Posthumanism

 What is that? 

It can mean many things dependent on the discourse. 

But here is the definition from Oxford research encyclopedias: 

Posthumanism is a philosophical perspective of how change is enacted in the world. As a conceptualization and historicization of both agency and the “human,” it is different from those conceived through humanism. Whereas a humanist perspective frequently assumes the human is autonomous, conscious, intentional, and exceptional in acts of change, a posthumanist perspective assumes agency is distributed through dynamic forces of which the human participates but does not completely intend or control. Posthumanist philosophy constitutes the human as: (a) physically, chemically, and biologically enmeshed and dependent on the environment; (b) moved to action through interactions that generate affects, habits, and reason; and (c) possessing no attribute that is uniquely human but is instead made up of a larger evolving ecosystem. There is little consensus in posthumanist scholarship about the degree to which a conscious human subject can actively create change, but the human does participate in change.As distinguished from posthumanism, humanism is credited with attributing the conscious and intentional human subject as the dominant source of agency most worthy of scholarly attention. Since its inception during the Renaissance, humanism has been constituted in various ways throughout history, but as a collective body of literature, the human is typically constituted through humanism as: (a) autonomous from nature given the intellectual faculties of the mind that controls the body, (b) uniquely capable of and motivated by speech and reason, and (c) an exceptional animal that is superior to other creatures. Humanist assumptions concerning the human are infused throughout Western philosophy and reinforce a nature/culture dualism where human culture is distinct from nature. In contrast, a posthumanist scholar rejects this dichotomy through understanding the human as entangled with its environment. A posthumanist scholar of communication typically integrates scholarship from a variety of other disciplines including, but not limited to: art, architecture, cybernetics, ecology, ethology, geology, music, psychoanalysis, and quantum physics.


So maybe it can be seen as a question about what about what the Enlightenment is about. It is said that the Enlightenment if for progress and rationality and therefore also transhumanism (humans interacting with technology).

Its also questioning the role of man on Earth. 

To make it very simple, posthumanism is something that i happening right now and it sees "humanism" a an open notion; that is not a phenomena per se. 

If you want to dive deeper in the word. there's  videos about it here from New York University (here just part one): 


In my view it has a lot to do about interdependence, but also about the cruelty of mankind. 

we may not be is the transhumanist era right now, but in the very beginning of it... I this something that is god or bad? Anyway its coming. And it may lead to adapting to live on, for instance Mars.

I think posthumanism also is interrelated to the search for life in other planets, and the hope for seeing ourselves with they eyes of that lifeforms. 

Another term related to posthumanism is post-dualism. Dividing phenomena into two parts (women - men, humans-animals, east-western societies) is leading to discrimination.                                           Instead we can think in terms of interconnection, co-existence and relationality.

This is view of posthumanism bur not for transhumanism. The latter i still for  anthropocentrism positive and for human enchantment while the first is no just pro post-dualism but also for post- anthropocen.

You can find more information from Francesca Ferrando here:

http://www.theposthuman.org/

We may be in the beginning of an interesting era, even if transhumanism seems a bit scary.












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