What is humanism?
If we want to talk about posthumanist thought, we have to start from humanism.
Explain Immanuel Kant.
the other copernican turn which places preconditions of human experience in the middle of the universe
In Kant preconditions of human experience serve as the only lense towards the world of different phenomena
knowledge in Kant is always situated in human condition
modern is about situated knowledges, here the situatedness stems from the primal mediator, ie. the human -> but it was a radical and brave philosophy which rejected deity as a centre for phenomenological world, also reassuring for the European bourgeoisie who suddenly was enthroned as the new global elite
(Haraway is a humanist... :)
In Kantian ethics only humans are “the ends in themselves”. Categorical imperative: “Act as to treat humanity, both in your own person, and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means.” Only humans can create values and morals and reflect on them.
Animal as a category of things is rejected from this because they are thought of being un-selfconscious.
Kantian humanism is exposed by it’s attitude towards non-human animals:
“Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. The end is man.”
But in several occasions Kant apparently refers to animals as a sort of a phenomenological machine, unselfconscious but getting along, managing… Animal is a sort of human but unselfconscious. We can see a hierarchy. Human is not only the center of the antropocentric universe, but it also needs some sort of human-animal divide as a support.
A counter narrative would be that humans have humanized themselves by rejecting their own animality. Becoming selfconscious is a rejection of humans own animality because it makes a division between animals and humans. But according to zoological studies a divide between humans and animals doesn’t exist. There is no hierarchy.
So a posthumanist would simply say: "Though luck being a humanist.”
Animal and human exist as concepts, as words. Naming someone an animal works exactly because animal is not a species concept. Animal is someone that can be killed, and violence performed on actual non-human animals somehow also produces “humanity” as a thing.
This is performance. Human-animal divide is a performance embedded in language. (So I’m not saying there is no difference between different species of animals, just animals and humans…)
Check Soppelsa on performance: which one was first, the Cartesian animal machine or an actual animal as machine? Anti-marxian...
Humanism was the main ideology of the modern, colonial world.
Why we need posthumanism?
News about an algae that causes amnesia. “An attack” towards one of the most intimate human capabilities -> the memory
Amnesia is also about the so called human-animal-relationship in our culture.
Incarceration of different animals
extinctions
complicated, because pets have become true companions
The sense of subjectivity has become evermore fragile -> this is especially visible through the concept of the anthropocene, a widely discussed notion that we are living “the age of man” also in a geologic sense -> new fragility
How to found (make a foundation for) our thought on something that is not all human?
Posthumanism is also a necessity for contemporary times and is based on empirical experience. We are living in a world that comes after the one that was based solely on human experience ie. the humanistic world:
climate change
the sixth global mass extinction
cybernetics and genetics
COVID-19 (is breathing political?)
Human and animal divide is a social construct rather than biological category according to posthumanists. But we can see it everywhere. And one of the most visible traits of current ecological and social trouble is the human-animal divide.
What is speciesism?
“Speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.” Peter Singer, Animal Liberation 1975. A Kantian idea! A speciesist instrumentalises other species and only acts in self interest. This is the beginning of the modern animal rights movement,
Posthumanism aims at blurring the divide between human and an animal, and instead focuses on the mechanics of animalization of other “non-human” species and actors.
According to artist Terike Haapoja who referates philosopher Cary Wolfe, “the conceptual opposition of human/animal already produces the structures in which any encounter with other species occurs: already beforehand, animalization governs how we approach other species.”
In these stables, please consider how the horses are “animalized”. To be a posthumanist, is to be critical towards the animalisation of an animal.
A horse is a rumour about the horse, it comes in advance through cultural norms, through biological knowledge, through casual gossiping.
also yesterday: gossiping
Can a horse be a racist, as we were told? This is a delicate matter, because it wasn't meant to be very serious a statement. But it gives us a lense of the process of animalisation of animals.
History of breeding is strongly connected to the history of modern racism and theories of human races. Breeding predates modern racism and has heavily influenced it. So maybe the horses as we know them are racists, at least while being part of the same material history of racism, eugenics and so on.
Haapoja continues: “No analysis of the encounter with other species can be made without taking into account how the mechanics of animalization also enable the oppression of human groups and individuals.”
And Cary Wolfe puts it even harsher: “As long as the humanist and speciesist structure of subjectification remains intact, and as long as it is institutionally taken for granted that it is all right to systematically exploit and kill non-human animals simply because of their species, then the humanist discourse of species will always be available for use by some humans against other humans as well, to countenance violence against the social other of whatever species - or gender, or race, or class, or sexual difference.”
So, the animalization of non-human animals is a parallel process with the animalization of humans. -> you can’t enhance animal right unless you realize that racism also stems from the same process of animalization. The problem is the divide itself. This might be a simplification… The history of racism is different from the history of speciesism, but as Wolfe and Haapoja argue the processes are parallel.
This goes back to the question of humanism: the criticism of humanism has to also take in to account the material and historical conditions of the emergence of philosophical anthropocentrism and transcendental humanism. French revolution, human and non-human labour, emergence of capitalism, industrialization and all the processes of instrumentalization related to it...
But the main point of Haapoja and Wolfe is that animal/human divide has to be dismantled instead of widening the field of ethics towards non-human species.
So post-humanism tries to dismantle the human/animal divide and treat is a performance embedded in language.
What is “poor” posthumanism?
Now, I have to admit my own lack of courage. I’m not Kant or Haraway. Grandiose statements leave me at lost.
Instead of a great dismantling of human-animal divide, I would start from something smaller. Maybe this place.
Mätäoja, which 2000 years ago was a downstream of the river Vantaa. Now a waste indicator and part of the green infrastructure of the city.
A stone age cult place nearby.
Malminkartano manor founded in the 16th century (before Immanuel Kant’s transcendental humanism). Agricultural and military cultural history in the area.
We are already engaged in long histories of human-non-human relationships in Malminkartano area. This is our field trip to posthumanism.
Haraway suggests three points of departure or modes for posthumanistic analysis:
molecular-evolutionary
historical
face-to-face (temporal companionship)
These are all here!
Furthermore I would try to develop a somewhat more humble approach to posthumanistic animal studies: a “poor” posthumanism. Work in progress.
Face-to-face contact
common exploration of environment
practical and work related tasks as a medium.
Away from symbolism and towards common struggle.
Institutional criticism shared by different species.
I would like to come back to something was said yesterday:
Roaming the pasture is a process of leaving something behind
Leaving behind, going behind someone, walking after someone, following, learning, unlearning
The territorial feeling
de- and reterritorialization
horse riding as a type of landscape painting
territorial feeling in riding a horse: impossible to know what the other thinks, but still certainty that the other one is trying to figure out your thoughts. This is not communication in any real or semiotic sense, but an act of exchanging territorial feeling.
More like leaving behind the flow information and jumping on the territorial exhange
In this exhange, I hope, there is no space for a prejudiced human-non-human-animal division - also that is going to be left behind.
Sorry if I have overinterpreted something you have said. This exchange is something worthwhile.
Cultural political innovation. Instead of policing the borders we should engage in an exchange of territorial feeling.
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