Steps to a Post-humanistic Antispeciesism

Relations, 2016

Humanimalia, 2016

The field of post-anthropocentrism in current animal philosophy and related disciplines is structured by heterogeneous concepts of anthropocentrism on the one hand and different usages of the prefix ‘post’ on the other. This paper expounds different perspectives on anthropocentrism, while additionally focusing on the possibilities of its overcoming: on how anthropocentrism is problematized rather than on what is problematized. Two different positions are used as examples: humanist post-anthropocentrism, as advocated by Gary Steiner, and post-humanism, as advocated by Cary Wolfe in reference to Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. In conclusion, the notion of ‘excess’ is analysed to illustrate the structural differences regarding a crucial term for both positions.

Lo sguardo – rivista di filosofia, 2017

The so-called 'animal turn' of the past couple of decades brought about a new focus on animals and animality that traverses the whole spectrum of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Certainly part of a wider cultural phenomenon – the crisis of humanism in late twentieth century –, it has in turn influenced and transformed posthumanist thought itself, not only enabling it to probe the boundaries of the 'human', but also partially reorienting it towards questions of immanence, embodiment, affects, and providing a more marked ethical and political impulse. On the other hand, the encounter with posthumanism brought to the new discipline of Animal Studies the awareness of the limits of the traditional, still very humanist approaches to animal ethics, and of the necessity of an overcoming of the humanist paradigm, of a new theoretical and methodological approach.

Once marginal, knowledge that many other species share characteristics hitherto thought restricted to humans, including language, tool-use and consciousness, is now commonplace across many scientific fields, from ethology to biosemiotics to neurophysiology. 1 Such new scientific understandings of nonhuman life have been one important inspiration for posthuman theorists aiming to replace ontologies of division with those of connection and relative difference. Animal sexual selection, for example, is much more than an instrumental process. As theorized by Elizabeth Grosz, animal courtship and sex provide not merely the means for reproduction and genetic survival, but are playful, exuberant, creative articulations of the active, forward-moving force of life. 2 Similarly, Brian Massumi outlines how the play of young animals shows their 'capacity to mobilize the possible.' 3 The wolf cub nipping the ear of another wolf cub enacts a ludic gesture, saying 'this is play.' But for the cub to learn how to be an adult wolf, the play bite must also stand in for a real, violent bite. The distinction between violent-bite and play-bite is not simply that one is training for adult wolf-hood and one is childish play. Rather, both ways of biting operate in a zone of indiscernibility without the specific differences of either being erased. The paradox of play is its 'as if-ness.' For Massumi, when animals play, 'they are preparatorily enacting human capacities.' 4 In this vitalist mode, posthumanism places the human in a continuum with other animals, connected through both lines of descent and contemporary ecological relations. Animals become worthy subjects of academic attention in the humanities, while humans become creaturely beings.

Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity, 2009

Medical Enhancements and Posthumanity, 2007

The present article examines a concern I have had for some time about the compatibility of humanistic psychology with the emerging animal rights movement. Beyond working out my position, the paper has the additional educational and, frankly, political purpose of bringing animal rights issues to the attention of humanistic psychologists.

Leonardo Da Vinci has provided the classical definition of Humanism in the form of ‘ideal’ Vitruvian Man and there has been numerous efforts into making it work in a universal context, to make an ideal definition to represent all of the Humanity in one point. This effort has lit a fire of dispute among the scholars and has given birth to different opinionated sub-divisions in context of critique, analysis and further discoveries. Humanism has travelled from Eurocentric, imperialistic concept with massive opposition and critique on individualism, superiority over ‘others’ in a path of Anti-Humanism and finally we are standing with the concept of Post-Humanism where the scholars are trying to find another way to reach the definition in an ‘Affirmative” way. From Rosi Braidotti’s text “Post-Human: Life beyond the Self”, we see that to reach a proper definition of Humanism, it is so far has been proved that none of the classical concepts are enough to build the definition of Humanism. Rather, in different contexts, we have to go back to some dissected ideologies and build our argument over their ashes while the previously contradicted ideologies are rising as Phoenix over and over again. Coming from the Anti-Humanist background, Braidotti is convinced that the classical definition of Humanism is not satisfactory and her years of experience along with her ethical, political and scholarly efforts in Anti-Humanism, she has reached a point where she is more convinced to Post-Humanism from a critical point of view. Posthumanism deal not only with the concept of ‘Self’, but also it takes into account the ‘Other’. Where the ‘Other’ does not belong to the boundary of species. In this point, the identity of species enters the argument. This text will shed light on this point with the help from Donna Haraway’s text “When Species Meet”. The discussion will follow the journey Humanism took to evolve throughout the passage of thoughts, time and history while trying to figure out a way to define identity of the actors involved. A brief discussion on ‘Identity’ will be a part of this paper. Moreover, how our perception of the world and how the elements define our communication with other species are also discussed briefly.