Rosi Braidotti Research Articles

Contesting the Prescriptibility of Emotion through Affective Encounters in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect (2012)

This paper explores how Lucy Prebble’s The Effect (2012) dramatises the subversive potentialities of affective encounters as an antidote to the isolating, profit-minded forms of posthumanisation prescribed by modern psychiatry. It argues that the play poignantly unveils how the convergence of the psychopharmaceutical industry with advanced capitalism and neoliberal ideology shape popular discourse around mental illnesses and the necessity of medically induced (self-)regulation of emotion. It also investigates how Prebble mingles crisis with hope in the piece by portraying the autonomy and unpredictability of affective bodily responses, which evade being translated into bio-data and destabilise biopsychiatry’s totalizing view of emotions as utterly controllable through the brain. My analysis utilises Rosi Braidotti’s theorisation of the posthuman subject as both susceptible to exploitation and control and as the site of resistance and ongoing transformation, as presented in her work The Posthuman (2013). It also employs Stefan Herbechter’s theories, as expressed in his book Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis (2013), on how biotechnological developments, advanced capitalism and ideology converge, facilitating new forms of self-governmentality. Finally, it refers to Brian Massumi’s conceptualisation of affect, prevalent in his work “The Autonomy of Affect” (1995) as an intense autonomic bodily response which resists processes of control and manipulation. Ultimately, I argue that The Effect highlights the transformative potential of affective encounters and interconnectedness, functioning as resistance to modern psychiatry’s isolating prescription of emotional self-governance through self-medication.

Visions of posthumanity: a posthumanist narrative study on Rebuild of Evangelion

Rebuild of Evangelion, the tetralogy of animated films created by Hideaki Anno, envisions and discusses the form and attributes of the posthuman in the near future, showing the inherent vitality of as the core feature, as well as the dynamic relationality in terms of geography and technology. The films critique the “Human Instrumentality Project” as a transhumanist ideal for its disembodied inclination, anthropocentric nature, and predatory dichotomy. Through the characterization and narratives of the films, the posthumanist values and ethics advocated by Rosi Braidotti are presented as Anno’s key message, that is, in the era of posthumanism that has already come, we should establish a monistic materialistic attitude, highlight the inherent relationality, embeddedness, and transversality among all beings, and establish a posthuman ethics that advocates egalitarian care basing on universal vitality.

The ‘Airlift Program’ and the Making of a ‘Glocal’ Citizen: Exploring the Nomadic Subject in Philip Ochieng’s Biography, The 5th Columnist: A Legendary Journalist (2015) by Liz Gitonga-Wanjohi

ABSTRACT The story of Kenyans who travelled to study in the United States of America, in what is known as the airlifts program and, its resultant implications on the project of the nation building, is well known. So much has been extensively written and documented in various forms on this subject from multiple and multi-layered dimensions and perspectives. However, my entry into this subject is through a critical encounter with Philip Ochieng’s life’s story, who happens to be one of the airlift beneficiaries to the United States of America, as reconstructed by Liz Gitonga-Wanjohi. I am especially interested in the way that his (Ochieng’s) life-story in this reconstruction is proliferated with aspects of nomadism. I discern nomadism in this discussion in a plural sense. As both literal and figurative, manifested through his practices of the everyday rituals of life. I argue that the nomadic tendencies, exhibited in his total lifestyle, define him as a glocal citizen: always oscillating between and betwixt the local and global spaces, languages and ideologies. In reading the nomadic subject, that is Ochieng, I consciously and cautiously, rely on Rosi Braidotti’s ideas of nomadic subjects as accentuated in her book Nomadic Subjects.

Human Cloning in the Posthuman Era: Critiquing Ethical Dilemmas in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go displays a dystopian society where the human clones exist solely as ‘carers’ and ‘organ donors’ to prolong the lives of their human counterparts. This advances profound ethical questions about human worth and the ethical implications of biotechnology. This paper explores the clones' defiance and resistance to identity within this ethically oppressive power structure in the posthuman condition. When the clones grapple with the otherness imposed upon them, they connect to the broader societal dynamics of control and freedom. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti's theoretical insights of subjectivity and posthuman ethics, and Homi K. Bhabha's hybridity, the paper analyzes the clones' acts of defiance through memory, subjectivity, artistic expression, and self-awareness. The clones' identities and their interaction within the human power structure reflect the ethical implications of social control that function as tools for the clones to navigate their imposed limitations. The analysis reveals that although the artistic creations of clones ranging from painting to literature to games develop the human-laden values in the clones, the artistic expressions like arts, literature, and paintings also awaken them to subvert and challenge the values imposed on their bodies and lives. The clones' rebellion through symbolic means in a posthuman context provides valuable insights into posthuman studies on scholarship and academic disciplines.

Collaboratively reimagining higher education: enacting posthuman feminist practices

ABSTRACT Helping people to better understand and respond to the complexities and multiplicities of twenty-first century realities requires higher education systems to break free from persistent hierarchical binaries and knowledge silos. Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman feminist vision, rooted in radically relational ways of being, offers a generative lens for reimagining higher education. As scholar-educators working in academic spaces, we have responded to Braidotti’s call to engage in creative experimentations for disrupting Humanism’s individualistic, competitive, and cogni-centric framings of learning and teaching. In this dialogue, we co-authors share stories about how ruptures in our experiences as educators led to rethinking theories from our field of adult learning through posthuman feminist concepts. We discuss how the theoretical resonances we found inspired us to reimagine our own research and teaching practices in ways that present possibilities for how posthuman feminist lenses can help us collaboratively reimagine higher education.

Gender Performativity and Unstable Identity in Contemporary Queer Romanian Prose

Despite its importance in the analysis of gender in various research fields, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity circulates in rather restricted academic spaces in Romania, as her gender studies is not yet a wide field of research. The importation and particularization of the discussion of gender as a social construct is influenced by various factors: from the persistent patriarchal structure of a society in which the post-communist legacy is still felt, to the simultaneity of theoretical receptions of works authored by Butler and several other types of feminist discourse, such as Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist approach. This paper analyses to what extent these theories produce effects in contemporary Romanian literature, especially in prose with queer issues at its core. The paper further examines the way in which the category of socially constructed gender can be used as a tool for analysing the configurations of the human subject as a sexualised Other in contemporary Romanian literature.

Understanding the Future Posthumanities: An Analytical Study of William Gibson’s Spook Country

William Gibson, who introduced the term ‘cyberpunk’ is a distinguished American Canadian science fiction writer. Gibson’s Spook Country, published in 2007, is a popular science fiction political thriller. With three interesting and intersecting plots, the novel is set against the background of the post-September 11, 2001 incident. Gibson portrays a future society that is beyond human capabilities using philosophical and imaginative posthumanist concepts such as Post-Humanism, Post-Anthropocentrism, and Post-Dualism intertwined with science fiction themes like interactive media, cyberspace, locative art, espionage and the art of virtual reality. This article analyzes the novel Spook Country based on Synthetic Theoretical Posthumanism, a typology framed by Matthew E. Gladden. The Posthuman theorists use philosophy and science fiction as a resource to re-examine the notion of “human” in a future techno cultural context. In addition, this study uses the theoretical framework of Francesca Ferrando, Rosi Braidotti, and other posthumanist theorists to substantiate how the novel represents future posthumanities.

Nature, significance, and the human perspective: Refusing the choice between scientism and posthumanism

This paper criticises contemporary posthumanist theories of anthropocentrism by reading an early essay by Bertrand Russell alongside work by Rosi Braidotti and Jane Bennett. It argues that, despite appearances, scientism and posthumanism share key commitments in common, such that clarifying the problems with which Russell struggles regarding nature and significance can illuminate symmetrical problems in posthumanism. Against these alternatives, the paper draws on insights from Bernard Williams, contemporary Hegelian philosophy, and J. J. Gibson’s work on animal agency to sketch a picture of what it means to take a human perspective. It is the perspective of one species among others, with a particular evolutionary history; it is also the perspective of a species that, because of certain developments in that history, knows itself as such. That opens us to forms of answerability to the world that do not touch the lives of unselfconscious animals. Some critics of the theoretical discourse on anthropocentrism have argued that taking a human perspective is morally unobjectionable. This paper goes further: it is necessary for grasping our relation to the rest of nature and so our responsibilities for it.

Et kritisk posthumant subjekt?

This paper studies a discussion about posthumanism between the two influential feminist philosophers Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway in the journal, Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 7-8 in 2006. In the journal Braidotti describes Haraway’s thinking as “high posthumanism”, while Haraway, interviewed in the journal, on the other hand is very critical of the term. She prefers thinking with other terms such as cyborgs, companion species or the Chthulucene. With the starting point in this historical discussion, the paper traces it into Braidotti’s recent book Posthuman Feminism (2021) and Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016). A central concern in the discussion is the critical subject: How can the critical subject be understood and operate in a posthumanist framework? Can there be critical potentials in more-than-human positions and perspectives? How to think critical subjectivity as relational with other species and the material world? Based on these questions, the paper investigates posthuman feminism through more-than-human perspectives on the critical subject.

Affirmative, Critical and Posthuman Approaches to Fascism. A Review of Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism, edited by Rick Dolphijn and Rosi Braidotti

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Embracing the Radical Cartographies of the Doggy Dérive

Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, and critical animal studies, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the walk-ies as a co-authored, multi-species act of making and performing together. This essay offers a snapshot of my current research, drawing on Erin Manning’s concept of relational movement, Andrew Goodman’s gathering ecologies, Tim Ingold’s meshwork, Deleuze and Guattari’s twin concepts of becoming animal and nomadic subjectivity, as developed by Rosi Braidotti and Dorota Golanska, and Roberto Marchesini’s theories of the Creative Animal. In doing so I consider the potential of the ubiquitous dog walk as an act of creative co-becoming.

Octavia Butler's Bloodchild and the Posthuman Complexities: A Process of Becoming

This paper examines the human-nonhuman relationship for co-reproduction and co-existence between two species in Octavia Butler's speculative fiction "Bloodchild". The humans called the Terrans and the aliens called the Tlics make a contract for reciprocity to save the futurity of both. This research analyzes Butler's speculation of some posthuman complexities related to identity, gender, reproduction and forceful bonding in the far future. The multifaceted female protagonist T'Gatoi, the male human surrogacy, non-normative pregnancy and experimental birth foreground the horror of dystopian future that Butler attempts to make humans aware of. Based primarily on the textual evidence, the paper uses Donna Haraway's concept of "speculative feminism", Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "becoming" and Rosi Braidotti's theory of critical posthumanities to argue for the author's warning to humanity against futuristic crises and call for a critical thought exercise to retrospect on human tyranny, egotism and sense of otherness. It proposes that overcoming the anthropocentric rule over nature and the "others" for the sake of natural equilibrium and socio-cultural harmony can help instill collective consciousness and promote community building to save this planet and the others for a sustainable future.

Karkulehto S.A., Koistinen, K., & Varis, E. (Eds.). (2019). Reconfiguring human, nonhuman and posthuman in literature and culture. Routledge.

The current climate crisis and the rapid and drastic changes our planet is undergoing at the moment demand a re-thinking of the way in which humanity and nonhumanity are understood. Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture aims to investigate human, nonhuman and posthuman representations in contemporary culture and literature, and analyse the way in which these concepts are reconfigured within the context of the Anthropocene. The volume is part of the Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture series edited by Karen Raber, a series that investigates how the non-human is represented in literary and cultural studies. Building on seminal works of authors such as Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, N. Katherine Hayles, but also on newer scholarship such as Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s “material ecocriticism” or Marco Caracciolo’s phenomenology of narrative, this volume seeks to understand the cultural changes engendered by the Anthropocene.

Stretching and cracking: becoming feminist posthumanist scholars in music education

ABSTRACT How and why did three PhD fellows become feminist posthumanist scholars within the field of music education research? Drawing on Karen Barad’s theorising of phenomena, not pre-existing entities, as the primary ontological unit and on Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the nomadic subject, we explore our research subjectivities as they are becoming in and through relations within the phenomenon of Western music education. Through the figuration of ‘voice’, we trace how and why our research voices stretch and crack as we go through a scholarly voice change transitioning from humanist to feminist posthumanist scholars. We tell performative stories that intra-actively take part in the ongoing re-configuring of the world, making matters such as children, care responsibilities, and ‘feminist killjoys’ become issues of music educational importance. Our aim is to offer companionship to others be(com)ing posthumanists, and to stretch the boundaries of music education research and practice.

They Make Death, and I'm the Labor of Life”

How is life affirmed under conditions of death, destruction, and debilitation? This article addresses this question by looking at the practice of sperm smuggling in Palestine as a life-affirming practice. The practice of sperm smuggling emerges in a context where reproductive injustices against Palestinians are daily occurrences of life under Israeli settler colonialism. The legal, social, and militarized targeting of Palestinian mothers and children, the mass incarceration of Palestinian men, and the attack on infrastructures of livability are Israeli biopolitical and necropolitical strategies of incapacitating the conditions necessary for the sustenance and reproduction of life in Palestine. Against this backdrop, the author argues that the practice of sperm smuggling circumvents settler-colonial efforts to curtail the reproduction of life and inaugurates a practice of life-making and a conception of life beyond its adjudication in the language of “rights.” Critically engaging with the work of Judith Butler and Rosi Braidotti, the author argues that sperm smuggling enacts an “affirmation of life” that refuses submission to the totalizing hold of physical, social, and political death.

Becoming-Woman and Time: When is the Subject of Feminism?

Abstract This paper considers the use of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of “becoming-woman” for feminist theory. Since its first use, the concept has polarized feminist theory. For some, it presents the route out of masculinist logics that third-wave feminism has sought; for others, it denies the female experience and returns “woman” to universalizing, implicitly masculine presuppositions. The paper argues that both are partly right, and that the disagreement stems from an underdeveloped consideration of how “being” and “becoming” coexist in time. Following Rosi Braidotti, the paper claims that “woman” must be understood not in essentialist terms, but as the “virtual feminine” who is the contested subject of sexual difference. Seen this way, woman's being is inseparable from her becoming. The paper therefore argues that we must understand the mutually constitutive relation of being and becoming that produces “woman” in this sense. Drawing on Deleuze's discussion of Aion and Chronos, the paper sees the subject of feminism as temporally dislocated, with both a being and a becoming, rooted in a present that she is always moving beyond. But it claims that this is central for reconciling the conflicting understandings of becoming-woman, and so for preserving the concept as a feminist tool.

Decentering Human/ Becoming Posthuman: Monstrous Subjectivity in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013)

Since its appearance in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818), the monster figure was deemed the human’s other that poses a threat to humanity. In 2013, in his award-winning novel Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi, the Iraqi acclaimed writer, appropriated Shelly’s monster in the hybrid posthuman figure of Whatsitsname that shares with Shelly’s Frankenstein the same anxieties but within the context of Iraq after the American invasion in 2003. With the advent of the twenty first century, and emergence of new social realities due to the capitalist system, the changes associated with technology, war on terrorism and globalization led to the rise of the posthuman condition in which human and other-than-human entities are envisioned in a new light. What characterizes the posthuman condition is the reassessment of the dualistic thinking that governed the human thought and the rise of hybrids as posthuman subjects. In this respect, many traditional boundaries between nature/culture, human/other, and humanity/monstrosity were transgressed. This paper aims at exploring manifestations of posthuman subjectivity in Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) by Ahmed Saadawi in the light of critical posthumanism. It claims that the monstrous figure in the novel is a posthuman subject that presents an alternative vision, not a threatening entity. It will focus on decentering human identity as highlighted in Michel Foucault’s criticism of biopolitics, and exploring posthuman subjectivity as pursued by Rosi Braidotti and Ellen L. Graham. Keywords: Posthumanism, Monster, Subjectivity, Decentering, Frankenstein

Envisioning Posthuman India: An Analysis of S.B Divya’s Machinehood

The contemporary technological epoch is witnessing the growth of posthuman discourse in science fiction novels as they focus on studying the future existence of humans and nonhumans. However, these posthuman insights and studies are mostly confined to Western sci-fi novels. The present study argues that contemporary Indian English science fiction optimistically deals with posthumanist concepts and shows how a harmonious existence is possible. The idea is delineated through S.B Divya’s debut novel Machinehood (2021), and it becomes a productive site to analyse posthuman India's future. The Borromean knot of human- achinenature in the novel delineates how this harmonious existence is possible. The study employs close reading and interpretation by using the concepts of “critical posthumanism” by Rosi Braidotti and “philosophical posthumanism” by Francesca Ferrando. The paper attempts to show how Divya deals with themes like advanced capitalism, neo-religion and sustainable environment, moving away from the conventional notions of anthropocentrism and how she unravels the potentials of posthumanism through symbiotic living.

The Epistemic and Material Violence Exerted Against Women in The Woman in White from a Posthuman Feminist Perspective

Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman in White (1860) can be taken as an embodiment of patriarchal dominion over-sexualized others of the discourse. In line with women’s holding a “less than” status when compared to men in the text, they are reduced to disposable bodies in posthumanist critic Rosi Braidotti’s sense of the term. The male characters’ representation as the universal representative of the human falls short in embracing the female characters. Hence, Anne’s imprisonment and Laura’s forced marriage in the text demonstrate the working mechanism of epistemic and material violence exerted against the ones who are deprived of the politically representable status by stripping them off their agentic potentialities. In tune with these considerations, this paper aims to find an answer if male and female characters in the novel are human to the same degree against the backdrop of feminist dimensions of posthumanism by highlighting exceptionalist politics as a consolidation of patriarchal logic. By extension, this study proposes to demystify how hierarchical binary thinking excludes more than what it includes in relation to woman. The article also interrogates if a bond of solidarity among women based on nondialectical relations of the self to the other might offer a solution by instilling feminist orientations of posthumanism.

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.