Chapter One

Post-Humanism: Life beyond the Self

Braidotti opens with a sketch of the history of the concept of “Man”. From Protagoras’

assertion that it is “the measure of all things”, to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the privileging of

the human (and, specifically, the human male) instills a set of “mental, discursive and

spiritual values” (13) which come to form the basis for political policies of eighteenth- and

nineteenth-century Europe. Man (and, crucially, this explicitly refers to White Men) is

understood as an “intrinsically moral” being, functioning as a kind of vessel for perfect

rationality and reason. Armed with these tools, Man is capable of a limitless expansion

toward his own perfection, and entitled to claim, as his own, whatever objects or others he

encounters along the way.

This humanist ideology was adapted by Europe, in the twentieth-century, into a

cultural model that allowed Europeans to view themselves as an unequalled force on the

planet, therefore entitled to use its resources as they saw fit. As Braidotti opines: “[t]his

makes Eurocentrism into more than just a contingent matter of attitude: it is a structural

element of our cultural practice, which is also embedded in both theory and institutional and

pedagogical practices” (15). Humanism became the ideological backdrop to Europe’s

imperialist foreign policy, in that it help develop the dynamic between “self” and “other”.

Europe views itself as the site of genesis for rationality, therefore elevating itself above the

non-European nations: Otherness, therefore, becomes synonymous with subordination. Entire

populations are reduced to non-human bodies upon whom the will of Europe can be

projected. For this reason, Braidotti points out that “Humanism’s restricted notion of what

counts as the human is one of the keys to understand how we got to a post-human turn at all”

(16).

Braidotti goes on to outline the decline of humanism in the 1960s and ’70s, starting

with the rise ideologies like fascism and communism. Both of these ideologies represent a

significant break from European Humanism: fascism promoted a “ruthless” departure from

the Enlightenment-era reverence for human reason, while communism advocated a

“communitarian notion of humanist solidarity” (17). Braidotti points out that one of the main

reasons for communism’s popularity in post-war Europe was the role it played in defeating

the intellectually- and culturally-destructive forces of fascism, suggesting that “for all ends

and purposes [communism] came out of the Second World War as the winner” (18), as

Communist parties became emblematic of the defeat of fascism across Europe. Even in the

U.S., Anti-humanism began to take hold of intellectual circles in response to the Vietnam

War. Braidotti quotes Edward Said, who opines that America’s revulsion at the war was in

part “the emergence of a resistance movement to racism, imperialism generally and the dry-

as-dust academic humanities that had for years represented an apolitical, unworldly and

oblivious…attitude to the present” (18-19). The anti-humanist Left that emerged in the U.S.

in the ’60s and ’70s represented an opposition “not only to the Liberal majority, but also to

the Marxist Humanism of the traditional left”(19).

Up until the ’60s, the universality of human reason in philosophical discourse went

largely unchallenged. Even Sartre and Beauvoir, who connected the “triumph of reason with

the might of dominant powers” (20), advocated a universalist view of human rationality and

attempted to resolve these contradictions through a dialectical model. It wasn’t until the

publication of Foucault’s The Order of Things that intellectuals began to seriously consider

what exactly was meant by “the human”. In this way, radical intellectuals post-1968 rejected

both classical and socialist Humanism, and the Vitruvian ideal was “literally pulled down

from his pedestal and deconstructed” (23). What was learned from the deprivileging of the

human was, crucially, that “[i]ndividualism is not an intrinsic part of ‘human nature’…but

rather a historically and culturally discursive formation” (24). That is to say, the

individualistic greed that characterized much of Post-Enlightenment Europe’s foreign and

domestic policy was demystified to reveal that it was not the manifestation of Man’s Destiny,

but rather a sort of psychosomatic cultural malady.

Having sketched the genealogy of the anti-humanism that informs her view of the

posthuman, Braidotti goes on to examine the tricky nature of actually enacting anti-humanist

ideals, writing: “it is one thing to loudly announce an anti-humanist stance, quite another to

act accordingly, with a modicum of consistency” (29). She points out that while humanism is

in many ways problematic, its individualist nature also makes it a valuable pragmatic

mechanism for progressive social change (i.e., individualism is what drives oppressed groups

to realize that they are oppressed). Braidotti admits that this is somewhat of a bind: “For me it

is impossible, both intellectually and ethically, to disengage the positive elements of

Humanism from their problematic counterparts” (30). There is a similar bind inherent in the

very act of declaring the end of humanism, in that such an act ironically seems to help itself

to a humanist conception of agency. In this way, Braidotti demonstrates what she

characterizes as “The Posthuman Challenge”, suggesting that rather than further enforcing the

binaric differences between humanism and anti-humanism, “Posthumanism is the historical

moment that…traces a different discursive framework, looking more affirmatively towards

new alternatives” (37). That is, Posthumanism can still base itself on the assumption of

decline of traditional humanism while productively avoiding the rhetorical paradoxes

embedded in the crisis of Man, instead focusing on new ways of understanding the human

subject.

With this in mind, Braidotti goes on to outline what she sees as the three “major

strands” of posthumanist thought: The first is (1) reactionary posthumanism, which

essentially denies the decline of humanism entirely, arguing rather that humanist ideals

provide the only workable model for adaptation to the globalized economy. What is so

problematic about reactionary posthumanism, argues Braidotti, is that it depends on a

universalist understanding of the individual, ignoring the insights of the anti-humanist

movement, and therefore is constricted to traditional Humanistic norms. As Braidotti

observes: “There is no room for experimenting with new models of the self” (39).

The second strand she identifies is (2) analytic posthumanism, which comes from

science and technology studies. This approach provides productive insights into “crucial

ethical and conceptual questions about the status of the human” (39), but is reluctant to

approach the development of a theory of subjectivity (Braidotti points to the influence of

Latour’s anti-subjectivity position as a possible source for this reluctance). Analytic

posthumanism is proving to provide a lot of practical insight into advances in technology and

science while ignoring the question of subjectivity, which creates what Braidotti describes as

a “highly problematic division of labour on the question of subjectivity” (42), as thinkers

such as Hardt and Negri avoid discussing technology and science with the same level of

sophistication with which they discuss subjectivity. Braidotti suggests that this segregation of

thought should be examined such that we can work toward a “reintegrated posthuman theory

that includes both scientific and technological complexity and its implications for political

subjectivity, political economy and forms of governance” (42).

With this in mind, she turns to the third strand of posthuman thought, namely (3)

critical posthumanism. Braidotti identifies herself as a part of this third strand, and states that

the goal of critical posthumanism is to “move beyond analytic posthumanism and develop

affirmative perspectives on the posthuman subject” (45). Critical posthumanism, she argues,

is rooted in critical schools like the poststructuralists, anti-universalist feminists, and post-

colonialist, in that each of these groups is concerned with an understanding of the individual

subject, as well as each subject’s place within the structure of humanity as a whole. She

points to post-colonial theorist Edward Said, who argues that “[i]t is possible to be critical of

Humanism in the name of Humanism and that, schooled in its abuses by the experience of

Eurocentrism and empire, one could fashion a different kind of Humanism” (47). This is an

idea that seems central to Braidotti’s project. She is a self-proclaimed student of anti-

humanism who seems to believe, deep down, that humanism is not fundamentally flawed but

sort of warped or infected by Eurocentrism1. She points to contemporary environmentalism as

another valuable source of a reconfiguration of the posthuman subject, as it resituates

humanity within nature, and values generic life force over the self-centred human subject

(Braidotti will echo this sentiment in her advocation of zoe-centric ethics in the next chapter).

The primary goal of critical posthumanism, then, can be understood as an effort to reject

individualism and turn not to nihilism or defeatism, but rather, forge a wholly new

understanding of a non-unitary subject, who is inherently embedded within a planetary (or,

even universal) whole.

Chapter Two

Post-Anthropocentrism: Life beyond the Species

Braidotti opens the second chapter with a quote from George Eliot:

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the

grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other

side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk around well wadded with stupidity. (55)

1 It’s probably worthwhile to note that Bradotti’s favorite philosopher is Spinoza, who was a big-time believer in the ability of the human subject to transcend the affective prison of individualism and become virtuous and publicly-spirited through education.

This passage, taken from Eliot’s Middlemarch, identifies a theme that informs much of

Braidotti’s argument against anthropocentrism. Following Spinoza, she argues that the

anthropocentric leanings of modern humanism that allow the development of urbanism and

civilization function to keep humanity in isolation from the rest of the “raw cosmic energy”

(55) of an absolute reality. Braidotti advocates a vital materialism, that identifies the whole of

the universe as one infinite and indivisible substance. Life is a property not of individual

entities, but rather a property of the substance as a whole2. This monistic understanding of the

universe, argues Braidotti, is the foundation of a critical posthumanism that avoids traditional

anthropocentric humanism, and allows for the development of a new understanding of the

individual. She writes: “there is a direct connection between monism, the general unity of all

matter and post-anthropocentrism as a general frame for reference for contemporary

subjectivity” (57). The project of this chapter, then, is to provide an outline for what the post-

anthropocentric subject would actually look like.

Braidotti then outlines the problematic nature of the increasingly globalized economy

in relation to the individual posthuman subject. She admits that she will “always side firmly

with the liberatory and even transgressive potential of these technologies, against those who

attempt to index them to either a predictable conservative profile, or to a profit-oriented

system that fosters and inflates individualism” (58). Her awareness of her biases is praise-

worthy, but her technophilic enthusiasm does not seem to inhibit her from exploring the

degree to which technological progress, in our advanced capitalist climate, is almost always

tethered to profitability for corporate interest (the “planned obsolescence” model that has

brought us iPhones 1 through 6 over the course of 7 years is a good example of this). The

individual drives this innovation through a desire for novelty, such that it is within the

interests of corporations to ensure (via television or other corporately-controlled media) that

2 This is notably similar to Karan Barad’s Agential Realism, as outlined in her book, Meeting The Universe Halfway.

individuals are continuously interested in novel innovation that can be appropriated as an

expression of the subject’s own identity as an individual, as opposed to, say, innovation with

the goal of reducing global suffering, etc. The implication seems to be that the globalized

consumerist structure of advanced capitalism already treats the consumer not as an individual

subject, but rather, as a collection of statistics that religate him or her into a specific

prefabricated identity. Advanced capitalism effectively profits from the commodification of

life itself, both in the emerging field of biotechnologies as well as the commodification of

individualist identity.

Braidotti goes on to present an alternative to this consumerist individualism,

advocating an emphasis on zoe, or the generic animating life force which is a property not of

an individual or species, but rather of the monolithic universe of matter. Zoe is the “dynamic,

self-organizing structure of life itself” (60), of which anthropos or bios is just a thin segment.

Braidotti points to a zoe-centric worldview, or a worldview that values generic life in all of its

iterations, as the central tenant of the post-anthropocentric turn, in that it effectively decentres

bios as the “measure of all things”. A posthuman theory of the subjective, therefore, could

emerge as “an empirical project that aims at experimenting with what contemporary, bio-

technologically mediated bodies are capable of doing” (61).

This non-profit-oriented and experimental model for testing the boundaries of

technologically mediated bodies is in direct opposition to the values of advanced capitalism,

the success of which seems to be tethered to a predictable model of what the neo-liberally

individualistic subject wants. Braidotti points out that the global economy is already

perversely post-anthropocentric, “in that it ultimately unifies all species under the imperative

of the market and its excesses threaten the sustainability of our planet as a whole” (63). That

is to say, advanced capitalist values create a kind of pan-humanity through our collective

vulnerability: the commodification of life itself is linked to the high demand for products

which in turn is linked to growing crisis of climate change. Crucially, advanced capitalism’s

post-anthropocentrism is not post-humanistic, in that it still advocates individualism such that

consumers can continue to pursue their own desires (i.e., products) while ignoring the

environmental or planetary implications of their consumerism. What is needed, argues

Braidotti, is a post-anthropocentric model that places the preservation of zoe at the centre. To

do this, Braidotti outlines a three-phase process, which she labels “becoming-animal,

becoming-earth and becoming-machine” (66)3.

The first process she discusses is Becoming-animal. She focuses her discussion on the

discursive practices that allow anthropos to set itself away from and above the rest of the

animal kingdom. To do this, she utilizes the mock taxonomy of Louis Borges, who classified

animals into three groups: those we watch television with, those we eat and those we are

scared of. Braidotti compellingly uses these three categories to demonstrate the way in which

our relationship to the nonhuman animal is wholly confined within classical parameters: “an

oedipalized relationship (you and me together on the same sofa); an instrumental (thou shalt

be consumed eventually) and a fantasmatic one (exotic, extinct infotainment objects of

titillation)” (68). The Oedipal relationship between human and nonhuman animals, Braidotti

observes, is inherently unequal and structured around the anthropocentric assumption that

these other animals exist primarily in relation to humans. This is expressed most explicitly in

our relationship to our pets, but is also in our language. Braidotti points out that animals have

long been reduced to metaphorical indicators of human virtues. In this way, nonhuman

animals become problematically reduced to symbols for human attributes, and thus violently

reinterpreted through human norms (trivial example: my understanding of what a mouse is

has less to do with the minimal experiences I’ve actually had with real mice and more to do

with people who I’ve heard described as “mousy”). Braidotti points out that to change this

3 She notes that these labels are in reference to Deleuze and Guattari, but also claims that she is “very independent in relation to them”(66).

violent imposition of human attributes on nonhuman animals, what is needed is a “system of

representation that matches the complexity of contemporary non-human animals and their

proximity to humans” (70). Nonhuman animals can no longer be used as symbols to reaffirm

human centrality, but must instead be approached “in a neo-literal mode” as entities

independent of human construct.

She then turns to the rest of our animal relationships: “those we eat” and “those we

are scared of”, or animals that are understood through their instrumental or entertainment

value to humans. This category, she argues, is explicitly linked to the market economy. She

outlines the ways in which animals are embedded within advanced capitalist structures not as

individual entities but as statistics or products. In this sense, she argues, Orwell’s ironic

suggestion that some animals are created “more equal” than others has been flipped on its

head: In our post-anthropocentric globalized economy, “no animal is more equal than any

other, because they are all equally inscribed in a market economy of planetary exchanges that

commodifies them to a comparable degree and therefore makes them equally disposable”

(71). The effect of this, interestingly, is that humanity is no longer at the top of any

constructed hierarchy. All individual animals, both human and not, are levelled in their

interchangeable place within the market economy. Again, what is needed is a turn to zoe-

centric ethics, in which the sustained preservation of generic life is the primary goal, and

therefore living things are not reduced to their utility or their market value but rather, are

understood as distinct and non-symbolic entities.

Braidotti then turns to recent developments in the field of animal rights. She outlines

the influence of post-anthropocentric neo-humanist Frans de Waal, who, through his work

with higher primates, popularized the idea that empathy and moral resibility were

characteristics not exclusive to humans. This is a significant move for many reasons, but most

crucially it functions to reinscribe the human within the animal kingdom. Virtues that were

previously understood as tenants of humanism, and thus indicators of our elevation from the

rest of the animals, were reconceptualized as developmental or evolutionary tools. As

Braidotti explains, “[t]he emphasis falls on the ethical continuity between humans and upper

primates” (78). While Braidotti agrees that this turn is important (noting triumphantly that

Waal’s empathy theory dethroned Dawkins's selfish gene theory, which she describes as

“definitely out”(78)), she admits that she is still skeptical of post-anthropocentric neo-

humanism, on the basis that “it is rather uncritical about Humanism itself” (78-79). She

explains that the “compensatory efforts” on behalf of nonhuman animals is a deeply overdue

realization, as humanity is still reeling from two centuries of a self-inflicted superiority

complex, such that the response has been largely ambivalent. That is to say, we may be able

to recognize that humanity is not inherently superior to other animals, but our societies are

still structured largely as if we were4. In this gesture of interspecies good will, humanism has

kind of subtly reinstated itself.

Braidotti then turns to the process of Becoming-earth. She identifies the two goals of

this section: “the first is to develop a dynamic and sustainable notion of vitalist, self-

organizing materiality; the second is to enlarge the frame and scope of subjectivity along the

transversal lines of post-anthropocentric relations” (82). To achieve these goals, she first

points out the problematic aspects of previous approaches to humanity’s relation to the earth.

She looks specifically at James Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis, which advocates “a return to

holism and to the notion of the whole earth as a single, sacred organism” (84). Although

Braidotti admits that this is an extremely seductive worldview in the face of our current

ecological crises, she points out that Lovelock problematically reinstates humanist values,

through the dichotomizing of nature and culture and earth and industrialization. In this way,

Lovelock fails to account for humanity’s situation within nature, and in doing so,

4 The fact that our current era is largely understood as “The Anthropocene” suggests that, through our anthropocentrism, we have actually become the planet-altering force that we were beginning to suspect we always were.

problematically reimagines technological progress as a wholly negative enterprise. In his

efforts to understand the earth as an organism, Lovelock simply imposes humanistic values

onto the earth (i.e., essentially imagining what he would want if he was the earth), and

therefore fails to understand the earth for what it is to itself. Lovelock helps himself to

Spinoza’s monism, but filters it through a distinctly humanist lense: the earth becomes a kind

of idol in its relationship to humanity.

Braidotti offers another interpretation of Spinoza, influenced by the previous

rereadings offered by Deleuze and Guattari: “[c]ontemporary monism implies a notion of

vital and self-organizing matter, as we saw in the previous chapter, as well as a non-human

definition of Life as zoe, or a dynamic and generative force” (86). That is, Spinoza does not

call his infinite substance “God” because it is something to be worshiped, he calls it “God”

because it is the vital and animating force of the entire universe. For this reason, a posthuman

notion of subjectivity has less to do with flattening out all species to the organs of a planetary

animal, and more to do with empathetic recognition of an inter-species goal of keeping the

planet, as the only known habitable environment for all known iterations of zoe, alive.

Finally, Braidotti turns to the process of Becoming-machine. Similar to the process of

Becoming-animal, the move is beyond symbolism. The machine can no longer be understood

as a metaphor for humanity, but must be conceived as an object on its own. Braidotti

advocates a model of becoming-machine inspired by Deleuze and Guattari as well as the

surrealists, one of a “playful and pleasure-prone relationship to technology that is not based

on functionalism” (91). This technologically bio-mediated process is beneficial as it allows us

to think of ourselves as “bodies without organs”, that is, without a teleologically defined

organized efficiency. Rather, the posthuman subject is able to account for the increasingly

technologically-mediated environment in a manner that is experimental and not exclusively

profit-driven. The playful and mutually beneficial relationship between human and machine,

then, is reimaged not as a relationship between product and consumer, but as two distinct and

nonhierarchically ordered species experimentally pursuing a common ethics (which, again,

should be the zoe-centred ethics outlined above). This would inherently require empathetic

understanding of the evolution of machines outside of their relationship to humans, which

Braidotti identifies as an important aspect of the posthuman turn: “the point of the posthuman

predicament is to rethink evolution in a non-deterministic but also post-anthropocentric

manner” (94).

Braidotti concludes the chapter by noting that in her focus on these processes of

humanity’s posthuman becoming, she does not mean to undersell the different aspects of

humanity or treat all of humanity as one largely self-similar whole, but in fact the opposite. In

blurring the distinction between Man and his naturalized others, Braidotti draws attention to

the dynamics of power that exist in society. Power, understood in the Foucauldian sense,

functions on a grid that the posthuman subject can experimentally resist. As Braidotti

observes: “power is not a static given, but a complex strategic flow of effects which call for

pragmatic politics of intervention and the quest for sustainable alternatives” (99). Ultimately,

Braidotti’s focus is on the “not-One-ness”5 of the material field as the medium through which

diversity (both inter- and intraspecies) can be valued and celebrated.

5 And crucially, this is not in disagreement with the Spinozist conception of a monist substantial universe, but rather to point of that the singular substance of reality is iteratively dynamic, or what Karan Barad would call “intra-active”.