Roberto Marchesini
Roberto Marchesini (born 1959) is an ethologist and philosopher whose research has focused on animal subjectivity and the ontology of animality, promoting a perspective of philosophical ethology. He combines scientific and philosophical perspectives to address a range of questions about evolution, behaviour, mind, subjectivity, culture, and ethics. He is Director of the School of Human-Animal Interaction and the Center for the Study of Posthumanist Philosophy, both based in Bologna, and he directs the journal Animal Studies. He has published many books in Italy on the topics of animal bioethics and posthumanism: Il concetto di soglia (Theoria, 1996), Post Human (Bollati Boringhieri, 2002), Intelligenze plurime (Perdisa, 2008), Il tramonto dell'uomo (Dedalo, 2009), Modelli cognitivi e comportamento animale (Eva, 2011), Etologia filosofica (Mimesi, 2016), Tecnosfera (Castelvecchi, 2017), Essere un corpo (Mucchi, 2020), L'amore per gli animali (Lindau, 2022). His major publications in English include: Over the human. Post-humanism and the Concept of Animal Epiphany (Springer, 2017), Dialogo Ergo Sum (University of Virginia Press, 2018), Beyond Anthropocentrism (Mimesis International, 2018), The Virus Paradigm (Cambridge University Press, 2021), The Creative Animal: How Every Animal Builds its Own Existence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Technophysiology or How Technology Modifies the Self (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023). Posthumanist Manifesto - A Pluralistic Approach (Lexington Books, 2024). With Marco Celentano Critical Ethology and Post-Anthropocentric Ethics (Springer, 2021). In 2018 Jeffrey Bussolini, Brett Buchanan and Mattew Chrulew published The Philosophical Ethology of Roberto Marchesini (Routledge) an essay outlining his proposal for the ontology of animality. He is the best known exponent of zooanthropology and posthumanism in Italy. Having developed unique versions of both, he can offer significant contributions to the existing anglophone literature on the topic. His zooanthropology holds that culture is present among nonhuman animals and that human culture and identity emerge out of animal references and through interactions with them at every level. His view of posthumanism challenges the idea that humans stand apart from the animal kingdom and are essentially distinct from animals. On the contrary, he believes that it crucial for humans to nurture a sense of shared existence with animal otherness, and to pay attention to both our animality and our deep constitutive links with the biosphere.
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Books by Roberto Marchesini
technological equipment. Each tool, while being specifically addressed to certain parts of the somatic ontogeny, always acts systemically, like an ecological niche (Odling-Smee, 1988). Just as a cobweb is a spider's somatic measure, its extended phenotype, so the technosphere dictates the ordering coordinates of our cell populations.
a general overview with a focus on new technologies. The technological development of the
last few centuries calls for a radical revision in our way of considering technology along with
its basic philosophical points of reference. The basic assumption of the essay is that we need
to go beyond the humanistic model which continues to view technology as a sort of garment
or a workshop that enables the human being to: improve its performance, pursue its goals,
provide tools for its verticalization/ascent in the world and emancipate the individual from
needs and fragilities. In order to understand the close relationship between the body and
technology, I will address the topic not only through an examination of the physiological
organization of the body in its relationship with the environment, but also by taking into
consideration the Evo-Devo theories that consider the body as an entity integrated within an
ecological niche. Because of the body’s plasticity and its adaptive capacity in ontogenesis,
technology has always modelled the somatic dimension of the human being. The dynamism of
human morpho-physiology, however, should not be attributed to an incompleteness or a
deficiency, but to its redundancy, something which confers virtuality to it. The book therefore
aims at revealing our need for a new anthropology, no longer based on biological deficiency,
but on the interactivity of the body. Thanks to its biological attributes – such as the
redundancy of the central nervous system or the musculoskeletal conformation – the body coevolved
with the technical device. Some of the cornerstones of the humanistic interpretation
have collapsed, such as the theory of human incompleteness, the ergonomic and disjunctive
dimension of technological support, the compensatory, amplifying and liberating vision of
technomediation, the self-sufficient reading of the ideational and design process, and the
presumption of full human control over the functions and structure of the machine.
The convergence of several technopoietic directives - such as nanotechnologies, biosynthesis
and neural networks - produces an acceleration of situations that surpass the capacity of the
traditional philosophies born in the wake of humanism to provide adequate interpretative
and predictive keys. The book stresses the extent to which we might face problems in
interpreting new technologies, if we continue to address them with inadequate philosophical
models: these models conceive technology as an instrument, that is, as a passive entity under
human control, whose function is external to the body. As this essay shows, we need to talk
about technophysiology, i.e., about a new way of reading our relationship with technology,
which is becoming growingly infiltrative and resembles more and more a partnership. We get
the impression that there is a considerable gap, even if only temporal, between what
technology makes possible and our philosophical ability to understand its consequences and
the existential spaces opened by the new supports. Cultural imaginary still relies on rhetorical
figures that do not allow us to grasp, even in a broad or partial way, the specific impact of a
technical innovation but, above all, what new existential dimensions and related fields of
research open up as well as what applications suddenly become possible. In just about forty
years, for example, the spreading of personal computers has profoundly changed people's
lifestyles and, consequently, the cognitive functions addressed, required or neglected. As a
matter of fact, posture, prattognosis, attention system, the mechanisms of arousal and stress
have changed. Thanks to the progressive miniaturization of these supports and their
versatility, in a short time computer technologies have found their place in electronic games,
mobile phones and music track players, becoming the gadget par excellence. Caught in this
embrace, the body has made room for the computer: like in a successful transplant, this graft
has changed the way of thinking of individuals and their social expectations. The increasingly
immersive digital attendance, so assiduous as to involve the younger generations for over
eight hours a day, has had shocking effects on their psychological condition; today we are
already beginning to notice the consequences, which are not always pleasant, however, but
which reveal how deep these technologies have infiltrated.
Our somatic organization must always welcome and agree with the support, through
processes of reciprocal adjustment that involve both the development of peculiar techniques
of use and the coming about of new developmental pressures on the organism. When a
technical-mediated condition is inaugurated, the standards of performance and feedback on
the various organs are modified. Through the device, the body builds new perceptive and
operational interfaces with external reality, so we witness a transformation of the sensory
correction mechanisms, both of sensitivity and of agency. Undoubtedly, in acquiring the
instrument, the whole organism undergoes a profound change: it is a metamorphosis that
involves neurobiological wiring, the endocrine setting, the immune response, sexuality, the
musculoskeletal chassis, the great organic functions, the biorhythm and cell turnover. This is
the reason that prompts me to posit that technology is always infiltrative, that is to say, it
embodies itself, even when at first glance it might seem to limit itself to clothing the body,
wrapping it like a glove, protecting it from contamination.
New technologies require us to go beyond our traditional view and perception of devices and
define a new philosophy of téchne, which takes into account the ontological metamorphosis
triggered by our relationship with devices. In order to understand this aspect we need, first of
all, to shed light on the somatic changes that occur when the human being gets accustomed to
a new device enters . In this essay I want to examine the effects technology produces on the
body from the point of view of the morphological configuration and organization of functions.
I use the term technophysiology to refer to this impact, which is transforming our way of
"being in the world": our perception of reality, the identity we build of ourselves, the
expectations we have and the meaning we attribute to our life. Being a body means, in fact,
living in coherence with the somatic dimension that characterizes us, but this is not free from
the modifications that technology imparts to the body.
The research presents a dialogue between the humanities and the natural sciences. It challenges the separation and oppression of animals with a post-humanism steeped in the traditions of the Italian Renaissance.
Readers discover a vision of the human as a species informed by an intertwining with animals. The human being is not constructed by an onto-poetic process, but rather by close relations with otherness. The human system is increasingly unstable and, therefore, more hybrid.
The argument it presents interests scholars, thinkers, and researchers. It also appeals to anyone who wants to delve into the deep animal–human bond and its philosophical, cultural, political instances.
The author is a veterinarian, ethologist, and philosopher. He uses cognitive science, zooanthropology, and philosophy to engage in a series of empirical, theoretical, and practice-based engagements with animal life. In the process, he argues that animals are key to human identity and culture at all levels.
Our existence, the existence of our species and its cognitive evolution, is far from being pure and confined within secure margins. From the mitochondria all the way up, the human is constantly mixed with the nonhuman. It reveals itself by way of hybridizations. For this reason, a perfectly consequent atlas of human biology would be a treatise on xenobiology. A compelling example is that of the bacteria colonies that constitute our microbiome. Even though they do not have anything “human” in their genetic code, they are an integral part of our body and our health.
Open to transformations, the human is materially and historically permeable to other natures, other matters, and other cultural agents. To be properly human is therefore, in a certain sense, to go past the boundaries of human “nature.” This is the meaning of posthumanism, as theorists such as Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Roberto Marchesini, Bruno Latour, Andrew Pickering, Rosi Braidotti, or Cary Wolfe conceptualize it. For these authors, posthumanism is a vision of reality according to which the human and the nonhuman are confluent, co-emergent, and defining each other in mutual relations. More precisely, a posthumanist vision rejects the essentialist separation between the human and the nonhuman, and emphasizes their hybridizations and their active interplay.
Relations’ double issue on posthumanism will explore these topics from two points of view: that of literature and ecocriticism (guest-editor Serenella Iovino) and that the ethical-ontological approach of zoo-anthropology (guest-editors Roberto Marchesini and Eleonora Adorni).
Nella speranza di fornire un contributo al dibattito e di instillare qualche dubbio nell'utilizzo di tale pratica, considerata spesso un dogma nella comunità scientifica, vengono qui posti degli interrogativi etici e offerte delle ipotesi alternative, scientificamente fondate, che ne favoriscano il superamento.
Una riflessione dunque sia per superare lo stereotipo dell’animale come essenzialmente diverso ed estraneo a ciò che è umano, sia per smantellare la nostra visione antropocentrica e i suoi numerosi limiti. Un importante contributo italiano a un dibattito internazionale fino ad oggi dominato dai pensatori anglosassoni."
technological equipment. Each tool, while being specifically addressed to certain parts of the somatic ontogeny, always acts systemically, like an ecological niche (Odling-Smee, 1988). Just as a cobweb is a spider's somatic measure, its extended phenotype, so the technosphere dictates the ordering coordinates of our cell populations.
a general overview with a focus on new technologies. The technological development of the
last few centuries calls for a radical revision in our way of considering technology along with
its basic philosophical points of reference. The basic assumption of the essay is that we need
to go beyond the humanistic model which continues to view technology as a sort of garment
or a workshop that enables the human being to: improve its performance, pursue its goals,
provide tools for its verticalization/ascent in the world and emancipate the individual from
needs and fragilities. In order to understand the close relationship between the body and
technology, I will address the topic not only through an examination of the physiological
organization of the body in its relationship with the environment, but also by taking into
consideration the Evo-Devo theories that consider the body as an entity integrated within an
ecological niche. Because of the body’s plasticity and its adaptive capacity in ontogenesis,
technology has always modelled the somatic dimension of the human being. The dynamism of
human morpho-physiology, however, should not be attributed to an incompleteness or a
deficiency, but to its redundancy, something which confers virtuality to it. The book therefore
aims at revealing our need for a new anthropology, no longer based on biological deficiency,
but on the interactivity of the body. Thanks to its biological attributes – such as the
redundancy of the central nervous system or the musculoskeletal conformation – the body coevolved
with the technical device. Some of the cornerstones of the humanistic interpretation
have collapsed, such as the theory of human incompleteness, the ergonomic and disjunctive
dimension of technological support, the compensatory, amplifying and liberating vision of
technomediation, the self-sufficient reading of the ideational and design process, and the
presumption of full human control over the functions and structure of the machine.
The convergence of several technopoietic directives - such as nanotechnologies, biosynthesis
and neural networks - produces an acceleration of situations that surpass the capacity of the
traditional philosophies born in the wake of humanism to provide adequate interpretative
and predictive keys. The book stresses the extent to which we might face problems in
interpreting new technologies, if we continue to address them with inadequate philosophical
models: these models conceive technology as an instrument, that is, as a passive entity under
human control, whose function is external to the body. As this essay shows, we need to talk
about technophysiology, i.e., about a new way of reading our relationship with technology,
which is becoming growingly infiltrative and resembles more and more a partnership. We get
the impression that there is a considerable gap, even if only temporal, between what
technology makes possible and our philosophical ability to understand its consequences and
the existential spaces opened by the new supports. Cultural imaginary still relies on rhetorical
figures that do not allow us to grasp, even in a broad or partial way, the specific impact of a
technical innovation but, above all, what new existential dimensions and related fields of
research open up as well as what applications suddenly become possible. In just about forty
years, for example, the spreading of personal computers has profoundly changed people's
lifestyles and, consequently, the cognitive functions addressed, required or neglected. As a
matter of fact, posture, prattognosis, attention system, the mechanisms of arousal and stress
have changed. Thanks to the progressive miniaturization of these supports and their
versatility, in a short time computer technologies have found their place in electronic games,
mobile phones and music track players, becoming the gadget par excellence. Caught in this
embrace, the body has made room for the computer: like in a successful transplant, this graft
has changed the way of thinking of individuals and their social expectations. The increasingly
immersive digital attendance, so assiduous as to involve the younger generations for over
eight hours a day, has had shocking effects on their psychological condition; today we are
already beginning to notice the consequences, which are not always pleasant, however, but
which reveal how deep these technologies have infiltrated.
Our somatic organization must always welcome and agree with the support, through
processes of reciprocal adjustment that involve both the development of peculiar techniques
of use and the coming about of new developmental pressures on the organism. When a
technical-mediated condition is inaugurated, the standards of performance and feedback on
the various organs are modified. Through the device, the body builds new perceptive and
operational interfaces with external reality, so we witness a transformation of the sensory
correction mechanisms, both of sensitivity and of agency. Undoubtedly, in acquiring the
instrument, the whole organism undergoes a profound change: it is a metamorphosis that
involves neurobiological wiring, the endocrine setting, the immune response, sexuality, the
musculoskeletal chassis, the great organic functions, the biorhythm and cell turnover. This is
the reason that prompts me to posit that technology is always infiltrative, that is to say, it
embodies itself, even when at first glance it might seem to limit itself to clothing the body,
wrapping it like a glove, protecting it from contamination.
New technologies require us to go beyond our traditional view and perception of devices and
define a new philosophy of téchne, which takes into account the ontological metamorphosis
triggered by our relationship with devices. In order to understand this aspect we need, first of
all, to shed light on the somatic changes that occur when the human being gets accustomed to
a new device enters . In this essay I want to examine the effects technology produces on the
body from the point of view of the morphological configuration and organization of functions.
I use the term technophysiology to refer to this impact, which is transforming our way of
"being in the world": our perception of reality, the identity we build of ourselves, the
expectations we have and the meaning we attribute to our life. Being a body means, in fact,
living in coherence with the somatic dimension that characterizes us, but this is not free from
the modifications that technology imparts to the body.
The research presents a dialogue between the humanities and the natural sciences. It challenges the separation and oppression of animals with a post-humanism steeped in the traditions of the Italian Renaissance.
Readers discover a vision of the human as a species informed by an intertwining with animals. The human being is not constructed by an onto-poetic process, but rather by close relations with otherness. The human system is increasingly unstable and, therefore, more hybrid.
The argument it presents interests scholars, thinkers, and researchers. It also appeals to anyone who wants to delve into the deep animal–human bond and its philosophical, cultural, political instances.
The author is a veterinarian, ethologist, and philosopher. He uses cognitive science, zooanthropology, and philosophy to engage in a series of empirical, theoretical, and practice-based engagements with animal life. In the process, he argues that animals are key to human identity and culture at all levels.
Our existence, the existence of our species and its cognitive evolution, is far from being pure and confined within secure margins. From the mitochondria all the way up, the human is constantly mixed with the nonhuman. It reveals itself by way of hybridizations. For this reason, a perfectly consequent atlas of human biology would be a treatise on xenobiology. A compelling example is that of the bacteria colonies that constitute our microbiome. Even though they do not have anything “human” in their genetic code, they are an integral part of our body and our health.
Open to transformations, the human is materially and historically permeable to other natures, other matters, and other cultural agents. To be properly human is therefore, in a certain sense, to go past the boundaries of human “nature.” This is the meaning of posthumanism, as theorists such as Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Roberto Marchesini, Bruno Latour, Andrew Pickering, Rosi Braidotti, or Cary Wolfe conceptualize it. For these authors, posthumanism is a vision of reality according to which the human and the nonhuman are confluent, co-emergent, and defining each other in mutual relations. More precisely, a posthumanist vision rejects the essentialist separation between the human and the nonhuman, and emphasizes their hybridizations and their active interplay.
Relations’ double issue on posthumanism will explore these topics from two points of view: that of literature and ecocriticism (guest-editor Serenella Iovino) and that the ethical-ontological approach of zoo-anthropology (guest-editors Roberto Marchesini and Eleonora Adorni).
Nella speranza di fornire un contributo al dibattito e di instillare qualche dubbio nell'utilizzo di tale pratica, considerata spesso un dogma nella comunità scientifica, vengono qui posti degli interrogativi etici e offerte delle ipotesi alternative, scientificamente fondate, che ne favoriscano il superamento.
Una riflessione dunque sia per superare lo stereotipo dell’animale come essenzialmente diverso ed estraneo a ciò che è umano, sia per smantellare la nostra visione antropocentrica e i suoi numerosi limiti. Un importante contributo italiano a un dibattito internazionale fino ad oggi dominato dai pensatori anglosassoni."
These are two totally different perspectives, because while in the iper-humanism the techno-science is used as the driving force of the Baconian domain, on the contrary, the post-humanistic proposal emphasizes the need to consider the non-human as a dialogic partner, as to say irreducible to any instrumental transformation aimed at any purpose, not even the chimerical idea of annihilation of the ontic perimeters between species. The non-human is a dialogic entity if and only if it is considered not as 'animal-by' but 'animal-with', that is free to express its authenticity in terms of subjectivity, diversity, uniqueness, and to translate from a zoo-technic mentality of performative use to a zoo-anthropological mentality of referential relationship. While the post-human laboratory celebrates the power of human being, the post-humanistic perspective emphasizes the conjugation with the non-human, hence the growing need for alterity – as the explanatory cornerstone of human being, as the proximal area of ontogenetic growth, as the perception of functional optimality, as vulnerability to adaptation, as enlargement of the sphere of moral responsibility – implied in the anthropo-decentralization, that is setting aside the anthropocentrism.
Therefore we have to read the construction of human dimension as a decentralization process from our phylogenetic legacy (Homo sapiens) where the non-human entity – machinic or animal – has not an instrumental role but an emergency one, that is to say, it is capable to bring out new predicates beyond the human being. In this sense, the encounter with the heterospecific is an epiphany because it inspires new existential dimensions and to become animal is not a regression anymore but an ancient art aiming to broaden our ontological and epistemological landscape.
Likewise, techné should not be intended as exonerative (to compensate an obligation) or able to give us power (to increase a predicate), but otherwise we have to consider it as: a) dialogic-referential function, capable to conjugate human and non-human dimensions, b) ontopoietic function, working in a catalytic way that generates new predicates. Within the “to become animal” and “to become machine” processes, on one hand the human being shifts outside the anthropocentric perspective and, on the other hand, fully achieves his talent through a movement, only apparently, contradictory.
To “anthropo-decentralize” means to widen our own immersion into reality, not to compensate a lack but to create new lacks, that are new co-evolutive functions embedding predicates achievable only with the partnership with alterity. The principal aim of this paper is to illustrate how this emergency processes occur as an effect of these hybridization events, comparing the ancient and traditional arts of becoming animal with the current cyborg poetics.
The main goal is to propose new interpretation patterns of being human that could help us to read the current technological singularity with more relevance. In a period of strong technopoietic acceleration and human hybridization, it is necessary to develop a new culture of techné able to avoid the anthropocentric paradox. Therefore we need to overcome that disjunctive and emancipative vision of knowledge, intended as elevation and supremacy over the world, descending from the humanistic tradition.
Knowledge, in fact, makes us more connected, needy and more responsible towards the world itself. At the same time, it is necessary to free the interpretation of techno-science from the catastrophic projections and the soteriological ones as well. In conclusion, the post-humanistic philosophy should not be understood as an exaltation of humans but as an acknowledgment of the influence of non-humans into the anthropopoietic processes. This awareness demands us more attention to alterity and a more subtle ability to accept our vulnerability and our need of the non-human as the most precious talent we have.
inside traditional perimeters and a tendency to avoid the grip of the present, on the wave of change.
This perspective has elicited multiple points of view, all of which implicitly share the idea that a particular cultural paradigm – the humanist one – has definitely come to an end.
Moreover, a comparison can only be valid when made between ontologically defined and opposed entities. From both a descriptive and an epistemological perspective, the comparison between human and non-human animals proves untenable, as we'll explore in the following essay. This
means that any assertion regarding animality as opposed to humanity is inherently flawed, lacking both formal validity and descriptive feasibility, and inevitably leading to tautology. The construction of an animal category in opposition to humanity thus emerges as a contrivance aimed at reinforcing
an existing prejudice. This, in turn, prompts reflection on the pertinence of using the term "animality" in the first place.
We can explain this protagonism in two ways: i) by arguing that it is merely an appearance, because an animal can only fulfil a pre-learned program, a set and pre-established behavioral pattern which, like a domino, leads to achieve a particular result; ii) by assuming that protagonism shows precise assessment and decision-making skills, it develops its own goals in a more or less conscious way. In the first case, protagonism turns out to be an interpretive illusion, the result of anthropomorphism; in the second case, it is considered the expression of an individual’s processing capacity. In this essay I introduce a third possibility, which I name the desiring condition of animality. The desiring condition is an affective – non-processing – state. It puts the subject in touch with the world and works as a motive, activating the subject’s cognitive and operational capacities.
In line with the transitions of 20th-century phenomenology, theriomorphism operates a shift from the exhibition of the uncontaminated body to transspecific hybridization and shows that it is impossible to understand the human by separating it from all external contaminations.
In light of this framework, the issues which contributors will reflect on will be the following: 1) The ways in which symbolic and theoretical boundaries and thresholds are constructed in Greco-roman and medieval texts and cultures; 2) The theories of nutrition in the framework of the ancient animal (and human) 'psychology' (e. g., in Aristotle, in ancient medicine, in the Presocratics, in Roman and medieval encyclopedists); 3) The cultural polarity between vegetarianism and sarcophagy in ancient and medieval cultures; 4) The ancient and medieval ethologies of nutrition.
The gills of a fish return to the oxygen dissolved in the water. Heteronomy makes the living non-autonomous, but not only in the thermodynamic sense, but also in its appearance. The world is not external to the entity that perceives it, but is already inscribed in the entity and is called to decline its expressions: this shows us the relational character of predicates and the
subject-world coherence-correlation. Furthermore, it speaks to us of an eco-logical inherence that deserves to be investigated with phenomenological metrics, in an even more adherent way than the classical mechanism of res extensa and the computability of phenomena.