bio
Rodrigo Ferreira Flores is a PhD Candidate in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His dissertation research focuses on the cultural mediation of digital practices and technologies in his native Mexico City. Previously, Rodrigo worked for almost five years as Communications Specialist for Latin America at J.P. Morgan. He holds a BA degree in Philosophy with Honors and a MA degree in Humanities and Social Thought from NYU; and has presented his work at numerous academic and art institutions such as Yale, Georgetown, Berkeley, UNAM (Mexico), ArtBo (Colombia) and ENS (France).
title
"Post-humanism, History, and Trauma"
abstract
Most recent deconstructive post-humanist approaches, along the lines of those of Wolf, Barad, and Braidotti, have articulated Deleuzian neo-materialist critiques about the ontological,epistemological, and ethical privilege historically awarded to the human. In so doing, these theories have brought into question both long-standing rationalist views about human exceptionalism and also opened post-humanist discourse to include critical discussions on race, gender, and embodiment. However, for the sake of stressing the material equivalence between the human and nonhuman, these writers have elided the significance of history and trauma in the human psyche. More specifically, they have ignored the role of history and trauma in constituting human identity, not only for human individuals but also for humans collectively. Following the work of authors such as Echeverria, Malabou, and Stiegler, the purpose of this paper will be bring psychoanalysis together with post-humanism in discussing the following questions: how do history and trauma fit in to the contemporary discourse on post-humanism? Are human history and trauma obstacles to be necessarily overcome by the post-human? Or, might different kinds of history and trauma lead to different versions of a post-human future? What might these different futures look like and how can we theorize them today?
