Posthuman Concepts Research Articles

Momente posthumaner Gewöhnung

Posthumanism is a controversial term that evokes very different associations and yet we are surrounded by what it attempts to describe on a daily basis. The use of computers and the internet alone leads to regular requests to confirm that we are not robots, but human beings. People wear implants that merge with their body and its processes, live in smart homes or share their household with digital assistance systems. The argumentation of this lecture takes up the concept of posthumanism and links it to the concept of habituation. Using the example of near-future series and digitally permeated more-than-human communication, the thesis is pursued that current technological developments not only challenge understandings of the subject, but that a new concept of habituation is also needed, with which various moments can be identified that are integrated into structures and networks of habituation of the posthuman or are organised within them.

Investigating Posthumanism through the Medium of Self-Representation Using Instagram's Augmented Reality (AR) "Camera Effect"

The Augmented Reality camera effects feature on Instagram provides users with the freedom to create, experiment, and share visual content without limitations, thereby presenting diverse self-images. Remarkably, Indonesia, ranking fourth globally in terms of Instagram users in 2022, demonstrates remarkable adoption of this AR camera effects feature, indicating rapid adoption of new media technology. This research investigates how users engage with this technology to redefine their identities and transcend traditional human boundaries. Through a desk study method, this study analyzes the "Camera Effect" feature on Instagram as a focal point for understanding the phenomenon of self-representation and exploring the concept of posthumanism. By referencing Frank Webster's theory of information society and the posthuman concept in literature, this research reveals that the AR feature on Instagram is a powerful cultural medium for self-representation, overcoming limitations between humans and technology in Indonesian Society. Self-representation becomes pivotal in posthumanism, and AR technology enables exploration and experimentation of diverse identities and expressions. Thus, Instagram's AR technology provides users with new ways to represent themselves, transforming the paradigm of representation and self-identity.

Cocreating a sonopoetic analysis

This article presents an artful analysis method coauthors created with more-than-human collaborators to make sense of a collaborative inquiry into their long-time creative sound practice. They discuss how Heron's whole person theory, posthuman concepts, and a multimodal data assemblage of sonic and textual, extant and researcher-created materials informed their methodological process and led to a sonopoetic collaging analysis-presentation. Mapping this inquiry's methodological trajectory, this article highlights key impasses researchers encountered, how decision-making at these specific junctures related to theories they were thinking with, and what each of these decisions produced. Following transcript excerpts from the audio collage created from this sonopoetic method we improvised, the article considers some wider significances of employing sonic methods in qualitative research.

The Crane bag: Braiding Irish mythology, indigenous knowledge and posthuman concepts in early childhood education and care

Initially, this article aimed to present findings from an empirical set of data, where postgraduates explored their pedagogical practice within early childhood education and care (ECEC). However, predictable modes of knowing were disrupted while braiding an artefact from Irish mythology known as the Crane bag, together with indigenous knowledge and posthuman concepts. In the generation of knowledge, the teachings of the Crane bag transformed the methodological approach to go beyond the fabricated split of matter and spirit. This transformation created the conditions for an onto-epistemological becoming with water. Hence, the intra-action of braiding together multiple theories became part of the empirical data. From the initial set of data, a photograph, capturing children rolling down a hill, was submitted by a research participant as an example of their approach to safety. In agreement with the research participant, I re-present the photograph in a different format, to tell the story of how an onto-epistemological becoming created an opening to decentre the image of the child. This opening changed the approach to the data analysis, which in turn allowed the more-than-human to come to the fore in the spirit of reciprocity.

Future Wars and Their Morale in Post- And Transhumanist Discourse

The article serves as a continuation of the first part of reflections on future wars and the morale of their participants. The results of a survey will be presented, addressing the most important issues and controversies related to the concept of post-humanism. The study of the awareness of declared transhumanists regarding international security confirmed the heterogeneity of predictions and perceptions of globalization trends. However, even the analysis of the "metrics," i.e., the characteristics of the research group's parameters, allowed for drawing interesting conclusions. The research goal remained complex. Firstly, I wanted to confront the theoretical assumptions of post- and transhumanism; secondly, I aimed to attempt an answer to the question: Who is and what does the contemporary post- and transhumanist think about future wars?

İnsan Sonrası Beden: Biyo(Teknolojik)-Sanatta Post-Dualistik bir Kendilik

The body has always been the subject of discussions whether in ancient, modern or posthuman times. In these discussions, it has been instrumentalized, domesticized, and even cursed or glorified, mostly through the dualisms such as mind/body, soul/body and self/other. Posthuman thought criticizes this dualistic comprehension for the body and proposes a post-dualistic understanding. This post-dualism blurs the distinctions starting from the ones between the human and machine, human and animal for a posthuman body. This study approaches the posthuman body as a post-dualistic entity as well. Through a qualitative research method, the academic literature was reviewed concerning the prominent debates on these issues and discussed the findings with the practical works of art. Primarily, Donna Haraway’s arguments on the body with the notion of cyborg and Katherine N. Hayles’ concept of posthuman were examined for building a basis of the research. At the intersection of these concepts, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming and becoming-machine notion were explored. Becoming-machine not only relates to Body without Organs (BwO), but also emerges as a developed concept for posthuman in Rosi Braidotti’s texts too. Braidotti interprets this Deleuzian concept in a critical posthuman perspective and proposes a new notion as Organs without Bodies. This concept connects to BwO with its criticism on organism and also benefits from Foucault’s arguments for biopower and biopolitics. So, Braidotti discusses Foucault’s arguments on modernity to develop a criticism on biotechnological capitalism. Therefore, this research aims to discuss these interrelated critical subjects through biotechnological manifestations in contemporary art. In this scope, the purpose of this study is to interpret critical issues on the body from an interdisciplinary point of view and contribute to the academic literature with an alternative discussion mentioning the post-dualistic possibilities of the posthuman body.

The phenomenon of the posthuman in the paradigm of modern culture

Scientific and technological progress has called into question the prevailing doctrines concerning the human condition. The author examines in detail the significance of the discussion about the need for a new understanding of what it means to be a human being in a society where the traditional differences between man and non-man, technology and biology, as well as nature and culture are becoming increasingly blurred. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of posthumanism and transhumanism, which, going beyond humanism, offer to reconsider and rethink what it means to be human. This article analyzes and compares modern approaches to defining the concept of posthumanism, where posthumanism is understood as a paradigm of thinking that replaces postmodernism, assimilating its basic attitudes. The object of the study is the idea of the posthuman as a biological species, a cybernetic organism and a digital disembodied entity. The subject of the study is the visual embodiment of the image of the posthuman in modern popular culture. The author's special contribution to the study of the topic is the analysis of many descriptive images of the posthuman, all of which find figurative embodiment in popular culture. The main conclusions of the conducted research are: cinema anticipated many transhumanistic and posthumanistic ideas, which later become the subject of study by philosophers and culturologists of ethical dilemmas and contradictions faced by humanity, discussions of the meaning of human existence, driven by the acceleration of scientific achievements and technological innovations. In a sense, it can be argued that mass culture is a tool that helps to realize the scale of social and cultural changes caused by the latest technological developments.

The Idea of Evolution in Transhumanism

In this paper I focus on a use of an idea of evolution in transhumanist discussions about technologies, human enhancement, and a concept of posthuman. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory stands at the origin of transhumanist thought and provides a theoretical foundation for many contemporary transhumanists. However, in the paper I argue that the idea of evolution used by these writers mostly cannot be interpreted as direct continuation of Darwin’s notion of evolutionary theory. The text is divided into three sections. The first section deals with Kurzweil’s term of evolution of our universe heading to the singularity. In the second section, I point out a metaphor which occurs in some transhumanist texts – the comparison of childhood and adulthood to natural and conscious evolution. The last section focuses on connection between the notions of progress, evolution, and human enhancement.

Mosaicking childhoodnature relations: situated encounters with country in times of climate change*

ABSTRACT This paper, by an intergenerational and international author collective, uses postqualitative ‘mosaicking’ to assemble and reassemble ‘material moments’ of childhoodnature encounters. Mosaicking is an experimentation that combines materials, digital devices, nonhuman nature, and humans to co-create something new; it enables us to ponder nature relations from multiple perspectives and in post-anthropocentric ways. Enacting this speculative inquiry, that works to blur the boundaries of diverse childhoodnature experiences, enables an exploration of the complex realities of climate change for children. This opens new post-anthropocentric orientations for Climate Change Education. We consider how the Aboriginal philosophy of Country and the posthuman concepts of childhoodnature, relational becoming, and nature relations can be interwoven and put to work towards this endeavour, thus challenging dominating minority world, humanist perspectives. Emerging from this we propose educational responses to climate change which are co-created, relational, place-oriented, embodied, transformative, and sensitive to children’s Climate Change becomings.

The discourse of the Anthropocene and posthumanism: Indigenous peoples and local communities

Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are characterised by their special relationships with their traditional lands and the natural world, which are essential to their physical and cultural survival, identity, knowledge, and spirituality. They are custodians of the land; however, often made invisible and voiceless in the face of irreversible destruction caused by human-induced planetary change. This Special Issue (SI) is inspired by the stories, worldviews, knowledge systems, and lived experiences of IPLCs worldwide. Based on the compounded impacts of global climate change and other human-induced crises on IPLCs’ ancestral lands, contributors to this SI recognise that the world has entered the Anthropocene – the epoch of human-induced planetary change. While human activities are considered geologically recent, they have profoundly impacted the planet. The contributors challenge the discourse of the Anthropocene, not only because it takes humanity as the prime reference point in understanding the world but also because of its reproduction of the onto-epistemological foundations of Eurocentric philosophy, which underpins colonialism and racial capitalism. This SI opens up space for historically marginalised IPLCs’ cosmologies, which embody their holistic, spiritually and physically interconnected, interdependent, and reciprocal relationships with land, the natural world, and non-human beings. It expands and pluralises the discourse of the Anthropocene through the concept of posthumanism to recognise alternative knowledge systems that decentre humanity’s dominant position in understanding the world. IPLCs’ onto-epistemologies align with posthuman or more-than-human ways of knowing, being, and doing, which embody their reciprocal relationships with land, non-human beings, and the natural world that are all deemed as living entities with agency. IPLCs’ voices urge us to relearn our ancestral ways of understanding and interacting with the world and reconnect to our holistic relationships with the planet Earth and its beings to ensure the continuity of nature and culture.

The discourse of the Anthropocene and posthumanism: Mining-induced loss of traditional land and the Mongolian nomadic herders

For over five millennia, Mongolia has been home to a remarkably resilient, land-connected, pastoral nomadic way of life and cultural heritage. Traditional local communities of Mongolian nomadic herders are custodians of the land. Since Mongolia’s transition to a democracy and neoliberal capitalist economy in the 1990s, an unprecedented mining boom has set in as large deposits of mineral resources were discovered. The mining boom and climate change impacts have put mounting pressure on herders’ ability to access their traditional land. Drawing on ethnographic research through storywork with Mongolian nomadic herders ( malchid) in their traditional land ( nutag) in the Gobi Desert region in Mongolia, this study aims to expand the discourse of the Anthropocene by engaging with the concept of posthumanism. We unpack the predominant discourse among Mongolian nomadic herders – loss of traditional land – induced by mining. In the Anthropocene – the epoch of human-induced planetary change – herders have become victims of both human-induced global environmental and climate change and the neoliberal capitalist extractive economy. Driven by mining-induced forced displacement from their traditional land and the natural resources on which they depend, herders are marginalised, resulting in the loss of their livelihood and severing of their special relationship and spiritual connection with their traditional land. We conclude that Mongolian nomadic herders’ voices urge us that it is crucial to expand and pluralise the discourse of the Anthropocene by relearning our ancestral ways of knowing, being and doing, and reconnecting to our holistic, spiritually and physically entwined, reciprocal and symbiotic relationship with land, non-human beings and the natural world that are all regarded as living and sentient entities with identity, agency and intentionality. Mongolian nomadic herders’ ancestral cosmology and onto-epistemology turn us to posthuman or more-than-human ways of understanding and interacting with the world, which decentre human exceptionalism and dominant position in the Anthropocene.

The Missing Post-Humanism: A Philosophical Posthuman Study of Don DeLillo’s Zero K and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition

In the Anthropocene, humans have established an uninhabitable ecosystem. His insatiable desire for resources and possessions has led to this catastrophe. The posthuman studies critically examine the human-nonhuman divide through technology, biology, and culture. The inquiry raises ethical and ontological questions about human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and the social effects of new technologies. Posthumanism envisions a complex and interdependent world. Francesca Ferrando believes posthumanism threatens the anthropocentric worldview. Posthumanism reconsiders human identity, agency, and existence in light of emerging technologies and complex human-nonhuman relationships. It emphasises inclusivity, connectivity, and subtlety in human experience. She demonstrates post-humanism, post-anthropocentrism, and post-dualism in her seminal idea of ‘Philosophical Posthumanism’. This study analyses Don DeLillo and William Gibson's science fiction novels to reconsider “the human.” In this paper, Don DeLillo's Zero K and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, Ferrando's ‘philosophical posthumanism’ and ‘posthumanism’ based on post-dualism, post-anthropocentrism and post-humanism views are compared. Ferrando's seminal work on 'Philosophical Posthumanism' expands on the above argument. This study seeks to investigate the absence of Ferrando's concept of post-humanism in selected literary works and the need for interdependence with other non-human species.

Learning and gender in everyday life

This paper focuses on the learning that happens in everyday life, beyond the formal learning environments of schools, colleges, and universities or even beyond community and adult education. It draws on posthuman concepts of ‘learning affect’ and ‘new worlds’ to conceptualise this as ‘invisible education’, affective and transformative, unrecognised but powerful and formative. Such invisible education has a powerful impact on formations of gender, class, race, sexuality, and disability and is thus a key field of enquiry with important consequences for gender equality. The paper will draw on a diverse range of grant funded qualitative, research projects to focus on such invisible education and to explore how diverse iterations of the category ‘woman’ are learnt in everyday life. The research includes longitudinal research with activists, interviews with young women in low paid work, and interviews and participant observations with women living in a women’s refuge. Most of the research was undertaken in the UK, but the paper also draws on insights from comparative research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Beirut. The paper concludes that everyday learning shows that ‘woman’ is not a fixed binary category, and that women drew on ‘the wilful’ and on invisible education to resist gendered categorisations.

THE TRANSHUMANIS’M PERSPECTIVE: CONCEPTS OF THE POSTHUMAN

Introduction. Posthuman concepts raise many ethical, philosophical and social questions. Such as fair access to such technologies, preservation of our humanity, interaction of new forms of posthuman society and culture, and others. These questions require investigation and critical reflection if we are to influence our posthuman future. The aim of the article is an analysis of transhumanism as a metacultural attitude that affects modern humanity and shapes its future prospects. Special attention is focused on ideas and concepts of transhumanism influence the formation of the concept of the posthuman, and how this process can change our understanding of human existence. We aim to indicate the essence of the concept of the posthuman in the context of transhumanism and the technological and socio-cultural changes necessary for its emergence and the consequences and ethical challenges along the way. Research methodology is a complex of philosophical and general scientific methods. The article also uses sociocultural, systemic and synergistic approaches. Research results. Philosophers in their research emphasize the need to develop careful cultural and political strategies to control the development of the posthuman and minimize potential negative risks. First, technological progress itself must be regulated, because any interference in human nature must not lead to negative consequences. Secondly, it is important that society is informed about how technological progress can affect the future. Thirdly, it is important to invest in scientific research in order to gradually introduce technological advances into our lives and start a deliberate path to the posthuman now. Conclusions. The posthuman is a possible future for humanity. And the evolution of man to post-man began yesterday. It is important that we actively manage this process, using regulation, ethical standards, scientific research and social dialogue to ensure that a posthuman future is in our collective interest and a common human value

Embodying Affective Intra-Actions Online: Enacting Posthuman Methods in Virtual Spaces

This article explores how the posthuman concepts of affect, intra-action, and diffraction helped me reimagine collaborative inquiry, a traditionally place-based action research method that emphasizes human affect as the root of all personal becoming, for an online context and posthuman world. I begin with a brief introduction to posthuman philosophies and the ways a 21st-century world increasingly mediated by digital technologies may be considered a shared posthuman present reality. Next, I look to the literature to show how scholars in digital contexts have used and created posthuman concepts, exploring some of the methodological implications of emerging posthuman perspectives for qualitative research, particularly in online spaces. Considering the insights various posthuman studies offer my attempts to design a virtual collaborative inquiry, I suggest an artful and embodied heuristic for starting from human experience to better understand and to create digital posthuman worlds.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ІДЕНТИЧНОСТІ В ПОСТГУМАНІСТИЧНІЙ АНТРОПОЛОГІЇ: ТЕРМІНОЛОГІЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ

The actualization of the problem of fluid and multiple identities inherent in the world of "liquid modernity" (Z. Bauman) was reflected in Western science of the last third of the twentieth century. At the same time, with the spread of trans- and posthumanist ideas in the twenty-first century, it is acquiring new, "non-human" horizons. The analytical article is devoted to the problem of the methodology of research and designation of alternative human identities in posthumanist anthropology. The terminological apparatus for the study of non-human identities is proposed for the first time in the post-Soviet area of humanities. The methodology of the study within the disciplinary field of Posthumanist anthropology (Transhumanist Studies, Posthuman Studies) is primarily based on the conceptual foundations of poststructuralism. In order to explicate the actual meaning of the terms "Other", "non-human", "non-anthropomorphic", "otherkin" in the scientific works, structuralism (the method of binary oppositions) was also used to find out the axiological connotations inherent in the concept of posthuman; as well as methods of semantic, terminological, and discourse analysis. The main generalized terms that mark the non-human identity of biological humans in scientific discourse are identified – "Other", "non-human" and "otherkin". The semantics of these terms is explicated, their short definitions are offered, the specifics and range of their use in foreign posthumanist anthropology are revealed. It is proposed to introduce the terms "non-human" and "otherkin" in the Ukrainian scientific discourse as the ones that most accurately reflect the wide range of individual experiences of people with other-than-human identities. It is proved that these terms can become the main generalizing tool for the study of non-human subjects and alternative identities in the Ukrainian science. It is argued that in posthumanist anthropology, poststructuralist research methodology should be preferred as more objective than structuralism and the method of binary oppositions. Key words: cultural studies, transhumanism, posthumanism, other-than-human identities, Other, otherkin, non-human, terminology, binary oppositions, structuralism, poststructuralism.

Meeting in the Forest: Education in a Posthuman Era

The author investigates the current worldwide growth of forest schools using concepts of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism diffracted through a popular nature documentary My Octopus Teacher.

Posthuman figurations and hauntological graspings of historical consciousness/thinking through (re)photography

This article draws on data collected from a secondary school in Florida to explore how temporally disjointed aesthetics (e.g. (re)photographs) impact constructions of historical knowledge. Using posthuman concepts (e.g. assemblage, rhizome, spacetimematter(ing), hauntology), this study relied on visual methodologies—specifically photo-elicitation—to attend to the question: How do engagements with (re)photographs contribute to the development secondary students’ historical consciousness/thinking? Data consisted of artifacts reflecting engagements with three collections of (re)photographs featuring ghosts/hauntings and semi-structured focus group interviews. Rhizomatic assemblages re-presenting entanglements with what was produced during this study suggest that (re)photographs not only fostered historical consciousness/thinking by exposing the in-between/ness of temporality and materiality, but that (re)photography extends the boundaries historical consciousness/thinking through students’ emerging relationships to the pastpresentfuture(ing).

Broadening Ontological and Epistemological Possibilities within Early Childhood Teacher Education for Sustainability

The dominant sustainability ethos and discourse within early childhood education pursue a normative ontological and epistemological direction aimed at empowering children’s agency and thus, building certain predefined moral values, knowledge, and skills. Likewise, mainstream early childhood teacher education programmes strive to build early childhood pre-service teachers’ sustainability knowledge and skills, especially to enhance their capacity to be transformative agents and motivators for change to engage children with sustainability challenges. In this conceptual article, drawing on posthuman concepts, I highlight the limits of such orthodox assumptions in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) teacher education and invite broader ontological and epistemic possibilities. I interrogate the human-centric assumptions that unintentionally perpetuate the deep-rooted binary thinking that separates humans from non-humans and other species. In doing so, I offer an expanded understanding of the underlying ontological and epistemic assumptions within teacher education for ECEfS. I conclude by indicating how posthuman theories serve as an impetus for epistemological and ontological multiplicities in early childhood teacher education for sustainability.

Образ мира и девальвация нравственных ценностей в современном обществе: аспекты проблемы

The article analyzes the dangers of scientific and technological progress for society. It is argued that the relativization of moral values in modern society has its source in relation to man as an object, which leads to primitivization and disintegration of the individual. The article draws a distinction between a moral and a civilized person, criticizes the theoretical foundations of the concepts of posthumanism, transhumanism, radical constructivism and constructive alternativism from the standpoint of the concept of moral values as a manifestation of the substantiality of the individual and mass consciousness in general. The moral sphere is considered in the article as a manifestation of the substantiality of human consciousness, the image of the world based on the relationship to the Other as a subject. The article discusses the process of formation of the moral sphere of society as the basis of the image of the world, a manifestation of the substantiality of human consciousness, its irreducibility to schemes and attitudes imposed within the framework of private interests.