CFP "Posthuman Agency": 4th Posthuman Global Symposium (NYU 2020)

The final program will be published on 23 May 2015 at: www.unige.ch/posthumanism2015 as well as on academia.edu. See the conference website for further details.

Journal Theology and Science, Vol 18: No 1, Routledge, 2020

The current era can be defined as posthuman. Why? Because the traditional notion of the human has been radically challenged not only by emerging bio-technologies, but also by our new understanding of the significance, and impact, of our species on planet Earth. In the era of the Anthropocene, the human is perceived as a geological force that can no longer be addressed in separation from its planetary and cosmic location. Aware of the importance of these realizations, scholars in the fields of Theology and Science are realizing the urgency of the posthuman debate. This is a unique opportunity for generative exchanges, that are forging not only public opinion, but also laws and regulations, as in the case of genetic “enhancements”i in humans. We as scholars produce what is valued as scientific knowledge, which constitutes the basis for laws, civic norms and social evolutions. The issues at stake are very high. This is why it is of key relevance to level the playing field, so that the discussion can be open, generative and informative; this is something we need to address right now. In fact, what is happening, is that out of excitement, or concern, for the possibilities involved by these bio-technological and ecological developments, some scholars have promptly entered the posthuman field, without a thorough investigation of the posthuman debate itself, thus basing their arguments on unwarranted premises and assumptions, generating confusion and even dismay. The discussion is happening, and it needs our voices. We bear great responsibility and we can make a difference; but before jumping into the posthuman, let's inform ourselves rigorously, openly and in nonsectarian ways. This is urgent, exciting, and necessary. The time is now, to connect and envision the posthuman turn.

Our lives are intertwined in a relationality exceeding the boundaries of humanism. Posthumanism is a multidisciplinary research field for designing new perspectives on the world, where ‘human’ is not central to the existence with a privilege to use, control and exploit other beings, by rejecting the anthropocentric views of causality and agency. The understanding of these terms has been shifting from humanism to posthumanism in academia since the 80s. Yet, as we shall see, this shift has long been happening in the art scene, starting from modern art. My purpose with this study is to explore if and how contemporary new media art can entail a change toward a posthuman world. To see if art can change the world, I first analysed the shift of the notion of agency from humanism to posthumanism and how it resonated itself in arts, prior to academia. Then, I intended to theorize a framework for thinking about new media art, specifically AI(Artificial Intelligence) art, which can hopefully give rise to the new understanding of a more-than-human agential world that posthumanism has been building. I have undertaken a case study to demonstrate my theory as well as to test its validity on a contemporary work which is Mosaic Virus, by Anna Ridler, a new media artwork that integrates emergent technologies of the 21st century.

Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry

Introduction to the Summer 2022 (Volume 14, No. 1) Special Isssue of Cultural and Pedigogical Inquiry with the guest editors Nikki Fairchild, Carol Lee and Kay Sidebottom. This is Part I of a double special issue that is grounded in the tenets, perspectives and the assumptions of posthumanism.

The winners of the UvA Create a Course Challenge 2019 were Amalia Calderon (bachelor in law and artistic research master student) and Clémentine Dècle (Bachelor in Politics, Psychology, Law & Economics) and Bernardo Couto Soares (veterinarian and sociology master student). Their course run in the spring semester of 2020/21 and this full compendium of the course has the materials, course manual, evaluation sheet, theoretical cartographies and supplementary texts.

Sound and Technological Posthumanism, 2013

Sapient Circuits and Digitalized Flesh: The Organization as Locus of Technological Posthumanization (second edition), 2018

The term ‘posthumanism’ has been employed to describe a diverse array of phenomena ranging from academic disciplines and artistic movements to political advocacy campaigns and the development of commercial technologies. Such phenomena differ widely in their subject matter, purpose, and methodology, raising the question of whether it is possible to fashion a coherent definition of posthumanism that encompasses all phenomena thus labelled. In this text, we seek to bring greater clarity to this discussion by formulating a novel conceptual framework for classifying existing and potential forms of posthumanism. The framework asserts that a given form of posthumanism can be classified: 1) either as an analytic posthumanism that understands ‘posthumanity’ as a sociotechnological reality that already exists in the contemporary world or as a synthetic posthumanism that understands ‘posthumanity’ as a collection of hypothetical future entities whose development can be intentionally realized or prevented; and 2) either as a theoretical posthumanism that primarily seeks to develop new knowledge or as a practical posthumanism that seeks to bring about some social, political, economic, or technological change. By arranging these two characteristics as orthogonal axes, we obtain a matrix that categorizes a form of posthumanism into one of four quadrants or as a hybrid posthumanism spanning all quadrants. It is suggested that the five resulting types can be understood roughly as posthumanisms of critique, imagination, conversion, control, and production. We then employ this framework to classify a wide variety of posthumanisms, such as critical, cultural, philosophical, sociopolitical, and popular (or ‘commercial’) posthumanism; science fiction; techno-idealism; metahumanism; neohumanism; antihumanism; prehumanism; feminist new materialism; the posthumanities; biopolitical posthumanism, including bioconservatism and transhumanism (with specialized objective and instrumental typologies offered for classifying forms of transhumanism); and organizational posthumanism. Of particular interest for our research is the classification of organizational posthumanism as a hybrid posthumanism combining analytic, synthetic, theoretical, and practical aspects. We argue that the framework proposed in this text generates a typology that is flexible enough to encompass the full range of posthumanisms while being discriminating enough to order posthumanisms into types that reveal new insights about their nature and dynamics.

Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, 2014