Senseless Distributions: Posthumanist Antidotes to the Mass Hermit

Abstract

This essay aims at showing how the “mass hermit”, as defined by Gunther Anders, is the logical point of arrival of that philosophical process which has interpreted human subjectivity as a closed system, intended as the sum of two mechanically overlapped parts: a biological-natural one and a psychological-intellectual one. This figure is counterposed with a subject who is “always already somewhere else, trapped in a senseless distribution”, as defined by Jean Baudrillard. A subject who is intended as a “living circuit” (cf. Schelling), a multi-identity that – like with dissipative structures – is regulated by the dialectical relationship between order and chaos. This essay aims at comparing these two human figures, showing how the philosophical fruitfulness of the second figure can be ascribed to its ontological hybridization with what is not human, beyond any unproductive anthropocentric conception of humanity.