Talk:Posthumanism

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Merge with Posthuman article?[edit]

This page needs to be merged with Posthuman. Astudent 06:33 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It no longer does. --Loremaster 02:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In light of the fact that this page no longer talks about transhumanism and/or the transhumanist concept of the posthuman, a merge is no longer necessary. --Loremaster 03:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See merge suggestion section below to continue debate. --Loremaster (talk) 02:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The articles on posthuman and posthumanism need to be clearly distinguished, in the lede. When I read these articles and the talk pages, I get the sense that there is no established clear distinction. Some people take them to mean the same thing (in either way), others distinguish them strongly, for others the distinction is fairly minor. It is useful to have a concept that corresponds with transhumanism, and a concept that corresponds with (pessimistic) postmodernity. It is perhaps unfortunate that the words used for these concepts are so similar. Richardson mcphillips (talk) 15:53, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Need for improvements[edit]

Hello. This article is in great need of help. To start, posthumanism is not absolutely related to or stemming from humanism. This is the postmodernist perspective only. I would like to provide some distinct corrections and additional information on posthumanism. Hayles is a good start. There needs to be more infomration on the postmodern french philosophers and the counter views to their hegemony. There also needs to be a wider selection of papers which can be obtained through google. I plan to add material to this page but I wanted to introduce myself first. JJRhetorical 20:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Posthumanism[edit]

There are additional topics to be covered under the "posthuman" rubric. Please see N. Katherine Hayles "How We Became Posthuman." It covers in great detail the aspects of the current culture that can be called posthumanist, in that they are explicitly and implicitly juxtaposed with the idea of humanism as proposed by philosophers such as Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Perhaps we should elaborate more on the posthumanist concept of the posthuman in order to differentiate it from the transhumanist one. --Loremaster 03:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POSThumanism - a different ideology[edit]

I don't know about you, but in Finland and in scandinavian humanism, posthumanism is the follower to the original humanism, which 1) places humans in nature instead of raising the human race on the plateau and 2) abandons the ideal of a naturalistic human as their ideal.

As such, transhumanism is a (large) subgroup among posthumanism, but posthumanism is a whole other ideology. Being transhumanistic-friendly is part of the ideology I'm sure, but posthumanism is still a very separate ideology. I'm sure "posthuman" is also a transhumanist term, but your views on the matter differ greatly from the meaning we have for the word, and e.g. what the local humanistic associations have on their web pages.

Mind if I edit the article to reflect that? Anyone? --Lussmu 22:00, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So we have "posthumanism" as in "beyond human", and "posthumanism" as in "beyond humanism". Sure, I don't see why the article can't mention both senses of the term, so long as the relevant contexts are mentioned. - Korpios 05:14, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's better to have 3 articles (posthumanism, transhumanism, and posthuman) to respectively focus on one sense for the sake of clarity as we do now. --Loremaster 13:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
while i appreciate the logic of having 3 focused articles i cannot easily accept the attitude that their must be a prevention of overlap. from how i see it, transhumanism is inherently rooted in posthumanist ideology. it is not merely coincidental that transhumanism pursues issues of the "posthuman". being of different etymological origins is arbitrary as their issues are correlative.
let me draw an outline as i understand it-
nietzschean overhumanism encapsulates the philosophical ideologies of
posthumanism which encapsulates the ideologies of
transhumanism which encapsulates the issues of the
posthuman whose issues reflexively effect the greater ideologies of
posthumanism

not only are the ideologies bed fellows, they are constantly having intercourse. see the posthumanist/feminist writings on Bods and Borgs for example. is that too poststructuralist of an interpretation?Some thing 01:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sociologist James Hughes on Transhumanism and Posthumanism[edit]

The following is a text from James Hughes that was forwarded to me which may help clarify this issue once and for all:


--Loremaster 07:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again you are narrowing the contents too tightly. You seem to be trying too hard to tie posthumansim into transhumanism. You cannot. They are different belief systems adopted for different purposes. My suggestion is to be clear about posthumanism and find substantial papers on the topic. JJRhetorical 20:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you are talking about since it should be obvious that I'm trying to break the tie between posthumanism and transhumanism. --Loremaster 20:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pepperell[edit]

I'm sorry, but I found the Pepperell manifesto to be very distant from the rationalist humanism strand this article deals with. As I understand it, updating the reneissance humanist agenda according to the "scientific progress" that has happened means rejecting epistemologic antifundamentalism in favour of naturalism. The "natural acceptance of paranormal" or the a priori knowledge that "we can't comprehend nature fully" is epistemological fundamentalism and dogmatism. --Tmh 23:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The link to the Pepperell manifesto has been removed. --Loremaster 13:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. Pepperell's manifesto is unique and the fact that Hayles did not note him is her mistake. In fact, what the heck does she know about posthumanism other than academic illusions.
I know Pepperell from a few conferences in the UK. This is not a personality contest. His writings are substantial and academically sound. JJRhetorical 20:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Removing Pepperell is a raw deal. Agreeing with his published manifesto has little bearing in articulating an impartial article. ps fly (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:07, 18 June 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Criticism[edit]

this edit is really a comment, since i don't have an account: most every sentence in this article is flawed. Undifferentiated, mostly meaningless period categories are lined up and placed in relations of 'transcending' [puleeze] the one before or 'returning' to something earlier. I go blank with the whole idea and am thankful this term [a tired echo of postmodern] has to date not been seriously taken up in contemporary humanities venues of academia. we need some fresh theorizations and terms so that we don't kill a subject in its fetal stages. --User 70.247.40.155

I'm assuming your comment refers to a very old version of the article. However, I've removed the word “transcends”. --Loremaster 13:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure where to place this comment, but here is as good a place as any. Can someone tell me what Adam Zaretsky's interview page has to do with posthumanism? First, Adam is an exception bioartist but BioArt has very little to do with posthumanism at this point in time. Were it otherwise, I would gladly support including Bioartists, but to be perfectly honest, none of the artists mentioned on this page work with posthuman concepts. Thoughts?

38.100.144.240 01:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but this section is nothing more than an opinionated refutation of philosophy itself. The link is improperly formatted, and the choice of its destination is a highly polarizing matter, communicating a clear bias on the author's part against theoretical discourse in general. That this, of all mildly metaphysical topics, would be singled out for irrelevance amidst so much genocide and essentialization of races and genders in the world (i.e. the consideration of them as essentially different, and therefore as not all simply human), baffles me. I'm going to delete this section if no one stands up to defend it and/or improves it. What makes a man turn neutral? (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What section are refering to exacly? Are you talking about a section in the article or on the talk page? --Loremaster (talk) 17:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
More then that, everything except the Haraway comment appear to be a naked endorsement of the exact topic. In addition, the citation link is dead. At most, it should be in the criticism section of Transhumanism, but I suspect that in a more trafficked article, it would be torn apart for problems of notability, coherence and content. It seems to be nothing more then the unelaborated pretense of an obscure political writer. Recommend migration or deletion. Equilibrium103 (talk) 11:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On Posthumanism[edit]

Loremaster asked this comment on the "posthuman" discussion site here:

Posthumanism should better not be characterised as an "extension" of humanism. Posthumanism is explicitly antihumanist. Moreover, in Europe the philosophical (postmodernist) posthumanism paved the way for the engineer's posthumanism of the Moravecs, Minskys etc.: Posthumanist philosophers and authors belonged to the first people in Europe who made references to Moravec etc. and included texts by the posthumanist engineers in their publications. One central common feature of both posthumanisms is the idea that machines (including machine intelligences) will become ever more important "actors", and that for this reason the centrality of the human being (as in classical humanism) is an old-fashioned idea. I think it would be better to delete the sentence or to extend the article. (I'm afraid my English is not good enough for doing this myself.)

I agree. Posthumanism is characterized as a "postmodern critique of humanism" rather than an "extension of humanism". --Loremaster 13:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction[edit]

This article claims posthumanism is an emergent philosophy but also a "dominant" philosophy. According to the Emergent philosophy page, emergent philosophies are on the fringe and therefore not dominant. Please clarify and correct. Mjk2357 03:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've corrected the article and removed the contradictory tag. --Loremaster 14:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Mjk2357 19:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

European?[edit]

The article says posthumanism is a European philosophy. I am interested in knowing more about this. I was under the impression that posthumanists existed all over the world. Perhaps the article means the posthumanistic movement began in Europe, and if that is what is meant, then I would like to learn more how, where, when and who the people behind it were. Thanks. //Kada 7 Feb 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.241.166.138 (talk) 13:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Like all discussion pages, the Talk:Posthumanism page page is for discussing improvements to the Posthumanism article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject. That being said, I suggest you read the books listed in the References section. --Loremaster 13:36, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've edited the article to remove any mention of European continental philosophy until we have a source for it. --Loremaster (talk) 16:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Haraway?[edit]

Haraway has never used the word posthuman to characterise her ideas. Moreover, she has made explicit reference to being against posthumanism as a guiding concept. Her work can more comfortably be characterised as cyborgology, which is particularly concerned with the politics of difference, the central thesis in her Cyborg Manifesto. --User:Andymiah

  1. It's not necessary for Haraway to have characterized her ideas as posthuman for her and her work to be legitimately characterized as posthumanist.
  2. Has Haraway made explicit reference to being agaisnt posthumanism or transhumanism? As Shannon Bell explains in the CIAC interview, there is a clear difference between posthumanism and transhumanism.
--Loremaster 22:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most certainly, they are distinct concepts.
In her 2006 NYU Dorothy Nelkin memorial lecture, she did urge the rejection of 'post' terminology, such as posthumanism. I think her work is more aptly characterised in recent years by the terms 'prosthesis', which takes up notions of transgressed boundaries. I suppose the main question about her appropriateness in this entry resides in the choice of the author to identify her as one of the, currently, 4 posthumanists. This creates the impression that her contribution to posthuman thought is distinct. Yet, if she is included, then we might include many more authors, perhaps including Chris Hables Gray or even Jacques Derrida. As such, unless a more comprehensive picture of this literature is presented, then her being noted creates a misrepresentation of the range of ideas that can be argued as having contributed to posthuman thought. As such, I would ask the author to explain why the entry includes only these four authors and not the many other notable thinkers whose ideas can also be read as posthuman. A possible solution might be to acknowledge the relative lack of theoretical distinctiveness to this concept, which I believe is still finding its way. --User:Andymiah
To avoid a possible dispute, I've deleted the List of notable posthumanists section until someone more knowledgeable can defend the inclusion of this people. --Loremaster 19:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Though I posted a large chunk below (sorry!), I wanted to briefly respond: Just because Haraway says she's not a posthumanist does not mean that her inclusion in Posthumanism's entry is unjustified. Even heuristically, it's extremely relevant (though IMHO it's not even heuristic to position Haraway in Posthumanism). The field draws on a lot of people, as you mentioned above, so I agree that a "notable list" isn't the best idea. But she does deserve some mention, as any posthumanist (in the critical posthumanist sense) is strongly informed by her work. --AdamFJohnson 23:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Haraway is certainly a posthumanist. And a notable one. The distinction between posthumanism and transhumanism is not a clear line; both re-think humanism, but in different ways. As I understand it, transhumanism throws out the idea of a unified 'man', who is in himself perfect or has the capability to achieve perfect, but takes up the latter part by integrating technology into his body. Transhumanism still seems to abide by the teleology of humanism, however, and still forms its basis on a western, white male perspective. Posthumanism is a more critical field, akin to a kind of critical theory of being (not strictly "human") and technological advancement. Haraway's book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women takes up this position, as does her later work ModestWitness@FemaleMan... though she doesn't explicitly call it "posthuman" (to my knowledge). She does engage with N. Katherine Hayles after Hayles' book How We Became Posthuman and I think even accepts the term. Cyborg theory a la Haraway is definitely worthy of this entry and more in line with it than others. In regards to both Haraway and Hayles' work, "post" means re-writing, not after. In this sense, Posthumanism is the discourse which critically questions humanist notions of individuality, unity, autonomy, etc. Heterogeneity, creation, revision, rewriting, polyvocality, etc are all characteristics of the posthuman, which is part of the concern that the field of posthumanism covers. Other than that, posthumanism is also a claim to situated knowledges, Haraway's notion that knowledge is multifaceted, located within various contexts, aware of social construction (both overuse and as a critical tool), and reliant on the sort of rational scientific knowledge that humanism enacts and modern scientific discourse follows. This is why posthumanism is not antihumanist. Anyway, just my two cents. I'll try to find some time to do a revision.--AdamFJohnson 23:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno if anyone is still paying attention to this page, but a great addition would be a mention of Cary Wolfe's Posthumanities series, which has been incredibly influential. Haraway's latest book When Species Meet was a part of this. Wolfe's new book is called What is Posthumanism? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.180.163.164 (talk) 19:16, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your two cents. I look forward to your revision. --Loremaster 12:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Harraway is a substantial voice, but her writing is more romantically transhumanist, per se. JJRhetorical 20:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Looking over Shannon Bell's differences between transhumanism and posthumanism, they are weak at best and flimsy, having little substantive knowledge of transhumanism. It appears that her perspective is limited and should not be used as an authority. Why is she listed in the article with Foucault, Latour or Hayles. Someone asleep at the wheel? ps fly (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Page move and redirect[edit]

This is a highly atypical use of the word "posthumanism". I suggest we move this to posthumanism (philosophy) or somesuch and redirect posthumanism to transhumanism. Evercat (talk) 04:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree. I suggest you read the archived debate on the Talk:Transhumanism page on this subject. --Loremaster (talk) 04:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

January 2009 improvements[edit]

It took me a while but I finally got around improving the Posthumanism article (since no one else wanted to do it) by tweaking content and creating a much needed disambiguation section in the lead as well as adding an image and two templates. I'm told Dr. Shannon Bell has read the article and judge that it "reads well". --Loremaster (talk) 00:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Towards Good Article Status[edit]

Who is interested in working to make the Posthumanism article meet Wikipedia's criteria for a good article? --Loremaster (talk) 16:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would be down for this, if I could do some substantial reshaping. Is anyone against harmonizing this page with posthumanism as it's emerged through Hayles, through Wolfe's Posthumanities series, and through a number of recent critical additions/responses (Wolfe, Timothy Morton, and so on)? It seems to me that one problem with the article as it stands is that it somewhat artificially divides "posthumanism" into a bunch of sub-branches with very few references on those sub-branches. Mostly, it seems like it's been written and discussed before there was enough critical consensus about how to even begin defining the subject matter. I'm pretty sure that no one has ever argued that we should divide "posthumanism" along the lines this article does. But surely we can talk about one historical branch coming through cybernetics (discussed by Hayles), the ecological de-centering of the human (not unrelated to the cybernetic through figures like Bateson, obviously), and the poststructuralist/continental decentering of the human (visible in Wolfe and Morton among many others) as three very clear, trackable and citable branches of posthuman thought. Handling the article in that way would certainly clean it up by Wikipedia quality standards, even though it would mean some major re-shaping of what's on the page as it is. I can see where the current divisions come from through some of these debates on the talk page, but they feel pretty dated. Thoughts? --RedInToothAndClaw (talk) 01:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Approaches to transhumanism within a post-humanism article[edit]

i will attempt to contribute to this article as i study transhumanism, the overhuman, non-human theory, post-human theory and post-humanism but befor i do i will describe my current impression:

  1. that this article needs more direct citation of sources (authors) discussing early post-humanist theory as from its relation to humanism
  2. the disambiguation leader to transhumanism is necessary to distinguish from post-humanism
  3. that mentioning transhumanism within the article as it relates to post-humanism is necessary to insure both inclusion and distinction as it is a very popular branch of post-humanist theory
  4. that transhumanism should also be understood as an active theory branched from futurology
  5. that post-humanism (post-humanist theory) should not be equated with transhumanism or posthuman theory and it should be mentioned that to do so could be interpreted as an error and at the very least cause confusion. for "Posthumanism" as a philosophy of the "Posthuman" is possibly a paradox because it would mean a philosophy held by sentient posthumans (ie: Super AI, which [most] people agree do not exist[yet])
  6. that post-humanism should not be equated with futurology, for futurology is a study of the future
  7. that futurology is not necessarily even a branch of post-humanism (even though transhumanism is) as futurology is not a philisophical theory or belief system
  8. that it is inappropriate to initially introduce the reader to the topic through the issues of the Posthuman rather than the post-humanist. Thus the first image for this article should not be of a robot touching fingers with adam, but rather, for example; an image of an early post-humanist theoretician.
  9. that it may be appropriate to move this article to Post-Humanism to emphasize its meaning, at least until transhumanist language becomes less confusing in public discourse.
  10. lastly, that overhuman ideology and non-human theory are relevant but complex in post-humanist discussion and also complex in its relations in transhumanism. (see "viroid life" by pearson) and thus the use of these terms should not be made casually without elaboration.

Some thing (talk) 20:30, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello "Some thing". Thank you for coming back in order to improve the Posthumanism article with your incisive insight. I agree with all your points except for number 6, 7, 8 and 9.
  1. Re: 6-7: I've edited the article to remove the description of posthumanism as a "form of furology". However, I suggest you read the theory section of the Transhumanism article to understand where the third definition comes from.
  2. Re: 8: Through debates I had to successfuly make the Transhumanism article meet featured article criteria, I was informed that adding the image of a person to a non-biographical/historical article adds nothing to our better understanding of the subject and is a waste of virtual space. Furthermore, I think the current image is quite appropriate since it uniquely emphasizes in a clever way the posthumanist project to subvert Renaissance humanism.
  3. Re: 9: We will need to discuss it with a greater group of contributors before proceeding with such an important move.
That being said, let's get to work. :) --Loremaster (talk) 21:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should use Andy Miah's essay Posthumanism: A Critical History as our main source for the Posthumanism article. --Loremaster (talk) 02:45, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge suggestion[edit]

Should we consider merging the Posthuman section of the Posthumanism article with the Posthuman article (in which we would cleary explain the difference between the posthuman of critical theory and the posthuman of posthumanist/transhumanist speculation)? --Loremaster (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regardeless of whether or not we decide to merge, I've decided to improve and expand the Posthuman article along those lines. --Loremaster (talk) 01:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Technocritic Dale Carrico on posthumanism[edit]

--Loremaster (talk) 00:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Too technical?[edit]

This article has been tagged with the technical tag since 2007:

The 2007 version was far too hard to understand, but the current version is just fine, so I am removing the technical tag. Please discus if you disagree. Guy Macon 00:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good. --Loremaster (talk) 00:43, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Intro sentence?[edit]

I'm a relative newbie and interested in working on this and related pages (e.g. Antihumanism and the other pages that link out from here). I think the list of five items in the first section is a good list of things that should be covered in the article, but I do not think they are in fact "definitions." I think it would be useful to start with a broad, general definition that could then lead into the various aspects of the topic, as represented in part by those five terms. Here is what I propose:

Posthumanism is a set of ideas, beliefs, and practices responding critically to traditional humanism or to traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition.

As a matter of fact, I just moments ago proposed a similarly words sentence to introduce the article on "Antihumanism." Of course, what follows in the two articles would be very different.

Given how actively this page is being edited by some very committed members, I did not want to make a change like this without putting it up for discussion first. Mhbroder (talk) 15:39, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do it. --Loremaster (talk) 16:10, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Introductory section[edit]

Intro section perhaps needs modifying there are a lot of overdressing definitions and two different case uses of the same word etc. Needs to work at some point. DocHeuh (talk) 18:01, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge of Posthumanization into Posthumanism[edit]

Covers similar information in this article, but essay-like Roasted (talk) 21:14, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  checkY Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 22:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]