The Posthuman: Differences, Embodiments, Performativity
Call For Papers
September 11th – 14th 2013, University of Roma 3, Rome, Italy
The University of Roma 3, the University Erlangen-Nürnberg,
the University of the Aegean and Dublin City University
are pleased to announce:
The 5th Conference of the Beyond Humanism Conference Series
The specific focus of the Conference “The Posthuman: Differences, Embodiments, and Performativity” will be the posthuman, in its genealogies, as well as its theoretical, artistic and materialistic differences and possibilities. In order to guarantee a systematic treatment of the topic, we will particularly focus on the following themes:
1 What is the posthuman? Have humans always been posthuman? If so, in which sense? Is the posthuman a further evolutionary development of the human being? What are the implications of gender, sex and race, among other differential categories, for the embodied constitution of the posthuman? Do posthumans already exist? What is the difference between the posthuman, the transhuman, the antihuman and the cyborg?
2 Philosophical issues concerning the genealogies of the posthuman: Which traditions of thoughts are significant to the posthuman theoretical attempt to postulate a post-dualistic and post-essentialist standpoint? What are the differences between the genealogies of the posthuman and of the transhuman? What points do they hold in common? Is the posthuman a Western-centric notion? Could non-dualistic practices such as shamanism be accounted as posthuman?
3 Bioarts, Body Art, Performance Art and the Posthuman: Which kind of art can be seen as leading towards the posthuman? Is the notion of the posthuman traceable in artistic traditions which precede the coining of the term “posthuman”? Can the posthuman be detected in cultures which have not been canonized by Western aesthetics?
4 Ethics, Bioethics, and the Moral Status of the Posthuman: Does the posthuman lead to a new, non-universalist, non-dualist understanding of ethics? Will posthumans have the moral status of a post-person, or will it be possible for them to have human dignity and personhood? Are human rights necessarily humanistic, or can they be re-enacted within a posthuman frame?
5 Emerging Technologies and the Posthuman: Which technologies represent the most significant challenge concerning the concept of the human/posthuman? Are restrictive national regulations concerning emerging technologies helpful in a globalized world? Do mind-uploading, plastic surgery, and cyborgian practices dissolve the border between human beings and machines? Human enhancement is already happening: should morphological freedom be regulated by social norms, or should it stand on individual choices?
6 Materialism and Posthuman Existence: The notion of matter as an active agent has been reinforced through Quantum Physics, on a scientific level, as well as by New Materialisms and Speculative Realism, on a philosophical level. Is the posthuman grounded in a materialist understanding of existence? What are the ontological, as well as the existential implications of the relationality of matter? Can it be related to a Posthuman Agency? What would a Posthuman Existentialism imply?
7. Posthuman Education: The notion of education in a posthumanist world; the transformation of the roles of teachers and learners in a posthuman social environment; what is the concept of a post- and transhumanist school? Which learning activities are central in a posthumanist educational system? Epistemological considerations about knowledge construction in the posthumanist era need to be considered further.
Papers will be selected and arranged according to related topics. Equal voice will be given, if possible, to presentations from the arts, humanities, sciences, and technological fields.
Major areas of interest include (in alphabetic order):
Animal Studies, Antihumanism, Heritage and the Arts, Postmodernism, and Conceptual Art, Bioarts and Performance Art, Bioethics, Cosmology, Critical Race Studies, Cultural Studies, Cyborg Studies, Deconstructionism, Disability Studies, Ecology, Informatics, Emerging Technologies and Ethics, Enhancement, Evolution, Existentialism, Gender Studies, Intersectionality, New Materialisms, Philosophy, Physics, Posthumanism, Quantum Physics, Science and Technology Studies, Singularity, Spirituality, Speculative Realism, Transhumanism
Other possible topics include, but are not limited to:
· Bioethics, bioconservatism, bioliberalism, enhancement
· Posthumanist anthropology, aesthetics, ecology, feminism, critical theory
· Representation of human performance in technology and the arts
· Enhancement and political discourse, regulation, and human rights
· Humanism, posthumanism, transhumanism and antihumanism in philosophy
· Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and posthumanism
· New Materialisms, speculative realism and quantum physics
· Existentialism, relational ontology, posthuman agency
· Transhuman and posthuman impact on ethics and/or value formation
· Phenomenology and postphenomenology
· Embodiments and identity
· Transhumanism and/or posthumanism in science fiction and utopian/dystopian literature
· Non-dualism in spiritual practices, mysticism and shamanism
· Globalization and the spread of biomedicine and transhumanism/br> · Economic implications of transhumanist projects
· Popular culture and posthumanist representations
· Theology, enhancement, and the place of the posthuman
· Technology, robotics, and ethics
· Cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality
· Cyborgs and democracy
· Humanity, human nature, biotechnology
SUBMISSIONS & DEADLINES
We invite abstracts of up to 500 words, to be sent in MS Word and Pdf format to: posthuman.conference@gmail.com
Files should be named and submitted in the following manner:
Submission: First Name Last name.docx (or .doc) / .pdf
Example: “Submission: MaryAndy.docx”
Abstracts should be received by May 15th 2013.
Acceptance notifications will be sent out by June 15th.
All those accepted will receive information on the venue(s), local attractions, accommodations, restaurants, and planned receptions and events for participants.
*Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Each presentation will be given 10 additional minutes for questions and discussions with the audience, for a total of 30 minutes.
FEES & REGISTRATION
A reduced registration fee of €50 (65USD) will apply to all participants.
SERIES “BEYOND HUMANISM”(site)
The Conference is part of the Series “Beyond Humanism”. The 1st Conference took place in April 2009 at the University of Belgrade (Humanism and Posthumanism), the 2nd Conference in September 2010 at the University of the Aegean (Audiovisual Posthumanism), the 3rd Conference in October 2011 at Dublin City University (Transforming Human Nature) and the 4th Conference in September 2012 at the IUC in Dubrovnik (Enhancement, Emerging Technologies and Social Challenges). This year, the conference “The Posthuman: Differences, Embodiments, and Performativity” will be held at the University of Roma 3, Department of Philosophy, Rome, Italy, from the 11th until the 14th of September 2013.
There’s an epic flame war over at Three Pound Brain in response to Scott Bakker’s discussion of Levi Bryant’s Object Oriented Ontology. I’m sitting this one out like my hero Custard the Cat. In part because, I’m just too busy and in part cos’ I don’t want to distract Scott from the trudge to Golgotterath and the moral necessity of euthanizing our immortal souls.
I’m currently using Davidsonian radical interpretation as a model for understanding the obstructions presented by very alien minds and phenomenologies – posthumans, aliens, cats, etc. However, much as I admire Davidson’s writings I don’t really want to be a Davidsonian. For example, I don’t think that content is constituted by how others might interpret it in ideal conditions. Entertaining or having a certain content is at bottom a power or disposition – it’s a state that makes a difference to what one can do, it exercises influence on actions, etc..
Ray Brassier refers to humans animals “with the capacity to be gripped by concepts” (Brassier 2011). I find the implicit analogy between concept use and possession suggestive, though it does not incline me to his view that concepts are inferential roles or articulations. If contents are real powers with “grip” then “uninterpretable content” is an oxymoron – for it would be a causally inert property whose possession makes no difference to the possessor or to anything else (Heil 2003, Ch8).
Such properties need not be identical to inferential roles because inferential roles are manifestations of powers and powers are not identical to their manifestations. Nonetheless, assigning inferential roles ( interpreting) may be a good way of predicting and manipulating the behaviour of the possessed.
If one is a Davidsonian radical interpreter, interpretation can be thought of as using a sentence with a familiar role in some interpreting theory or metalanguage – e.g. “The box is a trap” – and proceeding as if a state of the interpretee (an utterance or mental state) has the content which manifests this role. I suggested this approach in 2004 back when I was more sympathetic to the interpretationist cause. At that point, I was only dimly aware that this was a way of instrumentalizing interpretation and divesting it of its pretensions to constitutive status (I’m slow this way). Interpretability is just a spinoff of the fact that concepts and contents exert influence and have results we can track and use.
Thus understood, radical interpretation is semantic modelling as extreme sport. We create an artificial idiom that means something for us – the interpreting “theory” – and consider the degree to which another being shares that idiom (Roden 2004, 200-1). Success in interpretation need not depend on mirroring the content of the alien state we wish to understand. For example, the state by virtue of which the raccoon is able to represent the fact that a box is a trap will presumably differ from “The box is a trap” in not being a grammatically structured sentence in a public language but a brain state of some kind. However, if the modelling procedure helps us to shape and cope with cat, raccoon, posthuman behaviour the interpretation can be warranted on purely pragmatic grounds.
In Donald Davidson’s Philosophy of Language, Bjorn Ramberg imagines an idealized hard case involving people who are solely concerned with events that happened two days ago (Ramberg 1989, 120). We might not be able to appreciate what is it like to be entirely preoccupied with two day old events, but this does not mean that we cannot detect this temporal fixation and interpret those who have it. For example, we might have a theory that says of a temporal displacee that s (an utterance in the displacee’s language) uttered at time t is true if and only if p – where p reports some event two days prior to t. Of course, realizing that use value in the form of fluid communication might require more than just a helpful simulation. It would require the interpreters to become sensitive to the point of view of the displacees. So from radical interpretation we arrive at the threshold of cyborg becomings. But that’s another story.
Brassier, R. (2011). The view from nowhere. Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, (17), 7-23.
There’s a very interesting discussion of the merits of Marxism and an Anarchist-Green politics set out in John Zerzan’s book Twilight of the Machines (which I’ll admit to downloading, not reading!) over at the (Dis)loyal Opposition to Modernity. As I understand from the gloss in the DOM post, Zerzan views technology as inherently alienating and destructive and proposes its relinquishment in the interest of human autonomy and the planet (this gloss may need nuancing, obviously!).
Unlike some technophilic left-liberals, I treat relinquishment as a serious moral response to the incompatibility of technical modernity and political transparency. This is because modern technological systems are post-geographic and post-cultural – that is, any invention or device can be replicated in multiple contexts with inherently unpredictable results on the rest of the system (think, for example, of the global impact of Tim Berners Lee’s invention of hypertext for cabal of physicists at CERN). If modern technological systems are inherently unpredictable, then they are inherently uncontrollable. So even if we replace capitalist forms of ownership with a more rational way of allocating resources we’ll still be “living on this thing like fleas on a cat” (to quote Dr Gaius Baltar,)
The only options to verminous status I can conceive are relinquishment or a kind of anti-technological theocracy that artificially restricts the dynamism of self-augmenting technological systems (SATS). Both solutions are arguably based on a self-defeating ideal of sovereignty or autonomy. As Martin Hägglund argues via Derrida, there is no decision without the spacing between now and then – meaning that we can’t live without chancing the worst. The Anarcho-Green is thus a wrong-headed, philosophically naïve death-obsessive but, as fantasies of self-immolation go, his a relatively intelligible one.
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