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Posthumanism, subjectivity, autobiography

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Abstract

In the following essay I would like to go back and reconnect a few things that may have become disjointed in sketches of posthumanist theory. In particular, the points to revisit are: the poststructuralist critique of the subject, the postmodernist approach to autobiography and the notion of the posthuman itself. I will briefly return to the work of Haraway and Hayles, before setting out the relationship between the often proclaimed ‘death of the subject’, postmodern autobiography, and a few examples of what might be termed ‘posthuman auto-biographies’.

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Notes

  1. Anthropotechnics, in general, is based on the idea that humanness is defined through the use of specific tools or techniques. The term has been used by Peter Sloterdijk, however, in his project of a ‘prophetic anthropology’, to characterize humans as those beings who develop techniques that are designed to act upon humans themselves, namely in the form of a ‘self-taming’ or ‘self-engendering’ process (cf. Sloterdijk, 1999; 2001; 2009). Similar accounts of how humans are ‘originally’ connected to technology can be found in Bernard Stiegler's work (Stiegler, 1998).

  2. On the ‘inevitability’ of the subject see our introduction to this special issue, and its discussion of Cadava et al Who Comes after the Subject? (1991) in particular.

  3. As far as the dispositif (or ‘apparatus’) is concerned, this originally Foucaudtian notion has recently been returned to the centre stage of theory by Giorgio Agamben, who sees the apparatus as ‘rooted in the very process of ‘humanization’ (Agamben, 2009, p. 16). According to Agamben, Foucault has shown ‘how, in a disciplinary society, apparatuses aim to create – through a series of practices, discourses, and bodies of knowledge – docile, yet free, bodies that assume their identity and their ‘freedom’ as subjects in the very process of their desubjectification’ (pp. 19–20). What has changed under the current (arguably posthumanist) condition is that apparatuses ‘no longer act as much through the production of a subject, as through the processes of what can be called desubjectification.(…) What we are now witnessing is that processes of subjectification and processes of desubjectification seem to become reciprocally indifferent, and so they do not give rise to the composition of a new subject, except in larval or, as it were, spectral form’ (pp. 20–21). Agamben's overly pessimistic view is of course echoed in what follows; but as I would argue, there is also a more positive potential for posthumanist forms of auto-bio-graphical subjectivities as long as they are understood as ‘postanthropocentric’ (cf. below).

  4. For a good introduction and reader of the main texts in question here I recommend Easthope and McGowan (2004).

  5. For a more detailed and programmatic account of the continued relevance of subjectivity see Blackman et al (2008), who foreground the aspects of affect, experience, embodiment, materiality, agency and the relational or process character of subjectivity in contemporary theory.

  6. Cf. Easthope and McGowan (2004, pp. 42–50); see also Suzanne Gearhart's critique in Herbrechter and Callus (eds. 2004a, pp. 178–204).

  7. Autrobiography, according to the logic of the auto as becoming other (auto-hetero-biography) outlined by Derrida (2002, p. 415) and referred to above.

  8. For the distinction between zoē and bios see Agamben (1998).

  9. Posthuman and posthumanist are by no means identical in this context: for example humanist autobiographies of posthumans are significantly easier to imagine than posthumanist autobiographies of humans.

  10. The idea of techno-embodiment might be seen as one aspect of the growing interest in ‘body studies’, cf. for example the journal Body & Society, with its special issue on ‘Bodily Integrity’ (Blackman, 2010).

  11. See also Matthew A. Taylor's contribution to this special issue of Subjectivity.

  12. While organ transplantation always seems to involve an experience of the body as a ‘stranger to itself’ this of course, by no means, inevitably leads to the use of techno-scientific metaphors (cf. Shildrick, 2002). The ways in which organ transplantation (and amputation) affects the somatic image of bodily integrity is the focus of a number of articles in the special issue of Body & Society, edited by Lisa Blackman (2010). Especially the contributions by Margret Shildrick (2010) and Vivian Sobchack (2010) are helpful here. So is Francisco Varela's account of his liver transplant (Varela, 2001), which also discusses Nancy (2002; original French in 2000). I am grateful to the editors of Subjectivity for pointing out these references to me.

  13. Cf. the contributions to the recent conference on this topic I organized: http://futures.uni-hd.de.

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Herbrechter, S. Posthumanism, subjectivity, autobiography. Subjectivity 5, 327–347 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2012.13

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