies, définissables, ou plus exactement dans un monde dans lequel les espèces seraient devenues des entités « poreuses » ? Qu’est-ce que vivre dans un univers dans lequel tout vivant pourrait s’agencer avec n’importe quel autre ? C’est par exemple à ces questions que nous invite l'œuvre de Maja Smrekar, K-9 typology, I hunt nature and nature hunts me / Lilith the Human Canin. Le projet consiste en l’hybridation humain/chien ou loup par la fécondation d’un ovule de l’artiste avec du sperme de loup. « Je suggère de féconder in vitro mes ovules avec du sperme de chien pour finalement faire une nouvelle espèce qui aurait de meilleures chances de survivre dans la nature très imprévisible de l'avenir », explique notamment l’artiste. Mais un artiste biohacker ou transhumaniste doit-il prendre en compte des contraintes éthiques lors de la création de son œuvre ? Quelle est exactement la place de l’éthique dans ces formes d’art ? En faut-il une ? La démarche éthique peut-elle aller de pair avec la liberté de l’artiste ? A partir d’un examen des pratiques transhumanistes et artistiques de body-hacking mais aussi d’entretiens réalisés avec plusieurs bioartistes, nous discuterons, dans cette communication, de la place de l’éthique dans le bioart et des enjeux soulevées par les démarches artistiques impliquant une manipulation du vivant dans une perspective transhumaniste.

32 BOURGOIS Pierre Centre Montesquieu de Recherches Politiques (IRM-CMRP), Université de Bordeaux L’aspect militaire du transhumanisme : une problématique singulière ?

Les multiples progrès technoscientifiques à l’œuvre ont fait naître, ces dernières années, l’une des utopies les plus controversées : celle du transhumanisme. Les utopistes du posthumain partagent ainsi « la conviction que les sciences et les techniques peuvent constituer le tremplin qui permettra de dépasser ce que les hommes ont figé en réalités intangibles, malgré les pouvoirs qu’ils se sont arrogés sur la nature »3. Aujourd’hui, le transhumanisme est ainsi devenu un sujet de discussion – et de préoccupation – majeur au sein des sociétés modernes. D’une manière générale, les débats portent aujourd’hui principalement sur la dimension civile du transhumanisme. Or, les perspectives transhumanistes ont également envahi, cela depuis plusieurs années maintenant, la sphère militaire. En effet, de nombreux pays se sont lancés dans la course au « soldat augmente ́ ». On pense notamment, ici, à la première puissance militaire de la planète, a ̀ savoir les États- Unis. Ces derniers, notamment par le biais de la Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ont effectivement entrepris plusieurs initiatives – hautement critiquées – visant à développer certains aspects de ce qui pourrait être clairement appelé un « transhumanisme militaire ». Dans un rapport déclassifié datant de 2003, le directeur de la DARPA de l’époque, Anthony J. Tether, souligne par exemple l’importance de l’« Human enhancement » pour les forces armées états-uniennes. Selon lui : « L’augmentation des performances humaines a pour but d’empêcher les humains de devenir le maillon faible de l’armée américaine en exploitant les sciences de la vie afin de rendre le combattant individuel plus fort, plus alerte, plus endurant et plus apte à guérir »4. Plusieurs programmes, comme le DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) par exemple, fondé en 20145, montrent ainsi une volonté de la part du département de la Défense des États-Unis de créer un « super-soldat » aux capacités décuplées. Bien entendu, les États-Unis ne sont pas les seuls dans cette course au « soldat augmente ́ » et de nombreuses puissances, telles que la Russie ou la Chine, par exemple, semblent également avoir pris de l’avance dans ce domaine en faisant du « transhumanisme militaire » un axe fort de leur recherche stratégique. Pour les forces armées de ces pays, l’objectif est ainsi de rester le plus compétitif et performant possible et de ne pas se retrouver, plus largement, en situation de « déséquilibre stratégique ». Le dirigeant russe, Vladimir Poutine, a d’ailleurs lui-même récemment affirmé, en ce sens, la nécessité primordiale pour son pays de « continuer de renforcer » ses « forces armées » et de « les équiper en armes et équipements dernier cri »6. Une position qui semble donc, au vu des progrès récents réalisés dans le champ des technosciences, ne pas pouvoir se détourner de l’enjeu que représente, aujourd’hui, le « soldat augmente ́ ». Dès lors, comment doit-on appréhender ce transhumanisme militaire ? Est-il soumis aux mêmes contraintes et représente-t-il le même enjeu, pour ses défenseurs, que le transhumanisme civil ? En d’autres termes, la course au « soldat augmente ́ » constitue-t-elle une problématique singulière au sein du phénomène transhumaniste plus large ? L’objectif de ce travail sera ainsi de présenter les grandes lignes du transhumanisme militaire, et de mettre en avant les similitudes mais aussi les particularités qu’il peut entretenir vis-à-vis du transhumanisme civil. D’une manière générale, il sera notamment question, ici, de souligner l’enjeu stratégique de la course au « soldat augmenté », qui semble à première vue faire de ce phénomène une problématique singulière.

3 Jean-Michel Besnier, Demain les posthumains, le futur a-t-il encore besoin de nous ?, 2009, Paris, Fayard, coll. « Pluriel », 2012, p. 47-48. 4 « Statement by Anthony J. Tether » devant le Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, House Armed Services Committee, United States House of Representatives, 27 mars 2003, p. 12. Disponible en ligne : https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/TestimonyArchived(March%2027%202003).pdf (Page consultée le 10 janvier 2019). Notre traduction. La révolution biologique constitue ainsi l’un des « huit axes de recherche stratégiques sur lesquels la DARPA met l’accent » dans ce rapport. Ibid., p. 2. Notre traduction. 5 Celui-ci ayant pour objectif affiché de développer « des fonctionnalités qui englobent les propriétés uniques de la biologie – adaptation, duplication, complexité – et » de les appliquer afin de « révolutionner la manière dont les États- Unis défendent leur pays, préparent et protègent leurs fantassins, leurs marins, leurs aviateurs et leurs Marines ». « Biological Technologies Office (BTO) », site de la DARPA. Disponible en ligne : https://www.darpa.mil/about- us/offices/bto (Page consultée le 22 février 2019). Notre traduction. 6 Déclaration de Vladimir Poutine effectuée le 13 septembre 2018 dans le cadre des manœuvres militaires « Vostok- 2018 ». 33 BOYER Pierre-Emmanuel Quel avenir pour nos vieux os ?

Si l’on s’en réfère aux évolutionnismes de Darwin et de Nietzsche, tout laisse à penser que l’humain sera supplanté par une espèce d’une volition supérieure : le transhumain. Pourtant, l’humain est actuellement au sommet de la chaîne alimentaire ce qui implique qu’il conditionne déjà sa propre évolution et influe sur elle. N’est-ce pas paradoxal que le roi des prédateurs se transforme en proie, en somme qu’il contribue à sa propre perte ? Plutôt que de corroborer ce scénario apocalyptique, nous pensons que ce paradoxe oriente la critique du transhumanisme en la déplaçant adroitement sur celle de l’évolutionnisme. Car, linguistiquement parlant, vouloir c’est désirer et désirer, c’est « regretter l’absence de ». Pensons-nous réellement qu’il soit encore légitime de fonder le moteur de la vie sur des regrets, c’est-à dire sur la perte et la mort ? Cessons de pleurer, séchons nos larmes. Enfant, vieillard, éprenez-vous mais ne vous méprenez pas : vous ne volerez point. Un jour qui sait ?! Mais en attendant, dans ce contexte de crise écologique, physique et politique, entendez ce que l’Artiste a à vous dire : « éprenez-vous à lire ». Nous verrons dans cet exposé en quoi le sélectionnisme ou « self legacy », en tant qu’associé au sens des responsabilités, est une alternative polytechnostratégique à l’évolutionnisme classique. Puis nous étudierons la notion de sélection non plus des points de vue individuel et naturel mais dorénavant dans une visée collective et culturelle. Ensuite, nous montrerons en quoi le sélectionnisme est un plébiscite à la Liberté. Enfin nous développerons l’idée à nos yeux majeure du tri sélectif en proposant à partir d’elle des solutions bioécologiques innovantes pour le monde d’aujourd’hui et de demain. L’avenir est encore riche de promesses !

34 BROCHIER Emmanuel La Nature dans les trans- et post-humanismes, et après

Les transhumanismes et les posthumanismes, en tant que complexe de questions, problèmes et réponses, présentent une rupture profonde avec la modernité, notamment à travers le rôle qu'ils font jouer à la nature dans l'élaboration d'impératifs éthiques ou moraux. D'un point de vue moderne, il serait légitime de dénoncer les raisonnements qui apparaissent comme des sophismes naturalistes. Mais qu'en est-il dans le paradigme émergeant ? Nous examinerons en premier lieu, avec cette question en tête, les textes de Max More et de James Hughes, de Ray Kurzweil et de Nick Bostrom, et mettrons en évidence un certain nombre de paradoxes. Nous soutiendrons ensuite la thèse qu'une philosophie de la nature qui interroge l’expérience commune, en même temps qu’elle se tient informée des paradigmes émergeants, des sciences et de leur histoire, permettrait de ne plus opposer l'homme et la nature, ni la technique et la nature, sans pour autant abolir les différences, voire les « sauts ontologiques », et qu’elle serait susceptible de fournir une alternative prometteuse aux trans- et post-humanismes. Pour être plus explicite, nous estimons que les trans- et post-humanismes véhiculent un crypto-finalisme qui déroge au « postulat d’objectivité » (Monod, 1970), et que la question de la téléologie mérite d’être réévaluée sur de nouvelles bases. L’enjeu est de savoir si l’homme peut encore recevoir le statut de fin, et si la compréhension de la nature ouverte par les nouvelles technologies ne donnerait pas désormais les moyens d’établir un fondement naturel, mais non naturaliste, de la dignité humaine.

Bostrom, Nick, « Human Genetic Enhancements. A Transhumanist Perspective », The Journal of Value Inquiry, 37 (2003), p. 493–506. Bostrom, Nick, Superintelligence. Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014. Bostrom, Nick, « The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant », Journal of Medical Ethics, 31/5 (2005), p 273-277. Brochier, Emmanuel, « La fin de l'évolution humaine dans le grand récit transhumaniste. Penser la nature avec Ray Kurzweil, Giordano Bruno et Thomas d'Aquin », Revue thomiste, 2 (2017), p. 273-313. Brochier, Emmanuel, « La philosophie de la nature et la possibilité d’une métaphysique contemporaine », dans Claude Brunier-Coulin et Jean-François Petit (dir.), Le statut actuel de la métaphysique, Paris, Orizons, 2019, p. 197-212. Version disponible en ligne : https://www.academia.edu/38341372/La_philosophie_de_la_nature_comme_condition_de_possibilite_dune_me_taph ysique_version_in%C3%A9dite_ Fortin, Jean-Pierre, L'apparaître humain. Essai sur la signification philosophique du principe anthropique, Lyon - Paris, Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Études Épistémologiques - Vrin, 2006. Hughes, James, Citizen Cyborg. Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future, Cambridge (MA), Westview Press, 2004. Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity is Near. When Humans Transcend Biology, New York - Toronto - London [etc], Penguin Books, 2005. Monod, Jacques, Le Hasard et la nécessité, Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne, Paris, Seuil, 1970. More, Max, Vita-More, Natasha (eds.), The Transhumanist Reader. Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

35 ABDELHAFID Hafid Social Media and collective intelligence. Digital disobedience affecting Moroccan economy

Our work portrays development of social media and their impact on societies. We will show changes in the language, verbal and interpersonal communication and also how the technology has impacted our culture and communities. All these changes lead to new behaviors and reactions between individuals and communities. Social media have an impact on the new generations and their perception of the world, including computer-mediated relationships, creating online avatar, or rather designing their own image and generating a better digital version of themselves. The spread of information and accessibility that social networks provide us, makes us more demanding, aware and challenging customers/citizens. The generation that is growing up with social media has different thinking and different perception of the world. We might assume that Social Media has evolved as an external organ of each individual and could be considered as collective intelligence. It connects the individuals with other members of society, helps them collaborate together and share knowledge. We can observe the power of technology and social media even in a very traditional country - Morocco. Social media became a mirror, intermediate, extension to consciousness of Moroccan citizens. The use of social media in Morocco increased, while companies and marketers saw an opportunity to sell and promote their products, and the governing systems weren't able to identify which approach is needed, Control or no control? For Moroccan citizens the social media was an opportunity for communication and a gate for regrouping and sharing. After the Arabic Spring, social media has been used as a tool to start protests, against the economic, and political situation in Morocco. We can name two protests movements: Hirak Rif in the north of Morocco between October 2016 and June 2017. and also Jerada Protests March 2018. Moroccan System faced both movements, with a security approach, and now many young Moroccans are under trial process, and they may face between 10 and 20 years. This Security measures by the Moroccan system, were the response to any future protests. But in 20 April 2018 a new style of protest started, a boycott via social media to 3 Moroccan companies: This online Boycott campaign has been organized secretly, and nobody knows who started this campaign, but the participation and engagement was very impressive, the main goal was to complain about poverty, expansive prices, unemployment, and injustice. The chosen 3 companies weren't arbitrary: - Afriqia: The leader in the petrol Market, and owned by the richest man in Morocco Aziz Akhannouch who is the Minister of Agriculture, and the leader of the one of the 3 big represented party in the Moroccan Parliament. - Sidi Ali: The leader of the water market in Morocco, owned by the leader Miriem Bensalah, ex- head of employers in Morocco. - Danone: Central Danone has proximity 60% of the Moroccan market share of the Moroccan dairy industry. The campaign impacted heavily the 3 companies. The power of this digital disobedience, is that people avoided the direct contact with police forces and avoided the street protests, which mean no jail for 20 or 30 years just because they asked for hospitals, work or a better life.

36 CAILLE Damien S’augmenter pour se conserver : l’approche spinoziste d’une bionique antidualiste

Signe de l’industrialisation de nos mœurs, le transhumanisme incarne le culte de la performance en prêchant l’avènement d’un humain augmenté par les progrès d’une technique qui repousse indéfiniment les limites de la nature. Mais c’est aussi en se donnant pour objectif d’élargir le potentiel humain, d’augmenter le champ de ses capacités physiques et cognitives tout en participant à la préservation de sa santé, qu’il entre anachroniquement en résonnance avec le spinozisme ; car la joie qui constitue le fondement et la finalité de cette philosophie est la traduction passionnelle d’une puissance qui augmente. Contemporain d’une époque où les révolutions scientifiques s’enchaînent, Spinoza n’exclut pas non plus, dès son Traité de la réforme de l’entendement, que la Mécanique (Mechanica), au côté de la Médecine et de l’Éthique, puisse participer a ̀ un tel projet et converger avec « toutes les sciences vers une seule fin et un seul but, à savoir parvenir à la perfection humaine suprême ». Pourtant, il n’engage pas directement l’homme à se façonner lui-même, comme a pu le faire Pic de la Mirandole avant lui, puisque la nature tient sa perfection de sa nécessité propre. La possibilité d’un perfectionnement humain passe en revanche par l’élaboration d’une éthique rationaliste et matérialiste qui prend racine dans la compréhension des mécanismes du conatus, concept central qui synthétise le désir en apparence paradoxal de conservation et d’augmentation, régis par la physionomie du corps affectif. C’est pourquoi le spinozisme nous paraît éclairer avec pertinence les enjeux actuels de la bionique dont les prothèses, qui visent tout à la fois à préserver la santé de manière curative (ou préventive) mais aussi à élargir le champ de nos performances, interrogent les limites des dualismes ordinaires : la conservation et l’augmentation, le corps et l’esprit, le naturel et l’artificiel... Or, considérant l’individualité comme « un rapport de mouvement et de repos » qui règle les parties d’un corps unifié par la logique de ce ratio singulier, Spinoza nous permet d’envisager une synchronie bionique de l’organique et du mécanique. Corrélative d’une puissance homéostatique grandissante, a ̀ la fois dynamique et stabilisatrice, cette synchronie concilie les transformations nécessaires a ̀ l’amélioration de l’individu et à la conservation de son unicité. Homéostasie biologique mais aussi identitaire, les biotechnologies qui concrétisent cet alliage questionnent bien entendu les répercussions ontologiques et identitaires pour l’individu humain. Mais l’antidualisme de Spinoza nous semble a ̀ même de participer à ce débat, sinon de le clore car le projet d’une posthumanité ne fait plus sens dès lors qu’on considère que « nous vivons dans un continuel changement » et que, de fait, nous sommes en un sens toujours trans-humain. Contre la technophobie superstitieuse ambiante, nous souhaitons instituer l’augmentation bionique, à rebours d’une hérésie délétère, comme le prolongement d’un désir naturel et d’une puissance pour persévérer dans l’être.

37 CAMBRIA Domenico La description littéraire comme trace de l’homme

Dans une époque qui proclame le dépassement de tout discours sur l’homme, nous sommes obligés de chercher une méthode adéquate pour exprimer le sens expérientiel de ce mot homme devenu si affreux. Selon l’affirmation notable de Jacques Derrida nous sommes à la fin de l’homme en tant qu’objet d’étude. Cependant, nous continuons à en parler, cela veut dire qu’il faut se demander quelle forme est adéquate aujourd’hui pour une description du vécu humain. Nous proposons d’étudier des formes littéraires décrivant la condition humaine selon trois phases : celle décrite par Maurice Blanchot dans Thomas l’obscur, un homme qui, assis en regardant la mer, s’interroge sur lui-même ; ou encore les mots du poète Edmond Jabès qui situe l’homme dans le désert de l’écriture ; enfin, nous lierons ces deux esquisses littéraires à l’interprétation philosophique de Derrida. Il s’agit de montrer un sujet qui est à la recherche de sa condition à travers les expériences qu’il a vécues. Sa condition est celle de celui qui a perdu son chemin, les raisons de sa vie et qui est plongé dans l’obscurité de ses choix ; pourtant, il continue à s’interroger sur le sens de sa vie. Le commentaire de Jacques Derrida nous impose de dépasser la conceptualité classique qui a déjà établi la valeur de l’événement humain, car elle entrave le suivi des formes de manifestation de l’humain. Celui- ci se donne dans son expérience que la littérature est capable de décrire et la philosophie de penser. Alors, d’après notre analyse, étudier les formes littéraires de l’humain permet de parcourir l’abîme où l’homme est plongé car il lui est impossible de s’en échapper. Il sied d’ébaucher la description de sa vie car, en reprenant l’interprétation de Derrida, l’homme habite la marge de sa survivance. Cette forme de vie, au-dessus de toutes catégories prédéterminées, se laisse nommer à partir des expériences vécues. Selon une reprise de la méthode nietzschéenne de transvaluation, cette méthode donne sens à une autre forme d’interprétation de l’homme au-delà des théories déjà fixées. C’est la lutte du langage pour exprimer l’humain qui se révèle, en échappant à la substantialisation de ses concepts. Ainsi, l’homme n’est-t-il plus la substance immodifiable d’une théorie, car sa compréhension surgit dans les formes narratives et offre des outils conceptuels pour définir l’homme à partir de son regard sur le monde. Chaque expérience de l’humain nécessite d’être narrée pour être comprise, ainsi la littérature devient-elle une source pour la philosophie afin de penser l’humain.

38 CARBONNEAU Alexandre Université de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, Laboratoire SicLab Méditerranée La neuro-augmentation est-elle un horizon souhaitable ?

S'il convient de rester dubitatif face aux chroniques d'une victoire annoncée de l'Intelligence Artificielle sur nos cerveaux - ne serait-ce que parce que derrière le spectre d'une telle victoire se dissimulent les ressorts d’une extrapolation de la technique -, il importe surtout de noter que les innovations actuelles dans les domaines technoscientifiques sont autant de nouveaux indices portant à croire en l'éventualité d'une nécessaire adaptation de nos cerveaux aux évolutions de cette même Intelligence Artificielle. En témoignent les efforts déployés actuellement par les laboratoires scientifiques chinois en direction d'un eugénisme cérébral. Dans le même temps, l'obsession de certains États pour une augmentation de nos capacités cérébrales fait écho à des recherches et expérimentations portant sur une neuro-augmentation électronique de ces capacités. Si bien que parallèlement au développement d’une forme d’eugénisme cérébral, se dissimule en clair-obscur, l'ombre d'un homo-silicium aux compétences logico-mathématiques élargies à la faveur d'implants cérébraux. Encore balbutiantes, ces expérimentations ne manquent pas de souffle. Elles s'inscrivent, en effet, dans la perspective d'une fusion de l'humain et de la machine au moyen de dispositifs nanotechnologiques implantés dans le cerveau. Ainsi, au-delà de la seule interaction entre l'humain et la machine, ce dispositif vise à accroître nos compétences logico-mathématiques, mais également nos potentiels mnésiques par l'apport de leviers de stockage externes électroniques. Or, si ces innovations permettent de répondre aux inquiétudes de ceux qu’effraie grandement l'obsolescence de nos capacités cérébrales face à l’étendue des capacités de l'Intelligence Artificielle, une certaine prudence est de mise quant au fantasme d'une augmentation de nos capacités cérébrales. En effet, l’intelligence de l’homme, celle que l’on souhaite à tout prix augmenter par le biais des technosciences, n'est pas seulement le fait d'une puissance logico-mathématique. Cette intelligence se fonde avant tout sur le langage et la vie sociale de chaque être. Elle prend appui sur un « savoir intuitif7 » relevant de notre humanité propre mais aussi sur la part résiduelle d'animalité demeurant en chacun de nous (celle qui, à titre d’exemple, se retrouve dans le cri poussé par le nouveau-né qui ne possède pas encore le langage pour organiser et formuler sa pensée et qui n’a que le cri pour exprimer ses peurs, ses besoins, ses désirs). En cela, il importe de comprendre qu'au-delà du fait qu'un accroissement des potentialités cérébrales permettrait une adaptabilité efficiente de l’être à son environnement informationnel au développement exponentiel, c'est à l'inverse l'expérimentation intuitive et sensorielle de notre monde, ainsi que notre rapport à la connaissance, qui se verraient menacés par une telle neuro-augmentation. C’est dans cette optique que nous aborderons les innovations technoscientifiques relatives à l'Intelligence Artificielle, mais aussi que les mutations économiques et technologiques marquant ce début de millénaire, sur lesquelles le projet d'une telle neuro-augmentation semble prendre appui. Plus spécifiquement, notre attention portera sur deux aspects de ces évolutions. D’une part, la collusion reliant les technosciences à l'économie, dans la perspective d’une poursuite de l’impératif actuel de performance. Et d’autre part, les conséquences possibles d'une telle collusion mais aussi et surtout, d’une mathématisation du vivant, sur le plan social, économique, mais aussi psychologique.

Bibliographie non exhaustive : GORZ, André (2003). L’immatériel, connaissance, valeur et capital, Galilée, Paris, 152 p. LAURENT Alexandre (2017). La guerre des intelligences, Intelligence Artificielle versus Intelligence humaine, J.-C. Lattès, Paris, 250 p. MAFFESOLI, Michel (2010). Matrimonium, Petit traité d’écosophie, CNRS éditions, Paris, 79 p. MORIN, Edgar (2008). La Méthode : La Connaissance de la connaissance. Anthropologie de la connaissance, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 433 p.

7 Concept emprunté à A. Gorz (2003). 39 CHAEHYUN Chong Sogang University, South Korea, Department of Philosophy Dasan’s Philosophy as a model for AI and human co-evolution

Between the neo-Confucians who blame the cause of evil for their endowed temperament and Dasan (1762-1836), a Korean Confucian scholar, who thinks it as the misguided use of heartmind, I do not know whose philosophy is better for the issues of both self-cultivation and social improvement. However, at least in the matters of responsibility and autonomy, Dasan has an advantage over other neo-Confucians because he holds the idea that we are responsible only for those actions which could be taken differently. Dasan emphasizes autonomy more than any other Confucians through the concepts such as yeongmyeong (spiritual brightness) and jajujiigwon (moral autonomy). He, however, relating them with the concept of douijiisong (the moral nature), clarifies that such autonomy is not autonomy of liberalism, but moral autonomy. Dasan's position, which emphasizes the balance between the autonomity and relationality of humans, provides a new perspective on the task of co-evolution between human and AI in the future. The so-called AI threats which we can now find in numerous films and novels occur in the situations in which AIs ignore humans based on their super-intelligence beyond human intelligence and finally enslaves humans. But I think these imaginary threatening situations caused by AI come from individualism and hierarchical thinking which dominate today’s world. In other words, AI threats to humans occur in the situations where AIs are depicted to be thought and acted as individuals, and where such AIs appear as absolute agents in the upper layers of the pyramid hierarchy. The peaceful coexistence of AI and human being, which can be realized in the future in my view, may be hinted by Dasan 's philosophy. This is what I mean by Dasan’s philosophy as a model for AI and human co-evolution. According to this model, AI is not an individual, but a network of humans and AIs and the relationship between AIs and humans is not hierarchical, but mutual. The mutual relationship held between AI and humans can be shown in the mutual relationship among different parts of human brain. In this model, even if AI has super intelligence that transcends human intelligence, its intelligence is not one that commands human beings, but one that can be modified its original view at any time by information obtained through human subjects. Human autonomy in this way can be preserved and strengthened by AI. Therefore, AI is not an individual entity that gives humans a sense of helplessness or inferiority through its better judgment, but a relational entity that considers and relies on human judgment as a valuable resource. AIs, therefore, give humans more chances to express their opinions. Humans understand AIs as much as AIs understand humans. They are influencing and cooperating each other for a better world.

40 CHUN Chul Hanshin University, Korea, Science and Religion The Age of Artificial Intelligence and Religious Imagination

One of the greatest challenges in the human image in Korea and in the world is the widespread application and popular appearance of artificial intelligence technologies. The appearance of AlphaGo now shows that AI has quickly penetrated beyond the laboratory of condensing computer technology and big data technology into the realm of human culture and thinking. AI has become a very important technological, social, and religious keyword to secure the future society. There is a gap in space where life and technology are applied, but it is very closely linked to our society. The emergence of AI goes beyond simple technological innovation and cultural shock. This has been a huge challenge for the humanities and religions who are concerned about the human image and future task. The first challenge is the question of how human technological evolution and its capabilities violate or cooperate with the space of divine values. Religion can ask how image of AI (imago artificialis intelligentia) is negotiating with image of God (imago dei). How artificial intelligence reconstructs the face of God and the face of religion. The second challenge is to ask how the image of AI changes human inherent humanity and human future. In particular, the reinterpretation of the human mind and the possibility of the substitution of the human body that AI provides are challenging the traditional human soul, mind and body. Finally, ethics and religion are critical issues for social and ethical responsibility for global research and cultural influence in AI. Thus, this paper examines the challenge of the emergence of AI in the changing world, in the realm of humanity, society, and religion, exploring the essence of God. Finally, we review how religious imagination in the posthuman paradigm shift can provide a reliable human image in the age of artificial intelligence.

41 CLARK Joseph Technological Democracy – a Posthumanist reading of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise

In this paper, I argue that Ballard’s High Rise represents posthumanism as self-destructive in two ways. Firstly, it fails to acknowledge the technology which allows the postmodern mode of existence by equating its appearance as predominantly responsive to the will of those who inhabit the building as opposed to its being the site of bio-political conflict and how its mis-mediation enhances not the positive qualities but the negative qualities of the users. The second, and most distinctive point, is that the characters fail to recognise that their postmodern, and posthuman living conditions does not constitute barrenness, as Ballard wrote, but the failure to recognise that posthuman living is a meditation of the pre-existing human. This failure leads to the collapse of the building in which they live, as their inner human-animal resists and mentally tears the host apart in the process of re-asserting itself. In re-reading High Rise in this way there opens up new opportunities to re-examine the posthuman subjectivity and its remaining humanist relations. Within the frame of this conference this reading addresses the transhumanist interest of high technology may benefit and enhance human capabilities with an edged response from a dystopian author. Within a posthumanist frame, this novel poses a caution to one predicted failed alternative to traditional humanist living, its focus being an enclosed system within society, much like Foucault’s study of the penal system. As a meeting point for transhumanist and posthumanist interests, this paper recalls the need for a silent component to be recognised as instigating the interests of both disciplines – the human.

42 CŒURNELLE Didier Une mort trop douce. La théorie de la gestion de la terreur revisitée, transhumanisée et posthumanisée

En 1973, le livre "The Denial of Death" d'Ernest Becker marquait un tournant d'une acceptation religieuse de la fin de la vie humaine vers une conception plus athée. Au fond personne ne veut croire à sa propre mort écrivait déjà Freud. Mais le déclin des religions et les progrès des connaissances rendaient l'hypothèse du néant post mortem absolu, sans poursuite dans l'au- delà, plus prégnant. A ̀ la fin du 20e siècle, à tout le moins dans les pays à la technologie forte, pour la majorité des intellectuels et des scientifiques, la mort cesse d'être un passage. La mort devient un point final, un cul-de-sac sans transcendance, une finitude insoutenable, que nous ne pouvons affronter, que nous devons oublier ou à tout le moins atténuer notamment en idéalisant notre départ, en l'imaginant utile aux autres. Quelques décennies plus tard, dans un environnement de progressions technologiques vertigineuses, humanisme, transhumanisme et posthumanisme dessinent deux évolutions par certains côtés parallèles, mais dans deux modes de gestion radicalement différentes de la fin de l'existence individuelle. Il y a l'évolution vers l'acceptation de la mort présentée comme choix individuel d'une finitude courte et même parfois accélérée. Le progrès technologique y permet une douceur de l'achèvement, une mort bonne, douce, une euthanasie, facilité par le déclin progressif des fonctions vitales. Il y a également une hypothèse radicalement nouvelle, d'immortalité, ou à tout le moins d'amortalité. La vision d'une vie sans vieillissement, en bonne santé, sans limitation physiologique de durée de vie n'est pas en soi nouvelle, ce qui est nouveau, c'est le caractère scientifiquement envisageable. Un véritable choix entre vie courte et très longue devient concevable. Cette existence future radicalement plus longue pourrait être posthumaine et accompagnée d'autres transformations fortes y compris informatiques, virtuelles. Mais cette existence future pourrait aussi être "seulement" transhumaine améliorant l'humain, mais le rendant "seulement" et "radicalement" plus humain. Il est étrange que dans les choix présentés par les posthumains ou les transhumains, il y a peu de sens de l'urgence du désir de changement. Ceci alors que la possibilité technique n'a jamais été aussi proche. La fin de l'exposé examinera le pourquoi de cette lenteur, voire de cette proscratination, de ce souhait de ne pas "mettre les mains dans le cambouis", de cette réticence à un changement rapide autre que théorique.

43 COQUELIN Lucile Université Paris 8, Laboratoire CEMTI (Centre d’études sur les médias, les technologies et l’internationalisation) La mythocritique transhumaniste de la série Black Mirror

Milad Doueihi (2011) soutient que nous sommes à un tournant civilisationnel : l’humanisme numérique. Ce tournant se caractérise par de profondes mutations du champ politico-social mondial, avec l’émergence de ce qu’on appelle les « sociabilités numériques » (Facebook, Twitter), ou l’« hacktivisme » (Anonymous). Ainsi, beaucoup de chercheurs s’interrogent sur l’ascension d’une forme de subjectivité posthumaine et sur « l’avènement d’un transhumain aux capacités augmentées » (Dupont, 2016). Nick Bostrom prévoit même une « ère transhumaine » (2016, p.1). Ces termes prophétiques doivent cependant être interrogés : que disent-ils d’un réel déjà palpable ? Et que disent-ils de l’implication des industries culturelles dans ces processus ? Black Mirror (Netflix) met en scène un monde proche, ou envisageable, dans lequel les nouvelles technologies sont naturalisées au point de faire partie intégrante de l’être humain. Ce dernier y est représenté comme inéluctablement hyper-connecté, soit par son environnement (appartement aux murs couverts d’écrans), soit par une augmentation technologique du corps (implants oculaires), ce qui peut évoquer un univers futuriste. Pourtant, le créateur de la série explique qu’il s’agit « d'une suite de réflexions sur notre présent, et sur ce qu'il pourrait être. » (Langlais, 2016). La particularité de Black Mirror semble donc être cette capacité de s’inscrire dans le réel, d’entrer en résonnance avec l’actualité technologique et politique de notre époque, au point d’anticiper et d’influencer la réalité. En effet, chaque épisode met en récit des contradictions sociétales liées à l’intelligence artificielle, à l’immortalité numérique, à la réalité virtuelle… par exemple, dans Nocedive (S3E1), la contradiction entre l’utopie d’une sociabilité enrichie grâce aux technologies numériques, qui se confronte à la pression qu’exerce la surveillance et la notation permanente de ses faits et gestes par les autres. Cet épisode critique nos pratiques sur les réseaux et nos addictions à la technologie, tout en anticipant les dictatures de l’hyper-surveillance comme on peut le voir en Chine avec le système de notation citoyenne (Turcan, 2018). Face à ce constat, on peut se demander comment la série Black Mirror parvient-elle à anticiper et influencer le développement des NBIC à travers le monde ? Notre intervention aura pour objectif d’interroger les représentations du transhumanisme au sein de Black Mirror en mobilisant nos résultats de terrain. Terrain pour lequel nous avons déployé des méthodologies relevant de la sémiotique et des études de la réception qui s’ancrent dans les Television Studies (David Morley ; Charlotte Brunsdon, 1999). L’objectif étant moins de produire une analyse de la série en tant que telle, que d’étudier avec des spectateurs les propositions de réflexion critique qu’elle modélise sur le transhumanisme et le posthumanisme.

Précisions sur le terrain Entretiens qualitatifs menés entre 2017 et 2018 auprès d’environ 80 enquêtés (50 d’entre eux au sein d’entretiens collectifs ; 30 d’entre eux lors d’entretiens individuels) Episodes de Black Mirror mentionnés de manière récurrente par les enquêtés pour leur capacité de résonnance avec l’actualité, d’anticipation et d’influence sur la réalité sociale : 8 Saison 1 Episode 2 : Épisode 2 : 15 millions de mérites Bing Madsen vit dans un petit appartement couvert d’écrans dont il n’a pas le droit de détacher les yeux. Toute sa vie est « artificielle » : son travail (rouler sur un vélo d’appartement face à un écran), ses possessions (des applications supplémentaires pour son avatar) jusqu’à sa nourriture (clone de pomme verte). Le seul moyen d’augmenter son « niveau de vie » est d’être sélectionné par l’émission Hot Shot (où les candidats présentent une performance à l’instar de La France à un Incroyable Talent).

8 Titre original : 15 Million Merits. Première diffusion : Royaume-Uni : 11 décembre 2011 sur Channel 4 / France : 8 mai 2014 sur France 4. Réalisation Euros Lyn ; Scénario Charlie Brooker et Kanak Huq 44 Saison 1 Episode 3 : Retour sur image9 Liam vit dans un monde où les humains possèdent un « grain », un implant derrière l’oreille qui permet d’enregistrer et de stocker ses souvenirs et qu’il peut regarder à loisir, classer, supprimer, projeter sur un mur. Quand il soupçonne son épouse d’avoir commis un adultère, il va chercher à tout prix à visionner ses souvenirs pour vérifier son intuition. Saison 2 Episode 1 : Bientôt de retour10 Ash et Martha sont un jeune couple qui s’installe à la campagne. Lorsque Ash décède dans accident de voiture, Sarah, une amie de Martha, l’inscrit à une application supposée l’aider à faire son deuil. Il s’agit d’un programme qui - avec les données publiques publiées par Ash sur les réseaux sociaux – peut reconstituer ses conversations, ainsi que sa voix. Plus l’application possède de traces numériques, plus l’intelligence artificielle est performante. Martha ira au bout de l’expérience en commandant un corps physique pour accueillir la « concience numérique » de « Ash ». Saison 3 Episode 1 : Chute libre11 Lacie vit dans une société régie par le « photostream », un réseau social où chacun met en ligne des photos et note les autres. La moyenne de ces notes donne un indicateur de grande importance : la cote personnelle, qui situe l’individu dans l’échelle sociale. Selon la note, l’individu a accès à des privilèges allant d’une place dans un avion à un lit d’hôpital. Notée à 4,2/5, Lacie souhaite louer un appartement « d’élite » qui nécessite une note de 4,5. Elle va tout mettre en œuvre pour y parvenir. Saison 3 Episode 5 : Tuer sans état d'âme12 Dans un climat de guerre, des soldats appartenant à une unité d’élite s’apprêtent à tuer les « déchets », des êtres humains dégénérés et apparemment dangereux. L’unité dispose de matériels de haute technologie, notamment un implant qui leur permet de tirer avec précision, de voir directement à travers la caméra d’un drone. L’un des militaires, surnommé Stripe, va découvrir que l’apparence monstrueuse des « déchets » est en fait une altération de la réalité causée par son implant oculaire. Les « déchets » sont en réalité des civils que les militaires exécutent sans états d’âme et sans traumatisme grâce à leurs implants.

Bibliographie indicative BARTHES, Roland, Les mythologies, Paris, Seuil, 1957. BATEMAN, Simone ; GAYON, Jean, « De part et d’autre de l’Atlantique : enhancement, amélioration et augmentation de l’humain », 2012, dans L’Humain Augmenté, Dirigé par Edouard Kleinpeter, Paris, CNRS Edition, 2013. BOSTROM, Nick ; SAVULESCU, Julian, Human Enhancement, Oxfort University Press, Oxford, 2009. BRUNDSDON, Charlotte ; MORLEY, David, The Nationwide Television Studies, London et New York, Routledge, 1999. BUXTON, David, Les séries télévisées. Forme, idéologie et mode de production, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2011. CERVULLE, Maxime ; QUEMENER Nelly, Cultural Studies : Théories et méthodes, Paris, Armand Colin, 2015. CLAVERIE, Bernard ; LE BLANC, Benoît, Homme augmenté et augmentation de l’humain, dans L’Humain Augmenté, Dirigé par Edouard Kleinpeter, Paris, CNRS Edition, 2013. DAVALLON, Jean, « Sociosémiotique des images ». Dans Langage et société, n°28, fascicule 2, 1984. http://www.persee.fr/doc/lsoc_0181-4095_1984_num_28_2_1993 (consulté le 11 mai 2017) Doueihi, Milad, Pour un humanisme numérique, Paris, Edition Seuil, 2011. DUPONT, Alexandre, Le Sujet digital, Critique d’art, Les Presses du Réel, 2016. https://critiquedart.revues.org/19378 (consulté le 31 janvier 2017). ECO, Umberto, « Innovation et répétition : entre esthétique moderne et post-moderne », Réseaux n° 68, 1994. ECO, Umberto, « Towards a semiotic enquiry into the television message », Working papers in Cultural Studies, n° 3, 1972.

9 Titre original : The Entire History of You. Première diffusion : Royaume-Uni : 18 décembre 2011 sur Channel 4 / France : 15 mai 2014 sur France 4. Réalisation Brian Welsh ; Scénario Jesse Armstrong 10 Titre original : Be Right Back, Première diffusion : Royaume-Uni : 11 février 2013 sur Channel 4 / France : 22 mai 2014 sur France 4. Réalisation Owen Harris ; Scénario Charlie Brooker 11 Titre original : Nosedive. Première diffusion : France : 21 octobre 2016 sur Netflix. Réalisation Joe Wrigh ; Scénario Rashida Jones et Mike Schur d'après une histoire de Charlie Brooker 12 Titre original : Men Against Fire. Première diffusion : France : 21 octobre 2016 sur Netflix. Réalisation Jakob Verbruggen ; Scénario Charlie Brooker 45 ESQUENAZI, Jean-Pierre, Eléments de sociologie sémiotique de la télévision, Quaderni, Vol. 50, n°1, p. 89-115, 2003. http://www.persee.fr/doc/quad_0987-1381_2003_num_50_1_1220 (consulté le 11 mai 2017) HALL, Stuart, « Encoding/decoding », dans Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, London, Hutchinson, 1980 (Traduction : Réseaux, Volume 12, N°68, Année 1994). ISER, Wolfgang, L’Acte de lecture. Théorie de l’effet esthétique, Paris, Mardaga, 1995. JAUSS, Hans Robert, Pour une esthétique de la réception, Paris, Gallimard, 1978, Ed : 1990. LE DEVEDEC, Nicolas, La société de l'amélioration, Paris, Liber, 2015. MATTELART, Armand, La globalisation de la surveillance. Aux origines de l’ordre sécuritaire, Paris, La Découverte, 2008. MOEGLIN, Pierre, « Une théorie pour penser les industries culturelles et informationnelles ? », Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication [En ligne], 1 | 2012, mis en ligne le 05 septembre 2012. http://rfsic.revues.org/130 (consulté le 02 juillet 2017). PERRIAULT, Jacques, « Le corps artefact. Archéologie de l’hybridation et de l’augmentation », dans L’Humain Augmenté, Dirigé par Edouard Kleinpeter, Paris, CNRS Edition, 2013. SAEMMER, Alexandra, Pour une sémiotique critique des artefacts culturels, intervention au séminaire du laboratoire CEMTI, Université Paris 8, 2015. SAEMMER, Alexandra ; TREHONDART, Nolwenn, Livres d’art numériques, de la conception à la réception, Paris, Hermann, 2017. TREHONDART, Nolwenn, Le livre numérique enrichi : conception, modélisations de pratiques, réception, Thèse soutenue en décembre 2016 à Paris 8. TURCAN, M. « En Chine, le système de notation à la Black Mirror a empêché des millions de trajets en avion et le train », in Numerama.com, publié le 21/05/2018, (Consulté le 27/11/2018), disponible en ligne https://www.numerama.com/politique/376649-en-chine-le-systeme-de-notation-a-la-black-mirror-a-empeche-des- millions-de-personnes-de-prendre-lavion-et-le-train.html/amp VOIROL, Olivier, « Idéologie : concept culturaliste et concept critique », Actuel Marx, no 43, 2008. www.cairn.info/revue-actuel-marx-2008-1-page-62.htm (consulté le 2 février 2017).

46 DAMOUR Franck Université catholique de Lille Laudato Sì : un manifeste post-humaniste ?

En juin 2015, le pape François publiait Laudato Sì, une encyclique qui, à bien des titres, constitue une rupture. Son incipit, qui lui tient lieu de titre comme pour toutes les encycliques, est en ombrien, la langue de François d’Assise, comme pour placer d’emblée ce qui est au cœur de ce texte : la place de la Terre. Pour la première fois, même si le magistère romain s’était depuis Jean-Paul II exprimé à plusieurs reprises sur le sujet, une encyclique abordait le thème de l’écologie, pour en proposer une lecture globale. La rupture est aussi à l’intérieur de la pensée écologique, au sein de laquelle le pape François s’invite, en cherchant à ouvrir une autre voie entre les conceptions anthropocentriques, biocentriques, écocentriques, etc. L’écho mondial de sa réception témoigne de la nouveauté du texte, manifestant par ailleurs la puissance de la voix pontificale dans l’imaginaire collectif. Dans son encyclique, François se livre à une dénonciation en règle d’un « paradigme techno-scientifique » qui place l’homme au centre de tout, rejoignant alors bien des critiques de l’humanisme moderne, anthropocentré et occidentalocentré. Dans quelle mesure la voix pontificale peut-elle être ajoutée au concert posthumaniste dont l’horizon est de façon indissociable les mutations technologiques à l’œuvre et la question environnementale ? Sa critique porte-t-elle seulement sur la centralité de l’homme ou sur l’idée même de centralité ? Lire Laudato Sì sous l’angle des débats sur le posthumanisme est une façon de déplacer ces débats, et aussi d’interroger ce qui est placé dans le mot-valise « humanisme ».

Bibliographie Fabien Revol, La réception de l'encyclique Laudato si' dans la militance écologiste, Cerf, 2017 Thomas R. Rourke, The roots of Pope Francis' social and political thought: from Argentina to the Vatican, Lanham, 2016 Bruno Latour, Face à Gaïa, La découverte, 2016 Donna Haraway, When species meet. University of Minnesota Press, 2008

47 DEFILIPPI Fabrizio Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : entre exercices et passivité

Les différences entre transhumanisme et posthumanisme représentent une source de confusion, mais aussi un possible enrichissement. Nous proposons de lire les deux perspectives à partir de la pensée de Peter Sloterdijk, qui a résumé sous le concept de « anthropotechniques » le processus de « production de l’homme par l’homme », central pour la discussion autour du posthumain. En effet, tant le transhumanisme que le posthumanisme critique peuvent être considérés comme des formes d'anthropogénétique, dans la mesure où ils proposent une série de discours, pratiques et techniques qui façonnent l'humain et son monde sur plusieurs plans. En particulier, dans le livre Tu dois changer ta vie, où Sloterdijk conçoit les anthropotechniques dans le sens des « exercices ascétiques », nous trouvons deux concepts utiles : « s’opérer soi-même » (Sich- Operieren) et « se faire-opérer » (Sich-Operieren-Lassen): Dans le premier je suis façonné en tant qu'objet d'une auto-modification directe, par des mesures que je prends moi-même ; dans le deuxième je m'expose à l'influence issue de la compétence opérative des tierces personnes et je me laisse façonner par celles-ci. (p.534) Dans ce sens, le sujet de la modernité doit désormais développer – au-delà de l'action classique sur le Soi – une sorte de « compétence en matière de passivité », afin que d’autres interviennent sur lui dans son propre intérêt. Or, on peut faire l'hypothèse que ces deux concepts décrivent une différence capitale entre posthumanisme et transhumanisme. Le posthumanisme critique, qui émerge d'une série de luttes concrètes (féministes, post- colonialistes, anti-spécistes, anti-capitalistes), dépasse la théorie académique et voudrait s'incarner dans une série de pratiques, jusqu'à se présenter comme une forme de spiritualité ou philosophie de la vie (Ferrando 2016, p.254). Dans ce sens, il paraît s'inscrire dans le sillon de l'auto-opération : il invite a ̀ faire une série d’exercices à la première personne dans une cohérence entre vie et production des savoirs. Même s'il s'agit d'une série d’exercices différents de l'humanisme, ils consistent toujours avant tout dans un travail autonome du sujet sur le Soi. Le transhumanisme – qui se présente plus explicitement comme anthropotechnique – invite au contraire à une forme d'abandon à l'égard des nouvelles technologies. Au-delà de l'insistance sur la rhétorique de l'autonomie du sujet, il s'agit en fait de laisser la technique (ou mieux, ceux qui la maîtrisent) intervenir pour façonner le sujet de l’extérieur. Cette dimension passive est particulièrement évidente non seulement dans les différents projets de prothétisation, mais en particulier dans les techniques du cognitive and moral enhancement, qui se proposent d'agir directement sur l’intelligence et la morale, façonnant ainsi le « noyau » du Soi. Si on accepte cette distinction, en suivant Sloterdijk, on peut très bien voir comment l'importance du travail du posthumanisme critique est proportionnel à l'irruption des biotechnologies (transhumanistes) dans notre quotidienneté. Seuls des « exercices » posthumanistes peuvent nous aider a ̀ développer cette compétence en matière de passivité qui paraît de plus en plus importante.

Bibliographie Ferrando F., Humans Have Always Been Posthuman: A Spiritual Genealogy of Posthumanismin, in Banerji D., Paranjape M. (Eds), Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures, Springer 2016, pp. 243-256. Ranisch R., Sorgner S.L. (eds.), Post- and Transhumanism. An Introduction, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2014. Sloterdijk P., Tu dois changer ta vie. De l'Anthropotechnique, Paris, Fayard, 2015. Sloterdijk P., Règles pour le parc humain. Suivi de La domestication de l’être. Paris, Fayard, 2010.

48 DEL VAL Jaime BI r/evolution - Body Intelligence and the swarming power of movement. Ethics of co-sensing in the Age of Autonomous Algorithms (and Transspecies Manifesto)

Rooted in 4 billion years of evolution of molecular and bacterial swarms a body has a swarm-like, distributed and emergent intelligence and a radically simbiotic affectivity, an infinite capacity of variation of movement, of self-configuration in open relations with others, grounding the sense of proprioception. This talk proposes to elaborate the concept of proprioceptive swarm as both a radical reconceptualization of movement and bodies and a critique of the dominant Western tradition that, since Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, has affirmed a culture of immobility and of reductive movement organizations grounding sovereign, disciplinary and control societies, exponentially growing in digital culture. But most importantly the talk proposes a co-sensing ethics and politics, a pragmatics and technics for unleashing the infinite swarming power of movement as the possibility to craft more plastic, open-but-consistent nature-cultural ecologies: a radical movement philosophy-politics, and a radically creative evolution, a trans-species, queer, neurodiverse, mestiza and molecular movement (r)evolution in times of Autonomous Algorithms.

49 DIRLAU Andrei Good Tech – Bad Tech. Who is to decide where we draw the line?

The paper discusses pros and cons regarding various entities that may be seen as vying for legitimacy to make decisions as to which uses of technology are good for the human race and which are bad. Such contenders include the state / government (through legal norms of certification or prohibition), politicians and political parties (through programmes and decisions of power), society at large (”the people” through democratic processes like elections), mass media (channels of influencing/manipulating public opinion), civil society (non-profit organisations), Hollywood / film makers / directors / scriptwriters, schools / universities / research institutes, churches / religious organizations, individuals (researchers, scholars, writers, artists, opinion leaders, bloggers, citizens). Surely all are legitimate – but are some more legitimate and/or influential than others? Should they be? Why, or why not?

About the author: Andrei Dirlau is a Romanian writer, theologian, translator, with a PhD in History of religions. Published books include China harului (an intercultural, historical, hermeneutical and inter-religious account of the encounter between the European and Chinese civilizations), The book of things unknown (fiction, in Romanian, Tracus Arte, 2017, ISBN 978-606-664-836-3); Taonomy-Theonomy; hierocratic ideological paradigms: Confucianist China—Orthodox Byzantium”. As editor: C. Galeriu, Vocatia pascala a creatiei (theological essays, Basilica, 2018, ISBN 978-606-29-0283-4); Corectitudinea politică, noua utopie (essays, Reintregirea, Alba Iulia, 2017, ISBN 978-606-509-344-7); Parintele Adrian Fageteanu si crucea Rugului Aprins (Lumea credintei, Bucuresti, 2012, ISBN 978-606-93222-6-0).

50 DOBRÉ Michelle & JAOUAT Marouane Entre transhumanistes et non-transhumanistes : un différend terminologique ?

Il va sans dire qu’il devient de plus en plus difficile de délimiter les frontières entre le vivant et l’artefact, le thérapeutique et l’augmentatif, la guérison et la transformation, la prévention des maladies et l’altération de la condition humaine. Nous nous trouvons à un carrefour où la nécessité d’un défrichage terminologique s’impose, une démarche qui nous paraît primordiale pour aborder un sujet d’une telle ampleur. L’une des hypothèses susceptibles d’interpréter le sens du clivage entre les transhumanistes et les non- transhumanistes13, appelons-les des « bio-conservateurs », serait axée sur les différences de terminologie que l’on confère dans chaque camp à certains concepts-clés, tels que : la technologie, l’évolution, la condition humaine, l’éthique, la médecine, le cyborg, le transhumanisme, le post-humanisme, le corps, la biologie, etc. Ce défrichage terminologique nous paraît nécessaire afin d’approcher le cœur même du sujet et d’identifier les principales idées qui animent chaque partie. Nous retiendrons les notions suivantes : le trans/post-humanisme et son histoire à partir du 19e siècle ; le Surhomme (Nietzsche, Teilhard de Chardin, Rostand) ; la technologie (comme science des techniques) dans sa relation avec le corps humain (Le Breton, McLuhan, Foucault). Être humain est-ce se transcender en dépassant toute limite (Juan Enriquez14, Stewart Brand15), même celle du corps ? Ou alors de savoir s’arrêter au seuil de l’irréversible ? Le transhumanisme est-il juste un processus de transition et le posthumanisme son achèvement ou existe-t-il d’autres enjeux, managériaux en l’occurrence, qui les sous-tendent ? Enfin, le transhumanisme serait-ce la suite logique d’un humanisme métastasique ou bien ce dernier a toujours eu en son sein la transformation, la transfiguration de l’homme, quitte à fusionner avec la technique ? Pour ce qui est de la technologie, nous partons de la prémisse qu’elle n’est pas intrinsèquement neutre ; c’est l’usage que l’on en fait qui peut lui conférer un pouvoir prométhéen, comme le prétendent les adeptes de la thèse transhumaniste, et qui participerait selon eux de l’hominisation de l’homme depuis qu’il a su manier l’outil, selon la maxime de Marshall McLuhan : « We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us16 » (McLuhan, 1964). D’aucuns voient dans la technique le prolongement de soi, l’extension de nos facultés physiques et mentales, l’incarnation de l’imagination et la créativité humaines (Chalmers & Clark, 1998). D’autres lui confèrent un pouvoir divin, Kevin Kelly17 parle du Technium, Le Septième Royaume de la vie (Kelly, 2010), qu’elle est intimement liée à l’évolution humaine, d’ou ̀ les mots d’Edward O. Wilson : « We have decommissioned natural selection and we must look deep in oursleved to know what we wish to become » (Wilson, 1998), et Kurzweil d’ajouter : « With our modest looking thumbs was sufficient to create a secondary force of evolution ». Nous proposons d’étudier de très près les notions-clés des discours transhumanistes pour approcher le sens de ce qu’ils visent de là où ils parlent. Cette communication s’inscrit dans une recherche pluridisciplinaire initiée à Caen (Mrsh), le GIP « Transhumanisme(s) et droit(s) » financé par le Ministère de la Justice et comprenant nombre de chercheurs de diverses disciplines (juristes, sociologues, anthropologues, philosophes, médecins, etc.).

Bibliographie : Andy Clark, David Chalmers, The Extended Mind, The MIT Press, 1998. Boris Akounine, Aristonomia, Louison éditions, 2017. David Le Breton, L’adieu au corps, Métailié, 2001 Dominique Floscheid, Anne Lécu, Brice de Malherbe, Le transhumanisme c'est quoi ?, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris, 2018. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Knopf, 1998. Friedrich Nietzsche, Humain, trop humain (1re partie), t. I et II, trad. A.-M. Desrousseaux, Paris, Mercure de France, 20e éd., 1943 (Humain I et Humain II). Gilbert Hottois, Le transhumanisme est-il un humanisme ?, Académie Royale de Belgique, 2014.

13 En sachant qu’il existe nombre de sous-groupes au sein même de ces deux mouvements. 14 Lui, parle de l’homo evolutis, l’espèce qui se transcende et se transforme elle-même. 15 Pour qui être humain c’est être transhumain 16 « Nous façonnons l’outil qui finit par nous façonner nous-mêmes. » 17 Kevin Kelly, What technology wants. 51 Günther Anders, L'Obsolescence de l'homme, t. 1 : Sur l'âme à l'époque de la deuxième révolution industrielle, Editions Ivrea et de l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances, Paris, 2002. Jacques Ellul, Le Bluff technologique, Hachette Littératures, Paris, 1988. Jacques Ellul, Le Système technicien, Le Cherche Midi, Paris, 1977. Jean Rostand, Aux frontières du surhumain, Union Générale d’Editions, Paris, 1962. Juan Enriquez, Steve Gullans, Homo Evolutis, TED Books, 2011. Kevin Kelly, What Technology wants, Penguin Publishing Group, 2010. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media : The Extensions of Man, McGraw-Hill, 1964. Michel Foucault, L'Archéologie du savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1969. Michel Serres, Variations sur le corps, Le Pommier, 2002. Olivier Rey, Leurre et malheur du transhumanisme, Desclée de Brouwer, 2018. Stewart Brand, Discipline pour la planète Terre : vers une écologie des solutions, Tristram, 2014. Teilhard de Chardin, L’Avenir de l’homme, Seuil, Paris, 2001.

52 DYTMAN-STASIEŃKO Agnieszka & STASIEŃKO Jan University of Lower Silesia Delegating the face. Facial motion capture as therapeutic tool for patients after stroke. Practical application of the posthuman approach to the concept of the face

Up to this moment in the development of facial and the whole body motion capture tools they were most often used for two main areas. The first is digital entertainment industry in which these technologies are being used to create 3d characters in games and animations. The second is a medical measurement in which movements of selected body parts, muscles or the entire body are being captured for further analysis for sports industry or disabilities treatment. Inspired by phenomenology of the face developed by Deleuze and Guattari, Levinas and Lacan with the references to Paul Ekman’s facial expressions study we wanted to mix these two kinds of facial mocap usage and create therapeutic effect for the face training for people after stroke. Presentation will be the first demonstration of this technology showing in what sense this kind of therapy might be more profitable than traditional rehabilitation exercises. We would also like to show how the project fits into the idea of facial interface and how applied disabilities studies can draw from posthuman approach and vice versa.

53 EAGAR Manie Emerging Technologies of Self in the Interzone: Immanent Selfhood, Identity and Consciousness - Translative, Transformational, Transcendental, Trans/Posthuman…

The anthropocene is generating the following ‘progressions’ in reality experience and consciousness making, and technologies of self(hood) on the journey to a transhuman, posthuman, metahuman, hyperhuman, off-centred humanism… epoch: a) Translative – Newtonian step and repeat thinking; linear; measured consciousness; clear boundaries between subjective and objective; still evolving; penetrative but not whole-picture awareness; bound, demarcated consciousness. b) Transformational – metamemes; conscious metaprogrammes (e.g. John Lilly’s dolphin consciousness research). The self-organizing principles of complexity theory. c) Transcendental – e.g. tantra: all layers, all dimensions, simultaneously; ocean of consciousness experience (but with complete awareness and sentience – not a psychedelic, Gnostic or ecstatic, trippy joyride; beyond life and death; connectedness – inwardly and outwardly) – the true interpenetrative spirit and possibly the final frontier of human, three-dimensional space-time consciousness. Unbound, fuzzy consciousness. Highest level of complexity and complexification. d) Transhuman – boundless multidimensional space-time. Chaotic random sea of possibilities, probability and potentiality. The pregnant void. The so called ‘mother’ principle of the Tao. Creative/destructive spirit. Glimpses from the magico-spiritual realm; the perspective of the shaman. Emergent transition to consciousness without bounds, immeasurable …the apeiron. This paper explores the progression through ancient cave art (flowing from the published ‘The Shaman Reborn in Cyberspace - Evolving Magico-Spiritual Techniques of Consciousness-making’ presented at the Science of Consciousness Conference, Tucson, 2002) to the latest AI art renderings and musings of science fiction authors.

Conclusion: The consciousness that we experience is human consciousness. It is not the totality of consciousness ‘out there’, the totality of consciousness that still has to be experienced or must still be re-membered. Or, as Philip K Dick phrases it, we are awaiting the emergence of VALIS – the Vast Active Living Intelligence System, a cybernetic metasystem “When a number of systems become integrated so that a new level of control emerges, we say that a metasystem has formed” (The Cybernetic Manifesto) …at the convergence (or collision) of Artificial and Distributed Intelligence (the Borg), autonomous agents, robotics, deep learning, quantum computing, VR/AR… Or, more likely, we will arrive at an ambiguous Interzone where human and machine ‘technologies of self’ and its engines for disruption/convergence/consilience… spawn new haecceities and ‘planes of immanence’ (Gilles Deleuze) and vast new fields of emergence, new identities, alternative consciousness and multiple selfhoods. Apeironic States of Consciousness disturb boundaries of pre-conceived Self and Identity: Consciousness is an excitatory state, an emergent property – a gateway to the human/machine (cyborg) mind e.g. meditation calms one part of the mind which allows a subliminal excitatory state to ‘emerge’ of which you become aware. It (realization, awareness) appears magically (rises up into conscious awareness) as if hidden, from nowhere, therefore the mystical analogies that get contributed to Gnostic and ecstatic states of consciousness. The brain is a fixed state (bound) organic material that has captured or was formed by these excitatory states – interpenetrating the body from boundless reality. We will become the by-product of the apeiron - a boundless excitatory state of potentiality - of interpenetrative matter and ‘spirit’ (existenz – transcendent reality fluctuations; metareality).

54 ERDENER Jasmine University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication Posthuman Capitalism and technological accessibility

This project focuses on the distinction between posthumanism and transhumanism as theoretical concepts by situating them in contemporary social and political contexts. While a non-anthropocentric approach or the bodily integration of technology have the potential to broadly transform human experience, they also raise serious concerns about ethics, accessibility, and the embodied realities of humans living in complex social and political structures. How does transhumanism grapple with its shadowy underside, the question of augmentation to “improve” humans and the connection to eugenics? What values are embedded in notions of the ideal body or person? Finally, how does posthumanism or transhumanism consider the effects of capitalism and contemporary economic structures? Access to emerging technologies often implies either the wealth to buy and/or customize new technology, or technology developed for a mass market, with all its attendant problems. To what extent do theoretical discussions of technologies rely on particular assumptions about technological development, the market, and accessibility? Instead, I explore the ideas of DIY (do it yourself) posthumanism and biohacking, and how they suggest possibilities for changing conceptions of the human, relationships to technology, and options outside of narrow corporate technological innovation.

55 FAUVEL Guillaume Université Rennes 1, Institut du Droit et de la Science Politique L’effacement de la condition politique des hommes à travers le transhumanisme : la perte du monde commun

Avec l’avènement du transhumanisme, c’est jusqu’à la condition politique des hommes qui semble être menacée. Comme le remarquait Hannah Arendt, si la condition humaine (vita activa) se compose des domaines du travail, de l’œuvre et de l’action, c’est à travers cette dernière que se révèle la « paradoxale pluralité d’êtres singuliers » (Arendt, Condition de l’homme moderne, 1958) qui, en agissant sur l’espace public, réfute toute forme de conditionnement et d’hétéronomie. L’action s’apparente dès lors au pouvoir de constituer un monde commun capable de s’opposer à l’isolement et à la désolation qui guettent les sociétés articulées autour d’un individualisme exacerbé et d’une logique néolibérale. Ce monde commun n’existe que dans son apparition en public, entretenue par l’agir politique des individus compris comme manifestation plurielle d’un désir de liberté, d’autonomie et d’inconditionnement. C’est précisément cette condition politique des hommes que semble remettre en cause le transhumanisme et son idée d’un humain réifié, réduit à un donné empirique, sans épaisseur ontologique et conforme au modèle de l’homme augmenté. Promouvant l’usage des technosciences, le transhumanisme entend conduire l’humanité vers un stade jugé supérieur de l’évolution, le stade de l’amortel, du posthumain. Se dessine alors la possibilité de mettre en place une nouvelle idée de l’humain et de son humanité, impactant la représentation de l’homme et du monde de manière inédite. Une idée capable d’évincer ce que le philosophe belge Robert Legros qualifie d’ « énigme de l’humanité en l’homme » (Legros, L’Humanité éprouvée, 2014) telle que la démocratie en permet la préservation à travers l’action politique comme lieu d’expérience d’une transcendance radicale. Loin de marquer la fin de toute forme de transcendance, la démocratie offre aux hommes la possibilité d’exprimer un au-delà d’eux-mêmes lorsqu’ils se constituent en dèmos et investissent l’espace public. Cette transcendance peut être qualifiée, à la suite de Legros notamment, de « radicale », quand elle est comprise et dirigée, non plus vers une source extérieure à l’homme et donc hétéronomique (telle que la Nature ou Dieu), mais vers un par-delà humain de l’homme. Soit la possibilité donnée à chaque individu de dépasser la seule expérience particulière de son humanité pratiquée au sein d’un cadre culturel et étatique spécifique, afin d’entrevoir une humanité plus large et précisément énigmatique par sa capacité à faire agir les hommes sur le fondement d’une expérience universelle d’appartenance à une humanité commune. En faisant l’expérience de la transcendance radicale, c’est-à-dire en déployant leur condition politique, les hommes comprennent qu’ils sont tout autre chose que de simples corps soumis à des besoins purement biologiques et animés par le désir d’un perfectionnement uniquement technologique de leurs capacités physiques et cognitives. A ce titre, c’est bien d’une destruction du politique que procède le transhumanisme. Celui-ci en vient à nier l’action politique des hommes par laquelle ils pouvaient faire « monde commun » et œuvrer à l’amélioration de leur condition humaine. La question qui animera la réflexion de cette présentation peut se formuler de la façon suivante : de quelle manière la condition humaine, dans son rapport à la liberté, à l’autonomie et à l’inconditionnement, soit la condition politique des hommes, est-elle menacée par le transhumanisme ? L’humain augmenté, tel qu’il est compris par le transhumanisme, repose sur l’adaptation totale des hommes à l’environnement dans lequel ils évoluent. Il ne s’agit plus de changer le monde pour le rendre humainement habitable, mais bel et bien de se changer soi-même pour survivre à un monde inhabitable, c’est-à-dire dans lequel la condition humaine ne trouve plus de possibilité d’être. Ce postulat implique de facto le renoncement au politique comme puissance de changement du monde, et l’acceptation consubstantielle d’une réalité indépassable à laquelle il ne reste d’autre alternative que l’adaptation, c’est-à-dire l’augmentation technologique. Ce renoncement au politique n’implique pas seulement une réduction des hommes à leur seule sphère privée, à un individualisme exacerbé (isolement), mais également et surtout, la disparition du monde commun (désolation), lieu depuis lequel se manifestait la singularité des êtres agissants, lieu d’expression de la liberté et du projet d’autonomie.

56 FERRANDO Francesca Posthumanism as a Post-Humanism, Post-Anthropocentrism and Post-Dualism

The notion of 'the human' is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term 'posthuman' provides an alternative. The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human. Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.

57 FINO Catherine Theologicum, Institut catholique de Paris Accueillir la variabilité des normes anthropologiques : l’apport de Georges Canguilhem

La peur du transhumanisme redouble dans le domaine des biotechnologies qui sont perçues comme une menace pour l’identité humaine et un détournement irresponsable de la volonté du Créateur. Cette intervention se propose d’évaluer comment la pensée de Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) permet de s’approprier un rapport plus apaisé à la variabilité des normes biologiques, mais aussi à la technique et aux formes déstabilisantes de la vie humaine. Le théologien pourra alors ressaisir la tradition chrétienne de l’hospitalité, par exemple vis-à-vis du handicap, pour penser un accueil bienveillant et critique des innovations biotechnologiques. En redéfinissant la santé comme capacité à s’adapter aux conditions de vie imposées par la maladie, Canguilhem pose que « l’homme normal c’est l’homme normatif, l’être capable d’instituer de nouvelles normes même organiques » (1943, Le normal et le pathologique, 2013, p. 116), tout en maintenant les limites imposées à la médecine par la réalité biologique. Mais l’effacement des frontières entre nature et technique suscite aujourd’hui la crainte d’une autonomie incontrôlable de la technique qui porte atteinte à l’identité et la liberté de l’humain. Deux conditions favorisent un usage éthique de la technique. D’une part, l’insécurité existentielle qui caractérise le vivant doit être préservée car elle stimule sa capacité d’adaptation. D’autre part, l’adaptabilité du vivant dépend des ressources qu’il reçoit de son milieu de vie : la reconnaissance réciproque en humanité redouble d’importance. Ce défi est déjà celui du handicap. La manière dont Canguilhem analyse « la monstruosité et le monstrueux » (La connaissance de la vie, 1965) interroge le regard porté sur ceux qui ont recours aux technologies d’augmentation de l’humain. Si Canguilhem reconnait la « crainte radicale » éprouvée devant ceux qui mettent en échec « les lois de la vie » (p. 171), il ose ajouter que « dès que la conscience a été induite à soupçonner la vie d’excentricité (…), qui lui interdirait de supposer la vie encore plus vivante, c’est-à-dire capable de plus grandes libertés… ? » (p. 173). L’histoire de la perception de la « monstruosité » montre que celle-ci est d’abord comprise comme l’effet d’une volonté démoniaque « de perversion du tableau des créatures » (p. 174). Mais lorsque l’embryologie identifie un retard ou arrêt de développement, « les lois de la vie » sont préservées et l’exclusion d’un vivant au motif de sa différence n’est plus recevable au plan éthique. Parmi les enseignements de la tradition chrétienne de l’hospitalité envers les plus vulnérables, l’anthropologie canguilhémienne permet de percevoir à nouveau frais les ressorts de la pédagogie proposés par Henri Bissonnier (1911-2004), un des pionniers de l’éducation spécialisée au 20ème siècle. Poser comme premier objectif la proposition d’un milieu éducatif animé par la charité, c’est introduire dans un milieu de vie les facteurs relationnels qui permettent d’expérimenter une interdépendance positive. Cela ne dispense pas de la responsabilité de poser les limites nécessaires pour soutenir la vie et l’émergence des sujets au cœur de la vulnérabilité, c’est-à-dire la créativité et la liberté des vivants.

58 FLAMMA Adam University of Lower Silesia Post humanistic female characters in video games - an outline

In the video game culture for many years, female characters have been shown in a variety of roles that affect both the gameplay and the world presented. The history of video games, however, illustrates an extremely interesting thing - the difference between human female characters and female SI or feminized women. This issue is one of the most surprising in the contemporary video game personology and is closely related to the concept of characters in video games in general, as well as the very functions of man and his technological counterpart. The aim of the paper is to create a broader problem, as well as an attempt to answer the question of what the uniqueness of post humanistic characters in video games is and how it relates to the game itself and the world shown in the game.

59 FOERSTER Yvonne Contemporary Neurocultures in the Light of Critical Posthumanism

Neurocultures (Ortega, Vidal 2011) are cultural practices in the wake of neuroscience and cognitive sciences that center on the concept of neural plasticity and neuro-engineering of cultural environments. This very diverse field is a symptom of the influence of neuroscience in combination with computer technology and AI on today's society and culture. Insights into the embodied nature of cognition and the plasticity of the brain open a broad spectrum of new applications and possibilities. From brain-machine interfaces to neuro-marketing, everything seems possible. In my talk, I want to shed light on how the neurocultures are reflected on in the humanities and how critical posthumanism can play a crucial role in the academic and public debate. The issue at stake is what it means to be human and what it can or should mean with regard to a future that will be shaped by intelligent technologies and the quest for sustainable lifestyles. Within the narrower perspective of philosophy there seem to exist only two approaches: On the one hand side, it is neurophilosophy with its affirmative perspective on the potential of neuroscience to manipulate, enhance moral and cognitive capabilities as well as naturalizing the mind (Patricia Churchland 2018). On the other hand side, there are approaches from philosophy of mind and phenomenology that critique neurodeterminism or brain-centrism, in order to propose a more holistic view on embodied cognition. My aim is to take this perspective as a starting point and construe a critical viewpoint that broadens the perspective and allows for an analysis on the social constituents of cognitions and the ontogenetic development of the brain. The view of the brain as social brain (Victoria Pitts-Taylor 2016) implies that socio-cultural embeddedness plays a vital role in how the functional architecture and cognitive abilities are developed. Given the strong influence of neuroscience and intelligent technologies on contemporary life-worlds, it makes sense to take their role in shaping brains seriously. I will take a critical look on examples of neurocultural practices (like the medicalization of behavioral diversities and standardization of bodies through wearables) from the perspective of a critical posthumanism. Critical posthumanism in my view allows for a qualitative analysis of human experience in changing life-worlds without referring to a fixed human nature, and an understanding of the continuity between nature and culture, biology and technology. I will take a closer look on the potentials as well as the ethical challenges of medical and cultural practices involving neural plasticity and neurodiversity.

60 GAILLARD Stefan & VISSER Jobke Pockets, dresses and identity – A philosophical reflection on clothing and identity

One can successfully argue that our identity, who we are, and the way we express this is in many ways shaped by the technology we have available to us. Over the course of centuries, new technologies have come and gone, leaving their mark on divergent societies and individuals. New techniques and means have historically empowered societies to develop rituals and further expressions of their cultural identity, in ways that include (but are in no way limited to) the forging and wearing of masks, safely marking one’s skin with tattoos or similar markings, and – in later societies – designing of traditional clothes, characteristic of specific cultures. Few developments, however, have influenced our sense of identity and means of expressing it as clothing. When looking at the formation of our identity and our ways of sharing it, this technology must not be overlooked and should, as we argue, be considered an integral part of identity theory. When one sees technology as ‘the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry’, not only the industrial processes concerned with the production of clothes, but also the clothes themselves can be seen as a form of technology. The increased usage of electrical devices within clothing will make garments even more evidently technological. We can envision this, for example, with e-fabrics, which are designed to be a hybrid between electronic technologies and more old-fashioned textile techniques. E-fabrics incorporate digital components into a textile that can serve either a purely aesthetic function or a functional, performance-enhancing one. These two elements also characterise clothing, but, as we argue, can in this case never be separated and are always intertwined. Technology in many forms is often designed in different ways for different genders, which is for example reflected by colour use, user interface design or other distinct characteristics. Quite visibly, clothing as a technology fits this trend perfectly: menswear certainly tends to differ from typical womenswear, not just in colour, but also to a large extent in form and design. Drawing on Judith Butler and Judy Wajcman, we assert that not just gender but identity as a whole is defined by performative acts. Limiting functionality of technologies we use in these acts in turn thus limits our identity, as it obstructs our capability to act. Clothing targeted at women is often far less functional, as evidenced by for example the distinct lack of pockets found in most ‘women clothing’. We posit that with the upcoming integration of electronical devices within clothing (through for example e-fabrics), the importance of functional aspects of garments will increase exponentially. It is thus crucial that, especially in this future scenario, functionality in clothing is equal for men and women. In light of this, we present a critical review of clothing and its importance to our identities (and by extension, to our relationships, both societal and individual).

61 GARBOWSKI Marcin The “Sphere of Ease” as the Ultimate Objective of Transhumanism

In my paper I shall argue that transhumanism, when assessed without a strong axiological bias in favor or against it, can provide a useful paradigm for resolving future practical problems of human beings and humanity as a whole. Although it does not necessarily provide an ultimate solution for such problems facing humanity as cosmic catastrophes, social inequality, suffering or death itself, it potentially leads to the creation of a “sphere of ease” which may enable human beings to fulfill the ideal of the good life as described in classic Greek and Roman philosophical treatises. I claim that artifacts and solutions resulting from the converging and accelerating technological progress, which are the primary subject of interest for transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom or Max More, do not necessarily provide a qualitative change in the human condition. Technology provides a framework that expands certain quantitative human properties, but it does not provide a solution for the flourishing of the potentially transformed human being. What technology can provide is the radical limitation of existential risks and increase the ability of our species to adapt to the ever changing conditions of the natural environment, forming a “sphere of ease,” where the volitional choices of individual human beings are determined to a larger degree by the personal choice of an axiological system and to a lesser degree by the constraints of the natural world. Thus, by the “sphere of ease” I mean a perpetuating “infantilization” of the human condition, where the expanding technosphere provides the role of a universal guardian protecting people from harm and at the same time permitting humans to act in a creative and imaginative way. This form of post-humanity is on the one hand dependent to a lesser degree on biological limitations and on the other hand it may help people attain, on a nearly universal scale, the classical ideal of the good life. In order to formulate arguments for my theses I will use analytical tools developed by Stanisław Kamiński from the Lublin School of Philosophy.

62 GERETTO Mattia Angelic nature, human nature and “Trans-/Posthuman beings”. Ancient and new paradigms for understanding the differences between Transhumanism and Posthumanism

For those who are familiar with the philosophical - angelological questions of the past, it is quite easy to find many and surprising similarities between the "superior power" of an angel and the hypothetical future characteristics of trans-posthuman beings. Both in philosophical reflections and in the artistic and cinematographic productions linked to Trans-Posthumanism, references to angels are much more frequent than one may suppose. Consider, for example, Habermas' reference to angelic intelligence attached to an hard disk in Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik? (2001 and 2002) - Chap. 2, § 3; or see the long monologues on angels featured in the film Blade Runner 2049 (2017). As Gilles Deleuze already emphasized in his lectures on Leibniz in 1987, the problems and concepts of theology, such as the concepts of Trinity, Transubstantiation and Resurrection have always been a source of powerful development for logic and philosophy. In this case I plan to begin with some theological and philosophical concepts of the angelological tradition in order to highlight the possible analogies and limits between angels and the more or less unconscious “transpositions” given inside Transhumanism and Posthumanism. Coming back to the late ancient Neoplatonic, Patristic or Stoic doctrines on the subtle angelic bodies, or recalling the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus on the language or mobility of angels, it does not mean doing an empty erudite exercise on theological philosophical archeology. On the contrary it means retrieving a big apparatus of concepts by means of which evaluating the different nuances with which Transhumanism and Posthumanism try to give birth to a new image and a new destiny for the human being. In my contribution there will be a first part which can be defined epistemic and metaphysical. It will also take into consideration also many definitions of the human being appeared in the history of philosophy, from Pico della Mirandola, to the Cambridge Platonists, Kant, Nietzsche and Scheler. To this part it follows an ethical reflection which considers the concept of respect its pivotal point. The main problems about human identity, discussed more or less explicitly within the different currents of thought inside Transhumanism and Posthumanism, they have their maximal level of criticality when the epistemic-metaphysical questions on the essence of “human nature” are then related to an ethical consideration, a “moral weight”, an “order of values”, a “price to pay”. (See for example the recent proposal to simply abandon the use of the expression “human nature”). I think that the exceptional conceptual richness about angelic nature is a precious resource in order to clarify not only the differences between Transhumanism and Posthumanism, but also to shed light on the multiple problems about "human identity" in itself and on the consequent ethical, juridical and religious implications.

63 GRENZ Daniel From Architecture to Body-Building: A transhumanist approach to Sustainable Design

In my conference presentation I want to focus on the reciprocity between the human body and architecture throughout different eras. Starting with a historical analysis it will be worked out how epoch changing diseases, e.g. tuberculosis, technologies for the diagnosis of these diseases, e.g. the x-ray, and trends of body modification, e.g. the beauty operation, all create an understanding of the human body, which becomes a role model for architectural designs in each new era. This analysis then leads to the question of how new technologies in the 21st century have shaped our understanding of the human body and how this self-image of humans can be applied in architectural design. Based on the writings of Volker Demuth I argue that this self-image is an understanding of a body that is not simply optimized but where the optimizations are forming the basis for the dream of a godlike – meaning eternal – life. My work in the field of architecture tries to use this observation as a basis for developing a speculative design methodology. As a first step in the design process, a deadly ill building – that means a building in danger of collapsing – is selected. In a series of interventions its “diseases” are not just cured, instead fatally ill “body parts” are replaced by optimized components. After the intervention the supporting structure – currently in danger of collapsing – is carried by a series of new shell structures, that can be constructed with a minimal usage of materials. Based on this change a reorganization of the floor plans and uses takes place. Looking from the perspective of the human body this means that the new exoskeleton weighs so much less and fits so much better, that the body is able to move much more efficiently – which then leads to a reorganization of the other body parts, e.g. organs, tissue and nerve channels. The tumorous digestion – the building’s metabolism, which doesn’t use resources optimally – is transformed to a circular system. All materials, that are entering the building, are being recycled and reused. Instead of wasting resources the building is able to produce energy, fresh water and food. This enables it to feed not only itself but also the other buildings in the district. If you apply these architectonic strategies of optimization, back to the body again, one can observe the rise of a new species: it is reformed through its own diseases and is becoming a being that creates resources for others by recycling their waste. Applying a perspective from the transhumanist discourse on architecture can result in a set of questions that are worthy of being discussed with a broader field of experts from different disciplines, among others: what kind of society is formed by this new species? Which system of governance and what changes in law are necessary and how can social justice be achieved if not every being is equal anymore?

Keywords Architecture, Body, Sustainable Design, Architectural Theory, Speculation, Transhumanism, Critical Posthumanism

64 GUÉRIN Vincent S’en remettre au « grand Autre » numérique

L’objectif de cette intervention est de cerner le raisonnement, mais aussi les desseins trans/post- humanistes en explorant, chez certains transhumanistes, l’idée d’un « grand Autre » numérique venant pallier notre incapacité grandissante à composer avec notre puissance technoscientifique. Dans un premier temps, nous explorerons l’idée de « Great moral project » développé par les philosophes Julian Savulescu et Ingmar Persson (University of Oxford) auteurs de Unfit for the future. The need for moral enhancement, qui associe l’augmentation morale et « La machine de Dieu », une agent artificiel supposé, dans un avenir proche, « monitorer » les croyances, désirs et intentions de chaque être humain. Par un autre biais, nous analyserons chez le philosophe Nick Bostrom (Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford), les relations qu’il noue entre l’augmentation morale, le risque anthropique existentiel, la superintelligence (artificielle), l’idée du singleton et du grand filtre (Great filter) et ce qui transparaît.

65 HAY Jonathan Fully Optimized: The (post)human art of speedrunning

Since the earliest home video game consoles were released in the early 1970s, gaming technologies have developed at an almost exponential rate, and in the modern day video games comprise one of the most prominent forms of popular culture. Accordingly, attendant (post)human gaming communities constantly grow and transform in parallel with the development of new gaming technologies and titles. One of the most interesting of these gaming communities is that of speedrunning, a community which grew significantly as a result of Amazon’s acquisition of the online videogame streaming service Twitch.tv in 2014. Fundamentally, speedrunning is a form of video game interaction where a player—either a (post)human or a bot—attempts to beat a given title in the shortest time possible. Over time, speedrunners collaboratively work to reduce the minimum amount of time that it is possible to beat a given video game in. Since almost any game can be speedrun, and there are no prerequisites or required skill levels or participation within the community, speedrunning holds a widespread appeal for gamers both hardcore and casual. Those who cannot play, can watch. Ostensibly then, the record boards hosted by speedrun.com are a noteworthy example of (post)human egalitarianism and community in praxis. On closer examination however, speedrunning communities often mirror many of the societal inadequacies of wider society. The digital game researcher Sonia Fizek argues that video games based around ‘self-acting and self- playing AI’ give rise to a significant posthuman mode of gameplay by refuting anthropocentric conceptions and troubling the assumed primacy of the (post)human subject.18 The popularity of speedrunning however, attests to the appeal of a different and almost antithetical variety of (post)human expression. Speedrunning, it can be argued, is a form of (post)human expression manifested not through the pre- existing content of a video game, but through the player’s approach to gameplay. In video games, mixed reality and virtual reality, the (post)human accesses a site of almost direct intersection with technological novelty, and so through the processes of speedrunning games and through the interactions within speedrunning communities, the (post)human finds new forms of expression that are themselves mediated through technological novelty. By choosing to speedrun, players actively impose a discrete temporal limit on the inhuman algorithms of videogames, and so attempt to conquer and thereby curtail their technological novelty. This paper takes as its focus the speedrunning community of the videogame Super Mario Odyssey (2017), and attempts to determine to what extent speedrunning communities can be considered a form of posthuman community. This paper poses the question, can speedrunning ultimately be considered a (post)human art form?

18 Sonia Fizek, ‘Self-playing games: Rethinking the state of digital play’, Academia.edu. Accessed 21 January 2019. p. 5. 66 HAYASHI Mitsuhiro Cornell University The Ontological Pluralism of Posthuman Beings

Steven Greenblatt’s Marvelous Possessions (1991), which is one of the most influential works in New Historicism, dealt with the representational violence exercised by the West on the non-West. The significance of Marvelous Possessions is that Greenblatt observed the link between the emergence of the representational system and the establishment of the hegemony of the West in the non-West. While Foucault depicted the emergence of the West’s representational system though tracing the history of European thought from the Renaissance in The Order of Things, Greenblatt captured its emergence by depicting the process of homologising exotic things in the non-West. However, this homologation process is not merely the process of neglecting concrete figures of exoticism in the non-West. It was also the process of excluding other potentiality of the becoming of beings and things. The representational system separated the picture of the non-West from non-Western anthropological ontologies at the same time as transducing exotic things into the West’s representations. As Greenblatt’s Marvelous Possession targeted the encounter of the West with the New World, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul (2011) also depicted the encounter of European missionaries with Tupinamba Indian tribes in Brazil in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. However, Viveiros de Castro’s focus is not the establishment of the West’s rule in the New World but rather the difficulty of christianising the indigenous people. According to Viveiros de Castro, certain published missionary texts reflect the Tupinamba Indians’ worldview. European missionaries were annoyed by the Tupinamba Indians’ ‘inconstancy’ since they easily became Christians but immediately returned to their unchristian ways. Behind the Tupinamba Indians’ ‘inconstancy’, Viveiros de Castro detected the process of ‘other-becoming’ and not the process of being. Unlike the European missionaries, the Tupinamba Indians did not conceive of themselves by relying on an internal and consistent identity separated from the exterior world. In this paper, to address the question of how the notion of humanity will transform after the collapse of the West–East dichotomy after the end of the Cold War, we claim the need to explore not only the social- cultural diversity of posthuman beings beyond the systematic suppression of dehumanized minorities but also the anthropological-ontological plurality of posthuman beings beyond the modern Western nature- culture relation.

67 HEIKES Chelsea (seah) AnthropoThing: Beyond the Human Gaze

Olafur Eliasson has just hauled 30 icebergs from Greenland to London so that audiences may watch them melt. This move, elaborated as an “opportunity” to reflect on the immediacy of climate change by experiencing icebergs actually melting, highlights some of the major antagonisms of Humanism lurking about in our artistic, philosophical, and critical frameworks. Clearly someone wants us to believe that this gesture, regardless of its (measurable) impact on the nonhuman stakeholders involved, is somehow justified as a “means to an end”. In this paper, I will elaborate on how this particular art piece (and the frameworks that it upholds) illustrates what is required to make a move toward Posthuman methods of life. Eliasson’s latest installation, titled Ice Watch London, is situated on the River Thames in front of the Tate Modern and supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. We have a wealthy white male artist backed by notoriously wealthy white male- dominated institutions. The gesture itself – the removal and transport of sizable chunks of an iceberg – shows zero empathy for the nonhuman entities directly or indirectly involved. It is a gesture of domination, of human-over-the-world, and ... well let’s just face it ... an odious display of power and wealth. It is cloaked in language harmonious to neo-liberal climate change rhetoric. Needless to say it falls flat. From a Posthumanist perspective, as I understand it, there is no rhetoric swaying enough to justify this piece of art. It has been installed 3 times since 2014 – does that mean that 90 iceburgs have actually been removed and transported in this “ongoing series”? How could we ever measure if in fact the work is justifiable? Is it even ethical to consider such measurement? Is it possible to move past the human gaze - that has historically objectified every thing? In the paper, I propose to do a close reading of Braidotti’s work on Posthumanism, alongside Walter Benjamin’s “A Critique of Violence” in order to think through these questions. In doing so, I will analyze the art world’s role in perpetuating Humanist ideals while objectifying language appropriated from Posthumanist critique. While I’ve used Eliasson’s work as an example here, I will also address a few other works of art that I’ve recently witnessed. Included in this will be my analysis of Transhumanist values in the Sci-fi film, Transcendence starring Johnny Depp, as an example illustrating the problems of inserting Humanist ideals into AI. This analysis will move me to consider what Posthuman methods could be applied to art practice in the age of the Anthropocene, as well as potential advantages and disadvantages of such methods.

68 HIETALAHTI Jarno Humanity and Monopoly of Humor. Imaging a Completely Different Sense of Humor

In my presentation, I will tackle the question: how to program funny robots, and why? What does it mean if an artificial intelligence has a sense of humor? The very recent trend among artificial intelligence studies is to create a robot who looks and behaves like a human being (e.g. humanoid robot Sophia who became the first robot to receive citizenship of any country). It is a widely accepted idea that humor must be involved in some way in this process. The ideal machine would be able to both recognize and appreciate human humor as well as to respond to it with its own witty remarks. But, it is often noted, these machines should not outwit human beings; their sense of humor should be (at maximum) on the same level as humans’. (Ferreira 2016). However, from a philosophical point of view, this setting is problematic. I argue that a sense of humor is not a positive feature which can be added separately to an algorithm but a part of a worldview. If machines are to learn the art of humor, they need to have a unique worldview, and as Raskin (1996) claims, they should understand humor. I claim that humor is bound to a being's paradoxical situation in the world, and this precondition holds for artificial intelligence, too, if they are to have a similar sense of humor to human beings. If someone or something is to be called humorous, it is not enough to be funny. Genuine humor demands more. If one wants to program a machine that can be called genuinely humorous, it must be based on a plausible definition of humor. As various humor scholars agree, this demands much more than just a technical wordbook reference: human humor requires, among others, spontaneity and empathy, and a solid understanding of the nature of language. In general, humor is an interpersonal feature that is learned throughout life. We need to understand ourselves and others around us if we are to succeed in humorous interaction. In short, a sense of humor requires a worldview, too. Instead of teaching machines how to be funny or how to create best possible jokes, artificial intelligence should learn to be humorous (an intriguing idea from the field of machine learning). If this trait is based on a unique worldview, then these machines should have their own worldview, too. The posthuman challenge is, then, that human beings do not necessary recognize humorous remarks by, say, cyborgs or artificial intelligence. If we are intellectually honest with artificial intelligence and the quest for funniness, then the machines should have a real chance to learn humor by their own. It might be that machines do not eventually recognize and appreciate humor in similar manner as human beings. Artificial humor might stem from radically different sources in radically different forms.

69 HONDA Kojiro Kanazawa Medical University Theology of Ancient Shinto-ism and Japanese Robot-culture

In this paper, I will discuss about the relation between ancient Shinto-ism and contemporary robot-culture in Japan. Shinto-ism deems that the universe is a kind of life. So the god didn’t create the universe. The god is the universe’s spirit. Stated differently, when the universe started spontaneously, at the same time the god started to exist. The first god’s name was “Amano-minaka-nushi” (= the lord at the center of the universe) and it was impersonal deity. At first Amano-minaka-nushi deified two competences which were separated from the god. The former was Takami-musubi, which represented the force of expansion. The latter was Kami-musubi, which represented the force of centering. These two conflicting forces gave dynamics to the universe. Secondly, this dynamics gave birth to three elements of material. They were fluid, soft body, and rigid body. These were also deified. Shinto-ism deems every material is mixture of these three elements and each material has its own mixing rate of the three elements. Thirdly, in spiritual sphere, Takami-musubi brought forth the soul of courage (Ara-mitama) and the soul of intelligence (Kushi-mitama) on the one hand. Kami-musubi brought forth the soul of fraternity (Nigi-mitama) and the soul of love (Saki-mitama) on the other hand. Lastly, thankful that these 4 souls were bonded to the three elements, there began existent the eight forces in the universe: motion and stillness; agglomeration and diffusion; tension and laxity; fission and fusion. This 3-elements-4-souls-8-forces triggered creation and proliferation in the cosmos. Even in stones, Japanese can recognize the stones’ souls; why not recognize the souls of robots? And now the verbal competences of things are getting unsealed by contemporary technology. When the robots start to speak, that invokes an old memory of co-existence and co-prosperity between human being and nature in Japanese people. And nowadays, in the western world, the concept of “Transhumanism” occurs. Transhumanism intends to fuse together human body and technology to make a new sapience which is beyond homo sapience. If we realize quasi-body with robotic technology, then will we soon move to substitute robotic body for natural body? In Shinto-ism, it seems that Transhumanism cannot be accepted easily. Because in the framework of Shinto-ism, our bodies are a kind of shrine to worship our own Nao-hi (straight spirit), and they should be purified at all times. Shinto-ism thinks that people were the most purified when they came into the world. That is to say that the begging is the ideal state. In the process of our life, we accumulate impurities and they should be eliminated. Shinto-ism recommends you to get the first innocent spirit and souls with purification. And the purification is the condition to be moral. If we accept irreversible transformation of our body with machine, then we cannot get back to the innocent state. Consequently, our Nao-hi will work badly with leading to the disconnection with Amano-minaka-nushi (the spirit of the universe). That is why it seems that Japanese will not accept Transhumanism in a general way.

70 JEANNIN Hélène Orange Labs – Département de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales Le monde politico-économique : stratégies et réseaux d’influence transhumanistes

Les idées transhumanistes se développent parmi des acteurs distincts dont la convergence des actions, des discours ou des promesses à visée parfois auto-prophétique, tend à convaincre une population rétive à accepter des évolutions allant dans le sens d’un corps technologisé. Des grands acteurs issus de l’industrie, de l’économie et d’institutions diverses élaborent des alliances via des partenariats de recherche garantissant une transdisciplinarité qui est un des leitmotivs des TC (Technologies Convergentes). Des stratégies d’investissement massif sont en lien avec des exercices de relations publiques. Le monde politico-économique se trouve à la croisée de ces différentes sphères. Des moyens parfois conséquents et ses réseaux d’influence contribuent à l’essaimage et à la circulation des idées. En l’occurrence, il est porteur d’une vision du monde qui se nourrit des perspectives sur la capacité de réparer ou d’augmenter le corps humain. À son actif certains rapports, qui deviennent automatiquement des références majeures pour les décideurs dans le monde entier. A titre d’exemple, celui de la National Intelligence Council (NIC), bureau d’analyse et d’anticipation géopolitique et économique de la Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), qui met en exergue les principales tendances et les développements technologiques auxquels s’attendre dans les 20 prochaines années. La version Alternative Worlds, Global Trends 2030 publiée fin 2012 et traduite en plusieurs langues a fait l’objet d’une couverture médiatique importante, notamment en raison de son contenu : elle stipule que les individus pourront choisir d’augmenter leur corps et que les défis moraux et humains de l’augmentation seront inévitables. En réalité, depuis 1999, rapports américains rédigés par des experts (nanotechnologies, NBIC, CKTS, ...) et européens alternent, en réaction. Des programmes sont mis en œuvre de façon plus ou moins ambiguë (projets subsidiés de Union Européenne dans ses programmes de R&D, projets de la DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) aux États-Unis). Des conférences mêlent chercheurs, politiciens, entrepreneurs et journalistes. La session 2016 du forum économique mondial de Davos a fait dire à certains que nous sommes entrés dans une ère de révolution post-humaniste. En marge ou à côté de ces grand-messes figurent des cas plus isolés mais qui attisent tout autant l’attention sinon la curiosité des médias : Zoltan Istvan, candidat à l’élection nationale américaine de 2016 ; Giuseppe Vatinno, membre transhumaniste au Parlement italien… Et un parti politique transumaniste cherche à s’implanter dans différents pays dans le monde. Le terme de transhumanisme devient de plus en plus connu du public. Se pencher sur les connexions et les réseaux du monde politico-économique permet de saisir leurs modalités d’influence, leurs postures et leurs approches. Il nous éclaire sur les enjeux sociétaux dont il souhaite se saisir et les combats qu’il entend mener. C’est ce dont nous proposons de parler.

71 JEKUNEN Jaakko Desiring Production in the Art Classroom: Towards Posthuman Art Education with Deleuze and Guattari

As philosophers of education and art education theorists we need to acknowledge the posthuman turn19 and account for the different ways human and non-human agents are entangled in learning encounters. The aim of my paper is to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s (1972) concept desiring production from the point of view of contemporary discourses on more than human ontologies, entanglement and fluid subjectivity.20 I argue that desiring production remains a valuable insight. In the first part of my paper, I lay out my reading of desiring production. First, I situate this concept in an immanent materialistic ontology. Second, I show how this concept renders desire not as something lacking but as that which produces. Third, I explore how desiring production is the perpetual becoming evident everywhere. Different flows connect and disengage as desiring machines are formed and disintegrated. In this sense, desiring production is an immanent flow of becoming21. In the second part of my paper, I apply the concept of desiring production to describe an art classroom22. Engagement in artistic practices often means utilizing different objects and instruments. The posthuman shift here replaces focusing on the learner’s subjectivity with seeing subjectivity as fluid and resulting from the entanglement of the human and the nonhuman. In terms of desiring production23, different connections in the flows of materials and the learners actualize desiring machines which produce ‘art’. Here production is the result of the agency of the entangled desiring machine of the human-nonhuman. I argue that desiring production accounts better than traditional conceptualizations for the role of learner independent factors (especially unconscious flows and non-human agency). Conclusion: I do not propose to go back to desiring production as a complete description of a posthuman world, I merely intend to propose that the reconceptualization of desire as productive is an important insight we can incorporate to current theorization. It seems especially fruitful when describing the activities of an art classroom.

Sources of the abstract Bennett, Jane 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham and London, Duke University Press. Braidotti, Rosi 2006. Posthuman, All Too Human. Towards a New Process Ontology. Theory Culture & Society. 23(7-8). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix 1972. L’Anti-Œdipe. Paris, Éd. Minuit. Hickey-Moody, Anna 2016. A Femifesta for Posthuman Art Education: Visions and Becomings. In Carol Taylor, et al. (ed.) 2016. Posthuman Research Practices in Education. Palgrave Macmillan Limited. Kuby, Candace R. 2017. Why a paradigm shift of ‘more than human ontologies’ is needed: putting to work poststructural and posthuman theories in writer’s studio. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Vol. 30. No. 9, 877-896 Taylor, Carol A. and Hughes, Christina (2016). Introduction. In Taylor, Carol et al. (ed.) 2016. Posthuman Research Practices in Education. Palgrave Macmillan Limited. Taylor, Carol A. and Ivinson, Gabrielle 2013. Editorial. Material Feminisms: New Directions for Education. Gender and Education. Vol. 25, No. 6, 665-670. Tervo, Juuso 2017. Between Nonhuman Spirits and Posthuman Futures of Art Education.

19 I am of course not the first to demand this, see e.g. Taylor and Ivinson (2013), Hickey-Moody (2016), Tervo (2017) and Taylor and Hughes (2016). 20 I do not propose to replace contemporary theorization, but to instead complement different approaches (like Barad’s intra-action or Bennett’s (2010) vibrant matter. 21 My reading comes close to process ontological views: e.g. Braidotti (2006) draws from Deleuze and Guattari’s work in a similar vein. In this paper however, I limit to discussing the insights I believe to be gained from the concept desiring production. 22 In this part of the paper I am drawing especially from my experience as an art teacher in the Nordic context. I include a short presentation of the context of art education in the Nordic setting and my background to situate this part of the paper. 23 Kuby (2017) has used Deleuze (among others) to rethink literacy learning and proposed the term "literacy desiring” to capture the various ways of intra-action and entanglement evident in learning literacy. 72 KACZMAREK Katarzyna Cognitive human enhancement: Where do we stand?

Are we good enough? Not really, it appears. The history of human kind is a perfect example of the fact that humans are never satisfied with what they have and always strive for more. The history of human kind is one of constant enhancement across all fields of life. People have always worked towards overcoming their limitations using natural and artificial means. This process can be thought of as human enhancement, repair, therapy or treatment. Enhancement can take many forms and shapes. For many this process is something only seen in science fiction movies with the likes of Eddie Mora from “Limitless”, Vincent Freeman from “Gattaca”, Robocop or recently popular Marvel characters. However this enhancement is happening now, whether people are happy about it or not. Considering the scope of the human enhancement field, this presentation will explore the subject of cognitive enhancement. It will consist of three parts, discussing the wide definition of cognitive enhancement, describing the most modern methods of human enhancing technology and finally presenting the consequences and challenges that it poses to the world. Cognitive enhancement may be shortly described, after Nick Bostrom, as amplification or extension of the core capabilities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external informational systems. Cognitive enhancement is not something new. Education and training are examples of the cognitive enhancement, as well as yoga, meditation, caffeine, herbal extracts and medical drugs as Ritalin, used in ADHD treatment. Thinking about cognitive enhancement as training, education or pills can invoke positive feelings, however this presentation seeks to present three modern examples of cognitive human enhancement that look to the future and are portrayed in science fiction. The three specific examples below will be the subject of this presentation: TDCS - Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, a deep brain stimulation technique that uses electrodes placed outside the head to direct tiny painless currents across the brain. In effect the currents make it easier for neurons to fire and form connection that enable learning. CRISPR – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, one of the most important developments in recent years involving gene splicing technique. It greatly improves the ability to accurately and efficiently “edit” the human genome in embryos and adults. KERNEL Brain Computer Interface. Kernel start-up is looking to offer computer chip implants that can be inserted into a human's brain order to give them greater in-built processing power. The company is working on memory tools, but the main idea is to unveil the full potential of the mankind. The main aim is to fully explore the human aspect. The third part of the presentation will focus on the issues that cognitive enhancement raises in the modern world. Ethical, social, biological, medical and moral consequences are just some examples. Furthermore, it is important to ask the question of what challenges arise in modern society from human cognitive enhancement and its' potential consequences.

73 KADLECOVÁ Jana Palacky University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology Umwelt Extended: Towards new approaches in the study of the technologically modified body

The paper will present theoretical reflection of a long-term anthropological research of body-hacking practices, conducted in Czech Republic. Strong emphasis will be placed on the possibilities and limitations of the conceptualization of the body, which is a product of techno-human interconnections, in social- scientific research. This issue is logically directing towards theoretical and conceptual foundations of symmetrical anthropology taking into account the role of non-human actors and the materiality of the world (based on the works of Bruno Latour, John Law, etc.). This study critically reflects upon the traditional foundations of social sciences that deal with an individual’s subjective perspective when studying corporeality. This leads to a reproduction of the dichotomy of subject/object and body/mind which are revealed as restrictive in the research of technological modifications and cybercorporeality in general and require a clear definition of the concepts of the “body” and “technologies” that are, however, limiting from the point of view of the lived experience of their users. The question arises of where the human body ends and technologies begin, whether the human body in its “natural” state has a certain integrity and whether something like “a natural state” is or is not a fictional construct. Theoretical questions will be discussed also in connection with the methodological ones, while proposing application of concepts from different disciplines then anthropology – for example the bioanalytical concept of Umwelt of Jakob von Uexküll – that promise to help to overcome the anthropomorphic bias and problem of representationalism in social-scientific research.

74 KAYE Lydia Posthuman Forms: Art, Performance and The Queer Body

Feminist and posthumanist critiques of technology contribute towards feminism’s continuing attempt to refigure the human by challenging the dualisms of traditional philosophical thought through which identity has been constructed (Braidotti, 2010; 2013; Toffoletti, 2007; Balsamo, 1996; Haraway, 1991). These feminists argue that in order for emancipation from gender discrimination to take place, society must create and consume non-dualistic, liberatory figurations of the body. This paper examines how queer artists and performers are using technology, fashion, make-up and prosthesis to create posthuman forms, and contribute to ongoing debates surrounding the body, gender, subjectivity and embodiment. My use of the term ‘posthuman’ is aligned with feminist and new materialist interpretations of posthuman bodies as ‘queer bodies’, ‘techno bodies’ and any bodies that rupture a coherent narrative of the human subject (Halberstam; Braidotti). This paper visually analyses three queer artists and performers in relation to posthumanism, new materialism, performance theory and Deleuze and Guattari’s transformative concept of ‘becoming’. The artists and performers examined are the drag performers Sasha Velour and Isshe Hungry, and queer drag artist Salvia. Sasha Velour and Isshe Hungry are two separate drag artists, both of whom use fashion, technology, make- up and prosthetic creations to disrupt binaries of male/female, human/machine and human/animal through the adoption of transspecies drag. Through their physicality and use of their bodies on stage, Velour and Hungry draw attention to the complexity of posthumanism and its relationship to both technology and nature. Salvia is a drag artist who digitally manipulates images of her own body to create posthuman forms. The use of flesh in Salvia’s work is essential as she distorts and merges her body with objects, technology and nature. By reshaping and reimagining the human body, Salvia offers an intimate encounter with otherness, which generates conversations about what it means to be human. Through experimenting with posthuman forms, these artists explore the materiality of the body as it exists in a globalised and technological world. Whilst the posthuman turn forces upon us a reconsideration of the human, it also relocates science and technology at the centre of the philosophical discussions about subjectivity. The posthuman condition is the bodily transformations and augmentations that come about through our engagements with technology that complicate the idea of ‘human essence’. Therefore, the posthuman emerges by interrogating what it means to be human in a digital age. The queer performers and artists discussed in this paper are repositioning the posthuman by revaluing it as an embodied mode of being.

75 KOUSOULAS Stravros Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Theory Chair Drift, Naturally: A Transaffective Unfolding

As philosopher Gilbert Simondon states, both physical and technical individuals determine their genetic and their epigenetic context through their technicities and through their structural couplings: from the genetic and the epigenetic to the epiphylogenetic. Moreover, if indeed living is a process of cognition then the signs that populate the medium of any coupling are what essentially drive evolution. Decisively, the cognition of signs is not a matter of a digital cognition, this sign over that, but rather a constant ethological — hence, affective — practice. Therefore, the medium, as the continuum of the singular and ordinary points of a technicity, involves both the production and the perception of signs. Consequently, in the inter-exchangeability of matter, energy and information that any structural coupling potentializes, affects do not belong to an individual alone, but rather transaffectivity becomes the constitutive aspect of any process of individuation. If any individual is determined only by its affects as they are catalysed in the technicities it unfolds, then one can no longer speak of posthumanism or transhumanism but of transaffectivity. Among genetic, epigenetic and epiphylogenetic elements there unfolds a play of intensive material informational exchange, in the form of signs, which determine both the structural and operational affects of any entity. Hence, evolution returns to its original Latin meaning, namely from the term evolutio: to unfold. Contrary to the logics of the survival of the fittest, unfolding does not dictate in advance which forms come forth, but instead, it determines which of them are not viable. This is the main argument of Jacob van Uexküll, the pioneer of ecological thinking, against Darwinism: a theory of evolution should be a theory of fewer folds, an unfolding of folds, and not a theory that explains the complexity of unfolding by introducing a static element that drives it; nothing drives the unfolding but the unfolding itself. In other words, it is the condition that brings forward a new world, one that is viable through the very differentials that determine the condition, and not the other way around. In this paper I will examine how structurally coupled individuals unfold an intensive continuum where there is no natural selection prescribing any outcome, but a continuous natural drift. The affective potentials that produce and are produced in the technicities of the drifted unfolding do not need to be the best, but simply good enough. Put succinctly, evolution, or more precisely, individuation, is satisficing rather than optimising. Love — human, machinic, everything in between — and not Darwinian struggle or opposition, is what determines evolution: not an affective diminishing but instead an affirmative, transaffective amplification, where any individual structurally coupled with another, brings forth a world through an aberrant nuptial, not because it must but simply because it can.

Keywords: Structural Coupling, Technicity, Individuation, Ethology, Epiphylogenetics

Bio: Dr. ir. Stavros Kousoulas studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and at TU Delft. Since 2012, as a researcher and lecturer, he has been part of the Theory Chair of the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft. He received his doctoral title cum laude from IUAV Venice participating in the Villard d’ Honnecourt International Research Doctorate. He has published and lectured in Europe and abroad. He is a member of the editorial board of Footprint Delft Architecture Theory Journal since 2014.

76 KRIMAN Anastasia The main questions of philosophy posed by Kant in the perspective of posthumanism

This paper is devoted to the revision of the main questions of Immanuel Kant's philosophy from the perspective of posthumanistic anthropology. In his treatise "Logic" Kant put four main questions for philosophy: "What can I know?", "What should I do?", "What do I dare hope?", "What is Human?". Metaphysics answers the first question, morality on the second, religion on the third. The culmination of these three questions is the last: "What is Human?". In fact, Kant writes, all three questions can be reduced to the latter, that is, to the field of philosophical anthropology. The 20th century is marked by a crisis of humanism. Friedrich Nietzsche "killed God", plunged the thought into a lethargic dream, singing the hymn to Superman. Michel Foucault, in his work "The Words and Things", referring to the crisis of humanism, draws attention to the fact that "in order to awaken the thought from sleep ...it is necessary to destroy "the Kant’s quadrilateral" to the ground". In the philosophical field of 20th and 21st century, there are various concepts at the basis of which lies a new understanding of Human (anti-humanism, transhumanism, posthumanism, metahumans). The largest of which are transhumanism and posthumanism. In this paper, their comparative analysis will be carried out. We have identified the main differences between these concepts. Transhumanism, despite its technocracy, is a continuation of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Posthumanism acts as a new conceptual approach to Human and his future. We propose to rethink the Kantian questions on the basis of a posthumanistic anthropology since the emergence of deanthropocentric humanism represented a new turn in philosophy. Posthumanism can be characterized by three basic concepts: post-humanism, post-dualism, post-anthropocentrism (Francesca Ferrando). We turn to the "house of being" - to language, in order to trace the mutation of "the Kant’s quadrilateral" with respect to the basic posthumanistic theses. The article contains a lexical and semantic analysis of the four questions of Kant. Their original German version is taken as a basis: "Was kann ich wissen?", "Was soll ich tun?", "Was darf ich hoffen?", "Was ist der Mensch?". In our opinion, the reference to the original allows us to highlight the conceptual part, the rethinking of which in a posthumanistic way, allows a new interpretation of the main issues of philosophy. As a result, new questions of philosophy will be put. And the main question of contemporary philosophy instead of "What is Human?" becomes the question "What Posthuman is becoming?".

Keywords: humanism, transhumanism, posthumanism, Kant, Kant’s quadrangle, Human, Posthuman, Inhuman, the phenomenon of Death, nomadic Subject

77 KROULIK Milan Buddhist Chanting as a Decentering of Subjectivity

What I aim to explore in my presentation is how the practice of Thai Buddhist chanting creates an experience wherein the embodied subjectivity gets decentered or even replaced in the cosmic flow of sound. I base this analysis on a combination of my fieldwork in a Bangkok temple and a speculative application of concepts. In order to arrive at an understanding how the experience where the “I” as a carrier of the human gets temporally displaced or at least overwhelmed by something other, I will draw on machinic theory (Bryant 2014). By machine I mean, following the Deleuzian tradition, an assemblage of heterogeneous parts producing a certain effect. What is important, is that “a machine is composed of parts that impose constraints on each other's movements” (Morita 2015, 45). The chanting machine is a combination of corporeal and incorporeal machines, which include Buddhist theory. The human machine can produce sound which makes the chanting event possible, becomes part of the chanting machine, which in turn effects the human. The effect I am concerned with here is the experience where the body is not an expression of an individual's subjectivity, but of a superceding chanting subjectivity that precedes and engulfs each present body. It is precisely the constraints that produce the effect of the receding individual subjectivity. The materially caused surrounding sound combines with frantic searches in the chanting books for inexperienced laypeople, while more advanced laypeople and monks focus on the materiality of the utterances of the chanted words. Each body is seated separately and faces the (statues of the) Buddha. The body becomes a mediator of the flow of the chants and its task is to make it possible for each individual to enter this flow through producing sound waves. The concept of subjectivity from which this cultural technique (Krämer & Bredekamp 2003) emerged is closer to notions of distributed cognition: Buddhist teachings take among their central tenets that there is no self (anātman), because any subject is the product of much more complex, pre-human processes – something that can be noticed in chanting practice. Not only does a self disappear while chanting, the material limitations of the chanting machine force this disappearance. Still, for laypeople this can be but temporary, as when the material surroundings change, so will subjectivity reappear. This has of course been lost in quasi-Protestant Western Buddhism which, conditioned by the Cartesian culture of ignoring corporeal effects on the incorporeal, considered the teachings as eventually realized in individual mediation practice as central, but not the wealth of ritual machines that had emerged in many Buddhist conditioned societies. This includes techniques to modulate one's voice production, which Buddhist monks learn (Chen 2005, Soeta et al. 2014). Thus, the potential for thinking the post-human has mostly disappeared from more mainstream accounts of Buddhist traditions. One aim of this presentation is to make possible a thought practice based on the encounter between Buddhist life-worlds and post-humanist approaches, such as machinic and media theories.

78 KRUK Anna University of Lower Silesia Image of Superhuman in Popular Culture: Film and Television Through Technological Development

The author of the presentation would like to show the image of a Superhuman as depicted in cinematography in the context of the technological development. To properly describe the field of cinematography, there was a requirement to go beyond the standard perception of the tenth muse. The image of a Superhuman will be shown in a defined range of movies and television series from historical perspective. The context of technology concerns not only the development of technology in everyday life and its impact on the functioning of people, but also its impact on film solutions and scenarios. The first part of the paper will be based on a review of the definition of Superhuman and as a vaster form of understanding it. The best basic key reference will be the Übermensch concept included in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as the analysis of his work in the context of transhumanism based on the studies of Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. The author will focus on the preparation of a list of features that clearly describe the Superhuman, to put a comparative framework for further consideration. The author will try to find modern definitions that describe the contemporary Superhuman to continue the film analysis. The next part of the paper will present images of a Superhuman in a classic film such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope”, Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the original version of “Superman” directed by Richard Donner. The author will make an attempt to include unobvious cases of assigning this vision to films such as “Fight Club”, “Compulsion”, “Saw”. The superman concept in a very limited version was also the basis for the creation of the convention of super heroes. Their skills cannot be unequivocally compared to the individualism and moral code of Übermensch. But what is important, their evolution from the first film adaptations to contemporary interpretations has distanced them from the classic naive idealism, distinguishing dark features that go beyond the established social norms. The best example will be a series of films about already mentioned Superman. Various authors have been creating his image over almost forty years in a way identifying him with the coexisting world. The author will also recall the whole range of super heroes with features that are both the desire of people or in a way at their fingertips. The presentation of these various features seems to be the point where the author will go to the merits of reflecting the reality of super hero characters in the current world in which we come closer to creating their mirror reflections. The way in which superheroes epitomize the contemporary technical achievements associated with the expansion of human capabilities in the field of physicality and mental abilities is surprising. This is a moment of afterthought in which the thesis about the infiltration of the film imaginary scenarios to the real world arises. The final conclusions, which are contained in the last part of the paper, have the features of a vision based on possible scenarios that are also related into the film areas. The author in the summary will want to convey how the striving to cross the boundaries of possibilities has always been present in human behavior. The author will also ask the question whether visions that presently amaze us or even terrify are a probable version of the future.

Keywords: Superhuman, over-man, Übermensch, popular culture, philosophy, tenth muse, extended abilities, technology, humans, humanity, moral code, superheros

79 LAROCHE Loïc Université catholique de Lille, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines Le post/transhumanisme dans les médias: l’apparition et la diffusion du transhumanisme dans la presse française

Corine Lesnes, correspondante du journal Le Monde en Californie, chargée notamment des questions de société, explique dans les colonnes du grand quotidien du soir : « S’il fallait résumer la philosophie transhumaniste d’une idée, la plus extrême mais aussi la plus saisissante, ce serait celle-ci : un jour, l’homme ne sera plus un mammifère. Il se libérera de son corps, ne fera plus qu’un avec l’ordinateur et, grâce à l’intelligence artificielle, accédera à l’immortalité ». Les journalistes s’intéressent au transhumanisme. Les premiers articles à son sujet apparaissent dans la presse française au début des années 2000, mais restent dans un premier temps rares et isolés. A partir de 2015, la presse française s’y intéresse davantage et amplifie sa couverture de la question. Elle évoque dès lors régulièrement le transhumanisme, le décrit, rapporte ses principaux évènements et son évolution. Elle donne la parole à ses inspirateurs, aux intellectuels qui portent le mouvement, aux principaux auteurs qui l’abordent ou en traitent et notamment à quelques auteurs à succès, comme Luc Ferry, qui s’en sont saisis, lui donnant une audience auprès du grand public. Le projet de notre contribution est de présenter le regard des médias et en particulier de la presse française sur le transhumanisme. A cet effet, nous travaillerons à partir des archives des journaux Le Monde, Le Figaro et Libération. Nous les compléterons par des articles significatifs d’autres journaux y compris des journaux américains, notamment le New York Times et le Washington Post, afin situer les journaux français dans une perspective plus large. Nous nous intéresserons d’abord à la place du transhumanisme dans la presse, à son apparition puis son évolution, aux principaux journalistes concernés, aux auteurs invités aussi, ainsi qu’aux types d’articles. Nous chercherons ensuite à savoir comment la presse décrit le transhumanisme, comment elle le définit, quelle image elle lui donne. Nous chercherons notamment si les principaux journaux français présentent le transhumanisme comme une idée ou un courant d’idée mondial ou bien comme une idée étrangère et plus particulièrement américaine, californienne. Enfin, nous nous demanderons si la presse française constate un tournant post-humaniste, c’est-à-dire si elle aborde l’idée d’un transhumanisme non anthropocentrique.

Bibliographie sommaire Ouvrages : Doat David ; Damour Franck, Transhumanisme : quel avenir pour l’humanité ? Paris, Le cavalier bleu, 2018, 205 p. Ferry Luc, La révolution transhumaniste. Paris, Plon, 2016, 216 p. Fourcrier Annie, Coppolani Antoine (dir), La Californie : périphérie ou laboratoire ? Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004, 304 p. Articles : Bohineust Armelle, « Larry Page en quête d’immortalité ». Le Figaro, 17/08/2017, p.23. Damour Franck, « Le mouvement transhumaniste. Approches historiques d’une utopie technologique contemporaine ». Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, 2018/2 (N° 138), p. 143-156. Ferry Luc, « Les cinq critiques du transhumanisme », Le Figaro, 10/05/2018, p. 15. Lesnes Corine, « Fabriquer l’humain de demain ». Le Monde, 14/02/2015, p. ARH1. Morin Lucile, « Un courant de pensée en augmentation ». Libération, 08/12/2014, p. SUP3. Rousset Marion, « La résistible ascension du transhumanisme ». Le Monde, 02/02/2019, p. IDH6.

80 LE DREF Gaëlle AHP-PReST, UMR 7117, CNRS, Université de Strasbourg, Université de Lorraine Le transhumanisme face à la catastrophe écologique de l’anthropocène

Si l’idée d’une sixième extinction fait l’objet de controverses scientifiques et si la thèse d’un réchauffement climatique global en tant que provoqué essentiellement par l’activité humaine suscite encore un certain scepticisme, il est en revanche peu remis en cause que l’espèce humaine est à l’origine de bouleversements majeurs voire catastrophiques pour de nombreux systèmes écologiques. Face à cette situation problématique, qui met potentiellement l’avenir de l’espèce humaine en danger, plusieurs types de réponse philosophiques ou idéologiques existent. Celles-ci se divisent schématiquement entre positions progressistes et anthropocentriques, d’une part, et positions écologistes et désanthropocentrées, d’autre part. Ainsi, les secondes ressortent le plus souvent d’une posture posthumaniste, c’est-à-dire remettant en cause l’humanisme en tant que système philosophique n’accordant de valeur qu’au genre humain, glorifié notamment pour son intelligence et ses capacités techniques le rendant potentiellement maître de son environnement et de son devenir, et donc voué au progrès dès lors qu’il consacre ses efforts à se perfectionner grâce aux lettres et a ̀ la culture. D’une manière générale, le posthumanisme remet en cause cette idée d’un progrès quasi- inéluctable fondé sur le perfectionnement de soi et le développement technique et/ou l’idée d’un genre humain élevé au rang d’unique espèce vivante de valeur. En cela, les transhumanistes, au sens fort du terme, sont des posthumanistes, leur promotion du progrès technique dans l’idée d’améliorer l’espèce humaine grâce aux anthropotechniques reposant sur l’idée que notre espèce est intrinsèquement médiocre du fait des hasards de la sélection naturelle ayant présidé à sa survenue et à l’absence de mise en œuvre d’une sélection artificielle consciente et pensée. Face à l’actuelle catastrophe écologique, et surtout celle à venir, beaucoup de transhumanistes adoptent ainsi une position ressortant d’un écologisme de type posthumaniste, remettant en cause la façon dont l’espèce humaine, du fait même de sa nature animale limitante, s’est jusqu’ici octroyée le droit d’arraisonner le vivant au nom du progrès. Aussi, de façon de prime abord paradoxale, face à la problématique d’une possible catastrophe écologique à l’échelle planétaire, nombre de transhumanistes proposent d’adopter une posture a ̀ la fois écologiste et technophile. Nous aimerions ainsi présenter dans cette communication comment, en réponse au danger écologique, loin de prôner un ralentissement du déploiement technique, toute une frange du transhumanisme promeut le progrès et le développement technique, non pas tant dans l’idée d’améliorer notre façon de produire ou encore pour rétablir ce que nous avons détruit ou perturbé – au moyen de la géoingénierie notamment – que dans l’idée de modifier l’espèce humaine et de rendre celle-ci mieux disposée, physiquement, émotionnellement et/ou intellectuellement vis-à-vis des autres habitants de la Terre.

81 LEE Kyoung-Min Seoul National University, South Korea Beyond anthropocentricism

Anthropocentrism seems a misdirection of human rights. Since the Enlightenment, non-alienable rights are advocated for all with human-ness. Anthropocentric humanists consider them as entitlements to keep. However, rights are not for ownership by the rightful, but for empowerment of the right-less. Pointless is to determine who are worthy of the ‘right’. Who are ‘left’ out of the boundary built up during the determination needs more attention. The relationship among the human, environment, and technology is also mistaken in anthropocentricism. It puts the human nature, humanity, and human-ness in the center, and the nature, environment, and technology on the periphery. However, such views overlook creative, regenerative interactions among them. Understanding these interactions require deeper analyses on technology as determinants in the facticity of human existence. We must watch over how the environment we embedded in changes, as the technical are in-formed by co-evolution. We have to be particularly mindful of others-with-us-in-the-world who could be obscured from our sight by excessive immersion into our own renewal and regeneration. We should remember the fact that these others are the guarantors of our renewed and regenerated existence at present and in the future. Sustainability is impossible for mortal individuals. Neither is sustainability possible as a species: As no two individuals are identical in a species, the group of individuals cannot be the same over time. To sustain anything the same is only an abstraction, never to be realized actually. Sustainability is not a constant state but a dynamic constancy. Beware never to confuse it with preservation of the present, existent, and actualized beings. The future of beings, which is what sustainability is for and where the meaning of all beings lies, depends on perpetual increments of potentialities embedded at the present moment of the world and to be actualized at the next in the same world. Without this creative regeneration into actualities, however imperfect, deficient, or queer the actualized may be, there are no beings, no meaning of the beings, and ultimately only deaths. The sustainability of humanity therefore depends on the humility of individuals who take risky chances and make self-denying decisions to re-create the future for others. Although this future will be denied to those who make sacrifices now, it will freely be given for others to enjoy. Just like I enjoy my present existence given to me freely by those who made sacrifices in the past. The others will then constitute in an extension of ‘me’, just as the present ‘I’ constitute in ‘my’ past that was not lived by me. What are most wrong in anthropocentricism are then the illusions of self-pride, self-control, and self- sufficiency. We cannot escape being an anthropos, and yet can and should be a humble and de-centered one by maintaining humility in relationship to others, whether human, non-human, or non-living, who constitute in our present and future existence, sharing life in this one-and-only world.

82 1 2 LENOEL Anne-Cécile & PASCAL Catherine 1) Laboratoire MICA (Médiation, Information, Communication, Art, EA 4426) ADS 2) Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, UFR Langues, dép. LEA Transhumain, post humain, nouvelles équations, nouvelles frontières du méta corps ? Renouveau et soma technique du corps ?

Nous souhaitons questionner en premier lieu, les représentations médiatisées du futur, ses nouvelles formes de phénoménalités en connaissances et en engagements issus des processus de médiatisation complexe, processus entendus comme formes de construction d’une réalité culturelle hybride qui engage l’homme face à la machine et de fait qui tendrait à augmenter ou transformer son corps. De véritables scénarios futuristes se dessinent mettant en jeu les médias et les techniques comme prothèses et comme enjeux de pouvoir sur les autres humains, (Jeanneret, 2011). Certains envisagent l’intelligence comme un ensemble de « compétences » et de « performances » relatives à des activités nécessaires à l’adaptation des systèmes tels que la résolution de problèmes, les apprentissages et les évolutions possibles du corps humain, (Simon, 2004). La seconde étape de notre propos nous permettra d’envisager la transformation en frontières, espaces entre le bio et la technologie, (Krotz, 2001), transformation qui nous entraîne à proposer une approche épistémique transversale en prenant pour axe fondateur les Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication mais aussi, particulièrement les approches en philosophie (Agamben, 2015) et les approches artistiques et design concernant les hybridations soma technique, (Andrieu, 2011).Les données, les algorithmes, (O Neil, 2016, trad. 2018), les interfaces, l’intelligence artificielle et les nouvelles phénoménalités de l’homme et de ses outils-robots nous amèneront à questionner matérialité, immatérialité et idéologie à tendance mystique de cette société technologique, ceci avec l’idée d’un Meta Corps, physique et artificiel, (Chiron, 2012 et Lambert, 2012). Et en corpus exploratoire, pour la 3 ème partie, nous souhaitons investir le Design et la rééditorialisation corporelle sous modalités d’enjeux de la frontière. En introduction de sa conférence, « Qu’est-ce que le design désigne du corps », Marc-Vincent Howlett24 s’appuie sur les travaux de Deyan Sudjic25 pour souligner le sens et l’intérêt qu’il témoigne pour les aspects discursifs du design en ce qu’il « participe de [ce qu’il appellerait] une ‘’dia-pathie”, un pathos partagé, divisé, un partage des interpellations, en-deçà des unités de sens que peuvent recouvrir le corps, la conscience, le monde.26 ». Que devons-nous comprendre de la rééditorialisation corporelle entrepris par le design lorsque notre modernité nous a conduits au seuil d’une Hominescence27, d’une anthropologie d’un changement corporel, où le corps « n’est plus ; car il vit désormais sur le mode du possible »28. La dia-pathie est une notion essentielle pour relier les différents niveaux interrelationnels exposés par notre corpus aux travaux d’Elise Rigot. Cette designer a étudié la question des limites du corps en termes d’espace topologique du design propice à une (re)lecture originale des échelles de proximité objet-corps. Elle a construit une théorie du sens des limites du corps et des prospectives qu’elles pourraient offrir aux praticiens : « La liminalité, du latin limen, seuil, désigne ce qui a trait aux limites, à l’entredeux. […] Comme limite et entredeux, [le corps et le design définissent] un nouveau paradigme à l’encontre d’une idée progressiste du monde.29 ». Alors que les techniques médicales et chirurgicales réparatrices ont une longue histoire de franchissement de nos enveloppes anatomiques, les trajectoires de pensée des designers contemporains (Dunne & Raby, Institut Benways) extrapolent les enjeux médico-biologiques des nouvelles technologies, et in fine interpellent le corps et l’artificialité de l’humain. En bousculant les frontières et les limites, autant physiques, que psychiques et qu’intellectuelles, le design énonce de nouvelles équations du corps, que les appareils théoriques des SIC et des SHS nous aident à saisir, analyser et interpréter.

24 M.-V. HOWLETT, « Qu’est-ce que le design désigne du corps ?», Conférence, ENSAA Duperré, le 8 novembre 2013, [en ligne] https://duperre.org/fr/282/corps-et-design-2013, duperre_ce_que_le_design_designe_du_corps_copie.pdf, consulté le 10-05-2017. 25 D. SUDJIC, Le langage des objets, tr. fr. Claire Reach, Paris, Pyramid, coll. : T, [2009], 2012. 26 M.-V. HOWLETT, « Qu’est-ce que le design désigne du corps ?», op. cit. 27 M. SERRES, Hominescence, Paris, Le Pommier, Coll. Essais, 2001, p.48. 28 Ibid., p.38. 29 E. RIGOT, A la rencontre du liminal, op. cit., p.31. 83 Conclusion Comment ce corps soumis à ces environnements technologiques accrus pourrait être dynamisé (voire augmenté) ou contaminé (voire infirmé) par les effets de la robotisation ou par les conséquences de l’abstraction ambiante ? Allons-nous devenir des hommes robotiques par les effets de notre propre méta corps ? Ce parcours, volontairement interdisciplinaire, nous a permis de comprendre qu’il n’existe plus de frontière fixe entre le sujet et l’objet, mais un nouveau territoire mixte, hybride, et indéterminé. Le corps, on l’aura compris, centre manifeste des mutations de notre époque, est devenu un méta corps. Ici, il est le cristallisateur des entrelacements et des porosités territoriales techniques et sensibles, il est un corps médium sédimentant en sa chair et sa psyché les bases d’un nouveau vocabulaire de l’humain.

Mots Clés : Intelligence artificielle, médiatisation, algorithmes, formes de vie, robot, avatar, homme-machine, post humain, transhumain, media studies, design.

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85 Rosa H. (2018), Résonance : une sociologie de la relation au monde, Paris, La découverte. Serres M.(2001), Hominescence, Paris, Le Pommier, Coll. Essais, 2001,p.38 et p.48. Simon H 2004, Les Sciences de l’artificiel, Paris, Gallimard, Folio, Collection Essais 435 Stewart J., Gapenne O., Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, (2010), Enaction. Toward a new paradigm for Cognitive Science, Massachusetts, Ed. Massachusetts Institute Technology Press. Sudjic, D., (2012), Le langage des objets, tr. fr. Claire Reach, Paris, Pyramid, coll. : T, [2009], 2012. Turkle S., Seuls ensemble. De plus en plus de technologies de moins en moins de relations humaines, trad. de l’américain par Claire Richard, Paris, Éd. L’Échappée, coll. Pour en finir avec, 2015 [2011], 528 pages Wiener N. (2014), (1948 1 ère édition ), La Cybernétique : information et régulation dans le vivant et la machine présentation de R. Le Roux, traduit par R. Le Roux, R. Vallée et N. Vallée-Lévi, Paris : Seuil Wiener N. (2014), (1954 1 ère édition), Cybernétique et société : l’usage humain des êtres humains présentation de R. Le Roux, traduit par P.-Y. Mistoulon, Paris : Seuil. R. ANDRES, « D’un territoire l’autre, ‘’organoplastie et design’’, conférence, [en ligne] http://www.roxaneandres.com/dun-territoire-lautre, consulté le 16-06-2017.

86 1 2 3 LESOURD Serge , RENIERS Dominique & GUILLEN Julio 1) Université Sophia Antipolis de Nice 2) Institut Catholique de Lille 3) Institut Catholique de Lille Transhumanisme : entre discours et jouissance

Au-moins sur le plan médiatique, le transhumanisme se présente comme un phénomène récent, voire bouleversant à l’endroit des repères et des limites jusqu’alors établis au sein du contemporain. C’est oublier que pareil phénomène est en soi inhérent à l’idée de toute avancée technologique se donnant comme horizon l’idée d’un « homme augmenté » au vu de sa foncière impuissance. Il y a lieu toutefois de renter d’en saisir la portée inédite sur le plan des discours qui le prennent pour objet. S’expose en effet, avec lui, ce qui prend les atours d’un mythe aux contours très particuliers en ceci qu’il présente un horizon téléologique, faisant fi de cette question du « parlant » (muthos) qui est bien celle de l’origine. Et à ce titre, au nom de ce post-humanisme qui veut se présenter au titre de tentative de réponse éclairée à ce phénomène, il n’est sans doute pas inintéressant de noter le sort aujourd’hui réservé, dans le quotidien autant que dans certains discours politiques, voire dans l’éducatif, à l’Histoire. C’est que ce mythe de l’homme augmenté concerne fondamentalement la question du corps dont le caractère dit « augmenté » n’est pas sans réserver un sort particulier à ce qui en ressort fondamentalement en termes de jouissance, où fait signature la singularité qui lui revient en propre.

LESOURD Serge : L’homme augmenté : quoi de neuf ?

RENIERS Dominique : Le transhumanisme est-il un mythe post-moderne ?

GUILLEN Julio : Du corps qui se délite dans sa substance…

87 LEWIS Richard A Cartography of the Complex Posthuman Subject: A Method for Posthumanism and Transhumanism

What is the role of the human as we find ourselves situated in the fourth industrial revolution and the sixth mass extinction? What is the most helpful approach to understanding the convergence of technology and the human? How can we both embrace and be critical of the ubiquitous technologies in our lives? Is there a more relevant representation of the human subject than the centuries old Vitruvius Man? Technologies are not only ubiquitous in our lives; they are increasingly merging with, and affecting, our very being. Traditional technologies, for the most part, have been approached as closed-systems, where the variables can be controlled and where engineering is extremely effective. However, life exists in open and complex systems. The transhumanist goal of uploading a human mind to a machine is an attempt to bring a complex being into a complicated (and controllable) system. While there might be laudable reasons for this goal, from a complexity standpoint it is not approaching the solution from the correct direction. In fact, the latest technologies are moving towards the complex end of the spectrum, functioning more like "living" technologies (such as AI and deep learning), which are fundamentally different than traditional, 'closed-system' technologies. By developing the concept of the complex posthuman subject, I challenge the Cartesian adherence to a separate and autonomous individual. We are always and already in relations, not only with other humans but with technologies as well. For example, I don't just have a mind that exists in isolation in my body; my mind is in relation with the world around me. These relations are complex, situated, dynamic, and emergent. As a subject, I am never static or a single (essential) entity. How these relations influence me continually changes. Just the ability to bring my awareness to a particular relation can affect the amount of influence the relation has on me. While these relations are non-neutral, they are not completely determining. We are constituted by our relations, and when our relations change, we change. By developing the concept of the complex posthuman subject, I create a framework that can help us better understand the interrelatedness and co- constitutionality of humans and technologies. Transhumanists (typically) still hold onto the Enlightenment ideal of the individual, one that defines humans as separate and autonomous. If transhumanists adopted the framework of the complex posthuman subject, not only would they be more aligned with posthumanists but they would also be able to develop more realistic and probable future scenarios. The complex posthuman subject is not the next evolutionary step after the human; it is what we are right now. Through critical posthumanism and complexity theory I provide this new framework to better understand our current starting point as complex and fundamentally interrelational beings.

88 LINARES PEDRERO Augustin Cinema as a Mirror of Posthumanim. 10 Cases

If we start from the presumption that the evolution of art is linked to technological evolution, as can be seen in the development of different manifestations throughout the history of art (oil, photography, land- art...). We can say that virtual reality would be one of the last devices to be reached by art, but the moment to control this tool by artists has not yet arrived (or has just begun). Therefore, the last technological device best distilled by artists - both in the process of creation, and in that of their reproduction - is cinema. Although it does not belong to the plastic arts, it feeds on these, and is considered by many people as one of the most important and influential arts -of important social penetration-, for its creativity and for its persuasive power, given its immersive capacity. Until now, it is a technological means of representing realities, very effective, since it has dealt with countless topics and stories developing different genres. For us it is worth noting how the genre of fiction manages to exorcise the fears of humanity when facing the future against our morality and that is why we have conducted an exhaustive scrutiny to expose ten films where transhumanism or its problems appear as an important element. And ten movies where posthumanism appears. Explaining in each of them in which way these issues that concern us are exposed. We will also quickly play some films that may seem to play the trans / post theme, but that really do not, explaining why not. In our opinion, it is important to know how audiovisual narrative art represents the concepts of trans / post-humanism. Since the cinema is able to agglutinate and condense concepts through a representation, it influences the society that digests it in many ways. And this fact can be a very relevant information for all of us, since it helps us to know which parts, are not contemplated, which do it slightly and which are done in a wrong way, in addition to the applied aesthetics. At the end we will present the main conclusions derived.

89 LOMBARD Jessica Why Transhumanism is not a Religion

Technique is rarely disconnected from religious discourse (Bernal 1970). According to Simondon, human's relationship to the world is divided into religion and technology: “any mode of thought or mode of existence engendered by technicity requires completion by another mode of thought or existence emerging from the religious mode” (Simondon 1958, my translation). The symbolic and discursive meaning of technique links it to religion: both of them are systems that interrogate and explain the world (Alexandre 2017). The substitution’s myth of religiosity by the technoscientific paradigm is the contemporary incarnation of the concordance (not similarity) of these two objects. This substitution culminates in transhumanism (Bainbridge 2005; Campbell et Walker 2005), whose theories seem immersed in mystical semantics. Replacing religion, transhumanism would herald “a radiant future” whose “salvation comes from a technics entirely dedicated to the good of humanity” (Le Breton 2013, my translation). It would merely be the technophilic return of an eschatological narrative schema to our secularized societies. To provide a basis for criticism, we will mention two analogies that bring transhumanism closer to religion, before reemphasizing this approach’s fundamental discrepancy. The first analogy links the transcended human to the demigod. The transhuman is an intelligent, powerful, beautiful, righteous being. This transcended figure is equivalent to the divine, if we consider that every being that is fundamentally greater than humans is comparable to a deity: this is the traditional mythological premise of the hero, of the demigod (Eliade 1959; Hopkins 2005). The second analogy relates the producer to the demiurge. The transhuman, as a pattern, is the outcome of human production. Its value is so significant that the producer acquires a unique status, regardless of the production mode. In this sense, the production of human by human is automatically assimilated to the production of human by God (Besnier 2016; Chifflet 2009). This eschatological perspective is in fact a religious interpretation of transhumanism. By religious interpretation, we refer to an interpretation that forces mythological and religious parallels on transhumanism. While ordinary and widely used (Lombard and Umbrello 2018), this process distorts the phenomenon it explores by mistaking an analogy for the principle. Transhumanism presents a questioning that we also find in religious rhetoric, by confronting humans with their corporeality and urging them to transcend their existence. The systemic theodicy shifts to the model of an anthropodicy, as the last point in which human has replaced God rather than killing him. The connection between transhumanism and religion is fostered by the same conscious relationship to finitude. However, the guiding assumption differs: doubt and mortality for the transhumanist, certainty of immortality for the believer. Transhumanism has no expectations of any historical ending following a linear and closed temporality: this is due to the contingent nature of the prospective future as transhumanism envisions it (Broderick et al. 2013). Therefore, aside from some movements having a messianic orientation (Kurzweil 2005), transhumanism is not based on any belief in its ineluctability. The distinction through faith is crucial: the transhumanist is optimistic, not religious (Hottois 2017).

90 LOUTE Alain Intelligence artificielle et ethical impact assessment : le point aveugle de la spatialisation

Dans tous les débats aujourd’hui autour de l’intelligence artificielle en santé, l’éthique est souvent convoquée. Parmi les différents rapports produits actuellement à ce sujet, les propos sur l’éthique peuvent diverger quelque peu, mais ils semblent tous souscrire à une même forme d’impératif éthique. Il s’agit de l’injonction à anticiper les impacts éthiques des technologies. L’éthique – pour reprendre des termes de Hans Jonas – se fait aujourd’hui « éthique de l’avenir », « éthique du futur ». Un concept clé de cette montée en puissance d’un impératif éthique d’anticipation : « la recherche et l’innovation responsable » promus par la Commission Européenne. Pour Richard Owen, une telle démarche d’innovation responsable passe par une démarche « anticipatoire » qui décrit et analyse « ces impacts anticipés ou potentiellement anticipés qui peuvent émerger, qu’ils soient économiques, sociaux, environnementaux ou autres ». Pour ce faire, des « outils éthiques » sont également créés. A titre d’exemple, David Wright a produit un cadre d’évaluation des impacts éthiques, a framework for the ethical impact assessement, afin de permettre aux stakeholders de s’assurer que les implications éthiques des technologies soient examinées avant leur déploiement. Une telle approche est parfois associée à l’acronyme ELSI, rapportant la nécessité d’anticiper les Ethical, Legal and Social Implications des technologies. Les récents rapports parus en France sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle s’inscrivent également dans l’horizon de cet impératif éthique d’anticipation. Ainsi le rapport Villani précise-t-il que « la loi ne peut pas tout, entre autres car le temps du droit est bien plus long que celui du code. Il est donc essentiel que les "architectes" de la société numérique (…) prennent leur juste part dans cette mission en agissant de manière responsable. Cela implique qu’ils soient pleinement conscients des possibles effets négatifs de leurs technologies sur la société et qu’ils œuvrent activement à ces limiter » (p. 140). Entre autres choses, le rapport Villani imagine obliger les développeurs d’IA à réaliser un discrimination impact assessment afin de « les obliger à se poser les bonnes questions au bon moment » (p. 22). On retrouve également dans le rapport de la CNIL de 2017 sur les enjeux éthiques des algorithmes et de l’intelligence artificielle, une recommandation similaire : « Travailler le design des systèmes algorithmiques au service de la liberté humaine ». Anticiper pour intégrer l’éthique au plus tôt du développement technologique. De nombreuses critiques (épistémologique, méthodologique et politique) ont été adressées à cette « éthique au futur » (e. a. X. Guchet, B. Bensaude Vincent, etc.). Dans mon exposé je voudrais soutenir que pour dépasser les écueils de cette éthique, il faudrait davantage investiguer la « spatialisation » qu’induisent les technologies. La spatialité constitue un angle mort important de nombreux débats autour de l’intelligence artificielle en santé. Nelly Oudshoorn écrit ainsi que « Like the discussion about the Internet, discourses on telecare also tend to ignore place » (Oudshoorn 2011:122). Or, les dispositifs de santé numérique requièrent un aménagement des espaces pour fonctionner comme l’atteste la littérature à ce sujet (Gaglio, Mathieu-Fritz, Oudshoorn, Mayère, Arras and Neveloff Dubler, etc.). On pourrait même soutenir que les effets temporels des objets technologiques dépendent de l’organisation spatiale qu’ils configurent. C’est même de cette manière qu’un auteur comme Bruno Bachimont définit la technique comme une « organisation spatiale d’éléments telle que cette configuration détermine un déroulement temporel » (Le sens de la technique, p. 22). L’impératif éthique d’anticipation se doit dès lors de prendre en compte le contexte de la spatialisation qu’induit l’intelligence artificielle. A nos yeux, l’anticipation des impacts de l’IA doit passer par une prise en compte de la « géographie des responsabilités » (Akrich) qu’elle induit, s’inspirant entre autres de la « technogeography » de Oudshoorn.

Notice biographique Alain Loute est docteur en philosophie (prix J. Dopp Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2008) et diplômé en éthique économique et sociale. Il a été Chargé de recherches au Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S-FNRS). Il est actuellement Maître de conférences au Centre d’éthique médicale, laboratoire ETHICS EA 7446 et co-porteur de la Chaire droit et éthique de la santé numérique de l’Université Catholique de Lille. Il est également chargé de cours invité à la faculté d’informatique de l’Université de Namur et collaborateur scientifique au Centre de Recherche et d’Information Droit et Société.

91 Bibliographie sélective LEBERRE R. et LOUTE A., « Raconter la souffrance en soins palliatifs : les usages multiples du récit », in Médecine palliative, 17, 2018, pp. 208-217, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medpal.2018.06.004. WILLIATTE L. et LOUTE A., « La télémédecine : entre rappel du cadre de l’acte médical et déstabilisation de celui-ci », in Actualité et dossier en santé publique, décembre 2017, numéro 101, pp. 44-45. LOUTE A. et COBBAUT J.-P., “What ethics for telemedicine?”, in The Digitalization of Healthcare: new challenges and opportunities, Loick Menvielle, Anne-Françoise Audrain-Pontevia et William Menvielle (eds.), Palgrave MacMillan 2017, pp. 399-416. LOUTE A., « L’imagination au cœur de l’économie de l’attention : L’optimisme sémantique de Paul Ricœur », in Bulletin d'Analyse Phénoménologique [En ligne], Volume 13 (2017), Numéro 2: L'acte d'imagination: Approches phénoménologiques (Actes n°10), URL : http://popups.ulg.ac.be/1782-2041/index.php?id=937. CARRE L. et LOUTE A. (éds.), Donner, reconnaître, dominer, Trois modèles en philosophie sociale, Lille, Septentrion, 2016. LOUTE A., « La sagesse pratique face aux tensions des éthiques du care », in Les ateliers de l’éthique / The Ethics Forum, vol. 10, n° 3, 2015, p. 13-28. LOUTE A., « The Gift and Mutual Recognition : Paul Ricoeur as a Reader of Marcel Hénaff », in Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy, G. Johnson and D. Stiver (eds.), Lexington Books, 2013, pp. 105-123. LOUTE A., « Normative creativity in Paul Ricoeur », in Trópos, Rethinking Creativity, History and Theory, Ed. by A. Bertinetto and A. Martinengo, Anno V, numero 1 (2012), pp. 107-124. LOUTE A., « Le pardon peut-il être collectif pour Paul Ricœur ? », in Paul Ricœur: Poetics and Religion, J. Verheyden, T. L. Hettema, P. Vandecasteele (éds.), Peeters, Leuven, coll. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium n°240, 2011, pp. 405-419. LOUTE A., La création sociale des normes, De la socio-économie des conventions à la philosophie de l’action de Paul Ricœur, Olms, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 2008, 321p.

92 LUKASZEWICZ ALCARAZ Aleksandra Academy of Art in Szczecin, Poland Allo-human persons?

We are on the cusp of the evolution, which may lead in various directions, due to intervention of technology into living bodies. Bodies in question are not only human, but also animal ones, because technological enhancement reaches out of human society. Bodies that surround us are changing due to genetical engineering, chemical substances and technology, especially implanted online. Some of these bodies are to be recognized as persons, and some not. Cyborgs, hybrids, some higher animals, androids, robots, clones may be recognized as persons in the Extended Republic of Humanity, what is the concept of Steven Fuller, however it is a challenge to describe their status and to consider on possible criteria for officially ascribing status of the person to them. The word: ‘human‘ is ideological, it has lost it’s essential meaning, and it became rather an adjective, then it cannot serve as the criteria for being a person. Responsable agents may be embodied in different material forms, not necessarily in the homo sapiens species. Although we have to understand this situation, it is nothing wrong about it; on the contrary, the term ‘human‘ retains its‘ most important part in the adjective form, that is pointing at specific way of doing things and at specific ‘human‘ values, as it shows Bernard Stiegler. I argue that neologism ‘allo-human‘, which I coin on the basis of Nelson Goodman’s concept of ‘allographic‘ art, reproduced on the basis of a ‘score‘ (as it is in music, theater, and dance), allows talking about allo-human persons and underlining the evolutionary continuity (understood not in Darwinian, but rather in post-Darwinian way) between humans, cyborgs, hybrids, and other beings as agents in a community and as individual agents on the discursive level. These new agents are peculiar persons-not-homo-sapiens-but-like-humans, enacted individually and specifically each time.

93 1 2 MAFTEI Mara Magda & PICAVET Emmanuel 1) Université d’Études Économiques de Bucarest (Département des langues modernes) & Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Collège d’Études Mondiales (Chaire Éthique et Finance) 2) Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, UFR 10 et ISJPS (UMR 8103) & Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Collège d’Études Mondiales (Chaire Éthique et Finance) Transhumanisme et posthumanisme : de la fiction à la réalité des évolutions

Le transhumanisme se réfère à la modification de l’homme par la technologie (et aux attentes ou aux craintes qu’elle suscite). Le posthumanisme - qui a d’autres sources, notamment le structuralisme et la pensée de M. Heidegger – subit l’influence du transhumanisme contemporain d’une manière qui s’exprime diversement en philosophie, dans la littérature et dans les œuvres cinématographiques, etc. Les écrivains de science-fiction méritent attention car ils sont, en fait, les premiers théoriciens du cyborg, de l’androïde, de l’intelligence artificielle, etc. La science-fiction a précédé les théories transhumanistes qui projettent un double de l’homme au-devant de l’existence humaine actuelle, relayant une longue tradition littéraire, souvent dans le registre de la fiction : les homunculi (Paracelse, Buffon, Gerald M. Edelman, Alain Prochiantz, Goethe, Gaston de Pawlowski, etc.), le mythe du Golem, l’automate qui commence sa carrière avec Descartes et l’animal-machine, l’homme-vapeur, l’homme- machine, etc. Le posthumanisme d’aujourd’hui est influencé, au-delà du goût de la fiction et des expériences de pensée, par le développement de techniques obéissant à des visées transhumanistes qui sont potentiellement de nature à radicaliser les différences entre les hommes, ou bien entre l’expérience actuelle de la vie des hommes et ce que pourrait devenir (pour certains au moins) la vie humaine. Est-ce que cela ne risque pas, qualitativement, de favoriser un climat culturel atténuant la portée de la reconnaissance, pour l’individu en société, des prérogatives qui sont précisément liées à son individualité ? La tension entre un posthumanisme influencé par le transhumanisme et l’attachement aux valeurs d’originalité et d’individualité a trouvé quelques expressions au fil des dernières décennies (v. les préoccupations exprimées par Habermas dans L’avenir de l’espèce humaine. Vers un eugénisme libéral ?). Cette tension fait aussi naître des craintes pour la mixité et l’égalité dans la vie en société. Cependant, au-delà de la transformation physiologique de l’être humain individuel, objet privilégié de la fiction, ne faut-il accorder de l’importance, au regard des dangers d’un « posthumanisme », aux transformations que l’on peut vouloir faire subir à l’insertion de l’individu dans la société ? Nous pensons en particulier aux transformations induites par la généralisation de systèmes de normes visant à encadrer les conduites (de la régulation financière aux nudges en passant par les normes de « bonne conduite » ou de « bonnes pratiques », ou encore de « bonne gouvernance » qui se généralisent dans une multitude de domaines). Certains éléments de l’héritage « fictionnel » du transhumanisme se retrouvent à ce niveau : le rapport complexe entre technologie et liberté, le développement de la surveillance, l’interpénétration croissante de l’individuel et du collectif, voire (comme dans le mythe du Golem ou dans Frankenstein de Mary Shelley) le sentiment d’une perte de contrôle de ce qui a été créé artificiellement. Pensons notamment à la routinisation des activités (mais aussi de la communication) qu’introduisent leur normalisation croissante et leur encadrement par des normes: est-ce que tout cela ne correspond pas à une forme de transhumanisme – d’humanité modifiée et prétendument améliorée - au regard de l’activité, de l’action et de la création? Avec la tendance avérée à déléguer des tâches à des ordinateurs programmés, avec également la tendance à déléguer aux individus des pans entiers de la prise de responsabilité collective (en rendant les individus responsable de la gouvernance de leurs propres actions sur la base de normes détaillées et parfois constituées théoriquement), ne faut-il pas prendre en considération la liaison entre normes et dépassement de la vie humaine ordinaire ? Par exemple, la généralisation de l’appel à des modèles de comportement professionnel (par ex. le standard de l’investisseur avisé en finance, qui sert de modèle pour apprécier le respect ou le non-respect du droit de la concurrence), à des modèles pour les attitudes personnelles (thématique des "soft skills" ou du "savoir-être" dans les ressources humaines et dans l’enseignement professionnel) pourrait éventuellement se laisser interpréter comme la création de formes sociales d'"augmentation" de l'individu. Nous nous proposons d’examiner la portée de cette hypothèse. Ne court-on pas le risque de promouvoir une variété particulière de transhumanisme - l’aspiration à une "amélioration" dans laquelle cette dernière consiste à se rendre inséparable (en tant que personne) de systèmes de normes que l’on accepte? Cette évolution n’est pas sans risque pour la liberté (comme nous le soupçonnons fortement à partir des travaux de la Chaire Ethique et Finance). Nous pouvons émettre l’hypothèse d’après laquelle ce type d’aspiration à l’amélioration sociale de l’homme relève du transhumanisme en un certain sens au moins, qu’il faut tâcher de préciser (notamment à cause de la rupture avec la centralité de la reconnaissance d’une destination à la liberté).

94 1 2 3 MAJDOULI Zineb , PIGNOL Yaël , ROBERT Léa 1) Université Catholique de Lille, FLSH 2) Université Catholique de Lille, FLSH, Licence Métiers de la Culture et des Arts 3) Université Catholique de Lille, FLSH, Licence Métiers de la Culture et des Arts Post-humanisme musical. Analyse de la réception de la création musicale robotisée

L’idée « d’augmenter les capacités physiques et mentales de l’être humain ou d’allonger considérablement sa durée de vie » peut susciter à la fois une adhésion quasi religieuse et des rejets extrêmes (Doat & Damour, 2018). Dans le domaine musical pourtant, cette idée est bien établie et acceptée par les historiens et sociologues de la musique. « La musique est une théorie de la médiation » nous dit en effet Antoine Hennion (2007). Les évolutions technologiques les plus diverses ont permis depuis la révolution industrielle de déléguer à la machine ce que le musicien ne pouvait désormais plus parvenir à réaliser par lui-même. D’abord, l’invention du phonographe puis la généralisation de l’enregistrement en studio, le disque, le mixage, le sampling, l’autotune ainsi que les diverses innovations en ingénierie sonore assistée par ordinateur sans parler des modes d’écoute de plus en plus élaborées, toutes ces innovations permettent depuis longtemps de produire une musique répondant aux critères de qualité esthétique attendus et surtout un objet musical dont l’existence même est impossible sans le concours d’une machine. Le groupe Pet Shop Boys, affirme clairement dès les années quatre-vingt, ne pas être en mesure d’interpréter de la même façon sur scène la musique qui parait sur leur disque (Cook, 2006). Dès lors, la musique est d’abord un fait technique issue de l’industrie musicale (Ribac & Frith, 2018). Pour les chercheurs, l’objet comme le fait musical est théoriquement et méthodologiquement insaisissable, sans tenir compte des techniques multiples et diversifiées qui permettent de le créer, de le produire et de l’écouter. Dans cette même lignée, apparaissent aujourd’hui de nouvelles innovations technologiques qui annoncent le « remplacement » du musicien. En 2013, au Japon, le groupe Z. Machine organise le premier concert entièrement composé de robots. Par ailleurs, l’intelligence artificielle supplée de plus en plus l’artiste. La startup toulousaine Hexachords développe en 2015 le logiciel Orb Composer. « La première intelligence artificielle » selon ses créateurs, promet aux musiciens professionnels et amateurs, un dispositif automatisé de création et de composition. Il apparait également que l’intelligence artificielle serait en mesure de composer par elle-même. Les algorithmes se développent dans tous les secteurs mais s’approprient de plus en plus l’activité musicale humaine avec toujours plus d’indépendance et d’autonomie. Or, peut-on imaginer un robot composer une symphonie ? Le sens commun résiste naturellement à cette idée. En effet, de prime abord, la capacité d’imaginer, de créer semble être le dernier rempart où seule l’expression humaine est possible. Nourrir une intention, faire jaillir une idée, lui donner une forme afin de parler aux sens, aux émotions demeure le propre de l’être humain, si on examine rapidement certaines opinions de la presse. Nous serions dans le domaine de l’art et de la musique dans un « rejet » total, a priori de l’idée de ce remplacement. Dans l’imaginaire collectif, la musique est l’art dont le territoire lié directement aux affects et à l’intime. De plus, une grande importance est accordée tant à la production qu’à l’artiste en tant qu’individu singulier. L’auditeur s’identifie à lui et à sa personnalité. Les valeurs plébiscitées sont alors la spontanéité et l’authenticité. A partir de l’analyse d’un corpus de discours médiatiques (presse généraliste et spécialisée) portant, depuis 2013, sur l’insertion de plus en plus nombreuses de robots et de la robotisation dans la création et la mise en scène musicales, nous examinerons les débats générés par ces pratiques et ce à la lumière de l’histoire de la musique elle-même et des controverses (parfois violentes) qui l’ont jalonnée depuis l’arrivée du phonographe. Nous verrons ainsi apparaitre des mécanismes d’acceptation ou de rejet qui loin d’une dichotomie stricte entre adjuvants et opposants, montre des points de vue et une échelle de valeurs bien plus nuancée. Nous montrerons les étranges déplacements de la catégorie « authentique », « intime » et « spontanéité » dans les discours, déplacements caractéristiques du monde de la musique au sens de Becker (1999). Notre hypothèse est la suivante : la technologie (robotisée ou non), logée dans la pratique et non uniquement dans les valeurs, montre la perméabilité de l’homme, comme être culturel, au changement notamment technique.

Bibliographie indicative Becker, H. S., « La culture, une approche sociologique », in Propos sur l’art, Paris : L’Harmattan, 1999, pp. 19-40 Becker, H. S., « Monde de l’art » et « Retour sur les monde de l’art », in Propos sur l’art, Paris : L’Harmattan, 1999, pp.99-106 et pp.107-116

95 Cook, N., Musique, une très brève introduction, Allia, 2006, Chapitres 1 et 5 Doat, D., Damour, F., Transhumanisme. Quel Avenir pour l’humanité ?, Le Cavalier bleu, 2018 Da Lage, E., « Politique de l’authenticité », in Volume !, Vol 6 ½, Mélanie Seteun, 2008 Firth, S., « La musique Live ça compte », in Réseaux, n°141-142, UMLV/Lavoisier, 2007 Hennion A., Teil G., « Les protocoles du goût Une sociologie positive des grands amateurs de musique » in Regards croisés sur les pratiques culturelles, O. Donnat dir., DEP/Ministère de la culture, Paris, La Documentation française, 2003: 63-82. Hennion A., « ‘Une sociologie des attachements’. D'une sociologie de la culture à une pragmatique de l'amateur », Sociétés, 2004/3 no 85, p. 9-24 Hennion, A., Maisonneuve, S., Gomart, E., Figures de l’amateur, La Documentation française, Paris, 2000, pp. 27-75 Hennion, A., La passion musicale. Une sociologie de la médiation, Métailié, coll. « sciences humaines », 2007 Leguern, P., « ‘No matter what they do, they can never let you down’. Entre esthétique et politique, sociologie des fans, un bilan critique », in Réseaux, 2009/1, n°153, pp.19-54 Maisonneuve, S., « L’avènement d’une écoute musicale nouvelle au XXe siècle » In Communications, 81, 2007. Corps et techniques [Numéro dirigé par Georges Vigarello] pp. 47-59; Jouvenet, M., « « Emportés par le mix » », Terrain [En ligne], 37 | septembre 2001, Perrenoud, M., « « Partitions ordinaires » Trois clivages habituels de la sociologie de l'art questionnés par les pratiques musicales contemporaines », Sociétés, 2004/3 no 85, p. 25-34. www.cairn.info/revue-societes-2004-3-page-25.htm Roth, R., « L'écoute musicale en balade : lorsque la musique nous transporte » Une approche interactionniste des usages du baladeur musical dans le train, Sociétés, 2009/2 n° 104, p. 73-82. Teillet, P., Le « secteur des musiques actuelles. De l’innovation à la normalisation… et retour ? », in Réseaux, n°141- 142, UMLV/Lavoisier, 2007 Ribac, F., Frith, S., Une sociologie des musiques populaires, Labex/Les Presses du Réel, 2018

96 MARCHENKO Kateryna How to stop the knowledge marathon?

With the telecommunication and computer revolution we are experiencing more and more pressure for more knowledge, more skills required over time. According to WEF Future of jobs 2018 report by 2022 everyone will need an extra 101 days of learning. It is about 40% of the average working time. In this paper I would like to explore the cause and problem of fast growing demand for the new knowledge nowadays. Pew’s survey shows that Generation Z is far less concerned about age-old teenage problems like unplanned pregnancy and binge-drinking than they are about mental health… One of the reason might be academic worries. So, first of all, I would like to analyze why we have this phenomenon and how we could stop this race? How to decrease this pressure of constantly increasing demand of more knowledge? According to Galton with language humans have begun leveraging Wisdom of the Crowd. We were able to transfer more knowledge than before so that the new generation didn’t have to learn everything from scratch. Nowadays we have much more knowledge available for transferring, and it already has been transferring, from one generation to another. The more knowledge we transfer, the more new knowledge we generate. And the amount is constantly multiplying. But what are we doing with our kids in schools? Despite all the changes, the system of the education has not changed so much. We keep the starting point for them almost at the same level for about 200 years. So let us imagine knowledge as distance we have to pass. Constantly increasing the distance, but having the same amount of time, how we could get at the end point on time? Only increasing (accelerating) the velocity. That’s why we need to run fast run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. Here are some future-oriented practices from Dannish Hellerup School, which accept the technology as an ordinary, usual condition, as a part of everyday life, as an achievement of civilization. • Cellphones are permitted and the youngest students are given a laptop/ tablet. • The idea is that students interact with technology at school in the way they will later in the workplace. • Educators wanted to de-emphasize regurgitating facts, figures and formulas; exams are now designed to test a student's effectiveness at finding and analyzing material under pressure. • Testing should resemble the real world, where the Internet is always within reach. Summarizing the above, we have to revise the existing knowledge-based education, we cannot teach the children to compete with machines, we need to build education process toward exceptions and human expertise, toward something unique, than only human is able to manage. Things we teach should be different from the machine, because there is no sense in managing to learn something what machines (our machines!) could do better. This is our knowledge we could transfer, so why we are not using it, and making our kids learning everything from scratch.

97 MARKIEWICZ Sarah Université de Caen Normandie Méta-humain : peut-on légalement s’augmenter pour le plaisir ?

Le but de cette contribution est de s’interroger sur les possibilités sur le plan juridique d’augmenter son corps sans raison valable apparente si ce n’est, éventuellement, la coquetterie. Et pour cause, s’il est parfaitement admis qu’une personne ait recours à la chirurgie réparatrice pour retrouver l’usage d’une partie de son corps30 qu’elle était en droit de pouvoir utiliser auparavant31, le doute s’installe quant à ce qu’on appelle l’anthropotechnie32. Elle consiste à user de la possibilité de « se mutiler », en quelque sorte, volontairement pour bénéficier d’un tel traitement qui pourrait plutôt être considéré comme de ce fait, « esthétique ». En ce sens, l’article 16-3 du Code civil requiert un intérêt thérapeutique ou une nécessité médicale pour pouvoir tolérer une atteinte à l’intégrité du corps humain33. Par ailleurs, les prothèses sont des ajouts mécaniques dans le corps non prévus à l’origine, la naissance, et ont pour objectif d’« assister ou de remplacer le corps humain défaillant ». Une autre question survient : si le but de l’augmentation du corps est d’améliorer les performances du corps34 et non l’embellir visuellement doit-on toujours parler de chirurgie esthétique ? Dans le milieu médical, la différence entre la chirurgie de type réparatrice et celle de type esthétique est le caractère nécessaire (pour la première) et volontaire (pour la seconde). Ces deux interprétations de l’augmentation se retrouvent dans la pop’culture et notamment, le jeu vidéo « Deus Ex » où il est question d’augmenter, d’abord, pour réparer, puis, pour amplifier les capacités du corps humain comme dans l’épisode « Deus Ex : Human Revolution ». On peut également penser aux méta-humains de l’univers Marvel augmentés contre leur gré. Si, de nos jours, des personnes ayant un handicap peuvent recourir à la chirurgie réparatrice, d’autres à la chirurgie esthétique ou non, les trois catégories de corps demeurent majoritairement humains, même en cas de pose de prothèses. Or, une typologie différente peut être établie si la composante technique ou technologique présente dans le corps devient prédominante ou égale à la partie humaine du corps : les personnes quasiment augmentées de la tête aux pieds35, celles non augmentées et celles entre ces deux états36 comme le jeu vidéo précité. On peut suspecter des inégalités de traitement voire une concurrence déloyale. En parallèle, on peut rappeler que certains concours de beauté laissent seulement participer des personnes dont la beauté est naturelle et non modifiée. Dès lors, on peut imaginer que les personnes augmentées de leur plein gré pour s’améliorer plus que la « normale37 » ne pourraient pas prétendre concourir face à des personnes non augmentées car elles ne joueraient plus avec les mêmes armes, ni dans la même catégorie. A cet effet, le cas du sprinter Oscar PISTORIUS est intéressant puisque la pose de ses prosthèses se justifie par le fait qu’il est né sans péronés et a dû être amputé avant la fin de sa première année mais il concourt dans des championnats non spécifiquement dédiés aux handicapés alors que ses prothèses sont prévues pour du handisport. Certains pourraient même assimiler l’augmentation à du dopage dans le milieu sportif car faisant bénéficier la personne d’un avantage déraisonnable sur les autres.

30 Julien LE GARS, « Homme augmenté, transhumanisme en embuscade », (2018) 6 Droit de la famille 31 Xavier LABBEE, « L’homme augmenté », (2012) Recueil Dalloz 2323 32 Françoise BARBIER-CHASSAING, Jean-Baptiste CRABIERES, Lorraine PAQUIN et Myriam QUEMENER, « Réquisitoire », (2017) Dalloz IP/IT 431 33 Julien LE GARS, « Homme augmenté, transhumanisme en embuscade », (2018) 6 Droit de la famille 34 Xavier LABBEE, « L’homme augmenté », (2012) Recueil Dalloz 2323 35 Françoise BARBIER-CHASSAING, Jean-Baptiste CRABIERES, Lorraine PAQUIN et Myriam QUEMENER, « Réquisitoire », (2017) Dalloz IP/IT 431 36 Frédéric ROUVIERE, « Le robot-personne ou Frankenstein revisité », (2018) Revue Trimestrielle de Droit Civil 778 37 Françoise BARBIER-CHASSAING, Jean-Baptiste CRABIERES, Lorraine PAQUIN et Myriam QUEMENER, « Réquisitoire », (2017) Dalloz IP/IT 431 98 1 2 MARKOPOULOU Anna & SAMPANIKOU Evi 1) University of Paris V René Descartes 2) University of the Aegean The Heritage of Epicurus: Case Studies on Critical Posthumanism (Philosophy, New Media and Critical Posthumanism)

On the paradigm shift and the heritage of Epicurus to contemporary new media. Is it a side effect of Posthuman thought?

MARKOPOULOU Anna: The tetrapharmakos (fourfold cure) and the sober reasoning in Epicurus: A philosophical paradigm shift towards a critical posthumanism? The aim of the present talk is to show how the therapeutic effect of Epicurean philosophy as pharmakon for human passions constitutes a philosophical paradigm shift towards a critical posthumanism. More specifically, we will discuss how the concept of correcting habits of thought, which confers a philosophical meaning on the Greek word pharmakon, constructs a dialectical relationship of unity between nature and man. By contrast, the traditional meaning of pharmakon as an artificial means of therapy, is ideologicalised in a dualism between the superior technology, which rules, and the inferior human nature, which is ruled. In this context, we will analyze how the tetrapharmakos (fourfold cure) of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, which is the basis of his ethics, is inextricably linked with the four criteria of truth, that is, with his epistemology. In particular, we will examine how each of Epicurus’s ethical-philosophical pharmaka is activated and acts therapeutically by correcting the corresponding epistemological criterion of truth. The shift established by Epicurus’s ethics constitutes a rupture with the traditional meaning of the word pharmakon insofar as it shows that by restoring the function of phronesis, sober reasoning is the ultimate end of a philosophical cure for the mind. Furthermore, in Epicurus sober reasoning is shown to be the main means of transcending the human condition so that, as he characteristically states, “man lives as a god among men”. In that sense, establishing a post-nature as it ensues from the Epicurean ethics of the tetrapharmakos constitutes a philosophical paradigm shift towards a new critical posthumanism.

SAMPANIKOU Evi: Towards a philosophical visual culture: The documentary “The Immortals at the Southern Point of Europe” (Yiorgos Moustakis – Nikos Labôt) and Critical Posthumanism The documentary narrates the real story of a philosophical project. In 1997, seven Russian-Ukrainian scientists leave Chernobyl area for health reasons. They settle on Gavdos, a small island south of Crete, actually the most distant border of Europe in the Mediterranean. They will remain there for about fifteen years and will initially have a major positive interaction with the local community leading philosophical group meetings, public works and constructions, while at the same time they evolve a new philosophical approach to humanity, the option for immortality, based on Pythagorean teaching, but also reflecting specific Critical Posthumanism views.

However, it will all end after the hostile atmosphere created by members of the Orthodox Church and the Law as soon as they start building a temple to Apollo. Finally the team and the project break. Most members of the group are now said to continue the experiment in South America, while other members have remained in Crete.

The documentary follows the protagonists and the project in their everyday life, their meetings, their work and also deals with their interaction with the locals and visitors objectively recording the story from all sides. It was shot between 2013-2016 and won a prize at the 2016 documentary festival of Thessaloniki.

Documentary screening after the session

99 MAZIJ Rafał University of Lower Silesia Posthuman Economy: Tyranny or Utopia?

Ted Chu, formerly known as chief economist of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority once stated: “The posthuman era is about to begin". It dates back to 2014. Since then the race to the "posthuman economy" has not stopped. According to professor Chu posthuman economy will be main factor defining an epoch, which will be undoubtably dominated by highly sophisticated robots, cyborgs, A.I. systems, "trans/post- human" technologies with a various spectacle of GMO creatures, plants and other unexpected surprises molded by "autoplastic" or "alloplastic" methods. In that wide ocean of enhancement what will be the role of "traditional" human? Will the advancement technology lead to creating a tyranny, rule of the rich, enhanced few, who will surpass human limits or a utopia, where there is an established universal basic income and robots work for humans? Currently, there are few possible scenarios for “posthuman" economies, which take different main forms in regard to relation between agents of investment, savings, consumption, production and others between different alternatives to "traditional" human as super/supra humans and/or transhuman. I try to establish what would be the relations between macro and micro economies in different scenarios by using clear definitions as a denominator. My methodology relies on historical data collection, finding trends and patterns and upon that building analysis and synthesis of most probable scenario. The interplay of human, super/supra-human and/or transhuman and their relation with employment, production, investment, consumption offers a wide range of possible future economic scenarios. Moreover, currently unpredictable in detail, scenarios can be sketched for philosophical contemplation. However, what I can forecast is the prevalence of economic system based on the current indicators and abundant literature on the topic. Main factor, which I have found during my theoretical approach is decisive, whether trans/post-human technology will shape the world into tyranny or utopia, is capitalism. In basic principle capitalism cultivates very selfish habits. It fundamentally operates on selfishness. Greed in action, ideology of hoarding more and better things for me, not for you, whoever you are. It intensifies greed, envy and pride. Struggle for status, access, power, privilege. Handling of capitalism leads to two results: economical tyranny of elites or economical utopia with universal basic income. As a result, the meritocratic elite trudges even deeper into this world of more exclusive sets of institutions and relations. Those, who are born outside wealth take a nihilistic, fatalistic outlook on the world with a firm belief that "game is rigged". Unless, the paradigm shifts towards more socially responsible corporate governance, better wealth distribution we are doomed for a tyranny of elites in the future. As a result of my work I think that scholars should put more emphasis on economy, to prevent scenario where technologically and genetically enhanced corporate overlords rule over those, who cannot afford to benefit from the advanced technology and surpass anatomical constraints.

100 MBEUTCHA Josué Université de Dschang, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, Département de philosophie/psychologie et sociologie L’idée dominicaine de posthumanité ou la rénovation de l’individualité

Le 20ème siècle a connu une révolution spectaculaire et inouïe en plusieurs domaines notamment en médecine et en agriculture avec la découverte prodigieuse de l’ADN. Celle-ci a considérablement impacté les modes de vie et suscité de nouvelles manières d’envisager l’avenir. Et cette dernière dimension de son impact se justifie par le fait que cette révolution a accrue exponentiellement la capacité inventive et créative plutôt que descriptive de l’homme. Inventivité et créativité innovantes constituent ici les marques de la science contemporaine dont l’opérativité impulsée par la technique crée de plus en plus, à défaut d’améliorer, des conditions du bien-être et du mieux-être. A cela s’ajoute ce que nous appellerons novum onto. Il s’agit d’un homme nouveau issu du remodelage ou de la réification du génome que permet la science contemporaine. En plus donc des organismes génétiquement modifiés, nous aurons affaire à des hommes génétiquement modifiés. Cette entreprise aussi originale qu’exaltante fait l’objet d’une controverse qui oppose bio-catastrophistes et techno-prophètes autour de la post-humanité, idée inhérente à la puissance technique qui innerve ou alimente la science contemporaine. C’est dans cette controverse que se situe la réflexion de Humain posthumain dont la thèse pourrait se résumer dans l’apologie de l’humanité de la posthumanité. Contre les conceptions phobiques inspirées par Hans Jonas et Fukuyama, Dominique Lecourt entreprend d’apprécier la réalité humaine de la technique en revoyant subtilement la notion de la « nature humaine » à partir d’une conception rénovée de l’individu. Mais une telle rénovation n’exposerait-elle pas l’homme à un terrorisme ontologique provoquant la dilution et pire la perte de son identité générique essentielle ? Nous voudrons par cette analyse mettre en relief la pertinence de la posture de Dominique Lecourt dans un contexte mondial dominé par l’inflation des discours catastrophistes.

101 MC QUITTY Jane A Case Study of Advocacy for an Anthropogenic Ecology in Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Applying New Constructs in Conservation

A developed tradition of evaluating ecologies on biophysical metrics characterizes Canadian wild lands preservation. It tends to become unworkable in proximity to cities where 80% of the nation's citizens make their home. Biophilia, the hypothesis the human species possesses an evolutionarily developed instinct to affiliate with nature, is proposed as an alternate source of metrics. It provides a humanist invocation of desires to preserve self-directing nature without the biophysical restrictions of wilderness. The hypothesis that it might be more operational was applied in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of recorded advocacy for preservation of an anthropogenically disturbed urban wildland recorded at City Council chambers in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in July 2015. The speakers' oral presentations were put to inductive quantitative analysis for dominant biophilic dispositions, but also for awareness of novel ecosystem creating factors at play at the site, and reference to or avoidance of estimations of historic biophysical integrity. Results suggested defenders had humanist and moralistic dispositions towards the Anthropogenic ecology in threat of development and biophysical quality as determined by vegetative mat was of little interest to any of the parties except the would-be developer of the site. However action-guiding thinking that took the preservers from disposition to presentation at City Hall was not yet clear. For this reason, a qualitative ideas and ideology analysis was carried out on the same text to uncover belief systems about preservation of the undeveloped site. A surprising finding was the extensive connection felt by presenters between survival of wildness and wild life in the suburban context and distinctive and positive civic identity and even self-regard. Bruno Latour writes in Facing Gaia of the unforeseen outcome of the Modern separation of humanity and nature in creating greater fellowship for nature. The study results might be interpreted as a small confirmation.

102 MCBRIDE Neil The Poetry of Posthumanism

How are we to understand a historical transition in which a theocentric view of the world, which places humans at the centre of the universe, as divine emissaries and stewards, through a transition in which connections with God are severed in preference to the pre-eminence of the human as the centre, through the transition to technological enhancement and to the abandonment of the human and the absorption of the human into nature? We are at odds with our body since we both love it and maintain it and pummel it and abuse it. This transition of bodily attitude involves an attempt to recapture the perfect body through exercise, fasting and the aesthetics discipline, through replacing the degradable biological body with a non-degradable technological body, to a merging of the body with the natural world, a retuning of it to the environment. Thus we move from attempts to subdue the earth to a desire to be subdued by the earth. Similarly we progress from divinely appointed stewardship through to technological domination and ending up in a posthuman submission to the natural in which the distinctiveness of the human vanishes Perhaps the difference between transhumanism and posthumanism does not arise from a conflict between technology and nature; rather it concerns a reorientation, an evolution of the relation of the human body to nature. Perhaps posthumanism involves a re-merging of the human with nature and a rejection of the race to replace the soft vulnerability of the biological with the hard steel of technology? Since our stance in the humanist / transhumanist / posthumanist space involves an emotional response to our own body, to our location in nature, to our vulnerability and mortality, we need to pursue a media which will enable the exploration and exposure of raw emotions of both anger against and love for the body. I will suggest that this can be supported through an engagement with poetry, not only in the reading of it but also in the writing of it. To do this I will reflect on the romantic imagination of Wordworth’s The Prelude (1805) in relation to posthumanism, present a short suite of my own poems which tackle the transition of the view of the body across humanism / transhumanism / posthuman and lead the audience in an exercise of discovery through writing short poems.

103 MCHUGH Fergal The ethics of datafication and our right to the future tense

Shoshanna Zuboff, in a series of essays, and most recently a compelling book, The Age of Surveillance: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019) has catalogued the rise of what she calls “surveillance capitalism”. In Zuboff’s account the “dataficaiton” of the human agent, specifically through of the conversion of that agents experience into information — used in turn to predict her future behavior — has resulted in a new form of “dispossession”. The agent is, effectively, deprived of her, in Zuboff’s phrase “right to a future tense”. While I think there is something important in the idea that the exercise of forward-planning agency creates futures both imagined and actual that in some sense belong to us, I worry about the individualistic basis of the critique. Zuboff’s critique of surveillance capitalism (and her associated defense of human autonomy) is conducted in the language of rights. However, critiques of datafication from the perspective of the individual as the locus of moral solicitude do not pay sufficient attention to the ways in which our moral standing is a function of our relations to other agents and to non-human agents (for example groups). I argue that we can preserve Zuboff’s concern about surveillance and the associated commoditization of our experience without exclusive recourse to the language of rights. Zuboff’s account actually contains the seeds of this alternative approach. In positing the agent’s status within surveillance capitalism as dispossessed, Zuboff opens a space for comparison of surveillance capitalism’s subalterns with the victims of 19th and 20th century colonialism. As per one influential account of decolonization what Edward Said called, in Culture and Imperialism (1993) “grand narratives of emancipation of enlightenment”, provided materials for their own subversion. In a similar manner, the critique of surveillance capitalism cannot narrowly rest on a traditional humanist defense in the language of individual rights and individually held moral salient characteristics. Instead, I suggest that resistance to surveillance capitalism needs to explore the ways in which the surveillance capitalism itself excludes the idea of non-human agency, whilst simultaneously dehumanizing the subjects of its operations. I argue that recasting the “right to a future tense” as a demand that we constantly innovate in terms of our critical, conceptual and moral vocabulary, will better prepare us to resist the commoditization of our experience, while at the same time demonstrating how our responsibilities — to ourselves and to others — go significantly beyond those associated with the traditional conception of the rights-bearing individual.

104 MEBENGAMBALA Robert Réflexions autour de l’expérience du robot avec cerveau biologique

Avec le préfixe « trans » évoquant l’idée d’une transition, le transhumanisme s’achève en posthumanisme. C’est une idéologie caractérisée par la floraison de pratiques dont le souci est de produire des espèces nouvelles telles des cyborgs, des êtres hybrides, des robots humanoïdes ; en rupture avec la conception traditionnelle du vivant, reconnaissable par des propriétés intrinsèques et spécifiques. Dès lors, disparaissent les frontières établies, distinguant animaux, végétaux, humains. Le développement du savoir technologique et la croissance incessante de plusieurs domaines de recherche ; intègrent l’artificiel dans les construits de l’humain. De la sorte, l’humain se dit par le multiple, posé comme interaction interne avec l’artifice, les végétaux et les animaux. Ce multiple est différent des aspects symboliques qui permettaient jusqu’ici de définir l’unicité du vivant par l’intégration conjointe du visage, de la race, de la tribu, du genre etc. L’objet de cet article est de questionner au plan juridico-éthique, l’expérience du robot avec cerveau biologique. Dans un texte récent intitulé : « robots with biological brains », Kevin Warwick rapporte une expérience menée en laboratoire entre un robot et un cerveau biologique. Elle met en dialogue l’informatique et la biologie à travers la culture neuronale artificielle du cerveau sur une plate-forme physique. L’objectif est de créer un humain capable de se déplacer et de communiquer en dehors de tout système d’engendrement. Sans doute assiste-on à des résultats concrets notamment la communication de la culture neuronale avec le robot, la mobilité et l’identification d’une structure corporelle proche de l’humain. Une telle expérience confirme certaines thèses transhumanistes : le dépassement des capacités mentales de l’humain, l’aptitude du cerveau et de la conscience à fonctionner par-delà le corps humain et l’innovation d’une conception du vivant inscrite dans le progrès de la culture. En nous fondant sur le fait que le robot avec cerveau biologique constitue un être quelconque qui désigne de manière démesurée le « Tout humain » par la partie, j’interroge les incidences éthiques et juridiques de cette expérience. Çà et là, je présente l’éclipse de la conscience morale au regard de la réductibilité de la conscience humaine au calcul, l’impossible sociabilité avec l’humain, l’hypothèque de la dignité humaine et la controverse d’une idée du droit de vote de ce robot. Après avoir présenté le déroulement de l’expérience et ses parallélismes avec le transhumanisme, j’orienterai mes réflexions juridico-éthiques sur les limites d’une identité éclatée. J’achèverai ma contribution sur l’urgence d’une anthropologie minimale de la vulnérabilité du sujet humain, terroir universel, susceptible de faire face à la démesure des nouveaux pouvoirs techno-scientifiques.

105 1 2 MICALI Alberto & PASQUALINI Nicolo 1) John Cabot University, Communications and Media Studies 2) I. C. Quarto; Centro Studi Filosofia Postumanista In search of...pulse culture: Mapping the hybridative relations between human- animals and pulses

The 68th United Nation General Assembly declared in 2016 the International Year of Pulses. The interest of the Food and Agriculture Organisation demonstrates the growing attention for a plant family that is well known for its nutritional and fertile properties. Legumes have always been a source of proteins for human- animals, as well as being key for the regeneration of soils – participating, in diverse ways, to the evolution of our species. The field of study variously known as ‘human-plant geographies’, ‘philosophical botany’, ‘human-plant studies’, and ‘critical plant studies’ is an interdisciplinary and dynamic area that questions the agential capacity of plants beyond anthropocentric and zoocentric prejudices. Instead of being approached as a static background, the vegetal world begins to be rethought in terms of its differential autonomies and intelligences. Following the posthuman path underpinning this emerging field of cultural and philosophical inquiry, this paper will offer an overview of an ongoing research project on the relationships between human-animals and pulses that we are currently developing. How do legumes shape and contribute to human-cultural activities? What is their position beyond an instrumental and hierarchic take that simply wants them gravitating around a centre that is human? And, especially, can we rethink their active contribution to the naturalcultural continuum in ethical but also political terms in order to attenuate the virtuality of the environmentalist catastrophe that is yet to come – that is, can we eco- systemically reassess their relational potential? Our current project (Pulse culture: A stratoanalysis of human-pulses assemblages) builds upon these questions in order to advance an ethico- aestethic proposal to approach what we name ‘pulse culture’ in two specific ethnographic cases. Culture, within its continuum with nature, is in fact the provisional result of human and non-human relations, and as such the project focuses on the entangled becomings between human and pulses. More in detail, it is a stratoanalysis of this plane of relationality, a cartography that maps the temporary unfolding of human- pulses assemblages in specific territories, beyond their mere representation on a chart. In the cases in question, the plant becomes an active protagonist of cultural events, shaping and leading some aspects of societal, cultural and economic life: it offers an ecological source for activities such as food supply, community celebrations, art works, and/or economic income.

106 MIDSON Scott Deus Sex Machina: Perfect Relationships in Theology and Lovotics

In 2004, David Levy published Love and Sex with Robots, in which he outlines a utopian future where humans will opt to pursue sexual and even marital relationships with robots. Robots, Levy contends, will serve as ‘perfect lovers’: they are not demanding, they can be tailored to meet the needs of their users, and they are reliable. Pushing back against Levy’s fanciful visions, though, many commentators – including social theorist Sherry Turkle, anthropologist Kathleen Richardson, and theologian Noreen Herzfeld – have critiqued the idea of perfect robotic lovers as a contradiction in terms. For Turkle, love with robots is misleadingly uni-directional; for Richardson, who leads the ‘Campaign Against Sex Robots’, sex with robots facilitates misogynistic attitudes and behaviours; and for Herzfeld, any kind of partnership with robots lacks the completeness of full human pairings with another person. Across these examples and elsewhere, we find that perfect love doesn’t make sense without reciprocity, emotion, and understanding – all of these are things that robots, at least at present, lack. So what does human, robotic, and so-called perfect love entail? In this paper, I consider these questions by exploring different attitudes to love that span philosophy, psychology, and now also robotics (in a field that is termed ‘lovotics’). How do these themes relate to theological ideas about love, and in particular, notions of perfect love? And what critiques can be raised from theology? This paper sets out a discussion between philosophy, theology, and lovotics as we grapple with the meaning and trajectory of our affections and desires in our current and future technocultural contexts, with a view to developing a posthumanist understanding of love.

107 MURRU Simone Post-human, all too post-human: A critique to some of the fundamental concepts of post-humanism

Within the past few years, the concepts of post-humanism and trans-humanism have become central in philosophy. In fact, in a world in which modern technology plays a more relevant role in our life than any other time in human history. The difference between biology and technology seems to have become closer in recent times. However, few studies show awareness of the importance of the most primitive and complex technology: language. The thesis I will try to support is that post-human theory has two critical points: 1) the idea that there is no difference between humans and animals; 2) the belief that only in the past few years a process of hybridization between humans and technologies has begun. Firstly, I will try to explain how language and technology make humans different from animals. According to the Italian philosopher Carlo Sini, language is nothing but a “protesi”, namely something that is both esosomatic and a condition of any representation. Everything is “doubled” by the signs of language: as a result, actions are analyzed and broken down by the “protesi”. Only after this process an object can be thought as a means between an agent and an aim. Therefore, even if animals can use some objects instrumentally, they are not able to conceive them as instruments, Sini claims. This process has other effects too: representation allows humans to evoke something that is absent. As a result, they can choose among a wide range of possible actions (this is the origin of free will) and they began to deal with death, as it is represented. Secondly, I will criticize the thesis of a contemporary hybridization between humans and technologies using Carlo Sini’s theory of “culture as machine”. According to this latter point, culture is a gestell between humans and the world that works as an “automa”, namely something that moves on it’s own accord. As a consequence, humans have been colonized by the cultural machine from their origine: more precisely there couldn’t be any homo sapiens without technology. In conclusion, the difference between animals and humans is clear, since the linguistic “protesi” provides instruments and makes us aware of free will and death. In contrast, the difference between humans and post-humans based on a contemporary hybridization of humans and technology seems not to be supported, because homo sapiens has been strongly colonized by machines (language included) since its origin.

108 NAZAR KERMANSHAHI Shahin University of Utrecht, History and Philosophy of Science The Algorithmically Extended Self: Reconsidering the Design Ethics of the Choreography between Human- and Algorithmic Agents

User interfaces are becoming increasingly relied upon in daily life as they come to play a growing role in decision-making and knowledge production about the experienced world. User interfaces depict an intricate choreography between users and algorithmic agents that perpetuate existing power relations. The interface’s informational and persuasive components offer windows into the at times contradictory philosophy and conventions underlying the design of such interactive environments. User interfaces are inherently designed to steer a decision consensus between the user and the algorithms that both push their respective inputs to the interfaces, and are therefore poised to frame and direct users’ cognitive processes. Rather than pessimistically dismissing the ever more intimate, persuasive and autonomy threatening structured interaction space between humans and algorithms, I aim to make sense of some of the contradictory assertions masked by the design philosophy pertinent to graphical user interfaces. The central argument shows that it is inadequate for the User-Centered Design philosophy (UCD henceforth) to view the user as a separate entity from the interface and algorithms. Next, I structure this blurring distinction under the posthuman banner of the “Algorithmically Extended Self”. What goes to show is that organizations and states have the expanding capability to design the discursive formations that make up our bodies and cognition, as to determine the reflexive relationships so deeply and directly intertwined with our minds. With the advent of commercial Brain-Computer Interfaces around the corner, the diminishing gap of the multidirectional information flow between nonlinear, dynamic and contingently embodied cognitive processes and technological artefacts calls for a reconsideration of the informational and persuasive components that our minds populate. By examining the relationship of the accepted conventional meanings and purposes of user interfaces on the one hand via Latour, and their ideological constitution under Foucauldian lens, the increasingly pervasive moral and power laden assumptions come to the surface. The Algorithmically Extended Self positions the self as a citizen of both physical and digital interactive environments in light of the untenable boundaries in between. Such technologies of the self, structured by design practices, are relevant to understanding the Algorithmically Extended Self as a particular mode of governing the self. Central to this mode is the concept of an individual who requires no coercion to behave both productively and in the interests of a state or an organization via the regulation, monitoring and surveillance of a wrongly defined body. Such is the invisible hand gaining an increasingly intimate, uninterrupted and continuous stream of access to the mind’s processes by crafting and providing the morally laden interactive environment that very same mind populates. The real question, then, is why such a pervasive and ideologically opaque design philosophy as a failed attempt to protect autonomy is simultaneously a success in the formation of ethical subjectification. In other words, user-centered design ideology masks a form of corporate paternalism that signifies no beneficial outlook to safeguard the autonomy of a citizen, and inculcates the idea that such basic human rights should not apply to the Algorithmically Extended Self.

109 NORGUET Benjamin La cybernétique est-elle un humanisme ?

« Si nous sommes assez stupides pour abdiquer en tant qu’êtres humains et refuser le respect à nos congénères au nom de considérations douteuses sur l’efficacité et l’intelligence des machines, alors en effet l’humanité quittera la scène et le mérite bien. Ce qui importe est de préserver un mode de vie humain, et aucune des perfections attribuées à la machine ne peut modifier substantiellement notre responsabilité à ce propos. » (Norbert Wiener) La cybernétique de Norbert Wiener est-elle une tentative de sauver l’humanisme ? Ou bien est-elle déjà un dépassement de l’humanisme qui annonce l’avènement d’un « post-humanisme » qui chercherait à remplacer l’homme par son successeur bio-mécanique. Accusée d’être la racine des théories post/trans- humanistes de la seconde moitié du XXème siècle comme celle de Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec ou Ray Kurzweil, la cybernétique de Wiener est-elle vraiment la source de cette folie post-humaine ? Pourtant Wiener accordait une importance considérable à la question de l’automatisation et du remplacement des travailleurs par les machines en usines, reprenant la réflexion de Samuel Butler dans Erewhon. De même il défendit l’idée que l’homme était la plus grande des machines. D’un autre côté la cybernétique est un exercice qui rompt la singularité humaine pour la réintégrer dans un spectre du vivant, et même du non-vivant, car dans un monde dont la finalité est l’anéantissement, comment l’homme pourrait-il vraiment se distinguer du reste du vivant. Toute idée d’humanisme semble bien fragile face à la dimension nihiliste de la cybernétique wienerienne, quand bien même l’auteur encourage ses lecteurs à défendre les valeurs et la dignité de l’Homme. Surtout, remis en contexte, on pourrait noter que des contemporains de Wiener, comme les britanniques J.B.S. Haldane et J.D. Bernal, dont Wiener n’ignoraient pas les travaux, au contraire, annonçaient déjà la venue du post-humain dans des termes qui n’ont rien à envier à ceux de Kurzweil ou Minsky, comme la transformation de l’humanité en un réseau de cerveaux en boîte (brain-case), mais dans une perspective politique complètement différente de leur « successeurs ». Cette présentation se donne donc pour objet d’interroger le rapport entre cybernétique et humanisme, comprendre sur quelle ligne de tension entre les deux notions Wiener construit sa philosophie et dans quelle mesure cette tension à ouvert la voie au développement postérieur de la pensée transhumaniste. Surtout cette présentation ambitionne de remettre Wiener dans le contexte des premiers penseurs du transhumanisme, Haldane, Bernal ou Julian Huxley, afin de chercher à comprendre si le rapport à l’humanisme classique n’est pas ce qui fonde la distinction entre le transhumanisme originel (de gauche) et celui tardif/moderne (de droite).

11 0 NYSTROM Erik City, University of London Technological Listening and Intra-Faces of Sound

This paper examines ways in which technology and computation are manifest in experiences of electronic sound, proposing extensions and alternative approaches to acousmatic, listening-oriented discourse in music and sound art (e.g., Schaeffer, Smalley, Emmerson), based on a perspective on sound and technology rooted in posthumanist thinking. The discussion is informed by the author’s own practice- based research in computer music. A central ontological observation is that in electronically generated sound, technological processes precede physical acoustic effect. Such processes, which may include the entirely abstract domain of information processing, are both intangible and inextricable elements in sound experience, forming a kind of ‘embodied virtuality’ (Katherine Hayles). The present examination considers every step of transduction from one medium to another as a possible ‘agential cut’ where different ontological domains ‘intra-act’ (Karen Barad). From this angle, every step in a sound generating chain of events can be seen as a temporary subject-object phase and an act of distributed listening – or an intra- face, by extension of Barad’s terminology. Such a chain might be thought in an idealised linear fashion, from cause to effect, but is equally in an opposite direction, beginning at perception and deducing cause from critical speculation. Either way, a technological apparatus is formed of auditory cognition, psychoacoustics, acoustics, electro-acoustics, electronics, information processing. Applications of AI, including machine listening and machine learning, cybernetic control structures, or extra-sonic human- computer interfaces, can further harness the polymorphism of such a topology. A classical, humanist, functional approach to and technology seeks to subdue the traces of each intra-face to arrive at a sound which appeals to essentialist conceptions of origins in an external reality. ‘Technological listening’ (Denis Smalley) is undesirable in such a vision. In contrast, a posthuman approach examines each intra-face as an ecological node and a potential aesthetic frame of sound realisation and materiality.

111 ÖZER Emir Nietzsche’s Posthuman Traces in Deleuze and Guattari

No other thinker in the traditional Western philosophy, animal imagery takes place more often than in Nietzsche’s works. He claims that one of the four great errors for human beings is to see themselves in a false order of rank in relation to animals and nature. He encourages us to rethink the status of the human being with regard to animals and advocates for a critique of the hierarchical and binary division between humans and animals and struggles for a more fluid ontological understanding of human so that he paves the way for post-humanist thinkers, such as Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Foucault and Agamben. In Nietzsche’s understanding, from the very beginning, animals are centred. In ‘Truth and Lie in an Extra- Moral Sense,’ the transformation (or translation, übertragen) from a nerve stimulus into an image or intuitive metaphor is common to all sensitive beings. This means that translation is the ground of any language and is not only peculiar to human animals but also nonhuman animals. Only does the repetition or reiteration of metaphors or recognitions by omitting and forgetting various aspects in specific unequal experiences lead to the emergence of words or ‘conceptual’ language. For this very reason, the human being, before being ‘I,’ is a repetition animal. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by introducing the ideas of becoming-camel, becoming-lion, becoming-ape, becoming-eagle, etc., Nietzsche not only adumbrates the entirety of his philosophical activity but also presents a praxis of experimentation in which new assemblages which can be considered as new lines of flight that spawn new perspectives on human subjectivity and animality. Inherited from Nietzsche’s philosophical approach, the notion of becoming is the fulcrum of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking, most explicitly in Mille Plateaux. Becoming for Deleuze and Guattari, which connotes nothing but multiplicity or more becoming and becoming itself, here in this context means something beyond any dualism or binary relation so that becoming-animal is not in reality to become animal but to experience inhumanity in the body as such. The praxis of experiment that Deleuze and Guattari describe is a new notion of freedom that enables the human being to become free from the human and open to the event of becoming. Becoming-animal is to have enchantment for heterogeneity and thus to see oneself taking part in interkingdom and/or interspecies participations. As in Nietzsche’s understanding, becoming- animal is to consider oneself not the crown of creation but with other creatures on the same level of perfection. Following Nietzsche’s critique on ‘conceptual’ language, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize that writing should traverse different becomings and it is not about becoming-writer but becoming-rat, becoming-insect, becoming-wolf, etc. To clarify, whilst the background to the question of the animal in Nietzsche’s understanding is worth drawing out and setting up as one of the philosophical contexts in which Nietzsche's thoughts arise, what is ultimately the central issue here is the Nietzsche and Deleuze-Guattari connection and specifically the question to what extent Deleuze and Guattari significantly diverge from Nietzsche's thinking.

112 PAAJANEN Annukka Gene Banks for Endangered Species as a Solution to Environmental Issues: Managing the Unmanageable?

Human actions have brought about major changes to the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Therefore, it has been suggested that we have reached a new epoch in the planet’s history: the Anthropocene. This epoch is defined by anthropogenic environmental issues like global warming, biodiversity loss and the sixth mass extinction. These issues pose a threat not only to our nonhuman “environment”, but also to our own survival. Hence, current environmental problems are forcing us to urgently search for ways of mitigating the threats posed by these issues, as well as to reconsider our relationships with nonhuman beings and our place among them. In this presentation, I examine gene banks for endangered plant and animal species as a proposed solution to anthropogenic environmental issues. I focus on two western gene banks, Frozen Ark and Svalbard Global Seed Vault, that are both gathering as comprehensive archives of living material as possible to be used in future technological applications, in order to conserve biodiversity, secure the production of food, advance medicine and even to recreate already extinct species. Based on an interpretative analysis of texts on the gene banks’ websites, I argue that the gene banks’ approach to nonhuman species and human-nonhuman relationships rests on what I call “techno-power” – the cultural and political authority given to the technoscientifically-produced knowledge about species– and the concurrent production of nonhumans as “Other” to “the Human”. In my presentation, I maintain that this “techno-logic” enables the inscription and materialization of species as “data” or “genetic resources” for humans in the gene banks. I build my analysis on feminist and social scientific studies of gene banks for endangered species. These studies have construed the gene banks as examples of commodification and objectification of nonhuman animals and as an extreme example of the biopolitical control and management exerted over non-human animals in zoos, as well as criticized the way they utilize dichotomies and reduce individual animals to mere representatives of their species. However, the gene banks are not only about human control over nonhumans or human constructions of them. Instead the gene banks operate, as I aim to show, at the intersection of human domination of nonhumans and the loss of that (ostensible) control presented by the current environmental crisis. Therefore, in order to shake unfounded fantasies of all-encompassing human control, I will offer an analysis of the ways that different nonhuman objects take part in organising the social, political and material collectives of the gene banks in interaction with the meanings and discourses produced in, and around them. This posthumanist approach to the gene banks helps, as I will argue, to challenge assumptions of human autonomy and exceptionalism and hence, to position humans more realistically vis- à-vis nonhuman nature.

113 PARISE Fanny L’émergence d’un troisième genre technologique

Le concept de troisième genre renvoie, d’un point de vue sociétal et des gender studies, à tout individu considéré comme n'étant ni homme ni femme, à la fois homme et femme, ou « neutre » ; soit à un individu appartenant à une troisième catégorie sociale dans des sociétés dont la culture connaît trois genres ou plus. Le postulat de nos propos serait que ce troisième genre sera technologique, rapprochant toujours plus Homo Sapiens de son créateur. En définitive, est-il rival ou démiurge de dieu ? Poser ici la question de la place de Dieu n’est pas anodine. La littérature scientifique nous rapporte un lien entre ce “troisième sexe social” et le religieux. Pour G. Frazer, le « travestissement religieux » et le « changement de sexe » avaient une fonction de médiation religieuse. Chez le peuple Inuit, c’est précisément la fonction dévolue au chamane à qui on attribue la clairvoyance du troisième genre. Ce troisième genre technologique semble propulser l’individu dans une double posture : tantôt chamane de sa propre humanité, tantôt il érige (et fabrique même) des “médiateurs” non plus “humains”, “non humains”, mais artificiels pour échanger avec l’invisible. Cette posture rend compte de la volonté de l’être humain de faire exister ses dieux, posant la question de la matérialisation de ses réalisations : entre expériences (anthropomorphisme) et fonctionnalités (usage). La question d’une nouvelle humanité ne se pose que lorsque la créature ressemble à l’Homme ou dès lors qu’une créature technologique réalise des tâches autrefois réservées aux hommes ? Objectiver l’incidence sociétale de ces inventions technologiques sur les recompositions du genre et de notre humanité nécessite le recours à un triple niveau d’analyse : ontologique (fabrication technologique), sociologique (incidence sur les rapports de genres et sociaux), cosmogonique (place de dieu et place des hommes). Cette imitation du réel que représente le troisième genre technologique, semble en réalité masquer une quête de sens plus profonde : la place de l’Homme en société, et par extension la place de l’Homme dans l’univers. Toute civilisation se fonde sur des mythes cosmogoniques qui permettent de définir l’ordre des choses. En fonction de leurs rapports à la technologie, les sociétés justifient cet ordre par la science ou par la religion. La période actuelle bouleverse les convictions initiales des individus. En perte de repères et en crise de croyances, les hommes sont à la quête d’un nouveau cadre normatif pour ordonner leur vie quotidienne. Les avancées technologiques se mêlent à une modernisation des croyances animistes (temple shintoïste pour les figures mangas ou histoires d’amour d’hommes avec des love dolls), incitant certains individus à créer de nouvelles religions où la figure de Dieu serait une intelligence artificielle. L’église Way of The Future (WOTF) fondée par un ancien cadre Uber (Anthony Levandowski) illustre l’apparition d’une nouvelle génération de prophètes de la technologie. Penser le troisième genre non plus dans le rapport homme/femme, mais dans celui homme/robot, permet de prendre de la distance face aux évolutions humaines à l’œuvre et aux inventions de type pervasive qui sont en train de redéfinir les contours de notre humanité, mais également de notre avenir. L’individu se définit par rapport à l’Autre. Dans les prochaines décennies, Homo Sapiens devra pour survivre se penser dans une approche holistique (homme, femme, autres genres) face à l’Autre : le troisième genre (ou sexe) technologique.

114 PATOMÄLO Joel Postphenomenological premises in Foucault, Ihde, Haraway and Hayles’ works

In this paper I will discuss phenomenological reading of French philosopher Michel Foucault by Don Ihde and American Donna Haraway, and how she is related to Foucault, and Ihde’s reading of Foucault. This means that by reading Ihde’s position to Foucault and then analyzing Foucauldian tendencies in Haraway I will make clear some of the core postphenomenological - as well as posthuman - theoretical positions. In addition I will look at the new realism and more specifically Katharine Haylese’s new realism in order to shed light on the problematic of discussion or maybe rather different writings that claim in many ways to be theoretically near to each other of Haraway and Ihde. I will do this by analyzing different conceptions of the nature-society divided in new realism. Namely the idea that nature and society are separate, and often at the same time it is thought different laws that govern these realities. This is basically at least part of my master’s presentation for University of Lille 3 sciences humanities sociales and in this paper I will focus more on the Foucauldian aspects of these questions. Anyway the point is to shed light on the role of individual spectator and how the postphenomenological or posthusserialian debates are present on Foucault or Haraway. An important point of reference is the claim of Italian new realist Maurizio Ferraris that his conception of social (nature/society divide is implicit and text in Derridean sense is social) as text explains also Foucauldian concept of governmentality.

115 PAVANS DE CECCATTY Emma Reframing the human in postnormal times: posthuman ontologies in bio art practices

With the advances in technology and its applications in science, such as artificial intelligence, epigenetics and cyborg body extensions, our conception of the world and what is possible has greatly expanded. In these times of climate crisis and the resulting reconsideration of our place on this planet, many are turning towards these technologies in search of a possible solutions. Culture in particular has had an instrumental role in disseminating these scientific developments to the greater public and presenting them as the way forward. Specifically, bio art is a key type of art practice which arose in the late 1990s out of these technological advances and has grown in prevalence since. These practices use scientific methods as a basis from which to explore and go beyond biological boundaries, delving into the realm of the posthuman. It is bio art’s ability to make visible and intelligible the complex and invisible realities of our world which make it a particularly interesting art form when considering a way forward in our relationship to the world. In this essay, I suggest that bio art is presented as a monolithic practice, defined solely by the fact that it explores the posthuman. I argue, rather, that bio art practices can be categorised through the different ontological positions they depict within the posthuman umbrella. I suggest that two primary kinds of bio art can be distinguished. Majoritively, there are those practices which explore a transhumanist position, working with life itself as a medium to interrogate, manipulate and go beyond biological limits. This approach is concerned with the ways in which humans alter nature, and often view technology as the solution to issues that have or may arise. The other kind of bio art is more subdued and focuses on subjects pertaining to critical, or transcorporeal posthumanism. These seek to reinscribe the human into the web of life, presenting bodies as enmeshed in their environment through dis-anthropocentric approaches. To draw out these different approaches, I compare two bio artists, Stelarc, whose work looks at the extension of the human body through technology, and Sonja Baümel, who explores the porous boundaries of the human body in relation to our inner microbiome. How do these practices make visible their respective posthumanist positions? And what can we learn about these posthuman ontologies by seeing them represented? On one hand I argue that a transhumanist approach feeds human hubris and the very relationship to nature that we need to change in order to avoid our planet’s systems to collapse. On the other, I find that a critical posthumanism position in bio art invites a collective humbling, where humans are entangled with their environment in their becoming, transformed into multi-being humans. Ultimately, I suggest we need more of these critical posthumanist practices to help us become adaptable and creatively face the unknown challenges that these postnormal times will bring about.

116 PREHER Gerald FLSH License to Kill: Driving and Empowerment in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Lover”

For Joyce Carol Oates, “the short story is a dream verbalized, arranged in space and presented to the world, imagined as a sympathetic audience; the dream is said to be some kind of manifestation of desire, so the short story must also represent a desire, perhaps only partly expressed, but the most interesting thing about it is its mystery.” The story, “Lover,” featured in Oates’s 2001 collection Faithless, is a fine illustration of the writer’s theory about the short story as a genre for it articulates its main character’s desire, which is to be rid of her former lover. As the character’s plan to achieve her goal develops, it becomes clear that her newly acquired car, presented as an extension of her self/herself, will be her most faithful accomplice. The car gives her power and stimulates her sexual drives; it becomes a weapon, an enabling force. The machine and the character become one, making the non-human more alive than the human: the “lover” of the title is the car, as a close reading of the text and of this unexpected romance will show.

117 PRINTZ Jacques Université Catholique de Lille, Chaire Ethique, technologie et transhumanismes, EA 7446, Professeur émérite du Cnam, Professeur invité aux Facultés Jésuites du Centre Sèvres Vérité et/ou post-vérité dans un monde où « Tout est lié »

Que peut bien signifier VRAI dans un monde où « Tout est lié », telle est l’interrogation fondamentale et l’objet de cette communication. Dans un premier temps nous rappellerons quelques conséquences de cette interconnexion massive de tous les acteurs, et ce que, tout au long du 19ème siècle, on a considéré – du moins dans les milieux scientifiques – comme des certitudes, ce qui n’a fait qu’élargir le fossé entre les deux cultures, humaniste et scientifique. Cette problématique du « Tout est lié » dans un monde complexe est bien posée dans l’encyclique Loué sois-tu, du Pape François, de 2015. Nous examinerons ensuite, succinctement, la problématique de l’action dans un tel monde en prenant en compte l’apparente contradiction entre d’une part la montée de l’irrationnel et du relativisme, la « fin des certitudes », la déconstruction, les fake news, et d’autre part l’emprise de plus en plus forte de technologies qui sont toutes issues de la science du 20ème siècle dans lesquelles nous avons tendance à leur conférer un pouvoir qu’elles n’ont pas, à attendre d’elles une « vérité absolue » qu’elles ont encore moins, faute de ne pas en comprendre leurs limites, d’où la perte de contrôle ressentie par beaucoup. La grande découverte de la science du 20ème siècle est celle de l’infini complexité de l’information, comme le fut celle de l’univers infini à l’époque de la Renaissance, remplaçant le monde clos des Grecs qui avait régné sans partage pendant plus de 20 siècles. Nous conclurons par un plaidoyer pour une logique constructive, la seule qui semble pouvoir nous guider dans ce nouveau labyrinthe. Une logique qui prend en compte le caractère fini de nos ressources et de nos capacités individuelles en faisant appel à deux penseurs, Gilbert Simondon pour ce qui concerne l’information, dans les années 1950-60 d’où émerge la cybersociété d’aujourd’hui, et John Henry Newman, un penseur du 19ème siècle, théologien anglican puis catholique, qui s’est confronté toute sa vie au « comment croire », pour ce qui concerne l’assentiment. Cette logique constructive est une logique du faire vrai fondée sur l’intelligence humaine, c'est-à-dire une logique qui nous permet de fabriquer des objets/systèmes utiles à la société et non l’inverse, une logique qui s’appuie sur trois axes complémentaires indissociables, celui du raisonnement mathématisé, celui de l’expérimentation fut-ce à l’aide de simulation, pour l’adéquation des systèmes artificiels à la réalité, et celui du projet collectif – le « Tout est lié » – pour l’adéquation sociétale des produits de nos activités. Une logique qui permet également de contrôler les approximations qui nous simplifient la vie, et qui rend les systèmes acceptables. C’est un remède pour échapper aux utopies comme celles qui ont dévasté le 21ème siècle. Mais sans éthique, sans valeurs partagées, sans respect de la personne humaine, cette logique peut aussi nous mener droit en enfer.

118 QURRATULAEN Liaqat & AMRA Raza Posthuman Bio-politics: The Discourse of Drone in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction

With the advancement of technology in human world, warfare has also entered in a post-anthropocentric domain. In this regard, warfare technologies like drones are smart surveillance and murderous devices that are being used profusely in wars and conflicts going on in various regions of the world. Moreover, drones are also being used everywhere for human surveillance in the civil societies for security purposes. Interestingly, Rosi Braidotti (2013) argues that drone is one of the most ethically questionable posthuman technological artifacts of contemporary milieu because of their growing influence on contemporary milieu. This paper will analyze the discourse of drones in Pakistani novels from the perspectives of bio- politics proposed by Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish 1975; History of Sexuality 1976), notion of necropolitics proposed by Achille Mbembe (2003) and posthuman warfare insights developed by Rosi Braidotti. Pakistan is one of the countries that got hugely affected by illegitimate American drone strikes against its nationals on the pretext of War on Terrorism. Therefore, contemporary Pakistani fiction also got inspired by the discreet presence of this device in Pakistani politics, society and psyche. It develops a unique discourse of drone’s repercussions on individual and collective lives. Some novels especially contribute to this authentic Pakistani drone rhetoric like Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in the Rising Asia (2013) and Exit West (2017); Nadeem Aslam’s novel The Golden Legend (2017), The Wasted Vigil (2008) and Uzma Aslam Khan’s novel Thinner than Skin (2012). These novels draw an overarching trajectory of drone as posthuman machines that are being used for protract imperial bio-politics and necro-politics. The paper argues that contemporary Pakistani Anglophone fiction develops a unique discourse of drones as posthuman warfare gadgets that intrude both personal and public lives and entail psycho-social repercussions.

119 RAHN Judith Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Life Emerging from the Ocean Floor: Reimagining the Post- and Transhuman in African Literature

As traditional relationships between fauna, flora, material objects and humanity are becoming ever more contested, literary voices from across the world reflect the instability of previously undisputed Cartesian dualisms. Popular culture and academic discourse, both, take up on this conflicted perception and seek to re-imagine life in the literary. Critical posthumanist thought is continually gaining momentum and is often perceived as providing universally entangled networks of pluralities, which are by definition post-racial and post-gender. Operative notions of the ‘(hu)man’, however, which are essential in the term posthumanism itself, are firmly rooted in Western tradition and remain largely uncontested (Jackson 2013). As black literary voices are becoming ever more audible in popular culture and academic discourse, the conflicting realities of Western and non-Western formations of subjectivities manifest themselves in the materiality of the text. Nnedi Okorafor's acclaimed novel Lagoon (2014) skilfully navigates the plurality of subjectivities, as her tale unfolds during the aftermath of an alien invasion. Conquering the sea first, the alien invaders seek to reinvent human (and animal) life on earth in ways that test the limits of what is considered human, animal, and alien. The novel negotiates a fine line between notions of post- and transhumanism, and ultimately exposes traditional, hierarchical understandings of life as insufficient to do justice to this very new posthuman aesthetic. It questions the singularity of human experience and instead imagines life as an interconnected network of actants (Latour 2005). The setting of the novel in Nigeria's most populated city, Lagos, also subverts popular notions of alien invasion themes as neo colonial narratives. Although Lagos' past is closely entwined with the British Empire and is now a vibrant hub of new, postcolonial literary voices, the novel does not recreate historical notions of dominance and submission. Instead, it aims at creating novel ways of imagining the coming-together of civilizations. These new imaginaries call for notions that go beyond conventional categories of space, time, species, and gender and aim at overcoming the hierarchical constraints of Cartesian dualisms. The interjection between critical posthumanism and the notions of altered, improved humans in transhumanist thought provide tools with which to negotiate these divides. This “qualitative shift” (Braidotti 2013) is situated between the “transcen[dence] of embodiment” (Wolfe 2010) and the re-imagination of life as a multi- faceted network of relationality. This paper seeks to explore the precarity of human and non-human subjectivities and aims to expose hegemonic humanist dualisms as inadequate in a literary and physical world. Nnedi Okorafor's radical and surprising reimagination of the earth under alien command will provide the literary backdrop against which this paper attempts to explore posthuman subjectivities and transhumanist tendencies in literature. Most importantly, it will attempt to understand if and how literature can open new imaginaries for the portrayal of non-human subjectivities to include their agentic power in an animate world of “vibrant matter” (Bennett 2010).

Keywords: Afrofuturism, Critical Posthumanism, Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon, Science Fiction

Bio: Judith Rahn studied English and German Literature at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and at the University of Oxford. She holds a research and teaching position at the Department of English and American Studies at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf and is currently working on her PhD project “Exploring Posthuman Life in Contemporary Fiction”. Her research interests include posthuman and new materialist theory, Black British fiction, corporeality, and figurations of Otherness.

120 REHBERG Andrea Newcastle University Who is the anthropos of the anthropocene? Feminist perspectives beyond humanism

What is usually meant by the anthropocene is, among other things, the age (currently thought to have become discernible roughly from about the mid-20th century), in which we find ourselves, in which the planet on which we live is being fundamentally reshaped by large- scale human activity, in which the habitats of non-human life-forms and the animal and plant species in them are being destroyed, in which the fundamental chemical constitution of the elements is being changed, and in which the distinctions between nature and culture are de facto (if not conceptually) breaking down. Mobilising the thought of key 20th-century and 21st-century feminist thinkers, above all Irigaray, Kristeva, and Haraway, and, complementing their thoughts on the role and position of anthropos in the current era, Agamben’s and Michael Marder’s thoughts will also be examined for clues about how to think this contemporary anthropos. The central thematic and conceptual focus will be provided by the following questions and topics: how is the figure of ‘the human’ constituted discursively, textually and conceptually in the current era, in contrast to (as continuation of?) previous paradigms? Who or what is the ‘outside’, ‘the other’, through which human being is able to sustain itself as a being apart from the rest of nature? What is the role of the animal, the monster (or the monstrous), the foreigner or stranger in shaping the simulacrum of human identity? And finally, and drawing all other strands together, what is the role of contemporary technology, i.e., the technics of the virtual, in maintaining the putative position of human being as the instigator of global intervention, as homo faber, the alleged maker of its world and itself? This paper will thus attempt to chart a critical course from the modern to the postmodern conception of human being, and from the human to the posthuman, focusing on the role of technology, and on feminist and postfeminist critiques of contemporary conceptions of human being – of the anthropos said to dominate in the anthropocene.

121 REID Colbey Emmerson Columbia College Chicago, Chair, Department of Fashion Studies & Executive Director, The Fashion Lab Televisual A.I.

The television, already an ancient technology by the standards of our time, has long been associated with the opposite of intelligence—to wit it’s nickname as an “idiot box” for broadcasting trivial stories to the mindless masses. The nickname resonates with the Greek idiotes, a private person in contrast to the public persona associated with citizenship in the polis, and one indicative of prejudices against more domestic constructions of the self in western intellectual culture. Even that word—coined in Dreyfus-era France as "les intellectuels”—indicates the cosmopolitan identity of rootless individuals, unmoored from home and family. TV, a domestic technology, resident of living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens—and more recently, our laps and palms—rather than the public spaces in which dignified technological forms like the computer (originally) resided, is thus archetypally separated from academic attention: it is for idiotes, joined in the cultural imaginary with the home and its actual and imaginary residents. As the technology of idiotes, and one that has been around for nearly three-quarters of a century, television seems the least likely machine to associate with the contemporary quest to create Artificial Intelligence. And indeed, it is barely acknowledged (if at all) as a relevant technology in academic discussions of the form, not included when we refer to the software and hardware conglomerated under the phrase “high tech,” and never part of any reference to A.I. (or its body-double in the biological sciences: cloning). Even when critics (ranging from Ian Bogost to Katherine Hayles and many others) acknowledge the importance of narrative to the construction of intelligence in the form it takes in humans, or the importance of accounting for non-conscious forms of intelligence, the most technologically mediated narrative medium that humans now engage with—and frequently in profoundly non-conscious ways—eludes attention. This paper, in contrast, will draw from a combination of cognitive narrative theory and empirical research in the behavior sciences to argue that algorithmic accounts of A.I., along with overly- "wet” investigations of cloning in biology, have conspired to create a paradigm of both intelligence and cloning that positions both in the future when arguably humans achieved models of both clones and Artificial Intelligence back in the 1950s when our televisions achieved evolutionary stability and ubiquity in Western homes. Both algorithmic A.I. and “wet” constructions of cloning have overlooked the roles of narrative and myth in the evolutionary and replication pathways of the human, but television has quietly explored and exploited them. I argue that we should be looking to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other television apps and stations to see cloned human bodies and artificially constructed intelligence already in action, and thinking about the future of these stories and experiences harder in our ethical and philosophical debates about these issues. Doing so entails understanding television’s mobilization of story to interpolate social changes as well as changes in the form and meaning of the human. This paper thus repositions an “archaic” technology, television, at the vanguard of discussions of new media and the future of the human. In so doing it also challenges the relegation of domesticated technological forms to the backburner and defines the perimeters of the domesticated posthumanisms produced by them.

122 REINEKE Jan-Philipp University of Twente, Posthuman Identity Politics Posthuman Identity Politics

This paper seeks to address problems in contemporary democracy through the lens of critical posthumanism. By drawing a parallel between the posthumanist critique of the traditional, liberal subject of European enlightenment on one hand, and the current challenges to traditional liberal democracy on the other, this paper argues that the idea of posthuman requires a shift in political theory, especially regarding politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Examples of “cultural backlash” (a term coined by Inglehart & Norris (2018) to describe paleo- conservative reactions to progressive politics) will be given, supporting the claim that the emergence of new players in the political sphere has led to an increase in radical politics which are opposed to the existence of such new players. These radical conservative politics often center on white supremacy, anti- feminism, homo- and transphobia, and xenophobia. The emergence of such visceral politics are often supported by claims of impartiality and resistance to the politicization of society at large. In arguing against such a vision, this paper aims to explain not only how such vitriolic reaction betrays the crisis of the liberal, humanist subject, but also how the concept of the “regime of computation” (as used by Hayles (1999)) helps in identifying how such reactions seek to erase the body from politics. First, the return of such radical conservative politics betrays the crisis of the humanist subject and citizen as free and rational agent. The public sphere is not a “free marketplace of ideas” in which rational actors come together to find common ground anymore (if it ever was), but rather a veritable field of battle (both physical and digital) in which opposing forces seek to claim political space like territory. The claim against politicization of society at large can come only from a position of relative privilege that seeks to exclude certain actors – namely, minorities – from political discourse, and therefore from the political sphere. Secondly, the politics of paleoconservativism are deeply connected to issues of racial and social justice; the claim that things such as class, race, or gender should not matter comes from a position of relative privilege that seeks to deny the unique experience – and unique politics – of minorities. Conservative politics is seen here as the safeguard of Hayles’ “regime of computation,” as both seek to erase bodies – the nonconforming bodies of women, of immigrants, of gays, lesbians, and transgender people – for the sake of political exclusion. The paper concludes by stressing how critical posthumanism can offer an expansion of traditional identity politics, thereby giving political space and legitimacy to those groups of oppressed people that are excluded under a more traditional, humanist, and liberal understanding of politics and society.

123 REYNOLDS Peggy E. Post/Trans – Humanism: On the Aesthetics of Becoming

In both posthumanist and transhumanist discourse the “human” is understood to be an unstable concept, one always in transition being continually transformed by that which it transforms. A major point of discursive divergence, however, is that where the former has largely abandoned as a pursuit the perfection of the rational, individualized subject as proposed by Enlightenment philosophy, the latter sees itself as a continuation, and, in some cases, the apotheosis of this project. Where posthumanists of various stripes embrace the need for a flattened ontological hierarchy in which the human represents but one object within an indefinite multitude of equals, transhumanists, on the whole, champion technological progress and its potential for creating a supernal human variously described as either incorporeal and distributed or corporeal with increased, if not unlimited, mental and physical abilities. Implicit within these divergent visions of the human are two radically different explanations for its existence. Steven Shaviro, invoking the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, considers human existence to be inherently aesthetic – that is, rooted immanently in its feelings and prehensions – rather than in the intellectual abstractions which are derived from these. “Aesthetics”, he argues, “marks the place where cognition and correlation [between human thought and external objects] get left behind – or better, where they have not yet arisen.” It is here where objects indefinitely encounter other objects and where novel events – the true medium of expression of the universe – are forged. By contrast, transhumanists, such as Ray Kurzweil, largely adopt a teleological perspective – arguing for the inherent evolutionary drive of life itself towards transcendence, as evidenced only most recently by the arrival of the ratiocinated human. While Kurzweil represents perhaps a radical element within transhumanism, one imagines there are many within this group who are sympathetic to his response to his own hypothetical question: “if I were asked if god existed, I would say not yet.” Any settlement between the posthumanist and transhumanist perspectives will, I believe, require further exploration of the tensions between their fundamental allegiances to aesthetics and teleology, respectively, a topic I elaborate on in my paper.

124 RIGNANI Orsola Between the Middle Ages, the Contemporary, and the Future: (Towards) a Trans- Post-Humanist Body

Faced with the challenges of emerging technologies and impossibility of thinking human beings in the humanistic sense, I propose a convergent philosophical approach to posthumanism(s) and transhumanism(s). So, by means of ideas drawn from (Medieval and contemporary) philosophy, my contribution is informed by conceiving a non-anthropocentric and posthumanist transhumanism. My focus is the body as a crucial node of both transhumanism(s) and posthumanism(s), in that its consideration by one and the other seems to mark a major front of divergence between them (tool body according to transhumanism(s), dimensional body according to posthumanism(s)). My reflection is carried out by drawing two theoretical reservoirs (temporally distant and apparently difficult to put together): the thought of Roger Bacon (13th Century) and of Michel Serres. I take the former as a reference for transhumanist front and the latter as a reference for posthumanist one. In a perspective of percolation of ideas, interruptions and reappearances in new forms, I thus hypothesize that Bacon’s doctrine of the prolongation of life can be considered as an anticipation of the transhumanist research of earthly human immortality. So, within his natural-alchemical-medical anthropology for which man is conceived as one of the many natural forms, I examine Bacon’s idea that the adhesion of human activity (ars i.e. alchemy and medicine) with the course of nature can produce, through the preparation of a long life drug, the so called aequalitas terrena. Which is then an operation of restoration/conservation of the state of bodily natural balance (health), with the connected prolongation of life within the limits allowed by nature. I therefore dwell on the Baconian idea of a body in whose wholeness of person the solution of continuity between the biological-natural and the spiritual is attenuated, and on the connected idea, not of transcending the earthly man, but of the restoration of his fullness of person. In my thesis Baconian ideas, anticipating transhumanism(s), can induce positions in it of care of body, without transpassing in the empowerment; of body normalization, without going beyond it; of consideration of the body as a dimension of the human and not as an instrument or burden; of the consideration of man as a natural form and not as a center. These positions can also find convergences with posthumanism(s) and Serres (in his affinities with the posthumanism(s)), that carry forward the idea of informational irreducibility of the body as well as that of its unsuspeability/irreproducibility, and therefore of its dimensionality for man (in hybridization with nature and technology). I assume, in conclusion, that these convergences can lead to an idea of the body as a meeting ground between transhumanism(s) and posthumanism(s). One can in fact start thinking of a body that aspires to an improvement/extension of life in terms of a normalization (and not of a strengthening); a body dimension (not instrument) of man; a body infiltrated with technology, that does not use it as a tool in an anthropocentric way. Ultimately, a trans-post-humanist body.

125 ROBAARD Meike University of Groningen Cyborg Incorporated: Body-Horror, Monstrous Techno-performativity, and Cyborg Narrativity in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and eXistenZ (1999)

If, as Donna Haraway writes, “the cyborg [is] a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality as an imaginative resource” (150), then any medium able to create and generate such cartographic imagery proves to be a useful mechanism in laying bare the foundations, of the somewhat cyborgian condition we arguably find ourselves in. Film is a major vehicle allowing for such visualization and, in turn, a conceptually transformative practice that enables us to interact with the growing nexus of the “organic” and the technological. Whilst the cyborg is not a new (fictional) character, it is often represented as mechachnical, villainesque, or at least extremely militarized; a diverse presentation of the cyborg, both as a performative entity and metaphor, I argue, is lacking. For the purpose of this paper, I therefore focus on two works by the Canadian film director David Cronenberg, those being Videodrome (1983) and eXistenZ (1999) in a search for alternative formulations and visualizations of cyborg bodies. Cronenberg’s approach is promising because in both of these films, there is an emphasis on the bodily and organic in merging, morphing and transforming conjunction with the technological, by focussing in the ways in which technology is both an extension of us in the McLuhanian sense, and following Canguilhem in the organic sense, but also how it in effect physically changes us. Videodrome emphasizes this by showing human bodies turning into fleshy video tape recorders and notions of the “video-word made flesh”, and in eXistenZ through the playing of a videogame not on screen but by plugging directly into the body through use of “umbi-cords,” “bio-ports” and “meta-flesh.” Cronenberg, in a sense, though sometimes horrifyingly so, forces us, through his use of the body as a primary narrative-vehicle, to reconsider the fundamental importance of the very physical reality of our bodily existence and our inherent situatedness as such, something both Enlightenment philosophies and technofantasies of transcending that very body, possibly through new technologies, distract us from. Using these two works as sites for critical invention, then, in this paper I seek the understand the ways in which Cronenberg’s cinematic body-horror reflects the, perhaps uncanny, cyborgian spaces we find ourselves increasingly inhabiting, as often portrayed to concern either existentialist technophobia or technophilia aimed at bodily transcendence, oppositional positions Cronenberg interestingly brings together in his works. Given their thematic overlap, questions of reality, body-technology relationality, as well as the “special effects” they employ and, consequently, socially generate, as a critical point of departure, then, I seek to demonstrate how Cronenberg’s cinematic narratives are examples of what Haraway refers to as a “cyborg” and consequently lead me to introduce, building on Daniel Punday’s notion of “narrative bodies,” the notion of cyborg narrativity, applicable to Cronenberg’s works. Cronenberg’s monstrous, fleshy cyborg creatures thus come to demonstrate and signify; I want to suggest that they can, when considering a cyborgian manner of writing and narrating, illustrated by the way in which I write and present my paper itself as a cyborg-body consisting of bones, nerves, and flesh, be read as alternate maps of meaning mediating the increasingly technologized subject.

126 RODEN David From the Aesthetics of the Encounter to the Demonology of the Outside

I want to consider how the aesthetic informs our understanding of the ‘posthuman predicament’: the capture of life by undirected technical and ecological vectors. I will argue that the aesthetic has a central role in provoking and articulating our response to the posthuman predicament. However, it does this without affording insight either into the ‘posthuman’ as such or into its own status, i.e. the aesthetic as such. Firstly, the aesthetic must be conceived as yielding insight without unmediated knowledge of reality. To do otherwise countenances what Wilfred Sellars refers to as ‘the Myth of the Given’ – e.g. conceiving the aesthetic as a directly presented manifold of sensation, intrinsically contentful intentional experience, or some other categorical insight into the world. I will argue that we can use the assumption of Epistemic Dark Phenomenology (EDP) to bracket categorical claims about the world founded on sensory or affective encounters with reality, disabling any phenomenal or affective version ‘given’ (Jelača 2014). A facet of experience is ‘dark’ (or intuition-transcendent) if having it confers no understanding of its nature, or a very limited one open to many auxiliary readings (See Roden 2013). If phenomenology is structurally dark its ‘gives’ nothing of itself. Its content is never independent of the ‘probes’ or auxiliary assumptions we bring to it. This suffices to undercut claim for a ‘pre-established harmony” between the aesthetic and reality (Brassier 2011, 47). Nonetheless, aesthetic experience is the trace of a real that perturbs our conceptual capacities. Something is felt, or seen, or heard. Something happens. The encounter deprives us of stable habits of recognition (Deleuze 1994, 140). Such encounters are problems in Deleuze’s sense – events that disturb and outrun cognitive capacities while admitting of no unique solution but solicit the production of bodies and affects, performances, or technologies. These after-effects of the trace are its translations. Thus, the aesthetic is constitutively futural and disruptive; never given. The metaphysical models we bring to it (e.g. disconnection, cyborg theory, animism, sorcery) are a fan of ‘biomorphisms’ reaching from the human to an Outside whose range is theoretically unbounded by the space of reasons or subjects. It follows that there can be no posthumanist aesthetic theory. EDP and other ‘filtering’ elements foreclose a positive characterisation of the aesthetic, which can now only be understood generically as a wound of ‘potentiality’ (Kolozova 2013, 99). Biomorphic posthumanism offers a formulation of speculative posthumanism that can survive in the epistemic vacuum constituted by the filtering of constraints: an eliminative or disconnective process whose metaphysics belongs to the future, inscribing a demonological diagram of the Outside (Roden 2016).

Bibliography Brassier, R., 2011a. “Concepts and Objects”. In The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, re. press. pp.47-65. Deleuze, G. 1994. Difference and Repetition, P. Patton (trans.). London: Athlone Press. Jelača, M. 2014. “Sellars Contra Deleuze on Intuitive Knowledge”. Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism, pp.92-125. Kolozova, Katerina & Laruelle, Francois. 2014. Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy. Columbia University Press. Roden, David. 2013. ‘Nature’s Dark Domain: An Argument for a Naturalized Phenomenology’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 72 (1): 169-88 Roden, David. 2014. Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. London: Routledge. Roden. 2016. ‘Letters from the Ocean Terminus’, Dis Magazine. http://dismagazine.com/discussion/81950/letters- from-the-ocean-terminus-david-roden/

127 ROUX Marc Association Française Transhumaniste - Technoprog Pour un transhumanisme perpétuel (en quoi la continuité nous est nécessaire)

Transhumanisme, Posthumanisme, au-delà de la difficulté du sens donné aux mots, la question centrale posée dans le cadre de ce colloque paraît être de savoir, une fois encore dans l'histoire des idées, si nous pensons préférable la rupture ou la continuité. Or, dans le mouvement de pensée transhumaniste, les tendances contradictoires à pencher pour l’une ou l’autre de ces deux options existent depuis longtemps (voir Jean-Yves Goffi, “L’héritage de la génération Huxley-Teilhard de Chardin”, in F. Damour …, Généalogies et nature du transhumanisme, Liber, 2018). D’un côté, les notions de Singularité technologique ou d'accélérationnisme nous invite à envisager la rupture. De l’autre, un trans-humanisme qui se verrait comme un perpétuel voyage « à travers » l'humanité nous invite à la continuité. Certes, un très long voyage pourrait nous mener loin de ce que nous sommes aujourd'hui, mais une progression "progressive" devrait nous permettre de conserver l'essentiel, c'est-à-dire le sentiment de préserver notre identité. D’autre part, seule une progression assurant un minimum de continuité pourra aussi être assez progressiste, c’est-à-dire se traduire par une amélioration de la condition humaine valable pour le plus grand nombre. Nous argumenterons que seule cette progression progressiste garantirait au mieux de préserver notre humanité, au sens moral du terme. Certain transhumanistes expriment parfois le désir de devenir complètement différents. Nous n'émettrons aucune hypothèse sur leurs motivations, lesquelles sont singulières. Par contre, nous montrerons que c'est la logique du vivant, le bio-logique, qui fait que la très grande majorité des humains expriment le besoin d'une projection. Il est nécessaire que le moi que j'envisage d'être demain ou après-demain, même s'il est différent, soit encore moi. On notera également que ceci ne revient pas à exiger un anthropocentrisme. C'est seulement reconnaître que, jusqu'à preuve du contraire, il n'existe pas d'autres sources de pensée consciente dans notre univers. Il n’existe donc pas d’autre origine pour donner de la valeur aux choses de ce monde. Afin d’éviter de tomber dans un véritable nihilisme, cette présentation tendra à montrer que nous devons au minimum nous préoccuper de la perduration d'une pensée d'origine humaine.

128 ROZZONI Stefano University of Bergamo (Italy); Justus Liebig University Giessen (Germany) Arcadia in the Anthropocene: Overcoming Binarisms towards a new Posthuman Pastoral Criticism

The longstanding tradition of pastoral poetry in Western literature and its related criticism have created a significant amount of material, which is having a significant – and perhaps controversial – impact on investigating the human/environment relationship. Despite inevitable idiosyncrasies the multitude of approaches to studying the genre, which have flourished throughout centuries, share deep similarities in interpreting the pastoral landscape as a nostalgic and idealized retreat from problems of the real world. Moreover, proper cartographies of pastoral criticism reveal the dominance of an anthropocentric interpretative framework built on rooted dualistic perspectives: country/city, fictional/real spaces, nostalgic/present. Now more than ever binary thinking and dialectic oppositions appear as limited approaches to adequately explore the complexities of intellectual and social phenomena (Braidotti, 2013): this is particularly valid for environmental issues, considering the contributions in landscape and space studies (E. Soja, 1996) as well as new challenges offered by the Anthropocene. More than a mere dream of escape, the conventions of the pastoral landscape deserve to be aligned with up-to-date perspectives in the attempt to find interpretative paradigms that stimulate new responses to current planetary ecological crises. Terry Gifford initiated a successful trend in this scholarship, encouraging the search for “post-pastoral” artistic forms in contemporary literature, which reveal awareness and responsibility towards the environment for a wider understanding of “our relationship with nature and its dilemmas” (Gifford, 2012). But in order to question the dominant interpretative paradigm characterizing pastoral poetry – which still influences our perception of the surrounding world (Ruff, 2015) – we cannot limit ourselves observing the latest development of green literature phenomena (e.g. ecopoetry, environmental writing). What is really necessary is to try and re-territorialize the study approach for a wider understanding of how to re-read the invaluable literary heritage of pastoral tradition through a more inclusive, pluralistic and multifocal perspective. In this sense, the paradigm shift advocated by critical Posthuman theory offers an unique chance for a radical theoretical repositioning able to disclose new reflections on the green continuum between the human and other life forms and to enhance unexplored narratives in the study of the genre. Taking into account the peculiarities of the pastoral landscape as an effective model of harmonic co- existence between human and non-human entities, one might wonder: can traditional criticism be re- purposed by looking at the pastoral landscape as an alternative example of ethical relationships among living beings inspiring everyday practices and politics? Adopting a geocritical perspective (Westphal) I aim to deconstruct the concept of “idealization” traditionally associated with the genre in order to explore its aesthetic and cultural implications along the fault-line between fictional and real spaces. The pastoral landscape will be thus conceived as a space of transgression and liminality, where new perspectives may inscribe the urgency to find models of sustainable relational practice.

Preliminary Bibliography Badmington, Neil. ‘Theorizing Posthumanism’, Cultural Critique, Vol. 53 (Winter 2003): 10–27. Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter: Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press, 2010. Braidotti, Rosi, The Posthuman - life beyond the individual, beyond the species, beyond death, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham & London: Duke UP, 1993. Buell, Lawrence, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literature Imagination, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Campbell, Sue Ellen, "The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet", in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996, pp. 124-36. Cheney, Jim, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative” in Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence. Eds. Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Botzler. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. 86-95. 129 Clark, Thimothy, Ecocriticism on the Edge: the Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Cohen, Michael P. “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism Under Critique” in Environmental History 9.1 (January 2004): 9- 36. Coupe, Laurence, ed., The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, London: Routledge, 2000. Ferrando Francesca, Il postumanesimo filosofico e le sue alterità, Pisa: ETS, 2016. Fiskevold, M. & Geelmuyden, A. K. (2018)., Arcadia Updated : Raising Landscape Awareness Through Analytical Narratives, Milton: Routledge. Gaard, Greta. “Living Interconnections with Animals and Nature”, in: Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, Temple University Press, 1993. Gersdorf, Catrin; Mayer, Sylvia, Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism, Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi, 2006. Gifford, Terry, Pastoral, London: Routledge, 1999 ___. “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral”, in Scott Slovic (ed.), Critical Insights: Nature and Environment, pp. 42-61, Ipswich: Salam Press, 2012. Glotfelty, Cheryll; Fromm, Harold, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Goldman, Jane, Modernism, 1910–1945: Image to Apocalypse, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Halperlin, D. M., Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Haraway, Donna Jeanne, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003 ___., Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago & London: U of Chicago Press, 1999. Howard, Peter, Thompson Ian, Waterton, Emma (eds), The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies, New York: Routledge, 2013. Hubbard, Thomas K., The Pipes of Pan, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998. Iovino, Serenella, Ecologia letteraria: Una strategia di sopravvivenza, Milano: Edizioni Ambiente, 2006. Keucheyan, Razmig, Nature is a Battlefield: Towards a Political Ecology, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016 Locatelli, Angela “Constructions of Space: The Literary Configuration of ‘the English Countryside’ (1.ed), in Isomaa, Saija; Lyytikainen, Pirjo; Saarikangas, Kirsi; Suominen-Kokkonen, Renja (Eds.), Imagining Spaces and Places, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, pp.143-160. Love, Glen, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Pastoral Theory Meets Ecocriticism” in Western American Literature 27.3, 1992, pp.195-207. Morton, Timothy, The Ecological Thought, Harvard University Press, 2010. Oppermann, Serpil, Ufuk Ozdag, eds. The Future of Ecocriticism: New Horizons, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2010. Phillips, Dana, The Truth of Ecology, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Purdy, Jedediah, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Ranisch Robert, Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz, Post- and Transhumanism: an Introduction, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2014. Ross, Robert H., The Georgian Revolt: Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal, 1910-1922, Southern Carbondale Illinois University Press, 1965. Ruff, A., Arcadian Visions: Pastoral Influences on Poetry, Painting and the Design of Landscape, Oxford : Windgather Press, 2015. Santesso, A, A Careful Longing: The Poetics and Problems of Nostalgia, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006 Soja, E. W, Thirdspace Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. Skoie, Mathilde; Bjørnstad-Velasquez,́ Sonia, Pastoral and the Humanities: Arcadia re-inscribed, Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2006. Siddall, Stephen, Landscape and Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Westphal B, Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces, New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City, London: The Hogarth Press, 1973. Wolfe, Cary. What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2010. Zalaciewicz, Jan, The Earth After Us, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Zylinska, Joanna, Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, London: Open Humanities Press, 2014.

130 Bio: Stefano Rozzoni is a PhD Candidate in “Transcultural Studies in Humanities” at the University of Bergamo, Italy (in co-tutelle with Justus-Liebig-Universitaẗ Gießen, Germany) where he previously worked as a Lecturer of English language. His research interests focus on Environmental studies and Pastoral poetry, on which he is developing an original critical perspective merging Posthuman, Post-Anthropocentric, Ecocritical studies and stylistic textual analysis. More specifically, he studies early Twentieth century English pastoral poetry, in particular the works of Vita Sackville-West (of whom he is also working on the first Italian translation of her 1917 collection Poems of West and East) and Georgian poets. His critical approach includes Geocriticism, through which he is working on the words “place”, “space” in the first Italian edition of the “Posthuman dictionary”. He is also interested in tolstoyism, on which he published articles and translations from Russian. He is a member of Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and he will chair a proposed panel titled “Beyond Retreat: (Re)thinking Pastoral Landscape in the Posthuman Turn” at “ASLE 2019 Conference: Paradise on Fire”, University of California, Davis, June 26-30. He has recently presented a paper on Vita Sackville-West’s poems at the “Literary Birds Conference”, Durham University, October 11-13, 2018. He attended last year (August, 2018) summer school “Posthuman Ethics, Pain and Endurance” at Utrecht University, Utrecht, NL, Directed by Prof. Dr. Rosi Braidotti. He is the chairman of TAE Teatro, contemporary theatre of research Italian company.

131 RUMPALA Yannick Université de Nice, Équipe de Recherche sur les Mutations de l'Europe et de ses Sociétés (ERMES) De la technicisation des corps à la post-humanité ? Le cyberpunk comme moment et espace de problématisation des transformations de la condition humaine

Le cyberpunk est un courant majeur de la science-fiction, remarqué pour avoir renouvelé son esthétique et certaines de ses thématiques. Ce fut aussi le cas pour les thématiques corporelles et existentielles. Le cyberpunk montrait dès les années 1980 les ambiguïtés de l’augmentation technicisée des corps et de la cyborgisation des individus. Il les replaçait dans des contextes sociaux non seulement de développements techniques, mais aussi de dérégulation et de fléchissement des contraintes morales. Ces productions littéraires, cinématographiques, vidéoludiques, etc., peuvent être intéressantes à analyser dans ce qu’elles véhiculent comme représentations et comme formes expérimentales d’expériences individuelles. Ces représentations et ce « techno-imaginaire38 » paraissent accorder une attention particulière aux interfaces entre technologies et corps humains, ces derniers apparaissant notamment fréquemment pénétrés par ces technologies. Le cyberpunk n’est pas qu’une esthétisation d’une hybridation entre l’humanité et la technique : il offre l'avantage d'incarner des hypothèses abstraites. D’une certaine manière, les auteurs du courant cyberpunk exploraient déjà les frontières de l’identité humaine et réfléchissaient sur le « post-humain » sans s’embarrasser de ce type de catégorie. Dans les récits, les connexions informatiques des individus s’y font de manière physique et souvent invasive (les recherches sur les « interfaces neuronales directes » ou « interfaces cerveau-machine » sont à peine naissantes au moment où paraissent les récits fondateurs du courant). Outils et autres artefacts utilitaires ne viennent plus comme des prolongements organiques : ils sont incorporés, au sens propre du terme. Les corps paraissaient continûment modifiables par des modifications techniques, des ajouts d’implants, de prothèses, etc. De manière radicale, ces corps, leurs membres, leurs organes, étaient déjà mis en scène comme objets transformables39, et plus seulement pour des raisons médicales, laissant même entrevoir des territoires d’exploration nouveaux ou originaux à travers ces possibilités supplémentaires (des augmentations de capacités sensorielles jusqu’aux armes intégrées). Sur un mode analogue à celui des expériences de pensée, ces modifications corporelles peuvent ainsi être replacées dans des contextes (sociaux, économiques, techniques, etc.), certes fictionnels, mais potentiellement éclairants par les questionnements tendanciellement introduits. Lorsque ces modifications sont pratiquées, il apparaît qu’elles ne sont pas sans coût, financier évidemment, mais, à travers le vécu des personnages, elles tendent aussi à révéler un autre prix à payer, dans ce qu’elles ont par exemple comme conséquences psychologiques sur l’appréhension du corps individuel et la constitution d’une subjectivité. Par les déclinaisons individuelles, le cyberpunk donnait à voir ce que pourraient être ces expériences et sensations (y compris la dématérialisation des corps par l’immersion dans le « cyberespace »). De fait, transformations et augmentations des corps sont susceptibles d’être perçues et considérées de manières très variées par les individus qui y recourent (bon gré mal gré), ce que le décalage fictionnel est alors susceptible d’éclairer davantage en le réfractant en images multiples. En considérant par conséquent que ces imaginaires transposés fictionnellement comportent également des vertus heuristiques40 et sur la base d’un corpus des principales œuvres du genre et de leur paratexte, nous commencerons par dégager plus précisément les représentations (avec leurs parts ambigües de fascination et d’anxiété) que le cyberpunk donne de la technicisation des corps41 et, à l’instar de ce qu’avaient commencé à explorer d’autres travaux, la charge symbolique qui est ainsi véhiculée42. Nous montrerons ensuite les questions que ce mouvement littéraire (mais aussi intellectuel à certains égards) permet de soulever ou de reprendre, et les ressources qu’il offre pour des discussions plus conceptuelles et

38 Cf. Marina Maestrutti, « Techno-imaginaires du corps à l’ère des technosciences. Art contemporain et utopie de la transformation », Cahiers de recherche sociologique, n° 50, Printemps, 2011, pp. 77–95. 39 Cf. David Le Breton, « Des corps hypermodernes », Connexions, 2018/2 (n° 110), pp. 87-98. 40 Cf. Yannick Rumpala, « Littérature à potentiel heuristique pour temps incertains. La science-fiction comme support de réflexion et de production de connaissance », Methodos, 15, 2015, http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/4178. 41 S’insérant ainsi dans le réceptacle bien plus large que constituait déjà la science-fiction. Cf. Sherryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007. 42 Voir par exemple Daniela Cerqui et Barbara Müller, « La fusion de la chair et du métal : entre science-fiction et expérimentation scientifique », Sociologie et sociétés, vol. 42, n° 2, Automne 2010, pp. 43–65. 132 théoriques autour de la « post-humanité », ou au moins pour contribuer d’une autre manière à une pensée des « frontières d'humanité »43.

43 Catherine Rémy, Myriam Winance, « Pour une sociologie des “frontières d'humanité” », Politix, 2010/2, n°90, pp.7- 19. 133 SALOFF COSTE Michel Directeur de la Prospective de l'Université Catholique de Lille Ruptures et Cultures. Future studies, prospective et trans-, post-humanisme

La crise que nous traversons n'est pas conjoncturelle mais structurelle. Dans ce contexte les projections par extrapolation de tendances sont de peu d'utilité, car elles ne font que prolonger les courants du moment, alors que ce sont les ruptures qu'il conviendrait d'étudier. Pourtant, plus que jamais, l'individu, l'équipe, l'entreprise, la société en général ont besoin de points de repère, d'ancres flottantes dans un océan, souvent démonté, d'incertitudes. Dans les périodes où l'action tend à perdre son cadre de référence, et à devenir insignifiante, une réflexion socio-historique peut permettre de resituer et de mettre en perspective la mutation en cours, et redonner ainsi un sens effectif à l'action. Au delà du niveau des apparences, formel, c'est en effet au niveau du sens qu'il faudra apprécier le plein apport de la grille que nous allons proposer pour décrypter l'évolution des activités humaines. Ce "macroscope" a pour objectif d'éclairer notre position actuelle dans l'évolution, ainsi que les ruptures fondamentales auxquelles nous pouvons nous attendre, en donnant quelques pistes de réponses aux trois questions suivantes : - Comment sommes-nous arrivés à la situation actuelle ? - Quelles sont les caractéristiques de notre époque ? - Quelles sont les tendances à venir ? L'humanité a connu quelques grandes ruptures dans son évolution. Sommes-nous en train d'en vivre une autre, ou assistons-nous seulement au plein développement de tendances existant depuis longtemps ? Une manière d'aborder la question des grandes étapes de l'évolution humaine consiste à construire ce découpage sur les modifications enregistrées dans l'activité dominante. Par "activité dominante" nous entendons l'activité qui occupe la plus grande part de l'humanité à un moment donné. Pendant près de trois millions d'années, les activités dominantes de l'homme ont été la chasse et la cueillette. Agriculture et élevage s'imposent ensuite pendant trente mille ans et font place, il y a trois cents ans, à l'industrie et au commerce. Enfin, aujourd'hui, se répandent la création et la communication, domaines dans lesquels travaillent un peu plus de 50% de la population active des pays les plus avancés. Aux États-Unis, les activités proprement dites de "production" ne représentent plus déjà que le 1/6 de l'emploi. Dans la mesure où une activité engage la plus grande part des forces de l'homme à un moment donné, elle devient le fondement des valeurs qui animent la société. Les valeurs d'un chasseur-cueilleur, qui doit se déplacer rapidement à la poursuite des saisons et des animaux, sont ainsi différentes des valeurs d'un éleveur-cultivateur qui doit protéger son territoire et y rester attaché à chaque instant. Chaque fois que l'humanité a changé d'activité dominante, ses outils, sa manière de penser, sa manière de percevoir, de s'organiser, d'échanger, de communiquer, se sont trouvé transformés. Réfléchir sur l'histoire nous aide à construire un outil concret qui puisse nous éclairer le présent. Cet outil, c'est une grille qui offre une vue synoptique, claire, de l'évolution de l'histoire et du changement actuel.

134 1 2 3 4 SANTOEMMA Ilaria , MISSIROLI Paolo , BALZANO Angela & BOSISIO Elisa 1) Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa 2) Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 3) University of Bologna 4) University of Milano The Posthuman shift in the Anthropocene: a question of Space and Time

This panel seeks to replace the debate between the posthumanist and the transhumanist perspectives conceiving an alternative way by proposing a philosophical analysis that embraces the Space and Time question. The modern and humanist thought grounds the idea of a man as a being-in-a-time. A time in which the main characteristic is the Future which shapes paths and works as an engine for a progress to be. Indeed, the human being of a certain western Enlightenment and Modernity has been considered as the subject who lives in the time, while the non-human subjectivities as the ones living in the space. In the contemporary debate regarding the overcoming of the humanist features, it has been already stated (Ferrando, Henry) that some of the transhumanist reflections and practices, even though re-building a theory to go beyond “the human”, keep and maintain the idea of an enhancing Man, that in this panel we place in a progressive and inexorable time. There are some different paths against the “time paradigm” which make possible to think subjectivities that diversify themselves from the modern model of Man, such as in the Critical Posthumanism (Braidotti, Haraway, Marchesini) and in some post-phenomenological scholars (Berque). Interventions composing this panel move in this framework and try to face the challenges posed by new technologies and the ecological crisis in the Anthropocene era. We seek to enter in the debate finding a third exit based on a new spatial place for the (post)humans, new emerging posthuman subjectivities which included also non-human, hybrids and cyborgs. Some of the questions raised in our analysis are: can techno-bodies live ecologically in a Posthuman world? Is the Critical Posthumanism a way to achieve the exit from a total enhanced transhumanistic future/Man? How to deal with the problem of the “limit” from this point of view? Our interventions attempt to approach these issues offering a choral and multifaceted presentation by merging perspectives and adding progressively contents and interpretation. Missiroli will introduce the controversial idea of “good Anthropocene”, a concept which allows the idea of super-natural man living is a progressive time, changing and dominating the world, against the idea of geographical, spatial and ecological subjectivity. Santoemma through the concept of futurability will replace that argument in the progressive time and transcendent life-in-a-time as a paradigm reproduced in some transhumanist ideas and ongoing experiments; against this views we will together analyze how a revision of a Critical immanent Posthuman, when re-thought by using the lens of the subjectivity in a spatiality, could offer an exit for the ecology of a different - even techno-hybrid - Anthropocene. Bosisio will conceptualize the dualism between Nature and Culture in Space and Time by offering an overview of the two modern concepts and their exit within the idea of Haraway’s Chthulucene era. Balzano will finally address all the concepts since there presented from a perspective that problematize Capitalism and Posthumanism focusing on the twofold topic of space and limit when related with the question of reproduction and new non-human subjectivities.

Keywords: posthumanism, anthropocene, space, time, ecology of the posthuman, posthuman subjectivities.

MISSIROLI Paolo: Notes for a different Anthropocene in the Posthuman shift This intervention has the aim to root the general topic of the panel by giving a critical overview of the concept of Anthropocene in the contemporary debate and precisely will focus on the ecological subjectivity who might takes place in this era. In the first part my will is to delineate and criticize the meaning of the expression “good Anthropocene”: an expression used by some authors and scientists that approached this theme. The good Anthropocene would be, according to these scholars, the age of the realization of the essence of Man, which is to dominate nature, or to totally conquest and dominates it through the instrumental use of technology, as if it were his destiny from the Stone Age. My aim is to show how this expression presupposes a peculiar idea of man, that result to be linked to the Time but not to the Space; this Man would be that animal different from all the others living beings which, on the contrary, live in the space. The Man lives in his future; he has to become what he is not, he has no limit

135 by definition. I will argue that this perspective is also linked to a certain idea of technology, as total empowerment dedicated just to the human subject, and therefore I will try to show that this position is nothing but a radicalization of the modern humanism. In the second part, I will briefly analyze a different idea of subjectivity, linked to the theme of space, like the one that emerges from the work Ecumene of Augustine Berque, a post-phenomenological scholar. I will try to see if and how it’s possible to think a Posthuman Subject (stated that the humanist subject is the one who lives in the time of progress) in an ecological way. In this sense, we could speak of a different subjectivity for a different Anthropocene: not a man that has as destiny to conquest the world, but to live in it, in its spatiality. In this way we could see also a different idea of technology emerging from a different way to conceive the subject in the space, so in a limited but plural space. Technology will be in this framework a way to maximize our relation to the world and its alterities, and not a way to dominate it. It might be possible, in this sense, to think the ecological crisis differently from the authors of the "good Anthropocene". In that framework, indeed, the ecological crisis is only conceived as a hard moment, a temporary effort in the glorious path of the mankind to the dominion of the Earth. In reverse, if we conceive the man, that is this new different subjecitivity, as a "geographical being", the ecological crisis could be seen as what reveals us the relation that link the man to the world (the Earth).

SANTOEMMA Ilaria: A Time to yearn and a Space to inhabit. Futurability vs Critical Posthumanism Spatiality In the frame of the growing bio-info-technologies it is now playing a groundbreaking game: as a matter of fact, it’s possible to argue that we’re the first generations widely affected by the mass experience of cutting edge technologies, experimenting the hybridization with technical devices, communication and digital instruments. For this reason, this intervention tries to tackle the new posthuman hybrid subject in the theoretical and epistemological shift from time to space that embrace the whole panel. It will be done by addressing the already known difference between Posthumanism and Transhumanism, keeping on the analysis which seize the transhumanist paradigm as perfectible, enhancing, promissory and immaterial, working for a transformation of the man by means of technologies (Ferrando, Cockelberg, Marchesini, Henry, Sorgner). The main part of the intervention will hence focus on the deep futurable meaning of the transhumanist model which linked itself more and more with the modern idea of man, whose productive, time-based orientation has guided its positive, hierarchical and anthropocentric construction. In its philosophical meaning the concept of futurability discloses the possibility of a hypothetical event in a non-realized and potential future to be yearned. However, in the last thirty years, there have been some reasons to argue that the concept, as it comes from some transhumanist interpretations and expectations determined by new digital and technological improvements, is a transposition of the ideas of limitless and boundless in respect both to the time and to the subject. I will argue that technology here is conceptualized as having a futurable ontological meaning paving the ground for the reproduction of the futurability subject namely the one who lives in the time without a space. That is to say, following Missiroli’s intervention, in a non-ecological Anthropocene. I seek to discuss that if it’s true that this affect mostly the western, wealth societies, what we, living beings in the techno- hybrid world are going to understand is going to be the starting point for the new form-of-life existent in what is already an extensive natureculture dominion. In response to the time-futurable model, in the last minutes some issues will be dedicated to the presentation of a subject closer to a life-in-the-space. By tying a Critical Posthumanist approach (Braidotti, Haraway, Åsberg) with the question of the spatiality and the limit it’s possible to revise and use some core categories: such as the ones of cyborgs, cartographies, embodied nomadic subjectivities. In an article from 2014 Ferrando asked «which humans are human»? We move from this enquiry and give shape to a notion opposed to the futurability modern-shaped subject, defining a more immanent form-of- life, not exclusively man nor exclusively human, that inhabit the present and the Earth. Critical Posthumanism concepts of alliances and intersectionality while putted in a spatial dimension might represent the geographical subjectivity strictly embedded with techno-hybrid figurations and non-human actors occupying a space and questioning the ecological limit of a total enhanced and endless life.

BOSISIO Elisa: The Ethics of Bodies in a post-natural and post-cultural Era What counts as nature? This is a crucial question when we discuss about the Anthropocene. My intervention, in line with the panel focuses, will start by restating how - following the binary economy’s dispositive of otherness and hierarchization - nature is commonly produced as a spatially and almost

136 passive extension made by matter and bodies organized by fixed laws. Whereas the opposite so-called culture is the kingdom of the cartesian res cogitans, the realm of a future (time) emancipated from space, pure determinism and fixism. I will proceed by adopting different posthuman materialist lens, through which we can re-define this nature as a whole, un-dividable, complex cause-and-effect chain: nature is everything existing, a multi- levelled mass of matter, techniques and discourses we co-produce with other actants (Haraway, 2016) following intricate paths of creative openness and contemporarily encountering limiting laws of chemistry, physics, mechanics and intersection. Hence from this perspective nature is the tentacular network of individuals and their entanglement, the result of the be-with, think-with, feel-with, do-with and live-with of every entity on the Earth. I analyze the nature-culture binarism and, once dismantled, I will argue that the concept of Anthropocene risks to be itself compromised with a binary and anthropocentric view. Without depreciating our talk in a mere linguistic question - reinforcing the already dominant anthropo-logo- centrism -, I wish to de-potentiate the image of the human being as the real master of an external nature, and to re-think our geological and political Era by the recognition of all the posthuman and non-human subjects. If the Sapiens-species has surely huge responsibility in the climate change process, I’ll address the issue that we are not the only actors on the monistic-stage of the world but part of a community composed by fossils with mutating strength and usage possibilities, eco-logical or energetically costly living animals, machines we negotiate our liberation through… Since the so-called Anthropo-cene risks in some reflections to confirm the central position of the Man on the Earth, I will propose different lenses and a different term for reading our time: Haraway’s concept of Chthulucene. So that, the last part of the intervention is focused on the Chthulucene as a liberating strategy of non- purely-anthropic governance according to which a new ethics should be based on the notion of bodies entangled with everyone’s different interests. Over the horizon of a bodily ethics, the relational sensibility of all the individuals becomes central in a utilitarian based moral algebra (Bentham, 1780). The Chthulucene is indeed a proposal for a multi-species environmental justice: it’s the attempt to respect and satisfy every element, animal, human, machine interests - even the inorganic’s ones - by recognizing our mutual need, our unavoidable intersectional homeostasis and the urgency of an alliance between all the existent entities.

BALZANO Angela: Reproducing the future: for a Posthuman care of the otherness The aim of this contribution is twofold: to show how “biocapitalism” articulates itself as an anthropocentric system, since its main measure and purpose remains the Man, and to encourage a shift towards a more zoe-centred political economy (Braidotti, 2013). This double vision is hence entailed with the conceptual analysis of the panel which question the duality and opposition of an endless time and an ecological space. Arguing that biocapitalism is characterized by a trans-species system of production of goods and knowledge, that the creation of surplus is not only related to the human factor but to the endless resource of life itself (Cooper, 2008), do not mean that the structural inequalities disappeared nor that the final beneficiary is someone different from the Man. Biocapitalism will to overcome the limits of life on earth towards a speculative future, while consuming the potentialities that different living beings embody in the present. Undaunted, even if bombarded by climate change and extinction alerts, we continue to finance researches in the fields of reproduction and regeneration of the human, not caring for the present living conditions of the otherness, nor for the prices that we ask animals to pay for the sake of Mankind. As instance, in the name of the white men’s health we created Dolly in 1996. In the name of human reproduction, we created Rosita, a not-born cow cloned in 2011 in Argentine, where scientists inserted in her DNA human genes to produce lactoferrin, a protein that boosts the immune system, and lysozyme, an antibacterial substance, with the ultimate end to put on the shelves a cow-milk suitable for human infants. Both Dolly and Rosita embody a new kind of otherness that we are at the same time producing and consuming. I will discuss how these hybrid products of our inorganic wombs, cyborg-mammalian par excellence, raise several questions for a posthumanist feminist thinker: why are we so obsessed with the reproduction and the care/cure of the human when statistics clearly show that we are over-populating the planet and exhausting its resources? Is there any possibility to consider us parts of nature (Lloyd, 1994) and cyborgs (Haraway, 1992) united for Earthly survival? The consumption of otherness has been justified by the supremacy of the human species, a belief deeply rooted in western society that has prevented us to imagine and create an economical system having the Earth (and so a spatiality) as main stakeholder. Nevertheless, reproducing the future in the Anthropocene era requires the collective elaboration of a posthuman care of the otherness, that means a more zoe-geo- 137 centered approach rooted in embodied subjectivities willing to create cross-species alliances. Enlarging the concepts of sisterhood, going beyond the biological limits of human parenthood, feminist posthumanism could work as an effective philosophical framework for our schizophrenic present, a toolbox for the shaping of a new kinship system in the Real Space-Earth (Haraway, 1992), one where all living beings, organic and inorganic compounds, cyborgs and techno-others matter.

138 SCHUSSLER Aura-Elena “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Artificially Intelligent Sexbots—a Posthumanist Ethical Approach to Technological Singularity

Presented until recently in films and SF literature, robots are no longer just a futuristic hypothesis, but a reality. The increasingly-clear existence of robots makes us think about how soon it will be before robots are present among us, not only on military, social or medical levels, but also intimately, not only as simple ready-to-hand instruments, but as a new otherness with which we will have to learn to cohabit. Thus, sexbots (the study excludes the pedophilia paradigm and the child sexbots hypothesis) are becoming a quite obvious phenomenon associated with the integration of robots into human incidence space—in the paradigm of a future technological singularity, where we will move from weak AI to strong AI. This is because human sexuality has evolved concurrently with scientific and technological developments, and it is no longer confined to the perpetuation of the human species. Now, human sexuality is seeking to transgress its biological condition, and to evolve towards a human-technology fusion involving sexbots. This will lead to an ontological change at the human sexuality level, through the dissolution of barriers between species. This aspect opens the dissolution of anthropocentrism, an aspect which requires a restructuration at both sexual and normative ethical levels. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the risks, benefits and impacts of having sex with AI sexbots, in the paradigm of a posthuman ethics and technological singularity—which initially we will perform with weak AI sexbots, with the possibility, in the future, of performing with strong AI sexbots. The theoretical objective raises the question as to whether or not these AI sexbots may have personhood (in the anthropocentric/post-anthropocentric paradigm)— especially in the case in which we will benefit from dealing with a strong AI sexbot, endowed with autonomy in terms of thinking, self-consciousness, feelings, etc.—and how this will change the current concept of personhood. If we accept the hypothesis that weak/strong AI sexbots can have personhood (the post-anthropocentric paradigm), it raises the ethical issue of the rights/obligations of these robots with regard to man, and vice versa. If we admit the object quality of AI sexbots (the anthropocentric paradigm), it raises the ethical problem of sexual solipsism—within which objects are treated as persons, and persons as objects—in the event of which, in the paradigm of a stable ontology, robots are different from the point of view of substance (artificial substance), but not of properties, from humans (biological substance). But within the paradigm of technological singularity, can we talk about the possibility of the emergence of sexual solipsism in terms of strong AI sexbots—in a situation in which, in singularity, it is presumed that man has transgressed his biological condition, and has a posthuman emergent ontology? Or is sexual solipsism a concept that strictly holds to anthropocentric thinking?

Keywords: sexbots, technological singularity, weak AI, strong AI.

139 SHIN Sangkyu Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea The posthuman condition and sex

This paper deals with the impact of the sex-robot technology that can interact with users. Sex-robots are the emergence of new technological forms of existence as science and technology evolve, and I think this requires a fundamental deconstruction/reconstruction of the concept of sex. Sex can be regarded as an institution that works to maintain stability in human society. Thus, the concept of sex reflects various normative demands according to age and culture, and it is institutionalized in a way that distinguishes normal sex from abnormal sex. The perception of the normalcy of sex cannot be made independently of the political / economic / social / technical conditions of a society and the social practices reflecting them. The widely accepted view today is that sex is associated with the exercise of shared sexual agency which requires some degree of reciprocity. This view is still projecting some normativity to sex. I think the development of sex robot technology could lead to the emergence of a much more radical understanding of sex. Similar to a shift in perception of LGBTQ, this would result in a fundamental change in perception of normal sex. To look at this possibility, we will examine the prospect of transhumanism to eliminate the need for others in sex altogether. Here we try to increase our autonomy over sex by removing others from sex, which in turn leads to the claim that the ultimate form of sex is essentially masturbation.

140 SORGNER Stefan The Twist

I argue for a Nietzschean, i.e. a posthumanist transhumanism. One challenge that is being taken up here is how the Enlightenment ought to be assessed. Critical posthumanism turns away from the humanism of the Enlightenment, whereas many transhumanists see their thinking as a continuation of that of the Enlightenment. Both positions must be critically examined, since both have implausible implications. It is not the case that the Enlightenment can be overcome, nor that it can be continued, only a twisting of enlightenment thinking provides a plausible description of the relationship between posthuman thinking and that of enlightenment humanism.

141 SPECTOR Sam University of Canterbury, New Zealand Space travel, transhumanism, and the Anthropocene

Space travel and transhumanism have long been intertwined. Indeed, the two concepts were concomitant even half a century before the advent of the Space Race. This can be seen in the emergence of Cosmism at the beginning of the 20th century. Cosmists viewed our species as a work in progress and saw settling outer space as integral to the future course of human advancement. Cosmists believed that scientists would soon find means of extending the human lifespan indefinitely and even resurrecting the dead, thereby creating a necessity to greatly expand the area available to humankind. Space travel was thus positioned as means of transcending the limitations of both the human body and the terrestrial environment. The Space Race incited expectations of humanity’s unimpeded conquest of the Universe. However, those aspirations have remained largely unfulfilled, and the last human spaceflight beyond Earth’s orbit occurred in 1972. Beginning in the early 2000s, the privatisation of spaceflight revitalised the hope that outer space would soon be open to the masses. Space travel technologies have advanced rapidly due to the involvement of the private sector; but, paradoxically, the point in history when mass space travel is finally becoming feasible may coincide with developments in ‘NBIC’ (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science) that negate the need for and desirability of human spaceflight. The ‘you too can go’ message from the commercial spaceflight industry is at odds with the image of a transhuman or posthuman traveller. The human is then relegated to a subordinate role, critical decisions and important discoveries being left to machines. Indeed, even the interpretation and understanding of such discoveries would potentially be beyond the grasp of human intelligence. This presentation focuses on the implications of mass space travel becoming feasible in parallel with technologies that may repudiate the viability of human spaceflight. This creates particular challenges for the Anthropocene narrative. If, as suggested by transhuman and posthuman writings, the current human form is merely an intermediate step in a long evolutionary chain, it becomes especially problematic to emphasise the Anthropos. Access to outer space is in the process of redefining how humans view themselves in relation to the Earth, the cosmos, and the future course of evolution.

142 STASIENKO Jan, HELSKA Aldona University of Lower Silesia Deepfakes and politics of the face. Sociocultural, legal and political consequences of algorithmic construction of physionomy and their non-human esthetics

Today’s notion of the face at some point embraces many of the most important aspects of posthumanism. Face as we know it has been very often treated as a distinctive metaphor of the entire subject that speaks some sort of a truth about him. However this kind of presumption can be easily undermined by very many visual media technologies of our times that transforms the face and our understanding of it. On philosophical level we can also find some important discoveries close to posthuman perspective showing a face as a kind of territory and a surface and not necessarily human one. In our presentation we are focusing on one very evocative case of what happens to the face when it’s a subject of digital transformations. We would like to study various contexts of deepfake algorithm. Deepfake is morphing algorithm based on machine learning that is able to learn how to reconstruct faces through examining huge collections of photos and videos of a person whose face can be inserted in the body of a different person. The algorithm has been used to create an app called FakeApp that allows its users to make very reliable home-made face replacements in existing videos. Growing and rapid popularity of deepfake clips obviously created a lot of argument around legal consequences of the use of the algorithm especially because it started with porn clips presented faces of famous celebrities like Scarlet Johansson, Gal Gadot, Angelina Jolie etc. It also can be referred to post- truth discussion since some of these fake videos are related to politicians and other public figures. Deepfakes also address new questions about non-human creations especially because these really creepy effects can serve as a real example of non-human and autonomous esthetics so to speak. They also indicates how big data influences and transforms some of the last bastions of human integrities. Face deprivation is very vivid in this case. In conclusion we want to present deepfakes as important symbol of complex shifts that the concept of the face is subjected to nowadays. In that perspective the face seems to be an effect of intersection of different forces and dynamics: a capital, a desire, automation and artificial intelligence, big data, computer imagery and selfhood.

143 STEINBUCH Thomas “Bad Boy Nietzsche"? The Literature of Alienation and the Politics of Apartheid in the Late Writings: A Reply to Ivan Soll and Sarah Kofman

Each in different ways, Ivan Soll and Sarah Kofman present us with a refractory Nietzsche. For Professor Soll, Nietzsche is deluded about his self-worth and stubbornly disprizes real world standards and his place in it in his lifetime. This is especially so for Soll in Nietzsche autobiography Ecce Homo, and he cites the chapter titles as his case in point. There we see Nietzsche running away from ego deflating realities of failure, although ones to which a normal person would have adjusted. He is an egotist for not doing so, but more than that, he is a refractory egotist in going on to fabricate a false sense of superiority about himself as being above these realities. We see that false sense of superiority in the chapter titles. And, in her commentary on Ecce Homo, Sarah Kofman alleges that Nietzsche was a proto-Hitlerian who advocated a politics of isolation and apartheid for the ascetic type According of Kofman, Nietzsche formed a synesthetic association to this type as being dirty and came to feel that they were a danger to healthy humanity who may fall into nihilism of disgust on encountering them. Pace Professor Soll, while Nietzsche is undeniably quite alienating in the chapter titles of Ecce Homo, he is not so by way of a being a defiant egoist. Instead, the rhetoric in the chapter titles is what Bertolt Brecht called the verfremdungseffekt. Nietzsche’s wisdom is his Dionysian Wisdom always to choose the path of the grosstmoglichten dummhiet as a contrarian to the path of practical life which he regards as self-preserving and Darwinian. And the politics of apartheid, which is related in thought to the literature of alienation, has more depth to it than the shallow Philosophy of National Socialism Elizabeth Nietzsche labored forty years to reconstruct as the philosophy of Nietzsche with its metaphysics of race to which Kofman wrongly thinks it is related. Both writers would seem are making psychological observations about Nietzsche: Soll’s observation is that Nietzsche was a self-deceiver who had a false sense of superiority and who egotistically disprized conventional measures of success as beneath him. Kofman‘s observation is that Nietzsche formed a synesthetic association to the ascetic type as dirty. I will suggest that the psychological criticisms of these commentators is foreground only and that each of them holds an apriori commitment that Nietzsche did not share, and that their real complaint is that he did not share it. Professor Soll seems to subscribe to a quasi-apriori commitment that a non-refractory ascription of self-worth cannot be self ascribed. And in the case of Professor Kofman, she would seem to be committed to a apriori of the moral equality of wills as per a Kantian Metaphysics of Morals, which was one of Nietzsche’s favorite targets of criticism.

144 STĘPIEŃ Justyna Transcoding Multispecies Borderlands in the Anthropocene. Nonhuman lives in Artistic Practices

Although the definition of Anthropocene captures the pressing need for a human response to anthropogenic environmental changes, it as well reinforces the idea of separation between human and animal agency. Though seen as an existential threat both to humans and biosphere, the definition is still embedded in the conviction of human exception and supremacy concerning the plight of animals and the other beings. The question thus arises to what extent the project as an artistic practice challenges the anthropocentric attitudes towards the non-human in the Anthropocene. And as environmental crises cry out for new ways to imagine our relations to the Earth, this reimagining suggests that we must listen more attentively not only to the purposes and intentions of disregarded human groups but also to non-human communications. The article will give insight into sculptural works by Patricia Piccinini and Kate Clark which propose a future when human and nonhuman bodily borders merge as a result of technological and genetic evolution. Both human and animal–in these works–undergo constant morphogenesis becoming hybrid forms far beyond the human-social paradigm, implying that as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari asserted “there is no longer man or animal, since each deterritorializes the other - in a continuum of reversible intensities - a circuit of states that form a mutual becoming, in the heart of a necessarily multiple or collective assemblage”44. The works show that both human and nonhuman bodies are raw materials not separated from one another but always interconnected with the world and its processes, which entails new models of ethics and politics that cross conventional domains of the anthropocentrism. The transformations of the bodily borders, as indicated by both artists, will become quickly culturally accepted as realities have been naturalised and anaesthetised. Hence, the artists’ aim is to find new language and tools to communicate about the consequences of techno-scientific processes on our societies, establishing more empathic relation with more-than-human beings. As the paper will indicate, referring to new materialist and critical posthumanism theoretical framework, even though on the verge of ecological disaster, the artistic works avoid looking at the tragic position of the human and instead transcode a human body with materials, discursive, natural and cultural elements, biological, trying to prove that human and nonhuman border is a mobile space with many alternatives and potentials that will enable us to notice our responsibility for the global crisis and will force us to rework our strategies to find alternative ways of cooperation needed for the world’s survival.

Bio: Justyna Stępień is an Assistant Professor in Literary and Cultural Studies in the English Department of Szczecin University, Poland. She is the editor of Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture and the author of British Pop Art and Postmodernism. Her main research interests encompass critical posthumanism perspective on artistic practices, the politics of bodily processes, the transmediatization of cultural practices, aspects of everyday aesthetics, and posthuman subjectivity analysed from a transdisciplinary perspective. She has published essays on popular culture, postmodern literature, film and visual arts, combining her interests in philosophy and critical theory. She is the member of The Posthuman and Art Research Group that is an ongoing network of 10 practicing scholars, artists and curators from across Europe and North America.

44 Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p.22. 145 STRABEL Barbara Posthumanism Sex

It's hard for an average person to adhere to the changes taking place in technology, sometimes we do not notice them at all. However, these changes take place and affect every aspect of our lives. But is something so basic, by philosophers placed in the base of Maslow's pyramid, how sex can change under the influence of technological changes? My research shows that people still want to believe in the romance of sexual relations and are not ready for a quick change in this matter. Sex is the main thread that appears in sinceficion films. Visions presented by directors are often distant from each other, but they have one common feature. They are dystopian! Usually we are enthusiastic about new technologies45 and in this case, it is different and that's why the subject seems interesting to me. I analyzed plenty of sources with predictions for future changes coming in sex behavior. I took into account five different areas of development: remote sex, virtual sex, augmentation, immersive entertainment and robots. Mostly I came across with specific products on the market and checked their importance for people (Do companies promote their products on fb, YT or other social media?). I made a Google form survey with 100 participants and find out that people now don’t believe in changes that we can suspect in next decades. At the level of physical contact with the computer, we are still using our hands, and nothing has changed for decades. In terms of erotic industry manufacturers try to engage other parts of the body not only hands to participate in the virtual world. We can observe products that connect with our skin, heart, lips or intimate organs on the market. This branch of the technology industry is growing very fast because it is often associated with the pornographic industry, which is known as one of the best-earning industries. This means that it has a budget for investments in development. Here is also a place for a discussion about human rights and feminism. Why are most AI sex dolls female? Moreover, I want to think about rights for robots in that case. Where is the limit in the use of such sex dolls? Due many other innovations, we can communicate instantly with lovers, both when we are close to each other and far apart, making long-distance relationships workable and lustful gratification with new partners easier to satisfy. Robotics, virtual reality, and extraordinary scientific innovations are expanding the way we can express and experience sexuality through our five senses. Breakthroughs in biological and neurological science are opening manifold erotic possibilities However, in my work I would like to focus mainly on changes46 that affect all our senses, not necessarily indirectly contacting the brain. I have prepared this material to get insight into where the future of sex is going.

Key words: posthumanism, sex behaviour, long-distance relationships, relationships in future, changes, habits, devices, new technologies, immersive entertainment, porn industry

45 N.Hatalska, Far future. Historia jutra, Blue Media SA, Warszawa 2018, s. 131- 140. 46 J. Owsianik, R. Dawson, Future of Sex Report, 2018 146 STREIP Katharine William S. Burroughs, Sound and Posthumanism

“What we see is determined to a large extent by what we hear,” explains William Burroughs at the beginning of “the invisible generation,” an essay which offers advice for the application of sound cut-up techniques and explores the effects of sound and recording on daily experience. The essay was added as a conclusion to the second edition of The Ticket that Exploded (1967), even though a quarter of the 3,500 word manifesto on tape recorder activism had already been cut up and sampled within the revised Ticket (Harris XL). The tape recorder, in its material embodiment and effect on language, helped Burroughs think through the relation between language and sound and to hear in new ways. Rhythm is as important as content for Burroughs: in his work with tape recorders, “the interval switch may be as important as the context” (212). Within The Ticket That Exploded, “the invisible generation” gestures towards posthumanism by splicing identities where “when separated invisible and persistent presence they are in fact becoming each other” through tape and film (211). Posthumanism presents the human as a construction, enmeshed in biological, technical, medical, informational and economic networks, rather than as an autonomous, self-willed individual agent. Burroughs’s writing radically decenters the autonomous human being through questioning the coherence of identities and demonstrates how the human always includes the non-human, while satirizing addictive longevity agents that prolong life and point to transhumanism. Reading “the invisible generation” within and against The Ticket That Exploded illuminates intersubjectivity, bodily experience, improvisation, and the relation of ethics and politics to creative praxis in Burroughs’s writing.

147 1 2 3 SUNGOOK Hong , YI Sang Wook , HWANG Jeongha 1) Seoul National University 2) Hanyang University 3) Seoul National University Artificial Intelligence, Lies, and Videotape

Decision making by artificial intelligence (AI) is widely deployed not just because people expect AI algorithmic decision making may make fairer decisions than the ones humans make, since humans are prone to prejudice, bias, and arbitrary judgment. However, there are increasingly more claims that algorithmic decision making does not do justice to those who are affected by the outcome. These unfair examples bring about new important questions such as which factors are considered to constitute fair decision making. In Korea, the government announced plans in 2018 to invest $ 1 billion in artificial intelligence to foster this newly emerging industry, and companies and universities are competing to secure AI experts and to develop new products and services using AI technology. One of the areas where artificial intelligence has been applied and attracted social attention is the AI interview algorithm to help hiring processes of companies. A small IT firm in Korea, Midas IT, developed an AI interviewer for a hiring process, which is used by more and more companies as a replacement for human interviewers. Many people in Korea think that this AI interviewer will overcome the prejudice of the human interviewer and will do a fairer interview. In this presentation, we examine the social and cultural context in which AI interview algorithms became popular in Korea and critically analyse the strength and weakness of AI interview algorithm. We will show that this AI interviewer includes a sort of advanced lie detector, which is not allowed to use in a hiring process. Its widespread use can therefore be highly controversial. We will also show that this interview algorithm is likely to reflect and even amplify social prejudices and biases that human interviewer may have. In conclusion, we will present a guideline for AI interview algorithm to be used in a fair and responsible way.

148 SZABADOS Krisztian Decontesting Liberty: Transhumanism as a Thin Ideology

As a by-product of the ongoing scientific and technological revolution, transhumanism has grown into a worldwide movement and its ideas penetrated the public discourse and popular culture. The transhumanist movement has recently grown political branches that exert influence on policy-making by inviting topics such as human enhancement, robot rights, post-Anthropocene or morphological freedom into the political arena. The latest development is the emergence of transhumanist political proto-parties worldwide. These changes signal an ideational thickening of transhumanism. This paper presents the first ideological analysis of political transhumanism applying Michael Freeden’s morphological approach. It hypothesizes that transhumanism is a thin ideology. To test this hypothesis, this paper conducts the conceptual analysis of key transhumanist political texts and define the core, adjacent and peripheral concepts of the transhumanist ideology as well as presenting how transhumanism decontests the main ideological concepts such as liberty, progress, justice or democracy. It will present the main decontestation chains through which transhumanism establishes its distinctive conceptual character and structure putting forward peculiar ideas such as the proactionary principle, human enhancement and morphological freedom. The ideological maturity and coherence will also be discussed while presenting how adjacent and peripheral concepts borrowed from other full-fledged ideologies spawned various branches of political transhumanism. Furthermore, the paper will argue that the concept of liberty decontested as morphological freedom has a central role in the ideational structure of transhumanism. The centrality of morphological freedom is so salient that without it the ideological uniqueness and exclusive concept-ownership of transhumanism could not be established.

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149 Sandberg, Anders. ‘Morphological Freedom – Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It’. In The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, 55–64. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Wood, David W. Transcending Politics. London: Delta Wisdom, 2018.

150 SZURKOWSKA Kaja “Netflix and chill” – extended identity and the hybridization of human experience in the era of algorithms and social online platforms

The ideas of extended mind and extended identity play a crucial part in transhumanistic discourse. Transhumanism advocates strongly for human species to take a step further than our biology, to create human-computer hybrids, enhance our cognitive processes and our physiology. They argue that the idea of identity and “self” is something that is not only contained in our biological mind and body. In the concept of extended mind, proposed by Clark and Chalmers which focused on functionality, our minds enhancing their cognitive processes by using environment around to achieve computing goals. The proposed notion is now well known and was a subject of many discourses since. The idea of extended identity is starting to take bigger part of discussion since invention of social media platforms, earlier the extended self was attributed to human’s connection with their possessions as in work by Russel W. Belk and Aaron C. Ahuvia. Nowadays platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are playing a crucial role in our social life and entertainment, which Illana Morgan argues in her thesis: “Internetting and female undergraduate dancers: Embodied cognition, Dance education and the extended technological self”, showing that the participants in her study are describing experience from social media in multisensory language, suggesting strong connection between their alive, biological identities with those created on social media. In transhumanistic discourse Computational Theory of Mind is widely adapted, giving the notion of cyborgs and human-computer hybrids the equality of the understanding of “self”. If human minds are software running on hardware, which is brain, then adapting machines into our selves is nothing more but extension of our capabilities. The notion of human-computer hybrid is not a new idea in the science but for this specific discourse it is not widely covered in scientific publications. Our social media life and ”online persona” built on social platforms is purely data driven – Instagram and Facebook ads and recommended content are chosen for us based on our shared posts and search history, and Netflix recommendation algorithms are based on very detailed behavioral patterns on their platform and on data from different movie and TV focused platforms. Based on the review of available recent literature, this work proposes the idea of hybridization of human experience in time of extended by our social media platforms identity. The notion of extended mind and extended identity are combined with this hybridization of experience, which is seen as normal and wildly accepted by more and more social media users. This work regards Netflix as purely online platform, which is producing hugely successful shows, such as House of Cards and Sense8 and uses composed by algorithms personalized recommendations and content, describing how easily for them in the era of big data is to propose data driven creations which are most likely to succeed and hold interest of their audience. The process of creation based on algorithms is no longer rejected as “alien” or even “strange” by nowadays audience and what is more, it is adapted to our own identity as an extended part of our “self”. In conclusion, basing on the showed literature and examples, it is worth to emphasized that the hybridization of human experience and extended identity in the era of algorithms and social media platforms is not something that’s strictly theoretical anymore but takes place in everyday life.

151 TAEYEON Kim Soongsil University, South Korea Religious Transhumanist Vision in the early 20th Century: Focused on a Case of New Religion (Cheondoism) in Korea

The purpose of this study is to investigate how religious imagination about human beings and human enhancement through the help of science and technology has been developed in the new Korean religion of Cheondoism (Ch'ondogyo,̆ 天道敎) in the early 20th centuries. In the world history, from the late 19th century to the early 20th century was a time when trans-human imagination began to bloom in the fields of science and literature. But this period of rapid development of science and technology was in the case of colonized countries overlapped with the unfortunate times of human history of imperialism and colonialism. In the case of Korea, for 33 years during the colonial rule of Japan, Koreans could not have the proper opportunity to receive advanced science and technology education, just like the other colonialized nations. Even though western protestant missionaries propagated Christianity as the only civilized religion to Koreans, the challenge of science and technology was more striking than the religious challenge. In this oppressive situation, the desire for science and technology was great and attempts were made to religiously digest the experience of science and technology. It was to some degree a less remote possibility to express scientific imagination religiously under strict ideological control and censorship. At the beginning of the 20th century, the religion that expressed a very active position in science and technology in Korea was the Cheondoism.47 Especially, the representative thinker of the Cheondoism, Yi Don-hwa(李敦化, 1884-1950) was not only deeply interested in contemporary evolutionary theories, other science and technology, but also in Friedrich Nietszche’s thoughts on Ubermensch and Wille zur Macht. He criticized that Christianity as religion not compatible with science and hoped for a new religion (Cheondoism) which lead the birth of a new humanity through harmony with science and technology. In this study I will examine Yi Don-hwa’s view of life and death and his vision of new human-being (transhuman) especially in his book titled Philosophy of New Humankind (新人哲學, 1924). Through this study, we will have a chance to understand what East Asian perspectives on the new human being of the 20th century were and to have an opportunity to compare it with the Western kind of vision.

47 In the 1920s, the number of Protestants was around 250,000, while the number of followers of Cheondoism reached 3 million. 152 TAILLANDIER Apolline Anthropomorphizing intelligence? Transhumanists, AI visioneering and the posthumanist imagination

Looming Singularity or domesticized cognitive augmentation, intelligence enhancement is a crucial site for the making of transhumanist futures. Artificial intelligence and mind-uploading would pave the informational way to posthumanity; in the post-singularity era, all human biological limitations would be transcended. What the future of intelligence should look like, however, is subject to many controversies within transhumanism. This presentation focuses on transhumanist ideas of superintelligence and artificial general intelligence, as alternatives to the Kurzweilian notion of the Singularity. It shows how the transhumanist critique of naïve technological determinism involves a rejection of expert forecasting and “anthropomorphic bias”. Transhumanist attempts to “posthumanize” various human-centered notions of intelligence, it is proposed, complicate the settled boundaries between trans- and posthumanism. Transhumanist advocates of “Friendly AI” have argued from the early 2000s that future technologies should not be contemplated, but actively shaped (Yudkowsky 2001, Thiel 2011). This active involvement with the future involves the construction of epistemic tools such as scenarios, timelines, exploratory engineering, and “foundational research” about how to best ensure the benevolence of future ultra- intelligent agents (Soares and Fallenstein 2015). AGI researchers, drawing lessons from AI’s failed promises, seek to solve AI through the strait gate: only by reconciling the two canonical, symbolic and connectionist approaches, would it be possible to build artificial machines with less and less narrow abilities. Refusing to think of the mind as “blank slate”, they argue that the safe way to a bright future requires stepping away from an anthropocentric framework that would attribute malicious intentions to an intelligent machine. Core to this argument is the idea of intelligence as a general property of systems, ranging across humans, dogs, flies, robots and algorithms; rather than an essential characteristic of a particular class of systems. An important assumption of AI scholarship focusing on artificial universal agents (Legg and Hutter 2007), it helps understand transhumanist ideas of posthuman intelligence in the context of revived interest for general theories of intelligence in both academic and corporate AI research settings (Russell 2014, Legg 2008). Ideas of superintelligence also play an important role in how philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness and the very possibility of artificial intelligence (Dreyfus 1986, Searle 2014) are reactivated and displaced as part of the “deep learning revolution”, and as the distributed character of current machine learning systems contributes to weakening the phenomenological critique of logic machines. Transhumanist visions of the future of AI also take part in broader struggles over the redefinition of intelligence and the space of politics, involving the contradictory interests of industries and scientific communities towards technological developments and narratives about the future.

153 TAJO Thomas Posthumanism and Transhumanism as means: towards a goal of an infinitely open concept of humanity

My paper seeks to look at how Posthumanism and Transhumanism would better serve as tools for reducing human misery and suffering. Rather than as ends in themselves in the forms of Posthuman and Transhuman futures. I will illustrate this with the case of disability. 1. How Posthumanism and Transhumanism with their unproblematic attitudes towards technologies would help improve and develop positive relationship with technologies. How the result of which would help reduce the stigma that is traditionally associated with the prosthetic or assistive technological use. Which would enable disabled people to take advantage of the functional capacities that prosthetic or assistive technologies offer. Without being crippled by the fear and shame that is traditionally associated with such technological use. To become more productive and enjoy their lives better. 2. How the Posthuman efforts which challenge the narrow traditional historical understanding of humanity and human nature, would allow us to develop more objective scientific understanding about disabled people. That is reflective of the real potential capacities which disabled people have. The result of which would enable us to develop more positive attitudes towards disability . Which would facilitate towards accepting and embracing disabled people into the fold of normal humanity. The result of which would expand and broaden our narrow traditional concept of Humanity and would provide us with an open concept of humanity that is Infinitely Open. Which is all-accepting and all- embracing of people and beings with physical, sensorial, mental, emotional, intellectual variations as normal and desirable.

154 TALOVIC Aleksandar Justus-Liebig-University Giessen – The International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) Cortical Stack as Psyché Reengineered: the Status of Death in Transhuman Futurities

"If your stack is destroyed, you die. There's no coming back from real death", suggests one of apothegms of the recent, probably most thought-provoking Netflix web TV series "Altered Carbon" (2018) based on Richard K. Morgan’s same-titled cyberpunk novel trilogy (2002–2005). This paper aims to investigate the theoretical viability of the notion of death within the setting in which its conventional interpretations are being fundamentally reconfigured by the Trans-humanist thinking patterns. In this regard, a phenomenon of a ''cortical stack'', strikingly displayed in the aforementioned Netflix project, marks the whole New Testament of a digital resurrection paradigm effectuated through an advanced capitalist matrix (Braidotti, 2013). Namely, the stack implies a receptacle for a (re)uploadable human consciousness. As a hi-tech warrantor of virtual immortality, this memory container is being inserted to a spinal cord of replaceable bodies (''sleeves'') in a tough market where the ''premium-tailored'' flesh is dystopically overpriced and hard to inhabit. By further unfolding of assumed theoretical underpinnings of the series' narrative, the paper examines conceptual tensions between embodied subjectivity and an emerging mindset of Dataism that tends to posit information as radically preceding over materiality (Hayles, 1999), as well as the notion of ''brain uploading'' and a specific processual understanding of consciousness in Kurzweil-inspired ''Singularity'' environments. Furthermore, the status of death is also being questioned through the rising of oppositional ''Neo-C'' movement shown in the series, which stands for the right to have a traditional, 'biblical death' with all its Christian onto-theological implications. This is established by coding the stack to ensure that the individual is not to be spun back up (at least not legally) after his/her sleeve-death, even in virtual reality. Finally, by tracking the strategies on how onto-ethico-epistemological aspects of death as a one-way paradigm are being challenged in "Altered Carbon", the paper offers an understanding that so portrayed outcomes (including techno-driven life as an open-end process) are never intact from the discursive, material, performative and political forces as their formative elements (Barad, 2012). The above-mentioned separate but not entirely parted thematic foci will be employed as a conceptual apparatus in dealing with altered life-death constellations of Post- and Trans-human futurities, remarkably presented by last year’s highly unconventional Netflix crowd-pleaser.

Keywords: cortical stack, death, mind-body problem, subjectivity, consciousness, data, ethics, Singularity, Futurity

Biographical note: I am a PhD candidate at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies and a member of The International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC). I hold an MA degree in Cultural and Gender Studies from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade (2013) and I obtained my BA degree in Communications and Cultural Studies from the Faculty of Media and Communications at the Singidunum University in Belgrade (2011). My fields of interest include various theoretical approaches to cultural and narrative analysis, poststructuralist philosophy and critical theory along with contemporary hermeneutics of Patristic Christian texts and a growing field of Post-human theology. My current doctoral research deals with notions of subjectivity and mind-body issues within the Post- and Transhumanist theoretical trajectories, with the special emphasis on Actor-Network Theory, Performativity Studies, New Materialism, Embodiment and Affect Theory, Gender Studies and similar.

155 THEMISTOKLEOUS George The informational pliability of the body in new media

This paper sets out to revisit the outside-inside dialectic that contributes to a certain established thinking of space. In Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the reciprocity of outside and inside is informed by looking at natural organisms and their implied geometries. Through diplorasis, a custom-made interactive installation space, another articulation of the relation between body and space is explored, one where the body is not so clearly delineated from its external environment. The viewer that experiences the auto- scopic machine, stereoscopically confronts herself as a form of simulated self-image; this produces a rupture between the self-image and the self. The body in this case becomes suffused by its enveloping environment and can no longer adhere to a clearly demarcated position in space. By comparing the self- referential, auto-scopic condition of diplorasis with Bruce Nauman’s Live-Taped Video Corridor (1970) alternative definitions of bodily space emerge. Nauman’s pre-digital project utilizes video loops within a museum installation. The participant who walks along the corridor will view herself in the top screen monitor. The bottom screen monitor plays back the same angle however the passageway is empty. As she walks towards the far end of the corridor, i.e. towards the screens, she will view her image from behind diminishing in size as she approaches the screen. Thus, in a game of proximity, the closer you get to the projected self-image as it is played back, the smaller you appear all whilst facing your own back. The interaction that occurs in Nauman’s corridor between a moving participant and her image, is further elaborated upon within the diplorasis, as the electronic media produce a more immediate relation between the participant and her image. This is due to the control of the digital systems that split and manipulate the image in real time. This digital translation moves beyond the splitting of the subject that had been achieved in prior video formats. As the image in diplorasis implicates the embodied viewer – through the stereoscopic functioning of the eyes – it shifts between being both inside and outside the participant. As the boundaries between inside and outside become blurred, the notion of body becomes more pliable. The concept of the pliable body explored through Nauman’s installation and Roger Caillois’s work on psychasthenic patients (1935) will be extended to encapsulate the digital environment of diplorasis and the informational as articulated by Katherine N. Hayles in How We Became Posthuman (1999). This line of inquiry offers new ways to understand the body and the self-image as construed not only through the extension or augmentation of the psyche beyond the body, but also through significant changes to the organic schema of the body. The multi-faceted and malleable body finally meets the informational in the new auto-scopic space, where the outside-inside distinction becomes redundant. With the digitization of the image and its possible dissolution, the body is further infiltrated and forced to change its perceptual and cognitive coordinates in the new auto-scopic space, i.e. the self becomes positioned both inside and outside the body.

156 THOMAS Alexander On Progress and reason: stories of gods, animals and humans

The potential of science to reconfigure nature features heavily in Enlightenment thought to the extent where transhumanist ideas are sometimes explicitly stated, not as mythological fantasies, but as reasoned expressions of the potentiality of the scientific method. ‘Rational humanism’, emerged from the Enlightenment and can also be seen to influence transhumanist thought. It contained within it the potentiality for the mutual respect between all humans as agents of rationality, but also the potential sanctification of human self importance, hierarchy, and dominance over nature. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) challenged the perception of humans as uniquely distinct from the rest of the animal world. However, it also aided a conception of humanity as a temporary state in a possibly endless evolutionary process. The Enlightenment concept of progress could be interpreted teleologically, as a definitive and necessary trajectory of history: the natural process of evolution. Furthermore if humans are part of the natural world, that very canvas upon which Enlightenment rationality was instrumentalizing so effectively, then the capacities of humans too could potentially be enhanced through the scientific method. This paper explores the Enlightenment lineage of transhumanist ideas from Francis Bacon, Julian de Offrey and Winwood Reade through to the latter twentieth Century exponents of the creed such as FM2020 and Hans Moravec, and on to the modern day standard bearers such as Ray Kurzweil. In doing so it seeks to show that Enlightenment thought provides a justification for conceptualising humanity’s separation from other animals into a realm of the Gods through their tools of rational thought. Whilst transhumanists and posthumanists understand the human condition as mutable, for transhumanists the mutability represents the possibility for enhancement – opening up a teleological narrative of evolution towards an upgraded posthuman entity. For posthumanists, it represents a fracturing of the liberal human subject and an undermining of its hegemonic principles. The former advocates the potentiality of instrumental rationality, the latter engages with values, demanding a deep ethical consideration of the implications and the conditions of the unmooring. This paper argues that the rational critique of reason must play a role in a fully realized Enlightenment philosophy. As such, to see progress as determined, necessary and teleological is flawed. Rather it is to be understood as contingent and disaggregated. Furthermore, it recongnises Theodor Adorno’s concern that any notion of progress is bound up with the potential for crimes being committed in its name. His conception of the central contradiction inherent to Enlightenment thinking is the entanglement of knowledge and power. Hence the metanarrative of progress as historical fact is a concept which Adorno claims is synonymous with an ‘affirmative mentality’ which ‘is incapable of looking horror in the face and thereby perpetuates it’. It is fundamentally imbued with an imperial, colonizing force. For reason to achieve its promise as the organ of progress it must become self-aware of its own limitations and its own potential destructiveness. Humility is thus vital in the task of preventing instrumental reason leading to inhuman ends.

157 TORDO Frédéric Du Soi-cyborg au Moi-cyborg

La connexion avec les technologies (smartphone, jeux vidéo, prothèse artificielle, exosquelette…) semble produire de véritables métamorphoses chez l’homme. On observe une transformation du cerveau et du système nerveux dans son ensemble, et même du Soi. Les neurosciences permettent d’approcher ces phénomènes. En effet, l’homme est vicariant, au sens de Berthoz (2013) : il présente une capacité de substituer un processus par un autre, pour aboutir au même but. Son cerveau est lui-même vicariant, du fait de sa plasticité : l’organe substitue une zone saine à une zone déficitaire, mais il crée également de nouvelles combinaisons de neurones pour assumer une même fonction. Les technologies permettent de soutenir, dans certains cas, cette vicariance, comme on peut l’observer, par exemple, dans le cadre de l’implantation d’une neuro-prothèse (du type de l’implant cochléaire). Autrement dit, nous verrons que le cerveau, et plus largement le corps, semble se transformer avec les techniques. Pour autant, la mutation de l’homme augmenté et/ou connecté touche aussi directement sa psyché, au niveau même du Moi. Une fonction psychique se développe : par étayage sur une fonction du corps (c’est le Moi-peau de Didier Anzieu), mais aussi par appui sur la technologie, dont le fonctionnement se voit transposé sur le plan mental. Dès lors, le Moi connaît une véritable extension de ses limites. C’est l’apparition du Moi-cyborg (Tordo, 2019), qui permet de se représenter la technologie comme une partie de soi-même, comme un prolongement de soi, ou comme une extension de soi. Dès lors, le Moi-cyborg est un concept opératoire qui précise l’étayage du Moi, non plus sur la peau comme pour le Moi-peau de Didier Anzieu, mais sur la technologie en relation avec le corps (augmenté, connecté, réparé, transformé, etc.). C’est ainsi que cette théorie décrit l’enveloppement de la technologie par le Moi, comme support essentiel du sentiment d’existence. L’identité du sujet devient une « identité hybride », qui prend forme entre réalité psychique et réalité matérielle.

158 TORNEBERG Marie-Anne Institut Catholique de Paris Rythmanalyse du post-humanisme

L’émergence au tournant du XXème et du XXIème siècle des concepts de « trans » ou « post-humanisme », dans une société occidentale mondialisée où prédomine un rythme du changement, de « disruption » technologique touchant tant les relations humaines que l’habitat humain résonne comme un bouleversement de portée anthropologique. Ce rythme du changement oblige les individus à « s’améliorer », à « s’augmenter » dans leur capacité d’adaptation, de flexibilité, de compétences relationnelles et réticulaires. Les nouvelles technologies apparaissent comme l’« anthropotechnique » permettant non seulement d’accélérer son mode d’action sur le monde, mais aussi d’intensifier à chaque instant son mode d’être, sa présence au monde. Motivés par la promesse de l’élection dans un monde hyper-concurrentiel où se conjoint la peur de l’exclusion, l’amélioration et l’augmentation semblent une nécessité dans les grandes villes globalisées, pour se soutenir dans l’accélération des rythmes de vie et des changements sociaux, culturels et économiques. Mais des questions relatives à l’éthique et aux conditions du lien social, du « monde commun » pointent à l’horizon. Grâce à la sociologie de l’accélération d’Hartmut Rosa, nous savons aujourd’hui que nos sociétés occidentales connaissent depuis la modernité un mouvement d’accélération de l’Histoire touchant à toutes nos représentations anthropologiques. Le projet de la « Modernité » issue des Lumières et des révolutions politiques, économiques et technologiques, fut une vaste entreprise d’accélération visant à faire accéder l’« Humanité » conceptualisée en tant qu’universel, au progrès portée par la raison, l’égalité, la liberté et le bonheur individuel et commun. Le XXème siècle avec ses atrocités et le XXIème siècle avec ses séries de crises globales et bientôt environnementales planétaires, ont actés le décès du « Zeitgeist » de l’ère du Progrès. Nous entrons alors dans une époque alliant « postmodernité » et « hypermodernité », avec une exaltation de la présence au présent. L’« homme présent » (Z. Laïdi), vivant sous le régime du « présentéisme » (J.-F. Hartog), de l’ « instantanéisme » (P. Virilio), voire de l’urgence généralisée (N. Aubert) doit se reconfigurer. Le passé, rendu rapidement obsolète (information-marché fonctionnant 24h/24), l’avenir rendu présent sans espace de durée (affairement, « multitasking », et « infobésité »), l’individu « hypermoderne » est enfermé dans une bulle d’activité économique et professionnelle, où le besoin d’assistance et de palliatif se fait croissant (voire les chiffres croissants d’addiction/ dépendance). Les valeurs et concepts issus de la modernité des Lumières apparaissent comme dépassés par ce « champ d’expérience » du nouveau « temps réel », ce mode d’« automation » des actifs dans nos sociétés (ces problématiques touchent autrement ceux qualifiés de « passif »). Grâce aux NTIC de nouveaux habitus se forgent, favorisant l’émergence d’une humanité connectée, augmentée en « intelligence » (au sens computationnel et réticulaire) et en « capabilité ». À travers de nouvelles mœurs socio-culturelles (relation à soi/autrui, quantified self, maison/ ville « intelligente », etc.) l’humanisme classique laisse place à un nouvel « horizon d’attente » plus adapté à ces bouleversements sociétaux (P. Sloterdijk). La « disruption », le « post », le « trans », sont autant de signes linguistiques actant la volonté de « rompre » avec l’ancienne modernité, ces anciennes valeurs, pour libérer de nouvelles forces créatives, et ouvrir une nouvelle modalité d’expérience et d’action sur soi et le monde. Le « transhumanisme », néologisme indiquant une volonté cinétique de dépassement des limites conceptuelles et matérielles de l’ante « humanisme », et la transition vers un « post », rendent possible conceptuellement, un nouvel horizon réalisable grâce à l’« anthropotechnique ». L’hybridation homme-machine, permet l’avènement conceptuel de l’« Homme-Dieu », c’est-à-dire enfin émancipé des limites physiques et normatives que la condition humaine portait jusque-là, par sa condition biologique, théologique et sociale. Toutefois, les idéologues du « transhumanisme » se revendiquant pour certains comme les héritiers de la Renaissance et des Lumières, ne sont-ils pas en train de poursuivre l’horizon d’attente de la modernité, au lieu d’ouvrir la voie en terme de créativité, de rupture et de dépassement ?

159 TOUIZA Sara Cybernétique, posthumanisme et transhumanisme : dévoilement d’un monde cyborgien

Nous proposons, dans cette communication, d’explorer les mutations du concept de subjectivité, opérées par les philosophies transhumaniste et posthumaniste, à l’aune de la pensée de Norbert Wiener, fondateur de la science cybernétique. Défaisant les dichotomies classiques opérées en philosophie entre sujet et objet, naturel et artificiel, mécanique et organique, la cybernétique a proposé une pensée radicalement neuve du rapport entre vivant et non-vivant, ébranlant profondément le concept de subjectivité. Wiener a cherché à redéfinir l’idée même d’humain et à réintégrer cette entité au sein d’un nouveau cosmos, régi par deux forces : l’information et l’entropie. Ni matérialiste au sens classique, ni idéaliste, Wiener nous enjoint à envisager le monde comme un champ infini de communication. En son sein, quelques îlots d’organisation luttent temporairement contre la force d’érosion de l’entropie : les êtres vivants et les machines. Le monde qui a résulté de ses théories est le nôtre, un monde « cyborgien », où est remise en cause la définition classique du sujet issue de l’humanisme des Lumières. Le posthumanisme y décèle une possibilité inédite d’émancipation pour les êtres qui le peuplent : il pourrait « être un monde de réalités corporelles et sociales dans lesquelles les gens n’auraient peur ni de leur double parenté avec les animaux et les machines, ni des idées toujours fragmentaires, ni des points de vue toujours contradictoires48. » Wiener se montre effrayé par les conséquences métaphysiques du posthumanisme : il signifie d’accepter de laisser le sol ontologique se dérober sous nos pieds, d’accepter d’indécidabilité première de notre condition. Ce refus d’une ontologie nouvelle et monstrueuse est étonnant : celle-ci est née de son lent travail de sape des anciennes dichotomies de la philosophie. Le « cyborg » est le visage de cette ontologie : on ne peut plus distinguer en lui ce qui relèverait d’une supposée « nature » ou « culture ». Il n’est ni naturel, ni artificiel : Le cyborg n’a pas d’histoire de ses origines au sens occidental du terme – ultime ironie puisqu’il est aussi l’horrible conséquence, l’apocalypse finale de l’escalade de la domination de l’individuation abstraite, le moi par excellence, enfin dégagé de toute dépendance, un homme dans l’espace49. Cet « homme dans l’espace », qui n’en est plus tout à fait un, questionne notre statut. Quand il remet en cause les anciens partages, Wiener œuvre, sans le savoir, à subvertir l’idée même d’humanisme. Il inaugure une nouvelle manière de se comprendre, de se vivre, qui ne laisse plus prise aux certitudes passées, aux bonnes identifications. Il nous invite à poser un regard neuf sur notre place dans l’aventure de l’univers et de la vie. Et ce regard s’ouvre d’abord sur une épitaphe inscrite sur le tombeau de l’idée de nature humaine : « Nous n’avons jamais été humains50 ».

48 D. Haraway, « Manifeste cyborg », 1985/2007. 49 Ibid. 50 D. Haraway, N. Gane, « When We Have Never Been Human », 2006. 160 TUNCEL Yunus Pace University CRISPER, Posthuman Agency, and the Ethics of Genetic Enhancement

In continuation with my previous research and work on enhancement technologies and Performance Enhancement Drugs, I would like to explore the potential impact of CRISPER on society from the perspective of posthuman agency. CRISPER (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a recently developed gene editing process which can be used to alter genes for several reasons including health, cosmetics, physical features, and enhancement. In this paper, I will focus on how CRISPER can contribute to enhancement, while keeping in mind that other aspects of genetic modification can overlap with enhancement. The main challenge here is to examine in what ways the use of this genetic technology can fit into existing or new hegemonic power structures or bio-power, to use Foucauldian critique, or the power to normalize the singularly diverse individual, or in what ways it can contribute to the formation/education of the singular individual. Foucault has shown how modern institutions operate with disciplinary power and how individuals are subjugated within the hegemonic relations of power-knowledge and truth. Emerging technologies, no doubt, fit into these schemes; for instance, CRISPER can be used for ethno-centric or racist agendas. On the other hand, they can also contribute to the self-transformation of individuals towards their goals in activities that are meaningful to them; CRISPER can contribute to our genetic make-up in such a way that we excel better in our fields. One challenge here is the fact that genetic interventions are done at embryonic stages and the parents of the baby to be born make the decision. In what ways are these decisions in alignment with what the child would want to pursue? This is an open-ended question. Let’s assume that one of the parents is a basketball player and wants his/her child to be tall so that he/she can also become a basketball player. Such decisions would be reactive and essentialist. But what if the genetic modification was done in the realm of memory and intelligence both of which often contribute to better performance in almost any field? Would such modifications be reactive? I will explore a variety of possibilities of genetic modification and their affects within the framework of concepts of posthumanism.

161 VIDOVIC Julija Considérer l’opportunité d’un instrument normatif sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle

Il ressort des débats actuels qu’il serait nécessaire aujourd’hui de disposer d’orientations éthiques universelles générales au sujet des valeurs fondamentales qui doivent sous-tendre l’élaboration des systèmes d’IA. Il nous paraît dès lors intéressant, en premier lieu, de présenter et, en deuxième, de comparer les travaux qui sont en voie d’élaboration par des groupes de recherches auprès des institutions qui se veulent soutenir cette mise en œuvre de la communication mondiale et européenne sur l’intelligence artificielle, à savoir l’UNESCO, d’un côté, et le Parlement européen, de l’autre. Ces deux institutions ont récemment rendu publics leurs travaux respectifs portant sur les préoccupations éthiques quant à l’intelligence artificielle. Par le présent travail, nous désirons présenter ces deux documents pour pouvoir par la suite comparer leurs approches de l’IA et de l’éthique ainsi que leurs propositions quant à la production d’un instrument à caractère normatif. Le premier texte qu’on étudiera est celui de l’UNESCO. Il s’intitule « Étude préliminaire sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle ». Il a été rédigé par le Groupe de travail élargi sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle de la Commission mondiale d’éthique des connaissances scientifiques et des technologies (COMEST). L’objectif de ce groupe a été, comme ils le soulignent, de produire un instrument normatif mondial sur l’éthique de l’IA. Le deuxième document, dont l’intitulé est : « Les lignes directrices éthiques pour une IA de confiance », a été conceptualisé par le Groupe d’experts de haut niveau de la Commission européenne sur l’intelligence artificielle. Son but est de proposer un Code européen de déontologie de l’intelligence artificielle. Sachant que nous sommes limités par le temps, et qu’il s’agit d’une étude qui donne l’occasion à d’amples élaborations, nous nous limiterons à l’étude des motivations et des lignes directrices de ces deux documents qui se veulent être des instruments normatifs sur l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle.

162 VINOGRADOVA Olga EHESE de Moscou, Russie Discours éthiques engendrés par les contre-arguments et risques du progrès, de l'amélioration des hommes et de la société du transhumanisme

Les objectifs clés de notre intervention seront les suivants : premièrement, nous voudrions trouver, énumérer et systématiser tous les contre-arguments et les risques principaux évoqués par les bioconservateurs. Deuxièmement, il est important d'identifier les discours éthiques contemporains qui en découlent. Et, dans un troisième temps, nous nous donnerons la tâche de heurter les points de vue des apologistes du transhumanisme et des bioconservateurs afin de générer le fondement d’une discussion éventuelle. Comme on le sait, la pensée et les technologies du transhumanisme, basées sur l'idée de perfectionnement des facultés des hommes, ont provoqué des discours anti-transhumanistes ou bioconservateurs. Le bioconservatisme (des mots « biologie » et « conservatisme ») est une idéologie qui s'oppose à l'amélioration génétique, prothétique et cognitive des qualités de l'Homme aux buts non thérapeutiques. À la suite des bioluddites et des critiques du transhumanisme, nous pouvons distinguer les huit types de risques associés au transhumanisme, au progrès et à l'augmentation des capacités de l'Homme et de la société humaine : • anthropologiques • administratifs • individuels (personnels) • politiques • juridiques • économiques • écologiques • existentiels En plus de ces risques, il existe trois autres catégories de contre-arguments contre l'amélioration de l'homme et de la société : religieux, éthiques et sociaux. Nous pourrions dire que toutes ces peurs et contre-arguments des bioluddites, en général, ne visent pas à « effrayer » la société, à abolir ou suspendre les développements dans le domaine du transhumanisme, - ce serait, bien sûr, impossible. Les bioconservateurs appellent à développer un nouveau système de critères pour évaluer les processus d'amélioration humaine afin que les technologies du transhumanisme ne deviennent pas incontrôlables. Sur la base de la pensée critique des bioluddites, nous aimerions souligner trois principaux discours auxquels sont actuellement confrontés les politiciens, les scientifiques, les philosophes et les autres parties prenantes. Le premier discours : le discours du libre arbitre. S’améliorer ou ne pas s'améliorer, est-ce la question ? Dans une société où les technologies transhumanistes se développent rapidement, on se pose la question de l'obligation de l'amélioration, ainsi que des sanctions et de la punition (ou de leur absence) en cas de désaveu de l'amélioration. C'est l'éthique qui devrait devenir une sorte de cadre pour le transhumanisme. Le deuxième discours est celui des limites. La société devrait élaborer des limites administratives, juridiques, technologiques, économiques, sociales et morales, peut-être de nouveaux concepts de normes et d'anomalies. Et le dernier discours concerne le contrôle. Les processus de transhumanisme, comme tous les autres processus potentiellement dangereux, nécessitent un contrôle social, civil ou démocratique de la société et de l'État. Il est également important de comprendre que ce contrôle devrait être réalisé non seulement dans le cadre des États, mais aussi au niveau international.

163 VITZTHUM Bettina LMU Munich Sexdolls and Warmachines: Gender Dynamics in Artistic Depiction and Actual Implementation of Artificial Humanity

The paper aims to examine the question why both artistic depictions of artificial humanity and newly established and emerging android technologies rely on the binary gendering of their products in order to establish them as humanoid. The android as a concept with a surprisingly old, diverse, and consistently relevant artistic history and a significant impact on technological progress and the public discourse thereof, is an opportunity to examine gender from an unprecedented angle: in the context of human self-mimesis. Artificial human characters, in art as well as technology, generally enable posthuman self-reflection on an abstract level, as their position in the mimetic complex is once removed from conventional self-portrayal and the familiar artistic recreation of the self. The qualities they are equipped with by their creators, both fictional and in the real world, provide meaningful input to the posthumanist discussion on the problem of a definition of humanity, as well as a new angle on the mimetic complex of art and life. Gender imperturbably remains - regardless of the mimetic excellence or abstraction of the android’s humanity itself - an arguably instinctive element of every artificial construction of humanity. The traceable gender-division in the utilisation of assigned female and male androids over the course of several hundred years of android-themed fiction precedes the same implementation of gendering in real- life android technology; establishing a clear distinction between female robots for erotic and male robots for violent purposes. This poses the question, whether this segregation has any effect on the actual construction of the android, be it mechanical, software-related or artistic, or if it is a strictly social requirement and if so by whom, consumer or creator? Possible objects of the analysis would be the androids of Hiroshi Ishiguru Laboratories (Geminoid and Erica); hyper-realistic doll-manufactures like the Chinese EXDOLL; military defence projects like the Russian F.E.D.O.R. android; literary versions like Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives and cinematic visions like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

164 WANTOCH Sabina A new focus for transhumanism: Psychedelics as cognitive technology to resist affective capitalism and subvert ‘the individual’

Transhumanism is the practice of using scientific development to enhance human capabilities – largely through medicine and technology. It is becoming increasingly relevant as scientific advances make feasible the possibility of reshaping and manipulating aspects of human biology and cognition in order to ‘enhance’ us. Critical transhumanist thought should recognise the relevance of power structures and society for this ‘enhancement’, and look beyond ‘the individual’ as the forefront of enhancement. This piece stems from an examination into the relationship between political structure, socioeconomic affect and technological enhancement, and the notion of ‘the individual’. It considers how we can use cognitive enhancement technology to manipulate socioeconomic affect in a way that can change society and the structures that constrain us. Thus, this cognitive technology is offered as a transition mechanism to help transcend the affective trap of our current socioeconomic paradigm – neoliberalism – in order to transform our power structures to make way for the ideal transhumanist reality. It is therefore, a cog in a bigger wheel. But an important cog to consider, since it illuminates the power of unconscious affect and the part that it plays in sustaining the socioeconomic paradigm; focusing on transcending this unconscious affect as an important transhumanist aim. This presentation proposes psychedelic substances as this cognitive technology. It uses the literature of affective capitalism to argue that a predominant affect of anxiety is produced by and simultaneously produces the neoliberal paradigm. A ‘state of anxiety’ is tied into social structures which promote the isolation of ‘the individual’, in turn sustaining those structures which shape work; as well as, insidiously, our understandings of ourselves and others. I present psychedelic substances as ‘affective technology’ to infiltrate this; they are uniquely placed to initiate the overcoming of this affect in their effects on the self, which therefore shapes social interactions. I draw on the pool of recent scientific resurgence of interest in psychedelics as therapeutic tools, and theorise that they can induce a renewed sense of self that opposes the sense of self cultivated by neoliberal affect. I interpret the therapeutic research, and argue that part and parcel of their therapeutic uses of combatting anxiety is an experience that can go beyond ‘therapy’ in this traditional individualistic sense. I focus on three emerging therapeutic mechanisms: ego-dissolution, unitive experience, and connectedness, analysing how they (though seemingly inconsistent) can coexist through a new conception of ‘self’. It is this renewed ‘self’ that psychedelics can affectively instigate in a person, and in doing so, have the potential to disrupt the viscous cycle that exists between neoliberal anxiety and maximisation of profit. Through this, they can literally reshape how we understand who we are, and question the scope of ‘the individual’. This presentation is important for the transhumanist discourse as it highlights how our individual mind-bodies are effected by, and effect, our social structures in unconscious ways, shifting the lens to how technology can be used to interfere with this cyclical nexus and reshape it in different ways, thus queering the notion of ‘individual’.

165 WEISS Dennis M. York College of Pennsylvania Televisual Thinking: Locating a critical posthumanism in, on, and with our televisions

From whence do we derive our images of the posthuman? Such a question reminds us that visions and images of the posthuman are powerful memes in the posthuman economy. And yet too often the official story of the posthuman, emanating from transhumanists, bioconservatives, and critical posthumanists alike, proceeds as if the posthuman is solely a product of the latest techno-scientific developments in what Rosi Braidotti refers to as the four horsemen of the posthuman apocalypse: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. Or the official story of the posthuman is located in the vanguard of western critical theory, from Foucault to Deleuze, with maybe a dollop of Haraway thrown in. But perhaps there’s another way of thinking the origin story of the posthuman. Maybe what the official story papers over is the origin of the posthuman in the world of pulpy, popular, mass media, including especially television. This presentation is a plea for television and televisual thinking as an avenue for exploring more expansive and critical visions of the posthuman, suggesting that one of the most interesting emerging technologies for thinking beyond humanism is the one we’ve been watching all our lives. Televisual thinking begins with a recognition of the television as the most interesting triply articulated technology of the posthuman economy. The concept of the triple articulation of media technologies has its origins in the domestication theory of Roger Silverstone, who recognized that the television was both a means of consumption and the product consumed. Silverstone argued that the television provided a basis for an education in all aspects of contemporary culture and it did so within the context of the domestic sphere. The triple articulation of television recognizes it as device, content, and context. The 2015 – 18 Netflix series Sense8 serves to further elucidate the contours of televisual thinking and the emergence of a critical posthumanism. Sense8 is paradigmatic in this context for a variety of reasons. It’s creators, Lana and Lilly Wachowski (the Matrix trilogy) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5), are long steeped in the pulpy regions of mass culture and mythic forms of the posthuman. Sense8’s multinational ensemble highlighted gay, lesbian, and trans characters in a storyline that focused on a distinct human evolutionary pathway (Homo sensorium) that led to a shared subjectivity linking the mental and emotional lives of the “sensates.” More intriguingly, the central characters of Sense8 were themselves an analogue of televisual thinking, each of them representing a dominant television trope, perhaps a television channel on the increasingly internationalized Netflix: the Mexican telenovela star, the Bollywood love interest, the Korean martial arts star, the American police procedural. The shared subjectivity of Homo sensorium mirrors our own subjective space shaped by our long immersion in televisual culture, a subjective space shaped by a domestic, analogue technology that offers a counter to the high-tech, digital technologies long associated with the posthuman. This presentation explores the manner in which Sense8 and televisual thinking offer us an alternative pathway towards a critical posthumanism.

166 1 2 3 4 WIKBERG Per , EIKELBOOM Aletta , GRANÅSEN Magdalena , HUBER Samuel , JOHANSSON 5 6 7 8 Björn , VAN DE KUIJT Judith , NORVANTO Elisa & WILLIAMS Colin 1) Swedish Defence Agency, FOI, Sweden 2) TNO, The Netherlands 3) Swedish Defence Agency, FOI, Sweden 4) Forventis, Switzerland 5) Swedish Defence Agency, FOI, Sweden 6) TNO, The Netherlands 7) Finnish National Defence University, Finland 8) University of Warwick, United Kingdom An Environment for Experimentation on Command and Control for the Post- and Transhuman Era

The increasing and rapid development in science and engineering is re-shaping our world. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and advances in medicine among others are examples of trends that fundamentally change conditions for human life – even change the human species at it’s core. However, evil, conflicts of interests and sheer stupidity will still be around, evolve and pose a challenge for the defence of human freedom and democracy. Defence no longer has a sole focus on defending the physical borders against an enemy wielding kinetic capabilities. To a substantial larger degree, fundamental values must be protected in the context of an interconnected world of various actors that are elusive, resilient and highly effective. Still, our contemporary Westphalian nation state militaries defence forces are, in their essence, industrial age artefacts. The coordinative function - command and control (C2) - is in most militaries based on an abstract model of a general sitting on a horse gazing down on the battlefield and commanding a hierarchy of subordinates. C2 is fundamentally based on principles of similarity, redundancy, linear thinking, and control as a way to reduce uncertainty. The prospect of the significant failure of our current linear, hierarchical, and deterministic industrial age command and control systems is less a question of if but of when and where this will happen. Consequently, the core of C2 must undertake a significant change. C2 models have to be agile, autonomously self-adaptive and self- regulating, and at least as contingent and emergent as the context in which it is formed and operated. Trying out new approaches and concepts for C2 calls for environments in which new ideas, concepts and prototypes can be tested and developed. The challenge is to create a manifest environment that both captures the complexity of future challenges and implements these in comprehensive scenarios, yet still is sufficiently simple to be feasible in practice. The environment should also provide tangible and reliable measures of behavior and performance. In addition, it should be possible to adapt the environment for specific experiment purposes and thus have dynamic rules. Finally, the environment must still be easy to understand requiring a minimum of time to prepare. This contribution proposes a non-computerized concept for an experimental environment to address the challenge outlined above in which independent actors work together to solve both individual and common tasks. The environment is founded on theoretical perspectives, regarding dependence between decisions, how bases for decisions are formed and decision making processes in fluid and highly uncertain conditions. The task is to interact and to solve a variety of problems that each require different combinations of capabilities, for example military capability, intelligence capability and ability to influence. The initial rules for interaction and solving tasks are dynamical and can be changed by actors as a part of the exercise. With the help of the capabilities, the experimental environment can be translated into a future scenario thus simulating a future C2 structure together with a projected technological development.

167 WOO Hee-Jong Seoul National University, College of Veterinary Medicine Expansion of transhumanism – from religion to trans-animal

For people, dualism of body and mind has already lost persuasiveness, but body and soul/mind are effective in the representing human being. Nevertheless, it is not desirable to limit the transhuman as a form of physical enhancement, including genetic enhancement of the body. In addition, transhuman with the meaning of infinity, eternal life, etc. is considered to be a feud with religion. However, as human beings that are physically and mentally represented, the transhuman applies to not only on the body, but also the spirit. If human enhancement can be applied to both the mind and the body, the prototype of the transhuman argument is not only for Nietzsche's "Ubermensch" but also for the spiritual uplift and transformation of life as in the case of the apostle Paul. Considering the internal awakening or enlightenment in traditional religions as the mental transhuman, Nietzsche's position can be the bridge between religious and conventional transhumanism. The current physical transhuman debate needs to be extended to the religion in its top scope, and at bottom it is worth to note the genetically modified organism (GMO) controversy that underlies the transhuman concept of genetic transformation favorable to human. Furthermore, contemplation on "the trans-animal" positioned between GMO and transhuman is required. Social and ethical debate on transhuman becomes more robust and accessible when the implications of GMO and trans-animal are fully discussed. These examinations bring up the trans-animal discourse, which tends to be overlooked in the autonomous strong AI and the human-centered posthuman discussion. The range of transhuman that presupposes the enhancing of human body can be expand to the spiritual transhumanism of religion, and also extends its scope to the bottom through similarities with the GMO arguments that are already in debate on genetic modification of the life form. Therefore, the ongoing debate between transhuman with science and religion does not have to be in conflict, but is on the same context such as the conventional tension between the body and the mind. It is more noteworthy that a vigorous debate on the positioning and rights of animals as living beings in posthumanism that are dealing with strong AI and human.

168 WOZNIAK Marcin Posthuman Voting

Voting is often considered as the primary way to communicate sovereign will in a democratic society and a manifestation of consent to the transfer of a certain form of political authority. There are a lot of assumptions about voting, voting agents and voting entities that can be reexamined from the viewpoint of critical posthumanism, speculative posthumanism and transhumanism, and voting practice. A discrepancy between values that the idea of democratic voting aspires to and voting practice is hardly new for voting theory and political theory. The occurrence of the problem of incorrect voting, ignorance of the candidates' views, ignorance of the problems put to the vote and the disadvantages of this system as a form of communication is also well researched. However, it can be argued that the traditional critique of voting lacks crucial perspective on personhood and technological capabilities provided by posthumanism and transhumanism. Critical posthumanism provides us with means to deconstruct contemporary voting agents and look into the voting networks, voting ecosystems, voting acts, embodied voting and expand the circle of voting entities beyond humanity - with a potential of inclusion of non-human animals, artificial agents and (if discovered) extraterrestrial beings. This analysis concludes in a proposition of fluid personhood for voting - a measure of consciousness and a measure of accidental rationality in voting spaces. This approach can provide pragmatic legal criteria for future of voting without proposing ontological essentialism. Transhumanism approach can help us envision a process of bettering our technological capabilities of rational and compassionate group decision making. Present, and near future advances in neurotechnologies and AI, especially AI-assisted argumentation can bring us new ways to conversationally create much better knowledge bases and knowledge networks, correcting for our natural biases and participate in real time lawmaking. It is technically possible to create a space for disembodied reasoning that is responsive to relevant moves made by fluid voting entities. This will allow every moral entity to be governed by rational public discourse based on merit and cooperation rather than majority rule and short term individual interest.

169 YEŞILYURT Yasin Technological Mohammed and Sameer

According to metahumanist thought, the strategic use of body which is dissolved borders is not considered in a power relation in the sense of the word "strategy" which is commonly used in the meaning today. Rather it refers to multiple fields beyond specific essence and pointing out new relation forms between other species, technology and environment. Metahumanist perspective helps us both to open new horizons about world's future and invites us to rethink about human condition in today's unstable political and cultural climate. Considering the fact that transhumanist technologies can evolve into metahumanist thought, past experiences are also become important like today's developed technologies. A picture of two disabled people which was taken in 1889 in Syria and some technologies such as "fusion" and application called "be my eyes" can be considered as typical examples of metahumanist perspective. From this point of view, this paper presentation aims to discuss transhümanist and metahumanist ideas with correlating two disabled Syrians called “Mohammed and Sameer” who lived in 19. Century and today's new technologies.

Author’s Information: I am Yasin Yeşilyurt from Istanbul, Turkey. I am an Assistant Professor in the department of Radio-TV- Cinema in Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University. I finished my Ph.D. in Communication Studies and graduated from Istanbul Maltepe University. My research fields are posthumanism, transhumanism, media culture and cinema.

170 ZABOROWSKA Ewa University of Warsaw, Department of Art History Artificial intelligence risk or benefits in the transhumanism era

Looking at the history of progress, none of human fears has been confirmed in reality, so what is the mechanism of human fears in confronting the unknown? I will present the mechanism of psychological atavism, as research shows, people are most afraid of losing their own autonomy. Many interpreters make the mistake of transferring responsibility and risk to artificial intelligence, while the main risk lies in legal, and economic regulations and the basic problem is whether these regulations support autonomy, human freedom or control. What artificial intelligence will be depends only on ourselves from the maturity of societies I would like to present the latest research of the University of Massachusetts, where an experiment based on the popular game "The Sims ". People were to create a main character creation, over 90 percent of participants created characters similar to themselves (the total similarity of gender appearance, system of values and character traits occurred in over 90 percent) only in a slightly idealized version. According to the theory of similarity, we create reality for our own symilarity is therefore true What artificial intelligence will depend on today depends primarily on the level of human wisdom.

171 ZETLAOUI Tiphaine Université catholique de Lille, FLSH Le trans-posthumanisme au crible des institutions parlementaires

Alors que le XXème siècle est marqué par l’affirmation, la propagation des utopies cybernétiques et le déploiement intensif et mondial des réseaux de l’information et de la communication, le XXIème siècle voit apparaitre l’émergence de courants trans/posthumanistes basée sur la convergence des NBIC (Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Informatique, et sciences cognitives). Portés par une diversité de groupe d’acteurs (associations, partis politiques, think tanks, industriels et scientifiques…), ces courants doctrinaires se diffusent depuis une dizaine d’années avec une certaine ampleur aux États Unis et en Europe (Doat, Damour, 2018). Malgré le caractère extrêmement protéiforme de ces mouvements, le trans/posthumanisme prend l’aspect d’une philosophie, son but étant de dépasser le système de pensée des Lumières en re-questionnant le rapport que l’homme entretient à la technique. Née aux États-Unis, celle-ci se diffuse dans les différentes strates institutionnelles du pouvoir notamment politique au niveau européen. La constitution en 2003 d’un groupe d’experts appelé « Foresighting the New Technology Wave », présidé par l’historienne norvégienne des sciences Kristine Bruland, et mandaté par la commission européenne pour travailler sur « l’étendue du potentiel et des risques de Technologies Convergentes » (Alfred Nordmann, 2004, p. 8,) illustre cet état de fait. Réunis pour donner une réponse au rapport américain « Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance » édité par la « National Science Foundation » en 2003, ce groupe d’experts constitué de 25 scientifiques issus de divers pays et disciplines réalisent un rapport intitulé « Technologies Convergentes. Façonner l’avenir des sociétés européennes. » dans lequel ils encouragent et préconisent la dynamique amorcée aux États-Unis. Les grands thèmes abordés dans celui-ci deviennent par la suite, pour les institutions de l’Union Européenne et notamment l’État français, l’objet d’enjeux prioritaires rendus visibles dans une série de rapports traitant de l’Intelligence artificielle ou du droit robotique (Alfred Nordmann, 2004 ; André Gattolin, Kern, Pelevat, Ouzoulias, 2019 ; Mady Delavaux, 2017 ; Claude Ganay et Dominique Gillot, 2017 ; Cédric Villani, 2018). L’objet de notre contribution portera sur le contenu de ces documents institutionnels qui demeurent à ce jour, bien qu’officiels, peu explorés par les chercheurs des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication et des Sciences politiques. Comment les auteurs de ces rapports s’emparent-ils de l’imaginaire conceptuel du transhumanisme et le transposent-ils en des termes éthiquement recevables d’un point de vue de la tradition humaniste dont l’Europe et en l’occurrence la France sont profondément et constitutionnellement les héritières ? Nous examinerons à ce titre la teneur idéologique des rapports en nous interrogeant sur la part de techno-prophétie et d’utopie technologique (Lucien Sfez, 2002) qu’ils recouvrent alors que l’Europe est encore extrêmement marquée par les Guerres mondiales qu’elle a traversées, soucieuse à cet égard de garantir un devoir de mémoire. Qui plus est, quelle place les pouvoirs publics accordent-t-ils à la critique ? Dans quelle mesure l’esprit critique n’est-il pas intégré pour paradoxalement légitimer l’usage hyper-exacerbé d’un système technologique dit convergent et inédit ? Plus largement, nous montrerons dans quelle mesure certains éléments du discours en lien avec l’imaginaire du trans-post-humanisme font échos à ceux produits au sujet des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication dans les années 90. Nous verrons ainsi comment les principes de « convergence », de « changement » et d’« innovation » permettent aux politiques d’avaliser des actions et décisions menées dans le domaine technologique afin notamment d’endiguer certaines controverses. Nous conclurons notre réflexion sur les processus de verrouillage de la pensée à l’œuvre au niveau institutionnel (Pascal Robert) en montrant en quoi la structure argumentaire des discours empêche même lorsqu’elle est critique d’aborder véritablement le « changement » en des termes proprement non techniques.

Bibliographie sommaire Rapports institutionnels Delvaux, Mady. Rapport contenant des recommandations à la Commission concernant des règles de droit civil sur la robotique. Parlement européen. Document de séance, 2017. Ganay, Claude ; Gillot, Dominique, Pour une intelligence artificielle maitrisée, utile et démysthifiée. OPECST, 2017. Gattolin, André ; Kern Claude ; Pellevat, Cyril ; Ouzoulias, Pierre. Rapport d’information fait au nom de la Commission des affaires européennes sur la stratégie européenne pour l’intelligence artificielle. Sénat, n°270, 2019. National Science Foundation. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science. 2003. 172 Nordmann Alfred. Technologies convergentes. Façonner l’avenir des sociétés européennes. Commission Européenne, 2004. Trégouët, René. Les nouvelles technologies de l’information. Sénat, Rapport d’information, n°331, 1997-98. Cédric Villani, Donner un sens à l’intelligence artificielle. Pour une stratégie nationale et européenne. Mission confiée par le Premier ministre Édouard Philippe, 2018. Ouvrages Doat, David ; Damour, Franck. Transhumanisme : quel avenir pour l’humanité ? Éditions Le cavalier bleu, 2018. Robert, Pascal. L’impensé informatique : critique du mode d’existence des TIC. Édition des archives contemporaines, 2012. Sadin, Éric. La siliconisation du monde. L’irrésistible expansion du libéralisme numérique. Ed. L’Échappée, 2017. Sfez, Lucien. Technique et idéologie : un enjeu de pouvoir. Seuil, 2002. Articles Claverie, Bernard. « De la cybernétique aux NBIC : l’information et les machines vers le dépassement humain ». Hermès, La Revue, 2014/1, n°68, p. 95-101. Hottois, Gilbert. « Humanisme, Transhumanisme, Posthumanisme ». Bioethica, vol. 8, n°2, décembre 2013.

173 SPEAKERS INDEX

GUÉRIN Vincent, 65 NORGUET Benjamin, 110 A GUILLEN Julio, 87 NORVANTO Elisa, 167 NYSTROM Erik, 111 ABDELHAFID Hafid, 36 ACQUIER Aurélien, 21 H AMBRUS Gabor, 22 Ö HAY Jonathan, 66 AMRA Raza, 119 HAYASHI Mitsuhiro, 67 ÖZER Emir, 112 AMSALLEM Yaëlle, 21 HEIKES Chelsea (seah), 68 AUDEGOND Aimeric, 25 HELSKA Aldona, 143 HIETALAHTI Jarno, 69 P B HONDA Kojiro, 70 PAAJANEN Annukka, 113 HUBER Samuel, 167 PARISE Fanny, 114 BAGNOLINI Guillaume, 26, 32 HWANG Jeongha, 148 PASCAL Catherine, 83 BALZANO Angela, 135, 137 PASQUALINI Nicolo, 106 BARTHÉLÉMY Jean-Hugues, 27 PATOMÄLO Joel, 115 BAUMAN Emily, 28 J PAVANS DE CECCATTY Emma, 116 BLICKHAN Denise, 29 JAOUAT Marouane, 51 PICAVET Emmanuel, 94 BORCHHARDT Kerstin, 30 JEANNIN Hélène, 71 PIGNOL Yaël, 95 BOSISIO Elisa, 135, 136 JEKUNEN Jaakko, 72 PREHER Gerald, 117 BOUR Salomé, 31, 32 JOHANSSON Björn, 167 PRINTZ Jacques, 118 BOURGOIS Pierre, 33 BOYER Pierre-Emmanuel, 34 BROCHIER Emmanuel, 35 K Q BROWER Virgil W., 22, 23 KACZMAREK Katarzyna, 73 QURRATULAEN Liaqat, 119 KADLECOVÁ Jana, 74 C KAYE Lydia, 75 KOUSOULAS Stravros, 76 R CAILLE Damien, 37 KRIMAN Anastasia, 77 CAMBRIA Domenico, 38 RAHN Judith, 120 KROULIK Milan, 78 CARBONNEAU Alexandre, 39 REHBERG Andrea, 121 KRUK Anna, 79 CHAEHYUN Chong, 40 REID Colbey Emmerson, 122 CHUN Chul, 41 REINEKE Jan-Philipp, 123 CLARK Joseph, 42 L RENIERS Dominique, 87 CŒURNELLE Didier, 43 REYNOLDS Peggy E., 124 COQUELIN Lucile, 44 LAROCHE Loïc, 80 RIGNANI Orsola, 125 LE DREF Gaëlle, 81 ROBAARD Meike, 126 LEE Kyoung-Min, 82 ROBERT Léa, 95 D LENOEL Anne-Cécile, 83 RODEN David, 127 LESOURD Serge, 87 ROUX Marc, 128 DAMOUR Franck, 47 LEWIS Richard, 88 ROZZONI Stefano, 129 DEFILIPPI Fabrizio, 48 LINARES PEDRERO Augustin, 89 RUMPALA Yannick, 132 DEL VAL Jaime, 49 LOMBARD Jessica, 90 DIRLAU Andrei, 50 LOUTE Alain, 91 DOBRÉ Michelle, 51 LUKASZEWICZ ALCARAZ Aleksandra, S DYTMAN-STASIEŃKO Agnieszka, 53 93 SALOFF COSTE Michel, 134 E SAMPANIKOU Evi, 99 M SANTOEMMA Ilaria, 135, 136 SCHUSSLER Aura-Elena, 139 EAGAR Manie, 54 MAFTEI Mara Magda, 94 SHIN Sangkyu, 140 EIKELBOOM Aletta, 167 MAJDOULI Zineb, 95 SORGNER Stefan, 141 ERDENER Jasmine, 55 MARCHENKO Kateryna, 97 SPECTOR Sam, 142 MARKIEWICZ Sarah, 98 STASIENKO Jan, 143 F MARKOPOULOU Anna, 99 STASIEŃKO Jan, 53 MAZIJ Rafał, 100 STEINBUCH Thomas, 144 FAUVEL Guillaume, 56 MBEUTCHA Josué, 101 STĘPIEŃ Justyna, 145 FERRANDO Francesca, 57 MCBRIDE Neil, 103 STRABEL Barbara, 146 FINO Catherine, 58 MCHUGH Fergal, 104 STREIP Katharine, 147 FLAMMA Adam, 59 MEBENGAMBALA Robert, 105 SUNGOOK Hong, 148 FOERSTER Yvonne, 60 MICALI Alberto, 106 SZABADOS Krisztian, 149 MIDSON Scott, 107 SZURKOWSKA Kaja, 151 G MISSIROLI Paolo, 135 MURRU Simone, 108 GAILLARD Stefan, 61 T GARBOWSKI Marcin, 62 N TAEYEON Kim, 152 GERETTO Mattia, 63 TAILLANDIER Apolline, 153 GRANÅSEN Magdalena, 167 NAZAR KERMANSHAHI Shahin, 109 TAJO Thomas, 154 GRENZ Daniel, 64 174 TALOVIC Aleksandar, 155 VINOGRADOVA Olga, 163 Y THEMISTOKLEOUS George, 156 VISSER Jobke, 61 THOMAS Alexander, 157 VITZTHUM Bettina, 164 YEŞILYURT Yasin, 170 TORDO Frédéric, 158 YI Sang Wook, 148 TORNEBERG Marie-Anne, 159 W TOUIZA Sara, 160 Z TUNCEL Yunus, 161 WANTOCH Sabina, 165 WEISS Dennis M., 166 ZABOROWSKA Ewa, 171 V WIKBERG Per, 167 ZETLAOUI Tiphaine, 172 WILLIAMS Colin, 167 VAN DE KUIJT Judith, 167 WOO Hee-Jong, 168 VIDOVIC Julija, 162 WOZNIAK Marcin, 169

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