Hi everyone my name is Francesca Ferrando I’m a professor here at NYU's program of Liberal Studies and I am a philosopher of the posthuman.
In this video, I am going to address a third way to address the posthuman, which is post-dualism. In my previous video I discussed how to define Posthumanism as a post-anthropocentrism. And in the video before that we talked about Posthumanism itself as a post-humanism. Now something that comes back to the notion of post-humansim and post-anthropocentrism is post-dualism.
So when we talk about the human not as one but as many, we actually address humans in the plural. We show how many were considered less than other humans. For instance, in this dualistic frame we have the notion of gender with males historically being considered "plus" and female being considered "minus." And we talked about the history of slavery, according to which white is considered "plus," and black as "minus." In the history of colonialism we have the East and West, according to which the West held the "plus" and the East was the "minus." And, more generally, we can think of the separation between nature and culture, according to which culture will be considered "plus" and nature the "minus." This dualism itself also explains the relation to "anthropos," which we discussed in our previous video. In that video we demonstrated how "anthropos" was connected to the specific notion of the human as Greek, in separation from the barbarians, which were the Persians. Nature was in this separation from culture; culture was related to reason, nature to emotions.
Now this demonstration wants to underline the fact that there is a problem here, a structural problem. With the dualistic creation of identity, we are defined in separation from others. For instance, with the notion of "anthropos," we are "anthropos"--human-- because we are not gods or goddesses, because we are not non-human animals, or because we are not what was considered at the time to be barbarians. This is something, according to Posthumanism, that should be acknowledged and should be problematized. Even if we get rid of any kind of human discrimination, even if we live in a society where we don’t have any more sexism or racism or ethnocentrism--which obviously is not the case since we live in a society that discriminates based on gender, race, or ethnicity--but even if we get to this society where we don’t have this kind of discrimination, if we keep dualism as an approach, as a social technology, we will have other forms of discrimination. For instance, in the second video of this trilogy about Posthumanism we addressed the problem of speciesism, which is discrimination based on species, and we also talked about the Anthropocene, the era in which we live where thousands of species get extinct every year because of human action. So again we see a form of the problem related to a specific type of living related to a specific type of species, which is the human species.
Now, we're going to address the problem of dualism from an open perspective. First of all, the posthuman shows that dualism is not enough to define the human. As we talked about in the first video of the series, the human is in relation to the "oikos," ecology, the home in which we live. Reflecting the views of Darwin, humans have adapted to the environment in which they have evolved, and on the other side, the environment has changed because of human action during the Anthropocene. On the other side, we can think of biology. And we can think of the fact that dividing and separating humans from non-human animals is in fact problematic because if we look at the genetic scenario, the human shares about 95% of its DNA with a chimpanzee. The human is in genetic relation with everything else on this planet. So it's very hard to just separate the human from non-human animals and it's hard to define all the other non-human animals as one. So again, biology is a good way to deconstruct the notion of the human that has been created in dualistic terms. Think for instance of the self; think of the bacteria inhabiting our guts. We need them to survive, but we will not define ourselves as in relation to those materials. But they are part of our bodies and our biology. So again, we are not one but many. We are in relation with other species. We are in relation with other living microorganisms that inhabit our body. We are in relation to the food we eat, with the air we breathe, with the planet as the whole.
Rosi Braidotti offers a solution: thinking of subjectivity not just as human but as an open frame which includes the human and the nonhuman and the planet. Another example here is technology. Think of the cyber self, think of us in connection to what defines us in technological terms: our avatars, our online personas, our gmails. Think of pacemakers, as mentioned in the first video. Some humans are already, technologically-speaking, cyborgs because they have the connection of biology and technology. In a sense, we are addressing dualism as a problem because even if we are going to live in a society that does not discriminate anymore based on gender, race, etc., even if humans are no longer discriminated against, other forms of discrimination will play again on dualistic practices. We can think for instance of the fear of AI takeover, the fear that our technological beings being developed may take over the world. So again, we are going to see a dualistic frame in which we are human in separation from technology. There are many ways to address the problem of dualism that should be addressed directly. We can think of the interconnection between nationality and coexistence. We can think of affinity, empathy, and even other notions related to emotions and feelings.
This is the last of this miniseries on the posthuman. I hope you enjoyed the discussion, and please join the conversation on this topic. It’s an ongoing discourse and philosophy. You can find more information about conferences and lectures and videos and books and articles on my website www.posthuman.org.
Thank you so much for your kind attention.
In this video, I am going to address a third way to address the posthuman, which is post-dualism. In my previous video I discussed how to define Posthumanism as a post-anthropocentrism. And in the video before that we talked about Posthumanism itself as a post-humanism. Now something that comes back to the notion of post-humansim and post-anthropocentrism is post-dualism.
So when we talk about the human not as one but as many, we actually address humans in the plural. We show how many were considered less than other humans. For instance, in this dualistic frame we have the notion of gender with males historically being considered "plus" and female being considered "minus." And we talked about the history of slavery, according to which white is considered "plus," and black as "minus." In the history of colonialism we have the East and West, according to which the West held the "plus" and the East was the "minus." And, more generally, we can think of the separation between nature and culture, according to which culture will be considered "plus" and nature the "minus." This dualism itself also explains the relation to "anthropos," which we discussed in our previous video. In that video we demonstrated how "anthropos" was connected to the specific notion of the human as Greek, in separation from the barbarians, which were the Persians. Nature was in this separation from culture; culture was related to reason, nature to emotions.
Now this demonstration wants to underline the fact that there is a problem here, a structural problem. With the dualistic creation of identity, we are defined in separation from others. For instance, with the notion of "anthropos," we are "anthropos"--human-- because we are not gods or goddesses, because we are not non-human animals, or because we are not what was considered at the time to be barbarians. This is something, according to Posthumanism, that should be acknowledged and should be problematized. Even if we get rid of any kind of human discrimination, even if we live in a society where we don’t have any more sexism or racism or ethnocentrism--which obviously is not the case since we live in a society that discriminates based on gender, race, or ethnicity--but even if we get to this society where we don’t have this kind of discrimination, if we keep dualism as an approach, as a social technology, we will have other forms of discrimination. For instance, in the second video of this trilogy about Posthumanism we addressed the problem of speciesism, which is discrimination based on species, and we also talked about the Anthropocene, the era in which we live where thousands of species get extinct every year because of human action. So again we see a form of the problem related to a specific type of living related to a specific type of species, which is the human species.
Now, we're going to address the problem of dualism from an open perspective. First of all, the posthuman shows that dualism is not enough to define the human. As we talked about in the first video of the series, the human is in relation to the "oikos," ecology, the home in which we live. Reflecting the views of Darwin, humans have adapted to the environment in which they have evolved, and on the other side, the environment has changed because of human action during the Anthropocene. On the other side, we can think of biology. And we can think of the fact that dividing and separating humans from non-human animals is in fact problematic because if we look at the genetic scenario, the human shares about 95% of its DNA with a chimpanzee. The human is in genetic relation with everything else on this planet. So it's very hard to just separate the human from non-human animals and it's hard to define all the other non-human animals as one. So again, biology is a good way to deconstruct the notion of the human that has been created in dualistic terms. Think for instance of the self; think of the bacteria inhabiting our guts. We need them to survive, but we will not define ourselves as in relation to those materials. But they are part of our bodies and our biology. So again, we are not one but many. We are in relation with other species. We are in relation with other living microorganisms that inhabit our body. We are in relation to the food we eat, with the air we breathe, with the planet as the whole.
Rosi Braidotti offers a solution: thinking of subjectivity not just as human but as an open frame which includes the human and the nonhuman and the planet. Another example here is technology. Think of the cyber self, think of us in connection to what defines us in technological terms: our avatars, our online personas, our gmails. Think of pacemakers, as mentioned in the first video. Some humans are already, technologically-speaking, cyborgs because they have the connection of biology and technology. In a sense, we are addressing dualism as a problem because even if we are going to live in a society that does not discriminate anymore based on gender, race, etc., even if humans are no longer discriminated against, other forms of discrimination will play again on dualistic practices. We can think for instance of the fear of AI takeover, the fear that our technological beings being developed may take over the world. So again, we are going to see a dualistic frame in which we are human in separation from technology. There are many ways to address the problem of dualism that should be addressed directly. We can think of the interconnection between nationality and coexistence. We can think of affinity, empathy, and even other notions related to emotions and feelings.
This is the last of this miniseries on the posthuman. I hope you enjoyed the discussion, and please join the conversation on this topic. It’s an ongoing discourse and philosophy. You can find more information about conferences and lectures and videos and books and articles on my website www.posthuman.org.
Thank you so much for your kind attention.