All Too (Post-) Human
Stefan Herbrechter, Posthumanism: A Critical Introduction
Bloomsbury, 240pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781780936901
reviewed by John P. Merrick
If ‘anti-humanism’ sought to push us away from essentialist notions of the human, with all its liberal-ideological baggage attached, then post-humanism can be seen as the need to take seriously the non-human. This need springs from the fact that humans themselves are gaining the ability to become this ‘other’ of the human. We have the potential, then, to become ‘post-human’. This is due to the rapid development of prosthesis in its many forms, from the internet, new media, genetic modification, ‘cyborgization,’ and cloning onwards. Are we, perhaps, entering a new age in which traditional humanist subjects are dissolving? Posthumanism: A Critical Introduction takes this claim as its starting point, and attempts to uncover the radical implications of this scientific and technological development as the stripping away of the anthropocentric and ‘sacrificial’ logic of the humanist subject.
Yet, this becoming post-human itself comes with a huge weight of ideological baggage. Whether it is the Extropian movement, which attempts a futurology of the post-human (amounting to the divorce of spirit from its deadening corporeality), or the representation of this process within the cultural imaginary as a techno-dystopia (from Blade Runner to I, Robot and beyond), it appears that we cannot settle on the relative merits of techno-scientific development. Stefan Herbrechter's aim, then, in Posthumanism, is to intervene in this discourse to develop a new post humanism, sailing the fine line between utopia and dystopia, ‘real’ techno-scientific fact and cultural representation. This ‘critical posthumanism,’ according to Herbrechter, is a deconstruction of the human from within. Posthumanism is double; both a discourse and a process. Yet, interestingly, Herbrechter states that this discourse itself produces the subjects and objects of the discourse, in this sense the discourse itself works as a real process, alongside the techno-scientific development. Posthumanisn, in its current gestation phase, is radically open as to what and to whom it refers. The task of a critical posthumanism is an intervention which seeks to move between the discourse and the process and hence wrest it from its utopian and dystopian imagined futures, moving it towards more egalitarian and democratic ends.
The tools that Herbrechter employs towards this end may be familiar to anyone acquainted with posthumanism, centring as he does on Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida. Yet, Herbrechter's critical element amounts to reading posthumanism alongside that other great bastion of ‘antihumanism’ associated with postmodernism - particularly the postmodernism of Jean-Francois Lyotard. Postmodernism allows Herbrechter to somewhat tentatively move to questions of ethics and otherness in relation to both humanism and posthumanism. Humanism's other is constituted by its immanent ‘dialectic drive’ which, in setting the boundaries of the human, always already excludes a non-human other. Herbrechter sees this drive as the cause of the disasters of classical humanism (including ‘colonialism, racism, patriachy, machismo, class society, nationalism,’ and so on). Humanism, in drawing the distinction of what the human is, not only excludes something (whether that is animal, human, machine or object) but also does violence to that which is excluded. Humanism, seen in this way, is structurally based upon a violence to the ‘other,’ containing within itself the potential for the extermination of what is deemed inhuman.
Rather counter-intuitively, then, posthumanism forces upon us the need to re-answer the question of ‘what is the human?’ Humans - in their techno-scientific prosthesis - are in a process of change, the future of which is currently undecided. Therefore, it is not merely a rejection of humanism in favour of non-human actors that needs to be thought through (as some variations of posthumanisms seek to do, such as the many new materialisms and so-called Object Orientated Ontologys), but rather the immanent need to confront the traditional question of liberal humanism anew, whilst understanding the limits and failures of that tradition. As Herbrechter states,
[T]he combination of the theoretical critique of humanism and new insights developed by science and media-aesthetic practice shows that deconstruction of the humanist subject coincides with a new posthumanist understanding of human and nonhuman subjectivity, as an integrated form of agency within diverse networks of information environments and nonhuman actors.
It is, then, a critical, techno-scientific discourse which analyses the subject as the result of a process in order to seek the end of that same subjectivity, and the possibilities of its overcoming in the form of the integration of both human and nonhuman actors that result from this.
Yet, perhaps, when answering this question of ‘what comes after the [humanist] subject,’ Herbrechter can be seen as ultimately failing to maintain the distinction between process and discourse, utopia and dystopia. This can be seen most clearly in his analysis of new media. There he states that,
Nobody, in fact, exercises control over the media in second generation media society. Decentralized new media like the internet with its new possibilities for constructing subjectivities is to a large extent outside state intervention and also escapes, to some degree, the large international corporations, at least the more traditional ones.
For all his claims towards avoiding the pitfalls of a technological determinism, it seems at a crucial point he falls into the very same trap. Not only does he show an optimistic faith in new technology as the democratic organ of the (post)human, which evades state and corporate control (perhaps he would like to remind Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden of this), he also moves towards a separation of new technologies from their real base in actual empirical human beings. In doing so, he valorises the ability of new technology to create new forms of subjectivity (examples of this include, ‘Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin’ - so much for being outside the control of corporations). To his credit, Herbrechter does play lip-service to the unintended negative outcomes of new media, yet he can be seen to ultimately fall into a form of (critical) techno-utopia, despite his best intentions. In fact, despite all his protestations to the contrary, the talk of process and its concomitant discourse end up looking increasingly like another form of material, teleological periodisation. That is, after the modern and the postmodern we have a new age of the world, that of the coming posthuman.
Herbrechter claims that this process of development not only creates its own subjects but also engenders ‘new forms of political agency’. However, are these new subjects all that posthumanism expects them to be? Whilst we should be mindful, as Herbrechter states, to avoid a mere pessimism in regards to this and should therefore acknowledge the ability for new media to allow for networking between various geographically and culturally disparate groups, it has also lead to increased surveillance and passivity. In fact, one can even see in such new media a bolstering of the traditional autonomous liberal subject. The subject increasingly gains a semblance of political and social autonomy and individuality through their ‘likes’ and preferences on such social media sites. Every available opportunity is taken now to augment individuality, as each individual is under increasing pressure to become, in every visible aspect, a walking CV – and nowhere more so than on social media. These new virtual supplements of the corporeal subject do not merely dissolve that distinction but in fact may serve to heighten it. As Slavoj Zizek is fond of reminding us, modern capitalism is not based around the dissolution of the individual, but rather the imperative to develop your ‘authentic’ true self, which is actualised through the market.
Herbrechter sees humanism, quite correctly, as an ideological justification for the pseudo-emancipation of the bourgeois individual. He sees the isolated Robinsonades of capitalism as a result of the process of a historical development of individuation which, in doing so, is turning back on itself and creating new posthuman subjectivities. However, this raises an important question, I believe, for the nascent discourse of posthumanism. In what sense can we be seen as moving towards processes of posthumanism when the human – regardless of its ideological aspect - is still the cornerstone of society? If there are still traces of the modern, liberal individual in society, then surely a move which seeks to (however critically) move beyond this is problematic. A seeming awareness of this false move is shown by Herbrechter in his near-constant pronouncements of what a critical post humanism ‘must do’, which, to this futural emphasis, we might add; ‘if it were ever to actually exist.’ Herbechter ultimately ends up in a form of future projection based upon a supposedly real process, as if he were attempting to end the talk of grand narratives with a new fable of development
Herbrechter makes an interesting early move towards this when he states that ‘from a cynical point of view’ posthumanism can be read as the ‘ideological superstructure’ that hides the base of capitalism's ‘globalization, virtualization and further technologization.’ Yet this move is never followed through. Instead, he goes on to claim that if this is the case, then there must be, under that ideological weight, something of a true movement towards the posthuman which must be reclaimed from ideology and pushed in an egalitarian and democratic direction. The critical element, therefore, comes from following an ethics which would allow for the other's exclusion to be made apparent, and not from testing the ideological limits of the discourse of the human. This ethics is done ‘out of care for humans and the survival of the human and other species.’ The move that Herbrechter makes towards an ethical discourse that takes into account the produced and excluded ‘other’ of humanism can then be questioned as well. If the human is human only due to a process that creates it, of what value is an ethical stance? Quoting Gillian Rose, quoting Stevie Smith, what good is an ethics of alterity if the other is ‘not waving but drowning?’
For all of its problems, however, Herbrechter's book is written with a sharp lucidity, and very much fulfils its task of being a critical intervention into the discourse of posthumanism. Chapter 4, on posthumanism and science fiction, develops several interesting readings of Hollywood science fiction films – including Blade Runner, Terminator 2 and Invasion of the Body Snatchers – each of which portray a posthuman future, yet each ultimately return to seemingly innately human attributes in order to re-draw the human/non-human distinction once more. Chapter 5 makes steps towards a re-imagining of the University after humanism, and the end of liberal arts. In this, Herbrechter takes seriously the (very real) need to re-classify the humanities after the seeming triumph of science and the instrumentalisation of education. Yet, there is much more work to be done, and, in this sense, perhaps a critical posthumanism needs to be more critical still.
Yet, this becoming post-human itself comes with a huge weight of ideological baggage. Whether it is the Extropian movement, which attempts a futurology of the post-human (amounting to the divorce of spirit from its deadening corporeality), or the representation of this process within the cultural imaginary as a techno-dystopia (from Blade Runner to I, Robot and beyond), it appears that we cannot settle on the relative merits of techno-scientific development. Stefan Herbrechter's aim, then, in Posthumanism, is to intervene in this discourse to develop a new post humanism, sailing the fine line between utopia and dystopia, ‘real’ techno-scientific fact and cultural representation. This ‘critical posthumanism,’ according to Herbrechter, is a deconstruction of the human from within. Posthumanism is double; both a discourse and a process. Yet, interestingly, Herbrechter states that this discourse itself produces the subjects and objects of the discourse, in this sense the discourse itself works as a real process, alongside the techno-scientific development. Posthumanisn, in its current gestation phase, is radically open as to what and to whom it refers. The task of a critical posthumanism is an intervention which seeks to move between the discourse and the process and hence wrest it from its utopian and dystopian imagined futures, moving it towards more egalitarian and democratic ends.
The tools that Herbrechter employs towards this end may be familiar to anyone acquainted with posthumanism, centring as he does on Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida. Yet, Herbrechter's critical element amounts to reading posthumanism alongside that other great bastion of ‘antihumanism’ associated with postmodernism - particularly the postmodernism of Jean-Francois Lyotard. Postmodernism allows Herbrechter to somewhat tentatively move to questions of ethics and otherness in relation to both humanism and posthumanism. Humanism's other is constituted by its immanent ‘dialectic drive’ which, in setting the boundaries of the human, always already excludes a non-human other. Herbrechter sees this drive as the cause of the disasters of classical humanism (including ‘colonialism, racism, patriachy, machismo, class society, nationalism,’ and so on). Humanism, in drawing the distinction of what the human is, not only excludes something (whether that is animal, human, machine or object) but also does violence to that which is excluded. Humanism, seen in this way, is structurally based upon a violence to the ‘other,’ containing within itself the potential for the extermination of what is deemed inhuman.
Rather counter-intuitively, then, posthumanism forces upon us the need to re-answer the question of ‘what is the human?’ Humans - in their techno-scientific prosthesis - are in a process of change, the future of which is currently undecided. Therefore, it is not merely a rejection of humanism in favour of non-human actors that needs to be thought through (as some variations of posthumanisms seek to do, such as the many new materialisms and so-called Object Orientated Ontologys), but rather the immanent need to confront the traditional question of liberal humanism anew, whilst understanding the limits and failures of that tradition. As Herbrechter states,
[T]he combination of the theoretical critique of humanism and new insights developed by science and media-aesthetic practice shows that deconstruction of the humanist subject coincides with a new posthumanist understanding of human and nonhuman subjectivity, as an integrated form of agency within diverse networks of information environments and nonhuman actors.
It is, then, a critical, techno-scientific discourse which analyses the subject as the result of a process in order to seek the end of that same subjectivity, and the possibilities of its overcoming in the form of the integration of both human and nonhuman actors that result from this.
Yet, perhaps, when answering this question of ‘what comes after the [humanist] subject,’ Herbrechter can be seen as ultimately failing to maintain the distinction between process and discourse, utopia and dystopia. This can be seen most clearly in his analysis of new media. There he states that,
Nobody, in fact, exercises control over the media in second generation media society. Decentralized new media like the internet with its new possibilities for constructing subjectivities is to a large extent outside state intervention and also escapes, to some degree, the large international corporations, at least the more traditional ones.
For all his claims towards avoiding the pitfalls of a technological determinism, it seems at a crucial point he falls into the very same trap. Not only does he show an optimistic faith in new technology as the democratic organ of the (post)human, which evades state and corporate control (perhaps he would like to remind Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden of this), he also moves towards a separation of new technologies from their real base in actual empirical human beings. In doing so, he valorises the ability of new technology to create new forms of subjectivity (examples of this include, ‘Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin’ - so much for being outside the control of corporations). To his credit, Herbrechter does play lip-service to the unintended negative outcomes of new media, yet he can be seen to ultimately fall into a form of (critical) techno-utopia, despite his best intentions. In fact, despite all his protestations to the contrary, the talk of process and its concomitant discourse end up looking increasingly like another form of material, teleological periodisation. That is, after the modern and the postmodern we have a new age of the world, that of the coming posthuman.
Herbrechter claims that this process of development not only creates its own subjects but also engenders ‘new forms of political agency’. However, are these new subjects all that posthumanism expects them to be? Whilst we should be mindful, as Herbrechter states, to avoid a mere pessimism in regards to this and should therefore acknowledge the ability for new media to allow for networking between various geographically and culturally disparate groups, it has also lead to increased surveillance and passivity. In fact, one can even see in such new media a bolstering of the traditional autonomous liberal subject. The subject increasingly gains a semblance of political and social autonomy and individuality through their ‘likes’ and preferences on such social media sites. Every available opportunity is taken now to augment individuality, as each individual is under increasing pressure to become, in every visible aspect, a walking CV – and nowhere more so than on social media. These new virtual supplements of the corporeal subject do not merely dissolve that distinction but in fact may serve to heighten it. As Slavoj Zizek is fond of reminding us, modern capitalism is not based around the dissolution of the individual, but rather the imperative to develop your ‘authentic’ true self, which is actualised through the market.
Herbrechter sees humanism, quite correctly, as an ideological justification for the pseudo-emancipation of the bourgeois individual. He sees the isolated Robinsonades of capitalism as a result of the process of a historical development of individuation which, in doing so, is turning back on itself and creating new posthuman subjectivities. However, this raises an important question, I believe, for the nascent discourse of posthumanism. In what sense can we be seen as moving towards processes of posthumanism when the human – regardless of its ideological aspect - is still the cornerstone of society? If there are still traces of the modern, liberal individual in society, then surely a move which seeks to (however critically) move beyond this is problematic. A seeming awareness of this false move is shown by Herbrechter in his near-constant pronouncements of what a critical post humanism ‘must do’, which, to this futural emphasis, we might add; ‘if it were ever to actually exist.’ Herbechter ultimately ends up in a form of future projection based upon a supposedly real process, as if he were attempting to end the talk of grand narratives with a new fable of development
Herbrechter makes an interesting early move towards this when he states that ‘from a cynical point of view’ posthumanism can be read as the ‘ideological superstructure’ that hides the base of capitalism's ‘globalization, virtualization and further technologization.’ Yet this move is never followed through. Instead, he goes on to claim that if this is the case, then there must be, under that ideological weight, something of a true movement towards the posthuman which must be reclaimed from ideology and pushed in an egalitarian and democratic direction. The critical element, therefore, comes from following an ethics which would allow for the other's exclusion to be made apparent, and not from testing the ideological limits of the discourse of the human. This ethics is done ‘out of care for humans and the survival of the human and other species.’ The move that Herbrechter makes towards an ethical discourse that takes into account the produced and excluded ‘other’ of humanism can then be questioned as well. If the human is human only due to a process that creates it, of what value is an ethical stance? Quoting Gillian Rose, quoting Stevie Smith, what good is an ethics of alterity if the other is ‘not waving but drowning?’
For all of its problems, however, Herbrechter's book is written with a sharp lucidity, and very much fulfils its task of being a critical intervention into the discourse of posthumanism. Chapter 4, on posthumanism and science fiction, develops several interesting readings of Hollywood science fiction films – including Blade Runner, Terminator 2 and Invasion of the Body Snatchers – each of which portray a posthuman future, yet each ultimately return to seemingly innately human attributes in order to re-draw the human/non-human distinction once more. Chapter 5 makes steps towards a re-imagining of the University after humanism, and the end of liberal arts. In this, Herbrechter takes seriously the (very real) need to re-classify the humanities after the seeming triumph of science and the instrumentalisation of education. Yet, there is much more work to be done, and, in this sense, perhaps a critical posthumanism needs to be more critical still.