Humanesis

Abstract

With the recent emergence of copious scholarship that considers the discursive life of the term “human,” posthumanism has become a timely interdisciplinary discourse. This study is a critical analysis of three strains of this discourse's technologically oriented segment: scientific, humanist, and organismic posthumanisms. Throughout, analyses are presented in an effort to appreciate the insights available from these three perspectives, and to contextualize them in the larger conversations of technology and culture. Ultimately, though, the analyses also unpack how each perspective continues to hold onto certain elements of the humanist tradition that it is mobilized against; in each case, the study desublimates the presumptions that underwrite a given perspective. This study offers at least four unique contributions to the existing literature on posthumanism. Firstly, it nominates the term “technological posthumanism” as a means of focusing specifically on the discourse as it relates to technology without neglecting its other disciplinary histories. Secondly, it suggests that deconstruction remains relevant to this discourse, specifically with respect to the performative dimension of language. Thirdly, it offers analyses of artworks that have not heretofore been considered in the light of posthumanism, specifically emphasizing the role of aurality. Finally, the text's innovative form introduces a reflexive component that exemplifies how the discourse of posthumanism might progress without resorting to the types of unilateral narratives that the dissertation critiques.

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