DOCSLIB.ORG

Indigenous Posthumanism in Polluted Futures a Dissertation Submitted in Pa

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Indigenous Posthumanism in Polluted Futures a Dissertation Submitted in Pa UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Refuse Ecologies: Indigenous Posthumanism in Polluted Futures A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Stina Evans Attebery September 2020 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson Dr. Mark Minch-de Leon Dr. Dana Simmons Copyright by Stina Evans Attebery 2020 The Dissertation of Stina Evans Attebery is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to Sherryl Vint for her generosity, insight, patience, and constant support throughout this project and to Grace Dillon for introducing me to Indigenous futurisms and welcoming me into this field. I am also indebted to my committee members Mark Minch-de Leon and Dana Simmons for their feedback and support. I would also like to thank my wonderful colleagues and friends who have supported me at UC Riverside and at ICFA, SFRA, and SLSA, including but not limited to: Bridgitte Barclay, Kristina Baudemann, Katherine Bishop, Mark Bould, Grant Dempsey, Paweł Frelik, David Higgins, Kylie Korsnack, Cameron Kunzelman, Isiah Lavender III, Sean Matharoo, Graham Murphy, Josh Pearson, John Rieder, Brittany Roberts, Ben Robertson, Kameron Sanzo, Valérie Savard, Conrad Scott, Patrick Sharp, Rebekah Sheldon, Ali Sperling, Taryne Taylor, Christy Tidwell, Lisa Yaszek, and Ida Yoshinaga. I’m grateful to be part of such a friendly and supportive academic community. Special thanks to my summer virtual writing partners—Dagmar van Engen, Katherine Buse, and Miranda Butler—without whom this project may never have gotten through the final stages of writing and revising. Your feedback, commiseration, and companionship mean the world to me. This project received financial support from a R.D. Mullen Research Fellowship, the University of California’s President’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship, and a Sawyer Fellowship for the 2015–16 Sawyer Seminar on “Alternative Futurisms.” My first chapter will be published as “Oil, Water, Lightning: Indigenous Posthumanism and Energy Futures in Elizabeth LaPensée’s Thunderbird Strike” in the September 2020 issue of iv American Quarterly. The events and conversations around the Sawyer Seminar were particularly helpful for the early stages of this project, and I would like to thank Nalo Hopkinson and Sherryl Vint for organizing this year-long celebration of race in science fiction and my fellow fellowship recipients Kai Cheang, Taylor Evans, and Brian Hudson for a year of wonderfully generative conversations. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love and encouragement throughout this process. Thank you to my family, who have insisted on preemptively calling me “Dr. Attebery” for the past few years. I am glad to finally make good on that promise. My love and thanks to my partner, Josh, for reading my drafts, making me laugh, and reminding me that my ideas have value. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Refuse Ecologies: Indigenous Posthumanism in Polluted Futures by Stina Evans Attebery Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, September 2020 Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson In an era increasingly defined by apocalyptic climate change and extinction, critical theories often situate politics in strange forms of more-than-human kinship. In this dissertation I explore the ways human lives are entangled with the nonhuman matter of technologies and technological waste in addition to the animal and plant beings endangered by these conditions of environmental precarity. Post-apocalyptic Indigenous futurisms depicts dangerously toxic technological kin created from the refuse of capitalism and colonialism but enlivened through their relationship to Indigenous ontologies which find kinship in a nonhuman world. Indigenous futurisms craft ecologies that incorporate these toxic materials not just as kin but as a form of posthuman kinship. These figures are posthuman not because they are positioned beyond or after the human, but because they are as entangled with capitalism, climate chaos, and colonial science as they are with Indigenous ontologies of nonhuman life. This reorients a set of conversations about technological futurity towards land, sovereignty, and settler colonialism. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Posthuman Kin ...........................................................................................1 Indigenous Ontologies and Critical Posthumanism ........................................................4 Petroleum, Biomedicine, Haunting, and Refuse ............................................................22 Chapter 1: Posthuman Petroleum ..................................................................................26 From Oil Futures to Indigenous Futures ........................................................................30 Living Oil and Dead Fossils ...........................................................................................34 Land, Oil, and Water ......................................................................................................44 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................53 Chapter 2: Posthuman Biomedicine...............................................................................55 Witnessing, Risk, and Toxicity ......................................................................................59 Unmapping Toxic Bodies and Environments ................................................................76 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................90 Chapter 3: Posthuman Haunting ...................................................................................92 Indigenous Media Landscapes .......................................................................................96 Posthuman Time ...........................................................................................................113 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................121 Chapter 4: Towards a Refuse Ecology .........................................................................122 Cars, Holotropes, Genes, and Pollutants ......................................................................124 Anthropocene Stories ...................................................................................................138 Salvage and Refuse ......................................................................................................144 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................153 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................154 vii Introduction: Posthuman Kin We call here for those studying and storying the Anthropocene to tend to the ruptures and cleavages between land and flesh, story and law, human and more- than-human. Rather than positioning the salvation of Man—the liberation of humanity from the horrors of the Anthropocene—in the technics and technologies of the noösphere, we call here for attending once again to relations, to kin, to life, longing, and care. -Zoe Todd and Heather Davis, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene,” 775 Staying with the trouble requires making oddkin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. -Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 4 In an era increasingly defined by apocalyptic climate change and extinction, critical theories often situate politics in strange forms of more-than-human kinship, from Donna Haraway’s provocation to “make oddkin” in “hot compost piles” to Zoe Todd (Métis) and Heather Davis’ call to decolonize the Anthropocene by tending to our nonhuman relations on this damaged planet. I would like to propose one such kin: the plastiglomerate. Discovered and named by Patricia L. Corcoran, Charles J. Moore, and Kelly Jazvac along the Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, plastiglomerates are comprised of sand, shells, basalt, wood, coral, and other formerly alive and never alive matter bound together by melted and hardened plastic (Corcoran et al. 4). It is sometimes possible to pick out individual bottle caps, plastic fibers, and other pieces of debris poking out of these rocks, and sometimes the plastic of the plastiglomerate is only visible as brightly colored swirls of blue, green, or yellow in the rock. They can be strangely beautiful objects, even as they portend an increasingly toxic ecosystem. 1 Plastiglomerates defy easy categorization. They are naturally forming and human made, technological as well as geological objects. Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac refer to plastiglomerates as “an anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record,” a way of framing these living and nonliving assemblages through their relationship to a troubled future (4). This language of speculative futurity is picked up in popular science publications on the plastiglomerate, where they are referred to as “Future Fossils” (Nuwer) or as a variety of “Techno-Fossil” (Stone). Unlike the microscopic fragments of “plastic confetti” waste found in our oceans, plastiglomerates are dense objects that threaten to become part of the fossil record. Describing
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television the Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television
    The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television Edited by Michael Hauskeller University of Exeter, UK Thomas D. Philbeck World Economic Forum, Switzerland Curtis D. Carbonell Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, UAE Selection and editorial matter © Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck and Curtis D. Carbonell 2015 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-43031-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Part Three Autoevolution and Posthumanism
    Part Three Autoevolution and Posthumanism Pawe Majewski - 9783631710258 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/23/2021 08:08:01PM via free access Pawe Majewski - 9783631710258 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/23/2021 08:08:01PM via free access 17 Themes of Lampoon of Evolution In Part Three of this book I will discuss the last chapter of ST, and then some of the currents in contemporary philosophy and sociology, which in one way or another seem to be akin to Lem’s project of autoevolution. These are mostly convergences rather than any kind of genetic affinities, and will partly be constructed through my interpretations. The aim is to show that Lem’s work, especially ST, has great albeit so far unacknowledged significance for the con- temporary problems of our civilization. The last chapter of ST is titled “Lampoon of Evolution.” It includes a descrip- tion of the project of autoevolution of human species, the very description to which the rest of ST is but a set of introductory studies, as I have suggested ear- lier. The word “lampoon” ought to be taken with a grain of salt, just as other rhetorical devices Lem uses in the titles of his chapters and sections of ST. It is a testimony to Lem’s personal and internally diverse attitude to bioevolution. He both admires the phenomenon, which he often hypostatizes, and is critical and hostile to it. The admiration comes from the fact that bioevolution has pro- duced such amazing beings as a biological cell and rational humans.180 The crit- icism and hostility stem from the fact that for Lem the rationalist the process is unbearable in how blindly random it is.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Humanism: Reflections on Trans- and Posthumanism
    A peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies ISSN 1541-0099 21(2) – October 2010 Beyond Humanism: Reflections on Trans- and Posthumanism Stefan Lorenz Sorgner Department of Philosophy University of Erfurt, Germany [email protected] Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 21 Issue 2 – October 2010 - pgs 1-19 http://jetpress.org/sorgner.htm Abstract I am focusing here on the main counterarguments that were raised against a thesis I put forward in my article “Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism” (2009), namely that significant similarities can be found on a fundamental level between the concept of the posthuman, as put forward by some transhumanists, and Nietzsche’s concept of the overhuman. The articles with the counterarguments were published in the recent “Nietzsche and European Posthumanisms” issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technology (January-July 2010). As several commentators referred to identical issues, I decided that it would be appropriate not to respond to each of the articles individually, but to focus on the central arguments and to deal with the counterarguments mentioned in the various replies. I am concerned with each topic in a separate section. The sections are entitled as follows: 1. Technology and evolution; 2. Overcoming nihilism; 3. Politics and liberalism; 4. Utilitarianism or virtue ethics?; 5. The good Life; 6. Creativity and the will to power; 7. Immortality and longevity; 8. Logocentrism; 9. The Third Reich. When dealing with the various topics, I am not merely responding to counterarguments; I also raise questions concerning transhumanism and put forward my own views concerning some of the questions I am dealing with.
    [Show full text]
  • Rereading Posthumanism in the War of the Worlds and Independence Day
    eSharp Issue 12: Technology and Humanity Rereading Posthumanism in The War of the Worlds and Independence Day Alistair Brown (Durham University) Science Fiction as the Discovery of the Future In a 1902 presentation to the Royal Institution on ‘The Discovery of the Future,’ H.G. Wells contrasted two types of mind: the legal or submissive type, and the creative or legislative. 1 The former, which predominates in society, is retrospective, fatalistically understanding the present in terms of precedent. The more modern, creative type ‘sees the world as one great workshop, and the present no more than material for the future’ (Wells 1989, p.19) and is implicitly associated with the writer of science fiction (or the scientific romance, as then known). Given our acquaintance with Wells’ descendents like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, this seems fairly uncontentious. However, in a climate of postmodern relativism we may be less comfortable with the way in which Wells went on to formalise the relationship between present and future. He compared the creative predictions of the future to those analyses of distant prehistory made by the relatively recent sciences of geology and archaeology, and contended that it ought to be possible to produce a long term portrait of the future as has been done with the ancient ‘inductive past’ (1989, p.27). Though many prominent science fiction writers assert that science fiction is the reasonable extrapolation of present 1 A shorter version of this paper was presented to the British Society of Literature and Science conference in Keele in March 2008. I am grateful for all the comments received there, in response to which some parts of this paper have been modified.
    [Show full text]
  • The Potential of Posthumanism: Reimagining Utopia Through
    THE POTENTIAL OF POSTHUMANISM: REIMAGINING UTOPIA THROUGH BELLAMY, ATWOOD, AND SLONCZEWSKI by JACOB MCKEEVER Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2014 Copyright © by Jacob McKeever 2014 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements Though on the surface it was the smallest of gestures, this journey could not have begun without Dr. Kevin Gustafson, graduate advisor of English at the time, whose course suggestions helped this once ignorant anthropology major turned hopeful English graduate student begin this path. To Dr. Kenneth Roemer, thesis chair and director, thank you immensely for your insightful comments and guidance throughout this process. Not only were you the ideal committee chair, you were a constant figure of optimism throughout my time in the English program. To Dr. Stacy Alaimo and Dr. Timothy Richardson, committee members, my greatest appreciation goes out for your initial willingness to be a part of this committee and your eventual patience during the final stages. I sincerely appreciate all of you for your roles in both this process and my successful completion of this program. Most importantly, I want to acknowledge my family as my main inspiration and motivation. To Ashley, for subjecting yourself to my endless drafts and for your unending patience every day. And to Alec and Zoe, whose dad can finally come out and play. November 19, 2014 iii Abstract THE POTENTIAL OF POSTHUMANISM: REIMAGINING UTOPIA THROUGH BELLAMY, ATWOOD, AND SLONCZEWSKI Jacob McKeever, M.A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Goldfish Syndrome. Human Nature and the Posthuman Myth Copyright Cuadernos De Bioética
    Cuadernos de BioéticaLUCA XXV VAL ERA2014/3ª AND VITTORADOLFO TAMBONE THE GOLDFISH SYNDROME. HUMAN NATURE AND THE POSTHUMAN MYTH Copyright Cuadernos de Bioética THE GOLDFISH SYNDROME. HUMAN NATURE AND THE POSTHUMAN MYTH EL SÍNDROME DEL PEZ ROJO. NATURALEZA HUMANA Y EL MITO POSTUMANO LUCA VALERA* VITTORADOLFO TAMBONE** Institute of Philosophy of Scientific and Technological Practice Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma Via Alvaro del Portillo, 21, 00128 Roma * [email protected]; ** [email protected] ABSTRACT: Keywords: Posthumanism is a myth. This does not mean to say that it constitutes a narrative devoid of any foun- Posthumanism, dation, inspired by mere fantasy, far from it. The myth, as shown by Ries, Eliade and Lévi-Strauss on several myth, space and occasions, is based on something real and true, and appeals to conceptual structures that keep it away time, identity, from a mere scientific report: having had to do with the essence of things, it does not even have a purpose extensionism. of classification in a given place or time. In this sense, the posthuman myth lives outside of time and out of the common space of existence, or perhaps, it lives in its own time and in its own space. Just like the myth, posthumanism lives in consciousness: to prove this assumption, we will discuss in greater depth the spatial and temporal coordinates of posthumanism, as well as its cosmological and anthropological point of view. Once demonstrated its mythical essence, it will therefore be easier to remember how the posthuman myth – despite intending to present itself as a radically innovative and progressive thought – makes no more than re-emerge some coordinates that have always been present in the history of philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Seaman Postsecular Posthumanism (MLA 2016)
    Myra Seaman MLA 2016 (Austin) Roundtable: Becoming Human: Medieval In Pursuit of a Postsecular Posthumanities A new constellation, sometimes called “the posthuman turn,” sometimes “the nonhuman turn,” has come into view in recent years. Marked by the bright lights of the new materialisms, object studies, assemblage theory, critical animal studies, and media studies, its appearance has been hailed for the new routes it provides for (in the words of Julian Yates) “configuring the textual traces named ‘past’ as an archive or contact zone which may offer occluded or discarded ways of being” (Yates, 2010). New routes such as those brought to light through the posthuman turn use as landmarks certain traces of the past that have previously registered only as meaningless blips on the landscape. In recent years, posthumanism’s decentering of the human and flattened ontologies have helped us see in familiar medieval texts any number of participants that had remained invisible to dominant humanist approaches—the previously autonomous chivalric knight, for instance, was revealed by Jeffrey Cohen to be an assemblage of man, metal, animal (in forms both living and dead)—working in concert with any number of intangible agents. Where the humanist reading esteemed the singular valor of Sir Lancelot as exemplifying human exceptionalism, posthumanism reveals that the productive collaboration of the Round Table extends well beyond its human participants, and that chivalry (and the Human it praises) is insufficient in itself—that, in effect, it has never existed. In the light of the nonhuman turn, the late medieval past appears to have conceptualized human existence in ways we’d only partially perceived, complicating our understanding of medieval ethics, intercultural relations, natural history, and religion, among other very salient cultural markers.
    [Show full text]
  • Vo» the RHETORIC of POSTHUMANISM in FOUR TWENTIETH- CENTURY INTERNATIONAL NOVELS DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Counci
    /vo» THE RHETORIC OF POSTHUMANISM IN FOUR TWENTIETH- CENTURY INTERNATIONAL NOVELS DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Lidan Lin, B. A., M. A., M. Ed. Denton, Texas August, 1998 Lin, Lidan, The Rhetoric of Posthumanism in Four Twentieth-Century International Novels. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August, 1998,195 pp., works cited, 182 titles. The dissertation traces the trope of the incomplete character in four twentieth-century cosmopolitan novels that reflect European colonialism in a global context. I argue that, by creating characters sharply aware of the insufficiency of the Self and thus constantly seeking the constitutive participation of the Other, the four authors E. M. Forster, Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, and Congwen Shen all dramatize the incomplete character as an agent of postcolonial resistance to Western humanism that, tending to enforce the divide between the Self and the Other, provided the epistemological basis for the emergence of European colonialism. For example, Fielding's good-willed aspiration to forge cross- cultural friendship in A Passage to India-, Murphy's dogged search for recognition of his Irish identity in Murphy; Susan's unfailing compassion to restore Friday's lost speech in Foe; and Changshun Teng, the Chinese orange-grower's warm-hearted generosity toward his customers in Long River-all these textual occasions dramatize the incomplete character's anxiety over the Other's rejection that will impair the fullness of his or her being, rendering it solitary and empty. I relate this anxiety to the theory of "posthumanism" advanced by such thinkers as Marx, Bakhtin, Sartre, and Lacan; in their texts the humanist view of the individual as an autonomous constitution has undergone a transformation marked by the emphasis on locating selfhood not in the insular and static Self but in the mutable middle space connecting the Self and the Other.
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Modernity and Postmodernity in the Genesis of Transhumanism
    Cuadernos de Bioética ISSN: 1132-1989 bioé[email protected] Asociación Española de Bioética y Ética Médica España Pastor, Luis Miguel; García Cuadrado, José Ángel Modernity and postmodernity in the genesis of transhumanism-posthumanism Cuadernos de Bioética, vol. XXV, núm. 3, septiembre-diciembre, 2014, pp. 335-350 Asociación Española de Bioética y Ética Médica Madrid, España Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=87535786005 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative CuadernosLUIS deMIGUE BioéticaL PASTOR XXV Y J 2014/3ªOSÉ ÁNGEL GARCÍA-CUADRADO MODERNIDAD Y POSTMODERNIDAD EN LA GÉNESIS DEL TRANSHUMANISMO-POSTHUMANISMO Copyright Cuadernos de Bioética MODERNIDAD Y POSTMODERNIDAD EN LA GÉNESIS DEL TRANSHUMANISMO-POSTHUMANISMO MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY IN THE GENESIS OF TRANSHUMANISM-POSTHUMANISM LUIS MIGUEL PASTOR Department of Cell Biology and Histology, Medical School, IMIB-Arrixaca, Regional Campus of International Excellence Campus Mare Nostrum, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain. [email protected] JOSÉ ÁNGEL GARCÍA CUADRADO Ecclesiastical Faculty of Philosophy Philosophical Anthropology. Universidad de Navarra [email protected] Abstract: Keywords: There are various authors who, within the realm of bioethics, propose as a model of the human being, Transhumanism, a man who is enhanced, transhuman or even posthuman. The philosophical roots of these bioethical posthumanism, thinkers have not been sufficiently analysed. In this article our aim is to demonstrate the connection of modernity, this movement with the evolution of philosophy over the past several decades.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Contamination': Applied Linguistics, Literacies and Posthumanism
    Dossiê THOUGHT-PROVOKING ‘CONTAMINATION’: APPLIED LINGUISTICS, LITERACIES AND POSTHUMANISM ‘CONTAMINAÇÃO’ QUE FAZ PENSAR: LINGUÍSTICA APLICADA, LETRAMENTOS E PÓS-HUMANISMO Nara Hiroko Takaki* ABSTRACT This paper purports to present some characteristics of the posthuman perspective and relate them to contemporary understanding of applied linguistics and literacy studies with preliminary activities in this direction and interrogations for future studies. As interdisciplinary studies, posthumanism draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage (2005) and has been gaining relevance according to theorists such as Barad (2007), Bennet (2010), Braidotti (2018) and Pennycook (2018), among others. One of their concerns is the future of language research, teaching, learning and enacting in philosophical, transcultural and educational ways. Barad (2007) and Bennet (2010)) use the terms humans and nonhumans while Braidotti (2018) and Pennycook (2018) write humans and non-humans. At times, Bennet (2010) prefers human-nonhuman(s) to emphasize the idea of assemblage. They consider such agents in vibrant interconnected assembles within a broader range of semiotic, spatial and ethical complexities in the emergence of posthuman humanism as Braidotti (2018) argues. This calls for applied linguistics and literacy studies willing to recognize that they themselves are products of such entanglements for which a revision of ontologies influencing epistemologies and methodologies might be productive. Keywords: posthuman perspective; applied linguistics;
    [Show full text]
  • Posthumanism – a Critical Analysis
    Posthumanism – A Critical Analysis Stefan Herbrechter 1 Contents: Preface 3 Towards a Critical Posthumanism 5 A Genealogy of Posthumanism 38 Our Posthuman Humanity and the Multiplicity of Its Forms 85 Posthumanism and Science Fiction 121 Interdisciplinarity and the Posthumanities 151 Posthumanism, Digitalization and New Media 199 Posthumanity – Subject and System 214 Afterword: The Other Side of Life 227 Bibliography 234 Index (to be provided) 254 2 Preface What is “man”? This age-old question is everywhere today being asked again and with increased urgency, given the current technological developments levering out “our” traditional humanist reflexes. What this development also shows, however, is that the current and intensified attack on the idea of a “human nature” is only the latest phase of a crisis which, in fact, has always existed at the centre of the humanist idea of the human. The present critical study thus produces a genealogy of the contemporary posthumanist scenario of the “end of man” and places it within the context of theoretical and philosophical developments and ways of thinking within modernity. Even though terms like “posthuman”, “posthumanist” or “posthumanism” have a surprisingly long history they have only really started to receive attention in contemporary theory and philosophy in the last two decades where they have produced an entire new way of thinking and theorizing. Only in the last ten years or so, posthumanism has established itself – mainly in the Anglo-American sphere – as an autonomous field of study with its own theoretical approach (especially within the so-called “theoretical humanities”). The first academic publications that deal systematically with the idea of the posthuman and posthumanism appeared at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s (these are, in particular, works by N.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Theorizing Posthumanism Through Religious Wisdom Literature
    I’D RATHER BE A SAGE THAN A CYBORG: RE-THEORIZING POSTHUMANISM THROUGH RELIGIOUS WISDOM LITERATURE by Amy Shaw A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my professors for their wisdom, my parents Collette and Jack for their unhesitating support of my academic endeavors, and my boyfriend Simone for his tireless feedback and mentorship. iii ABSTRACT Author: Amy Shaw Title: I'd Rather Be a Sage Than a Cyborg: Re-theorizing Posthumanism Through Religious Wisdom Literature Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Julia Mason Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2013 The topics of identity and subjectivity are well-trodden paths in posthuman thought, and the trend has been to reduce the self to its material, social, and techno- scientific components. Yet the posthuman model of subjectivity—influenced by the tenets of postmodernism—tends to be disabling because it does not focus on the subject’s agency or the possibility of liberation from social tyranny. In this thesis, I use a sampling of what I call “religious wisdom literature”—specifically, the wisdom books of the Old Testament and contemporary Buddhist writings—to challenge the assumption that the self is indistinguishable from the ideologies that produce it. I provide models from religious texts that instead, emphasize critical agency, flexibility, and resistive power. I also suggest that focusing on these qualities may ultimately be useful in the composition classroom, where we can use “self-centered” expressivist techniques (reflective assignments, emotional awareness) to meet the social-epistemic goal of ideological critique.
    [Show full text]