The Refrain and the Territory of the Posthuman

Slovenské divadlo / Slovak Theatre , 2020

Anthropocentrism is one of the key concepts associated with a broken relationship between humans, or human society, and the natural world. An excessive focus on the human is among the debated shortcomings that exacerbates environmental crises. In environmental humanities, it is especially addressed by environmental ethics. Anthropocentrism as a problem also steps into the expert debate on environmental or ecologically oriented theatre and performing arts. These media are historically understood as media focused on the human, human society, human relationships, events, and history. In the presented study, some of the starting points of posthumanist philosophy that could enrich contemporary theories of theatre and performance art are considered, to help broaden their scope of attention to a group of specific works. These are various works of art confronting anthropocentrism, or using approaches that mediate non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocentric knowledge. From a theatrological point of view, they are identified in the framework of works which Hans-Thies Lehmann calls post-dramatic theatre, however, from the perspective of philosophy, they are in a certain relation with the essential ideas of posthumanism as defined by Francesca Ferrando and Rosi Braidotti, to give an example. The study's ambition is to provide fertile ground for a continued and more thorough perspective of a group of works that fall under performing arts (drama, theatre play, performance art), which primarily deal with the relationship between the human and non-human nature and offer unconventional ways of representing non-human nature or reflections on the relationship between non-human nature and the human.

This paper suggests a convenience of artistic approach to scientific research, while attempting to embody a theoretical concept of posthuman within the performance art practice. First part of the text discusses the onset and development of posthumanism as a philosophical and cultural movement focused on gradual man – machine convergence, the following part then presents its reflection within the work of selected performance artists. Posthumanism is conceived as a movement on the border between serious scientific discourse and fiction: Based on the mathematical theory of communication as well as the legacy of cyberpunk dystopia, it offers a vision of transition from human to the so-called posthuman. The posthuman is seen as an offspring of technoculture, a synthesis of living and artificial, and a loosely evolving entity without fixed ontological boundaries. Processual existence of posthuman is located beyond any dualistic categorizations and refuses essentialist approach. It is an attractive subject of science-fiction stories and a sexy postmodern slogan, as well as a symbol of transgression of predestinating categories such as race, gender or social status. However, posthuman is primarily a metaphor adopted by variety of narratives focused on potential aspects of technologically extended life: From serious scientific investigations, through science-fiction, up to its appropriations by the art world. The inherently open and independent language of art seems to represent a suitable interpretational tool for articulating the posthuman discourse, while transferring the theoretical concept of posthuman into a vivid and tangible form.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 2022

Of words and terms, I often think, they are what they door what can be done with them. I want to ask, in this brief afterword, not what posthumanism is but what it does, which is also a way of asking, what it does now and what might it do for those who still invoke it. So the point becomes to say, with Robert Sawyer, Monika Sosnowska, and the contributors "we have always been posthuman," but also then to ask "what can and should we do with that now?" Although most references to origins are dubious (and the unsavory powers associated with them), I start with two early invocations of both postmodernism and the posthuman, fully aware, in the context of this special issue, that it would be no surprise to succumb to the temptation to add "early" before any use of the term modern, modernism, or modernity, or to substitute "early modern" for any of the references to either modernism or postmodernism. This was of course very much on my mind in the years of collaboration with Scott Maisano on the volume Renaissance Posthumanism, which we thought of not as a variety of posthumanism but as an attempt to understand how the stage for later (including recent) disenchantment with and the de-centering of the human was more than capaciously set by the thinkers and the writers at heart of anything one might call Renaissance humanism. 1 In the heady days of 1976, as postmodernism was taking root both as a way of describing the world and as a staple of academic discourse, Ihab Hassan seems to have coined the term "posthumanist" in "Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture," which was first the keynote address at the International Symposium on Postmodern Performance and then later a published text appearing in the Georgia Review. 2 "Prometheus as Performer"

review of Life the Posthuman Condition, 2025

Posthumanism has had a significant impact on art and art research in Nordic and Baltic countries, including all kinds of performances and theatre, dance, and performance studies. The field of posthumanist research encompasses a wide range of theoretical and philosophical approaches, whilst the different fields related to posthumanist thinking, such as cognitive science and animal ethics, are developing rapidly. For instance: we are constantly gaining new insights into non-human beings and their abilities; artificial intelligence has quickly become integrated into the everyday lives of ordinary people; and the debate on human rights, intersectional feminism, and postcolonial theory, which are also part of the posthumanist discourse, shape academic as well as social discussions. The new information and theoretical pondering related to posthumanism have presented challenges to performing arts and research, but they have also offered inspiring new insights and opportunities. Life in the Posthuman Condition. Critical Responses to the Anthropocene, co-edited by S. E. Wilmer and Audronė Žukauskaitė, is a theory-oriented work that discusses and evaluates posthumanism from various perspectives. Some of the articles in the book analyze art works,

Excursions, 2010

The Bloomsbury Posthumanist Handbook edited by Jacob Wamburg and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 2020

This paper consider Critical Posthumanism, in the guise of thinkers such as Haraway and Braidotti, and introduces Speculative Posthumanism, while raising epistemological questions about both forms of posthumanism. Particularly important will be the issue of how to justify critical posthumanist claims about the embodied, ethically connected posthuman subject in the teeth of Epistemological Filters employed in Speculative Posthumanism. The Filter Arguments imply a radical form of abstraction which - following Badiou's terminology - we might relate to the idea of a 'subtractive' withdrawal from any concrete idea of a subject, embodied or otherwise: the figure of the 'biomorph', that I exemplify first in the bleak environs of J G Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. Although this creates problems for the critical posthumanists' embodied, affective subject it also raises formidable issues for the kinds of minimal agency that I explore in Posthuman Life. The result is a biomorphic posthumanism that can only think the void of the future by effectuating it. This immanent posthuman performance (disconnection thinking disconnection) is compared to the way Francois Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy attempts to think in or from the Real rather than about it. A consideration of the role of the non-philosophical performative, I argue, limns a ‘broken’ thought that can disconnect without pre-conception. The final part of the essay explores biomorphisms in the art and texts of Hans Bellmer, Ballard and Gary J Shipley.

Saudi J Humanities Soc Sci, 2024

Over the years, there has been a turn in the academy that is adopted as the postmodern era which encompasses the posthumanist, and a shift within it to new materialist, and affect theories. Human-dominant influence over natural elements such as flora and fauna, non-human animals, material, and immaterial objects is subjected to a radical shift. The innovative understanding of science and technology plays a crucial role in this current wave. Posthumanist thought comes in contact with a human-centered society, however, proposing a decentralized approach to the way humans perceive themselves in the environment. The politics at play here is not anti-humanist but a revisiting and acknowledgment of the environmental entities that make up the human space. Therefore, this paper takes an expository inquiry, querying if the knowledge of Darwin's evolutionary theory can be applied to the understanding of artistic performance through a posthumanist approach. Also, does posthumanism and the evolution of contemporary performance have what it takes to affect and effect the desired modification, granting agency not only to the human animals but to other non-human entities? Hence, humans must learn to coexist in the ecological space sharing power amongst things, plants, non-human animals, objects, and other forms of technological creations. Methodologically, the online library sources provide primary data for this research with a selection of works by three posthumanist performers to be analyzed. This research is pivotal to the artistic application of biology and technology, as tools in solving contemporary performance-related issues amongst humans, the organic and inorganic matter.

Subjectivity, 2012

Posthumanism is now well installed within the humanities and the social sciences as a critical discourse (see Wolfe, 2010) influenced by the wider technological condition (see Scharff and Dusek, 2003), the technological unconscious and non-conscious (see Thrift, 2004; Hayles, 2006) and by the academy growing increasingly inured to 'switching codes' of thought (see Bartscherer and Coover, 2011). It seems that the overriding task for posthumanism, as a critical discourse, is reflection on how the effects on and of contemporary technoculture and biotechnology force through a rethinking of the integrities and identities of the human: not forgetting, either, those of its non-human others, many of them of humanity's own making and remaking-gods, monsters, animals, machines, systems (see, for instance,

Technology, Art and the Posthuman: The End or a New Beginning for Humanism?, 2023

The aim of this talk is to contextualize the overcoming of dualisms within the contemporary art discourse through the critical posthuman perspective, solely focusing on the approaches to the non-human within artistic interventions, to create a typology of interacting with the non-humans in this specific art segment. approach the “human” as the critical posthuman subject (Braidotti 2013). Bioart theory is of importance, therefore I intend to build upon this theoretical framework and expand it by applying the perspective of critical posthumanism. This talk introduces preliminary findings of research outlined, based on analysis of collective exhibition Biomedia (2021), and draft of typology is be introduced. Conference: Technology, Art and the Posthuman: The End or a New Beginning for Humanism?