| Post·hum·an·ous | |
"In theory
there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice there is."
---Yogi Berra
<1> "The Death of the Human" is in many ways one of those characteristic intellectual bids for attention, in the vein of Lacan's "Woman does not exist" or Baudrillard's "the Gulf War never happened." Flashy and rhetorically misleading, such assertions nevertheless create a discursive space in what otherwise appears to be a closed, natural(ized) system. "Posthumanism," like any other movement or "-ism", is difficult to introduce, first and foremost, because of this kind of rhetoric: its first infiltrating tactic is to call the time of death on the current age. Perhaps the most salient example of this self-defined loss was the proposition initiated by T.S. Eliot and his circle that modernism was something other than the continuation of the Romantic era, when that rich tradition was in actuality flooding their every word. We respect our readers too much to bombard them with foolish polemics: Reconstruction is not a place for manifestos. Rather, Reconstruction is a medium for thought and discussion on the complexities of theory and practice in a wide range of disciplines, and a strengthening of what Michele Serres termed "those rare and narrow passages" that test the boundaries between the disciplines.
<2> The juxtaposed term "posthumanous" was derived from a macabre typo, a Freudian slip of the fingers soon after 9/11, where "posthuman" and "posthumous" me[e]t. The call for papers went out with little more than the following:
Post·hum·an·ous (p
st-hy
mə
n-nə
We imagined the CFP as a prod rather than a theme. Note that nowhere in this definition is the noun form; the guide here is an adjective, not a new object but some vague alteration of an existing thing. Appropriately, what joins these papers is something very simple, a recognition that "human" and "humanism" no longer seem adequate expressions of who we are -- if they ever were. Such a vague notion hardly suggests a single course of action, and a variety of approaches in the arts and sciences have attempted to imagine, to track, and indeed to create this shift.
<3> The term posthuman derives from the myriad other "post" positions including postindustrialism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and -- that catch-all of contemporary Occidental societies -- postmodernism, to name a significant few. In each case the prefix indicates a shift from a dominant, culturally defined position (or paradigm) into a new, as yet undefined position. There is certainly no agreement as to what, exactly, constitutes posthumanism or a posthumanist position beyond the premise that what previously seemed to constitute the subject position of a "human being" has been threatened, infiltrated, deconstructed, or denatured. As an investigation of this impression -- an impression many share -- the essays in this edition give evidence to that feeling, contributing to a conversation began long ago and perhaps one that may reach no end.
<4> Micro-computers, virtual reality, space travel, the rise of the services state, postcolonialism, feminism, reproductive rights, cloning technology, robot technology, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, artificial organs, same-sex marriages, transgender subjectivities, quantum mechanics, millennialism, transnationalism, cross-culturalism, alien sex fetish, global economies, global terrorism . . . all add to this sense that we are not quite who we were. Or, at least not who we thought we were. In effect, concerns that we readily term posthumanist are everywhere we care to look. We might even suspect that N. Katherine Hayles is right and that we already are embodied posthumans.
<5> Though immensely popular with critics and the broader public, cyborgs and their theoretical offspring, most via Donna J. Haraway's maternity, are only one manifestation of the posthuman subject: all are glorious hybrids, the lot of them, including the ones you will see here. For posthumanism is a fragmented proto-field with a wide variety of approaches, subjects, concerns, agendas, and futures. Take for example the critique of the two-sex model which has been an ongoing project of feminists, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights activists, and gender theorists for some time now. The veritable panic incited in right-wing groups by any critical incursion into heterosexual space should be enough to cue us in on the importance and power of what we will here call "Posthuman Gender." Originating in the work of Continental linguists and feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, and Julia Kristeva, what is now generally referred to as gender theory questions the primacy of the two-sex model and thereby what it means to be human. Michele Foucault and Judith Butler are, perhaps, the most well-known proponents of the assault on the gender barrier, and though neither Butler nor Foucault would phrase their analyses as an assault, the fact still remains that their works have been used -- and prodigiously -- in that project. Posthuman genders include any and all former "unnamables," including all letters in LGBTQ and any other "transgressive" gender practices. Interestingly, the rhetoric of many political and social organizations arising from these groups uses the term "people" in place of "human." Whereas the religious and political right accuses them of "inhuman practices," these groups counter with the argument that they "are people too" and show a preference for the word humane.
<6> The second consideration confronting anyone introducing a movement or "-ism" like posthumanism is that, once introduced, it inevitably reverberates back through (theoretical) time, reorganizing that very past it desires to reject. What can one say when Frank Kermode suggests that certain portions of the King James Bible are very "post-modern"? How should we see ourselves as historical subjects when Don Quijote is suddenly described as using the techniques of the modernist and postmodernist novels? Deconstruction and American Pragmatism continue the work of the ancient sophists, we are told. Posthumanism operates in the same way, as the past is interpreted under its register: Frankenstein's creature is as posthuman as Marvel Comics' The Hulk, and characters in The Matrix, Terminator and A.I. have posthuman predecessors in gnosticism and the golem. We can no more mark the moment the posthuman emerged than we can find the point in the rainbow where the orange ends and the red begins, or remember meeting our parents. If the human ends, it ends as headache does: at some point we just notice it is gone.
<7> Several major universities already have programs focusing on analyses of culture and science as one continuous web. These programs effectively question the humanities as a discipline. We might say that the inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary movements in general are essentially exercises in posthumanism as they question the boundaries of the field: the multiple, by its very nature, questions the singular or "disciplined." What would a posthumanities major look like? A quick perusal of this edition of Reconstruction alone might be sufficient to give us some idea of the range and depth of those studies and how rapidly they are becoming part of the mainstream of the humanities themselves. At what point will the humanities cease to be and posthumanities dominate? Is such a thing even possible, or desirable?
<8> We look forward to the conversation, if not the answer.
The editors:
C.
Jason Smith, Geoff Klock, and Ximena Gallardo C.
