Posthumanism

Posthumanism is an ethically ambiguous concept that refers to social movements and ideas about transcending the concept of what it means to be human by technological manipulation or augmentation. While skeptics fear new forms of oppression, enthusiasts not only promote the possibilities, but also claim that with a pending environmental collapse, transforming ourselves beyond humanity may be the only option of securing our species' survival.

Keywords Biopower; Cyborg; Gestaltpsychologie & Völkerpsychologie; Governmentality; Human Genome Project (HGP); Nanotechnology; Transhumanism; Übermensch (Super-human, Overman); Uploading

Overview

Explicit caution is needed to speak scientifically about a concept such as posthumanism. The concept immediately calls up in one's mind images from the science fiction movies and novels that have pervaded modern culture. While sometimes these images have offered apt warnings of dangers that scientific progress can entail, more often than not they are fictionally projected dangers or innovative myths and legends rather than true to actual scientific or social fact. This warning must precede any scientific contribution on the matter, for it is also a fact that very often academic authors, specifically sociologists and philosophers, have made either over-cautious or overzealous arguments on the subject that are based on very little actual understanding of the scientific facts.

The term posthumanism refers to conceptions of what it means to be human that transcend traditional concepts of the human or come close to abolishing them. As is the case with most laden concepts that have such theoretical magnitude, posthumanism comprises several complementary aspects.

Conceptions of posthumanism entail social aspects that can be traced back to Thomas More's Utopia (1516) and Immanuel Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), which both lead to the often misunderstood philosophical idea of Nietzsche's Übermensch, or Overman. Newer versions of this concept discuss the need for technological augmentation of the human body, resulting in the idea of a man-machine organism known as the cyborg. In other versions, the debate circumscribes the question of the intervention into the biological processes through the manipulation of the brain or the body with hormones and drugs, or even meddling with the genetic makeup. All these different areas can be viewed as deeply intertwined as well as discretely isolated, and they are in any event the subject of both grave fear and skepticism on the one hand and great optimism and hope on the other. Transhumanists like Nick Bostrom tend to hail the possibilities, while skeptics like Jürgen Habermas warn against the manipulation of "prepersonal life" on instrumentalist intentions.

The idea of improving ourselves as a species, of improving our bodies and mental capabilities, is certainly not in itself a new concept. The quest for immortality is the stuff of legend and is found in ancient sacred and fictional texts, such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Western world, the alchemists of the Middle Ages sought potions and elixirs that could extend life or improve the human organism beyond its natural capabilities. Francis Bacon, in his Novum Organon (1620), instituted the scientific method as the way to gain control over all the things of nature in order to improve human livelihoods. The subject was given a new turn when, in 1923, the biochemist Haldane published an essay that projected that in the future science would not only take control of nature as the environment for humans, but also that it would make human nature itself an object of manipulation through genetics. He predicted that humans would grow in artificial wombs, where they would be manipulated to be stronger and healthier.

About ten years later, such fantasies were reined in by novelists like Aldous Huxley, whose Brave New World depicted the future of such manipulation as leading to a less desirable form of society. The combination of emerging biotechnological capabilities on the one hand and, on the other, the hygiene movement — which sought to counter the much feared concept of degeneration that the Vitalist movement had set up as a counterforce in light of conservation of life-energy — led to the eugenics programs and finally to the purification scheme of the Third Reich that is known today as the Holocaust.

After the end of World War II, the discovery of DNA and its subsequent applications to the Human Genome Project, prenatal diagnosis, reproductive medicine, cybernetics, and the new research methods in neurology have renewed questions that the eugenics movement raised and that are now "coming through the back door." But this development is in itself not necessarily bad or good, for, as Nikolas Rose has argued, it harbors just as many pitfalls and dangers as it does possibilities for freeing individuals to make better life choices (2007).

Applications

In his seminal The Order of Things, Michel Foucault gave an account of how and when the sciences began to problematize what it means to be human and what it means to be a subject (1966). His study showed that all human eras contained certain conditions that regulated what was understood to be the truth. These implicit regimes of truth conditions were called epistémes by Foucault. Accordingly, what we have come to know as scientific discourse is in itself only a specific kind of regime of truth production. It is this discourse, however, that had made explicit the question of "what it means to be human": in closing the book, Foucault hints at the possibility that this way of thinking about ourselves as human subjects may "be erased like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea."

Foucault can be read here as making a prophetic statement about an upcoming age of posthumanism, an age in which the category of the human subject is no longer the primary category of social or scientific action. Whether the human category will indeed completely dissolve is a question about which Foucault's later works have been a little less clear. Yet today we live in the face of the possibilities of manipulating our genetic makeup before birth or changing memories with drugs, as has been done to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PSD) in soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile it has been debated whether such drugs should be made available to victims of rape, molestation, or horrible accidents (Glannon, 2006). These treatments could be called dramatic interventions into identity and personality. It may indeed be argued that with our subjective identity being rendered fluid and plastic in such a way, the concept of identity itself — which can be considered a prerequisite of the concept of the human subject — is dissolved. Nick Bostrom has introduced similar conjectures that look beyond technological developments to draw on both works of fiction and speculative science (2005).

Discussing the Prospects of Nanotechnology & Uploading

Nanotech is already being applied to small-scale products, such as new fabrics and certain computer components, but we are still far away from realizing the possibilities of nanobots performing delicate brain surgery, or of directly rewiring the mind. Even greater complexity lies in the question of uploading. Since the "mind" is often conceived to be constituted by neural activity, which is largely a form of electricity, some bold scientists have postulated that the mind can be uploaded into a computer, if only that computer holds a large enough storage space and offers enough processing capacity. Transhumanist philosophers like Bostrom have engaged in discussions over whether or not such a "virtual copy" of the mind would, on the one hand, be conscious and, on the other, if that conscious mind would have a personality identical to the original. However, it must be said that without a human body and with new possibilities of meddling with the datastream, a Foucauldian perspective would suggest that the concept of "identity" or "the human subject" would no longer apply to such an entity.

Another way in which scholars have envisioned the effacement of the human subject was introduced by Richard Dawkins through his book The Selfish Gene (1976) in the concept of the meme. The term is often misunderstood as being a mere neologism for cultural trait. However, having illustrated how genes propagate themselves over other genes in the "struggle for survival," Dawkins introduces the concept of the meme by postulating that society and culture are constituted by certain units or elements that struggle with each other for survival and domination in ways that much resemble Darwinian variation, competition, and natural selection. However, these memes do not have a concrete substrate. In other words, one cannot just put a finger on what they are. The melody of a famous motif from Bach can be written down in various ways — e.g., for a complex symphony orchestra or for a single flute — demonstrating that there is something transcending these variations that allows the melody to be recognizable whether played by an orchestra or simply whistled. So, too, the meme is recognizable across its variations and is perhaps much closer to the idea of gestalt than those of chromosomes or DNA.

Concept of the Meme

The concept of the meme was originally used in a similar fashion in 1904 by a German zoologist, Richard Semon, who was certainly familiar with the era-specific discussions between Gestaltpsychologie and Voelkerpsychologie, which had tried to tackle similar questions. It has many variations and siblings within the history of science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from French philosopher Gabriel de Tarde to economist John Maynard Keynes. Picking up on Dawkins' work, in 2000 Susan Blackmore published her seminal The Meme Machine, proliferating in particular the idea that memes can group together and function in unison toward their group survival under the term memeplex.

Since neuroscience has made popular the idea that consciousness itself may be a mere illusion or simulation, the existence of culture would similarly be reduced to memes. It is argued that these reductions are by far the simplest explanation for the existence of human culture. Consequently, if human culture and consciousness can be reduced to such a naturalist version, and therefore eliminated, the category of "human" dissolves in the process.

Viewpoints

Extropy

In 1988, Max More and Tom Morrow created a public forum for scholars engaged in the debate about futurist concepts and ideas about humanity and technology. This journal was called Extropy. In their work, they sought to promote transhumanism in the light of libertarian ideas, which they dubbedextropianism. By promoting the rights and possibilities for self-transformation and questioning legal and biological boundaries set before human expansion, they hoped to create "spontaneous order." Because of growing concerns that any concept of order would be too authoritarian, More latched onto the concept of the open society, a term originally coined by Karl Popper.

Dissatisfation with movements such as Extropy led to Nick Bostrom's and David Pearce's founding of the transhumanist movement in 1998. Their issues with their predecessors rested in particular on the fact that they had tended to create cults rather than academic debate. With the Transhumanist World Association, Bostrom and Pearce hoped to create a forum that would allow for political and scientific discussion under academic guidelines. Bostrom and his colleagues have continually stressed that, aside from cultural conservatism, they can associate and converse with most existing social philosophies as long as the proliferation of developing human evolution in the form of a "transformative agenda" remains central. It could be argued, though, that transhumanism is but another version of pragmatism.

In the voice of Donna Haraway, the feminist perspective has become prominent in the debates surrounding posthumanism. The feminist critique has challenged the traditional ascription of technology and culture to men and nature to women. Haraway thus famously stated that she would "rather be a cyborg than a goddess" (1991). Feminists have subsequently taken stances on both sides. Some claim the liberation potential of transhumanism plays in favor of the feminist agenda, while others perceive the movement as driven by masculine ideas and values.

Oppression & Violence

A more classic humanist perspective, represented by Habermas (2003) or Francis Fukuyama (2002) also urges caution. Their fear is that eliminating the binding factor that makes us equal in our humanity will ultimately lead to new forms of oppression and violence. Specifically, they believe that biotechnological intervention into our genetic or neurological makeup will destroy the human factor. Scholars like Nikolas Rose, on the other hand, argue that such interventions have taken place for centuries, that humans have always sought ways to improve their physical conditions. The new biotechnologies merely add to the toolbox, thereby enriching the choices individual people can make in their lives.

One crucial aspect, however, lies in the issues raised by the elimination of consciousness and the reduction of culture to memeplexes. Neuroscience respectively presents a challenge to the justice system, for, without consciousness and free will, how can there be legal accountability? If the defendant in a murder case can claim that it was not him or her, but a neurologically deficient brain that made the kill happen and that he or she is therefore not responsible, what would prevent other criminals from making use of this same defense? And, indeed, it is easy to find the odd historian who would claim that even the Holocaust must be viewed as a neurological event.

Within sociology, Bruno Latour's contributions have made a strong impression. Latour, originally a science historian whose work focused on the construction of objects in science, has become associated with the concept of actor-network-theory (ANT). He has suggested dropping "society" as the explanatory device of sociology and instead reconstructing the options for action in regard to the network ties that the object itself offers and enables. In other words, nonhuman entities are attributed with agency, which other sociologists have perceived as controversial. In this regard, Bruno Latour has suggested the creation of a new sociology, not as a sociology for humans, but as a sociology for earthlings.

Therapeutic Effects

In all of the various perspectives on posthumanism, Sherry Turkle has probably offered one of the most modest approaches to certain aspects of the debate. In her view, the use of technology, in particular computers and the Internet, can have therapeutic effects. However, one must be alert not to fall victim to addiction or crime. At the same time, she warns against what she calls sociable robots, and the subsequent dangers of an encroaching devaluation of social relationships, which could lead to an eventual destabilization of society.

Terms & Concepts

Biopower: The term biopower was introduced by Michel Foucault to describe a technology of power that states apply to govern a population by subjugating the body itself through a form of discipline and a regulative regime of biopolitics.

Cyborg: Cyborg is the abbreviation for cybernetic organism, a concept that derived from the 1950s discourse on cybernetics, the study and theory of complex, self-regulating systems. Commonly, the term cyborg is used to describe the technological augmentation of human bodies.

Gestaltpsychologie & Völkerpsychologie: The so-called gestaltpsychologie of the Berlin School was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ernst Mach and founded by Christian von Ehrenfels and Max Wertheimer in the late nineteenth century. A gestalt is a "whole form," which cognitively comprises the mind, that is governed by laws of perception that form a global process as well as by a principle of totality and the idea that conscious experience has a correlate in cerebral activity.

The Völkerpschologie was founded by Wilhelm Wundt and promoted by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steindahl. It was concerned with the investigation of cultural traits as expressions of a people's spirit. It and Gestaltpsychologie were engaged in the struggles for intellectual domination among German academia during the late nineteenth century. Völkerpsychologie eventually diminished when the fledgling field of sociology began addressing questions of culture.

Governmentality: The French term gouvernementalité was introduced by Michel Foucault in his later years. It became well known long after his death, along with the concept of biopower, when it was declared that the turn of the twenty-first century would be marked by advances in biotechnology. According to most Foucault interpretations, governmentality refers either to the modes of production that governments install to bring forth citizens that fit into the governments’ policies, or to the discursive practices (disciplines) that govern subjects. What is often neglected in the literature is the subject's active part in creating an attitude or mentality to actively and creatively govern himself or herself within the discipline by choosing from among the possibilities that the governing framework offers.

Human Genome Project (HGP): The HGP was an international project, begun in 1990, to determine the structure of human DNA and its supposed 25,000 genes in their functional and physical aspects. Headed by James Watson and financed by the National Institute for Health (NIH), the project was finished in 2003. However conclusive the results of this "cartography," though, there is a lot of work left because having a genome map is only the start. Much research remains to be done on the interrelational effects of genes, epigenetics, and the study of the proteom (the sum of proteins and enzymes that are the products of gene expression and that regulate the organism)

Nanotechnology: Technology at the nano level involves the application of science to the manipulation of matter on the scale of molecules and atoms (smaller than 100 nanometers). This technology has been applied to materials and fabrics. It is hoped that at some point nano-machines can be built for mainstream commercial, medical, and industrial use.

Transhumanism: The transhumanism movement promotes the idea of human enhancement through science and technology. Its goal is to overcome the physical and mental limitations of the human organism and transform humans into beings with enhanced capabilities, a goal that transhumanists see as the overall goal for humanity. Some argue that, in the face of an impending extinction through either natural disasters or the damage humans have caused to the environment, technological augmentation is the sole solution to save humanity. Critics have argued that transhumanism will dissolve the "common factor" people share and lead to new forms of oppression.

Übermensch (Super-human, Overman): In modern philosophy, this concept was coined by Friedrich Nietzsche. It is often misunderstood as being a direct influence on the racist concepts that governed Nazi ideology. However, this view gravely misinterprets Nietzsche, whose intention was to describe an idealized version of human existence, where the need for believing in another-worldly existence, as promised by religion, is transcended. The Übermensch, described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), manages to create new values in order to overcome the death of God and the subsequent danger of falling into nihilism.

Uploading: Uploading is more fiction than science. In theory, it is assumed that a human mind can be uploaded to a computer because cerebral activity is nearly identical with electrical activity and can thus be represented in algorithms and binary structures that a computer can translate.

Bibliography

Blackmore, S. (2000). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bostrom, N. (2005). A history of transhumanist thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14. Retrieved November 24, 2008 from: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf

Crary, A. (2012). What is posthumanism?. Hypatia, 27, 678–685. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=77437595&site=ehost-live

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Deckha, M. (2012). Toward a postcolonial, posthumanist feminist theory: Centralizing race and culture in feminist work on nonhuman animals. Hypatia, 27, 527–545. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=77437602&site=ehost-livee

Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. New York: Pantheon Books.

Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Habermas, J. (2003). The future of human nature. Cambridge: Polity.

Haraway, D. (1991). Cyborgs, simians, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York, NY: Routledge.

Glannon, W. (2006). Psychopharmacology and memory. Journal of Medical Ethics, 32, 74–78.

Latour, B. (2006). Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rose, N. (2007). The politics of life itself. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Shu-mei, S. (2012). Is the post-in postsocialism the post-in posthumanism?. Social Text, 30, 27–50. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74649781&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Beilharz, K. (2011). Tele-touch embodied controllers: Posthuman gestural interaction in music performance. Social Semiotics, 21, 547–568. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=65928211&site=ehost-live

Coyle, F. (2006). Posthuman geographies? Biotechnology, nature, and the demise of the autonomous human subject. Social & Cultural Geography, 7, 505–523. Retrieved November 24, 2008 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21939027&site=ehost-live

Foucault, M. (2008). Security, territory, population. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Fukuyama, F. (1999). The great disruption. New York: Free Press.

Kay, L. (2000). Who wrote the book of life? San Francisco, CA: Stanford University Press.

Shaviro, S. (2007). The souls of cyberfolk: Posthumansim as vernacular theory. Modern Language Quarterly, 68, 457–460. Retrieved November 24, 2008 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=26069135&site=ehost-live

Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.