Critical Remarks About Posthumanism
Critical Remarks About Posthumanism

Author(s): Mark Losoncz
Subject(s): Education, Social Philosophy
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Critical remarks; posthumanism; education Series; posthumanismseries; AI in education; androids at school; anti-humanism; humanism; posthumanist education; quantumnormalcy; transhumanism;
Summary/Abstract: Over the past decades, posthumanism has become a kind of buzzword, which, when used as a label, already gives the impression of progressivism. This article warns against posthumanist discourse in four ways. The first thesis is that posthumanism is problematic by its very name. It defines itself in relation to humanism, whose status - at least in posthumanist analyses - is extremely vague and uncertain, and as a social reality can hardly have the power that is attributed to it. I will then briefly outline how man has been viewed in Western thought and what humanism actually is. I will then suggest that the alliance that is assumed between contemporary theories (neo-realist, speculative realist, neo-materialist, object-oriented and others) and post-humanist theories is far from self-evident. On the contrary, several of these theories appear to be explicitly understood as “humanist”. Finally, I will argue that posthumanism is not aware of its own conditions of production. I will offer a possible interpretation that embeds the emergence of posthumanism in the framework of late capitalism, linking the different levels of ideology and the logic of capital, but I will not consider this explanation as exclusive and all-encompassing. In the concluding part of the article, I will discuss the implications of my argument for the relationship between posthumanism and education.

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