Activating the senses: the aesthetics and politics of the transpecies society

Abstract

The Transpecies Society is an association of cyborg artists and activists “that gives voice to nonhuman identities; raises awareness of the challenges transpecies face; advocates for the freedom of self-design and offers the development of new senses and organs.” This article explores how members of The Transpecies Society use sensory modification as a form of artistic expression and political activism. It asks, how do transpeciests seek to “stretch the bounds of experience” by developing new senses? Precisely what kind of experiences, and what kind of “sensory orders” are they interested in creating? By using technology to transform their own sensory capacities and connect more intimately with nature, how do transpeciests challenge anthropocentric views of society, and establish recognition and rights for those “who do not identify as 100% human”? I ultimately aim to demonstrate that for transpeciests, the creation of new senses is not just an attempt to refashion the individual body and push the boundaries of aesthetic experience. It is also an attempt to transform the social and political body by making room for new forms of posthuman identity and acceptance.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.