ABSTRACT
To what modes of life and living does the posthuman refer? And what, then, is posthumanism? The most common answer to these questions circulating in academic and societal debates, an answer that is urgent and compelling but also parochial, runs roughly as follows. Current developments in areas such as genetic engineering, virtual reality, and neuro-enhancement suggest that humanity is on the brink of a new era. Digital technologies are pushing human cognitive skills to the limit in terms of flexibility and multitasking, offering wholly new ways for people to communicate, work, entertain themselves, and tweak their identity according to different contexts. They make human beings increasingly dependent on vast systems beyond comprehension or control. As social identity is becoming ever more flexible and multiplied, so too, the notion of a biological individual, a member of a particular species, is being opened up through new technologies. There is a fast-growing catalog of transformed human bodies, people who have undergone plastic surgery (often combined with more conventional techniques, like tattooing) in attempts to look more like cats, leopards, or lizards. Genome scientist Craig Venter and his research team have carried out the world’s first genome transplantation, which they perceive as a way of effectively turning one species into another. Calling DNA “the software of life” (Life 7), Venter predicts that soon, scientists will be able to send genetic information over long distances to recreate an organism from scratch at another location. Thus, the tremendous costs of manned space flight could be avoided, and the prospect of populating other planets may become realistic. The sheer speed at which the stuff of science fiction is becoming reality creates the sensation, both thrilling and uncanny, that the future has already arrived. No longer the same, no longer “fully” human, or no longer human at all—such are the qualifications of the posthuman condition.
