Will the Real Post-Human Please Stand Up!

Abstract

Fernando Elichirigoity has written an impassioned plea for a postmodern philosophy of technology that would go beyond the limits of my project in writing Questioning Technology.1 Elichirigoity praises my turn to constructivism and my critique of Habermas but, failing to understand post-humanist insights, I supposedly remain bound to tired old modernist prescriptions which prevent me from adequately analyzing technology in its contemporary context. This diagnosis of my problems is expressed with more regret than satisfaction. The critic would be delighted if I would make 'encore un effort pour etre postmoderne' and surrender my lingering modernist nostalgia. Then, I could contribute to the strictly localized studies of particular technological systems which alone offer insight into the new forms of struggle appropriate to our postmodern condition. As it is, my analyses of the Internet, environmental politics and suchlike are marred by a reliance on the old demonology of the Left, and an abstractness and apriority typical of modernist critique. I hope this is a fair summary of an interesting comment on my book which may represent the views of a whole segment of readers I would like to reach. I assume that many readers of this journal will not yet have seen Questioning Technology, and so cannot measure these criticisms against the text. I regret this very much, as I do not think that these complaints fairly represent my book. In fact, it seems to me that most of these criticisms should be turned around and aimed at the critic. Who belabours apriori oppositions, who thinks abstractly and reifies his objects, the author of the book or the critic who treats it as a straw man for the overworked struggle of postmodernism against modernism? As I will show, in the most important respects for any contemporary politics of technology, I have already met the general methodological requirements that underlie this

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