Philosophy 224 Braidottis Posthuman Pt 2 PostAnthropocentrism One

Philosophy 224 Braidotti’s Posthuman Pt. 2

Post-Anthropocentrism �One of the central targets of Braidotti’s critiques of the humanist tradition is its anthropocentrism: the belief that human beings are the most important species on the planet. ◦ Human superiority could be grounded by: 1. The tenets of specific religious traditions; 2. A theory of value which privileges specifically human capacities or qualities; 3. The claim that humans are the only, or the highest, member of the moral community.

A Metaphysical Critique � The initial focus of Braidotti’s critique of anthropocentrism is its underlying metaphysical assumption: a form of dualism that separates humans from the rest of the nature. � In opposition, Braidotti advocates a vitalist materialism. ◦ The vitalism is evidenced in the claim that life is a property not of individual entities, but rather a property of the substance as a whole. � This monistic understanding of the universe, argues Braidotti, is the foundation of a critical posthumanism that avoids anthropocentrism, and allows for the development of a new understanding of the individual, “there is a direct connection between monism, the general unity of all matter, and post-anthropocentrism as a general frame for reference for contemporary subjectivity” (57).

Consumer. Centrism �One of the most obvious problems with the anthropocentric perspective, according to Braidotti, is how easily it is co-opted and deployed at the behest of anti-humanist forces. �Consumerism provides us with one such example: global capitalism trades on our feeling of uniqueness to drive consumer demand for products designed for obsolescence, catching us in a cycle of consumption which makes us into objects (purchasing machines). �Life itself becomes a commodity.

Zoe � Braidotti goes on to present an alternative to this consumerist individualism, advocating an emphasis on zoe, or the generic animating life force which is a property not of an individual or species, but rather of the whole of the material universe. ◦ Zoe is the “dynamic, self-organizing structure of life itself” (60), of which anthropos or bios is just a thin segment. � Braidotti points to a zoe-centric worldview, or a worldview that values generic life in all of its iterations, as the central tenant of the post-anthropocentric turn, in that it effectively decenters bios as the “measure of all things”. � A posthuman theory of the subjective, therefore, could emerge as “an empirical project that aims at experimenting with what contemporary, biotechnologically mediated bodies are capable of doing” (61).

An Example: Becoming Animal �Braidotti (developing the work of philosophers like Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze) develops a number of examples of how anthropocentrism structures our understanding of ourselves and our world and how a zoe-centered post-anthropocentrism would focus our attention differently. �Let’s consider one: the human/animal ‘divide. ’ �As typically conceived, this divide is premised on an the assumption of an inherent inequality: the anthropocentric assumption that these other animals exist primarily in relation to humans.

What is Animal? � One of the most common ways in which we employ this divide is to reinforce it by virtue of animal proximity and distance from us. � Braidotti points out that animals have long been reduced to metaphorical indicators of human virtues. In this way, nonhuman animals become problematically reduced to symbols for human attributes, and thus violently reinterpreted through human norms. � Braidotti points out that to change this violent imposition of human attributes on nonhuman animals, what is needed is a “system of representation that matches the complexity of contemporary non-human animals and their proximity to humans” (70). ◦ Nonhuman animals can no longer be used as symbols to reaffirm human centrality, but must instead be approached “in a neo-literal mode” as entities independent of human construct.

How are Animal? � Alongside our self-valorizing discourse on animals is our use of them, a use dominated by their instrumental or entertainment value to humans. ◦ In this use, animals are embedded within advanced capitalist structures not as individual entities but as statistics or products. � In our post-anthropocentric globalized economy, “no animal is more equal than any other, because they are all equally inscribed in a market economy of planetary exchanges that commodifies them to a comparable degree and therefore makes them equally disposable” (71). ◦ The effect of this, interestingly, is that humanity is no longer at the top of any constructed hierarchy. All individual animals, both human and not, are interchangeable within the market economy. � Again, what is needed is a turn to zoe-centric ethics, in which the sustained preservation of generic life is the primary goal, and therefore living things are not reduced to their utility or their market value but rather, are understood as distinct and non-symbolic entities.

The Other, the Inhuman �Another register in which Braidotti sees the advantage of a posthumanist turn moves beyond the animal, to a more general conception of the other. �Classically, the other of the human is the inhuman ‘other. ’ �Whether understood as a human who has rejected our common heritage, or the bruteness of a nature with no regard for human needs or interests, the otherness of the inhuman has been understood as a limit of our moral concern, a point beyond which moral reflection is no longer applicable.

The Techno-Commodity (again) � This classical dichotomy, like so many of the categories of classical humanism, is increasingly meaningless in the face of the rapidly changing technological landscape. ◦ For example, the relationship between humans and machines is increasingly moving from one of “self” and “other” into one of mutual interdependence, as machines become increasingly implicated into the definition of the subject. � Given this, the project of the third chapter is a defense of the position that “the current historical context has transformed the modernist inhuman into a posthuman and post-anthropocentric set of practices” (109). � As in the context of the critique of anthropocentrism, Braidotti points to her “matter-realist” vitalism as a more adequate basis for a discourse on death and mortality in our technologically bio-mediated present and future.

Moral Limits � The classical way of understanding the limits of moral discourse are increasingly running up against the complexly mediated contemporary concerns. � One example Braidotti cites is the debate about climate change. � Our way of addressing climate change commonly poses the issue as a conflict between human and natural interests, a dichotomization which belies the obviously interconnected character of the terms of the conflict. � The result is a deep anxiety about the rapid disappearance or destruction of “nature, ” as well as a misguided understanding of nature as something separate from humanity. � The classical moral concepts are unable to address the fact of our unity with nature (zoe) and that any adequate moral analysis is going to have to be a piece with and speak to this unity.

For Life, it’s Death � The key feature of this unity is that all life stands together. The death of the planet is also our death (though obviously the inverse is not the case). � What is needed for a posthuman ethic, is a more sophisticated understanding of death. ◦ Only with such a development can progress be made toward more sustainable and zoe-friendly public policy. ◦ In practice, a focus on zoe reinscribes the individual subject within the whole of the substantial universe. In this way, humanity can work toward a solution to the “posthuman predicament”, which is Braidotti’s term for the “significant changes in the status of the structure of the inhuman and inhumane practices” (116).

An Example: Health Care � � � An example of the consequence of not taking the zoe-centric perspective is seen in the recent health care debate. A popular classical perspective has been to encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own physical fitness and well-being. While these practices productively encourage a greater awareness of each of our posthuman bio-organic existence, they also “pervert…the notion of responsibility towards individualism” (116). Institutions like national healthcare can be dismantled on the misleading grounds that they function as “handouts” for individuals who refuse to take responsibility for themselves. This choice excludes those for whom the products necessary for a healthy lifestyle are financially inaccessible; thus those who are already marginalized within society become further marginalized, and can now be blamed for their own marginalization. In this way, the political policy is designed specifically to promote the sustained life of those who are deemed to be the “healthy” normative core of society and implicitly necessitates the death of those deemed unhealthy.

A (too quick) Conclusion � � � There’s much more to this analysis than one example can account for, but given our constraints, we can note a few salient feature of Braidotti’s posthuman theory of death and morality. The key is to recognize that, “[o]ne’s view on death depends on one’s assumptions about life” (131). For Braidotti, this refers to her matter-realist view of life as a generic force of “cosmic energy”. The death of the individual, then, cannot be seen as the teleological end of life, because life is not an inherent property of the individual, but rather the opposite: the mortal individual is best understood as a kind of temporary echo chamber for zoe, the temporality of which inherently means that death has always already occurred. Death is not an indifferent and inanimate state of matter, but rather a position on on the spectrum of vitality. For this reason, “Death is the becoming-imperceptible of the posthuman subject and as such it is part of the cycles of becoming, yet another form of interconnectedness, a vital relationship that links one with other, multiple forces” (137). That is to say, both life and death are impersonal, generic expressions of zoe, and understanding them as such has the potential to, ultimately, transgress ego and dissolve the boundaries between subjective individuals, such that the primary focus of each individual becomes the sustained existence of zoe. Health care?