Technology has become an increasingly significant element of humans' lives in recent years, and it continues to shape them in ways hitherto only imaginable in science-fiction. Moving beyond humanism, the human/technology relationship has caused the question of what it means to be human to be considered through posthuman thought. I see the reality of technology's effect on human lives giving rise to the figure of the posthuman, in which aspects of the human are replaced or enhanced by technology. Through the posthuman subject, I propose the idea of a postchild and the notion of a posthuman trialism as new ways in which to examine representations of posthumans. Texts aimed a teenage readers frequently offer perspectives on questions of identity formation and the need for adolescent protagonists to find their place in the world. I use a range of young adult texts, with a variety of different types of posthuman protagonists written over the past twenty years, to explore how the posthuman is represented through the narratives, and how power structures and ideologies are conveyed. Through my analyses I demonstrate that, despite technology's apparent superiority, it is human qualities that remain more important in the posthuman, although the extent to which the human is prioritised depends on the way in which technology is employed. My findings provide a clear illustration of how teenage readers are being shown about the ways in which technology can be used and viewed in their lives, and how the human/technology relationship may shape their lives. While the presentations do not portend the dystopian vision of the future still prevalent in many people's minds, they stress the need for humans' use of technology to be questioned by its users and those with power in societies. My new approaches to the posthuman also mean that my work gives ways in which representations of the posthuman in any media can be critically examined.

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This essay attempts to study transhumanism and its role in the anthropogenic pandemic at the center of the novel, in order to show that transhumanist thought was a driving factor behind it. By looking at transhumanist concerns in the portrayed society, and the beliefs of Crake, one uncovers that Crake was able to exploit the desire for enhancement of humanity as a whole in order to achieve the ultimate transhumanist goal: the near-perfect and immortal posthuman Crakers. Analyzing the intentions behind the creation of the posthuman, and Snowman’s relationship to them, it becomes clear that the posthuman is a replacement of existing humanity, since the sought after qualities of the posthuman can only be attained through genetic engineering before birth and not by altering individual humans. I hope to have shown that the novel contains a warning about transhumanism and the potential misuse of science when one person think things through to its logical conclusion. / Denna uppsats ämnar studera transhumanism och dess roll I den antropogeniska pandemi som står I centrum I romanen, med avsikt att visa att transhumanistiska tankesätt var en drivande kraft bakom den. Genom att titta på transhumanistiska intressen i det beskrivna samhället och Crakes egna idéer, upptäcker en att Crake lyckades exploatera önskan om en förbättrad mänsklighet för att uppnå det ultimata transhumanistiska målet: det nästan perfekta och odödliga posthumana varelserna Crakers. Genom att analysera avsikterna bakom skapandet av dessa posthumana, och Snowmans förhållande till dem, blir det tydligt att the posthumana är en ersättning för redan existerande människor, eftersom de begärliga förmågor och egenskaper som de posthumana besitter endast kan anskaffas genom genteknik och inte genom att förändra individuella människor. Jag hoppas att ha visat att romanen innehåller en varning om transhumanism och det potentiella missbruket av vetenskap när en person tänker igenom något tills dess logiska slutpunkt.

The selfhood of social professionals in children’s services is under-researched, and where the primary focus is on practice ‘outcomes’. Informed by a critical social policy frame this thesis focuses on the selfhood of social professionals in children’s services to ask how it might, or might not, be possible to think, and do, self differently. I bring into play a critical posthumanist (non-sovereign) becoming self alongside, and in relation to, the other ‘allowed’ or ‘prescribed’ selves of neo-liberalism, professional practice and (critical) social policy itself. Utilising theoretical resources, in particular from Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault, I characterise this as thinking with both ‘surveillance’ and ‘appearance’, and self as an explicitly political project. In a post-structural frame I pursue a post-methodological rhizomatic and cartographic methodology that aims to open up proliferations in thinking and knowledge rather than foreclose it to one clear answer, and where I also draw on a small number of interviews with experienced professionals and managers in children’s services. A rhizomatic figure of thought involves irreducible and multiple relations that are imbricated on the surface; it is a flattened picture where theory, data, researcher, participants and analysis are not separate, where all connections are part of an overall picture, and in movement. I argue that social professionals occupy a deeply striated landscape for being/knowing/practising, a particular ontological grid that tethers their selfhood to the pre-existing, and to intensifications in a neo-liberal project. Here, ‘rearranging the chairs’ becomes more of the same, where the sovereign humanist subject is “a normative frame and an institutionalised practice” (Braidotti, 2013, p.30). In thinking otherwise, beyond traditional critical theory, a posthuman lens draws attention to the ways in which we might be/live both inside and outside of the already existing and where we become with others, human and non-human in shifting assemblages. However, the self prescribed and prefigured in dominant discourses constitute the historical preconditions from which experiments in self, and other possibilities may emerge. Practices of de-familiarisation, a radical, non-linear relationality, and a hermeneutics of situation are suggested as strategies for thinking forward, for appearance, and a self beyond self.

(Fragile Frames + Monstrosities)ModernWar + (Flagged Bodies + Cyborgs)PostmodernWar = dis-AbilityCyborged / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-20 12:49:42.317

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Dentro do campo da cibercultura, podemos afirmar que existe uma série de subculturas com suas singularidades: idéias, estilos de vida, visões de mundo, rituais, etc. Todas elas colaboram para a formação de um imaginário cibercultural. O conceito de pós-humanismo é um deles. Difundido em inúmeros websites que tratam desse tema, percebemos que dentro do universo da cibercultura existe um imaginário repleto de representações que retoma os discursos mítico-religiosos arcaicos, muitas vezes de forma ingênua ou não proposital. Partimos da hipótese de que esse imaginário, como tentaremos demonstrar, baseia-se na idéia de um poder quase mágico ou religioso da tecnologia como instrumento para a transcendência humana e que toma o pós-humano como um novo ser humano, muito melhor que o atual, capaz de se utilizar das tecnologias para a transcendência de suas limitações. De maneira mais pontual, acreditamos que o tipo de discurso utilizado pelas organizações transhumanistas (que propagam a idéia do pós-humanismo na internet) está permeado por tropos discursivos e metáforas que remetem ao discurso mítico-religioso. Para tal tarefa, dois websites serão analisados: A World Transhumanist Association e o Extropy Institute. / Inside the field of cyberculture, we can state that there are a series of subcultures with their singularities: ideas, lifestyles, views, rituals, etc. All of them contribute to the formation of a cybercultural imaginary. The concept of posthumanism is one of them. Broadcasted in many websites that deal with this theme, we realize that inside the universe of cyberculture exists an imaginary full of representations which resemble the archaic myth-religious discourses. We depart from the hypothesis that this imaginary, as we will try to demonstrate, is based on the idea of a religious or almost magical power of technology as an instrument for human transcendence and which sees the posthuman as a new human being, much better than the present one, capable of using technology to transcend its limitations. To be more accurate, we believe that this kind of discourse used by the transhumanist organizations (which spread the posthumanism ideas on the internet) is permeated by discursive tropes and metaphors that take back to the myth-religious discourses. For this task, two websites will be analyzed: The World Transhumanist Association and The Extropy Institute.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Dentro do campo da cibercultura, podemos afirmar que existe uma série de subculturas com suas singularidades: idéias, estilos de vida, visões de mundo, rituais, etc. Todas elas colaboram para a formação de um imaginário cibercultural. O conceito de pós-humanismo é um deles. Difundido em inúmeros websites que tratam desse tema, percebemos que dentro do universo da cibercultura existe um imaginário repleto de representações que retoma os discursos mítico-religiosos arcaicos, muitas vezes de forma ingênua ou não proposital. Partimos da hipótese de que esse imaginário, como tentaremos demonstrar, baseia-se na idéia de um poder quase mágico ou religioso da tecnologia como instrumento para a transcendência humana e que toma o pós-humano como um novo ser humano, muito melhor que o atual, capaz de se utilizar das tecnologias para a transcendência de suas limitações. De maneira mais pontual, acreditamos que o tipo de discurso utilizado pelas organizações transhumanistas (que propagam a idéia do pós-humanismo na internet) está permeado por tropos discursivos e metáforas que remetem ao discurso mítico-religioso. Para tal tarefa, dois websites serão analisados: A World Transhumanist Association e o Extropy Institute. / Inside the field of cyberculture, we can state that there are a series of subcultures with their singularities: ideas, lifestyles, views, rituals, etc. All of them contribute to the formation of a cybercultural imaginary. The concept of posthumanism is one of them. Broadcasted in many websites that deal with this theme, we realize that inside the universe of cyberculture exists an imaginary full of representations which resemble the archaic myth-religious discourses. We depart from the hypothesis that this imaginary, as we will try to demonstrate, is based on the idea of a religious or almost magical power of technology as an instrument for human transcendence and which sees the posthuman as a new human being, much better than the present one, capable of using technology to transcend its limitations. To be more accurate, we believe that this kind of discourse used by the transhumanist organizations (which spread the posthumanism ideas on the internet) is permeated by discursive tropes and metaphors that take back to the myth-religious discourses. For this task, two websites will be analyzed: The World Transhumanist Association and The Extropy Institute.

In this article, I argue that the vampires in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels illustrate clearly the posthuman self in its connection beyond itself to other vampires, humans, and non-humans. Learning to co-exist becomes problematic in Harris’ series, where we encounter a “new” representation of vampire. These vampires have come out of the coffin, and their revelation allows us to explore how they can be viewed in connection to the human world and how their transcendence can be seen as a move toward posthumanism, as its particular blend of body and community help demonstrate what the self expanded could be. As a species that differs from us “typical” humans and yet must co-exist with us and other non-humans, the posthuman provides a theoretical framework for how we can approach this new representation as a disembodied non-unitary subject. Through their transcendence from the world of the living to the life of the undead, these vampires let us see humanity as a distinct moment in evolution that is a continuous process, not a resolution. There are six areas where we see these common characteristics between posthumanism and Harris’ vampires. The first is the vampire being represented as an other. Like the posthuman, Harris’ vampires are juxtaposed against the human population and because vampires are marked as other this creates tension where they must co-exist with humans and yet still be examined from an anthropocentric perspective. Another way the posthuman allows us to interpret this fear of vampires is from the position of the de-centered human. Because humans prior to the “great revelation” in Harris’ fictional world, believed themselves to be what defined humanism versus their non-human others; they must shift in where they are located on the species podium due to vampires and that creates a fear. Another correlation is that of immortality; which is what vampires inherit when they become a member of the undead, but for the posthuman it is encoding and dematerialization that allows us to transcend these mortal bodies. This notion of disembodiment demonstrates the body being a rhetorical strategy to create an effect, such as manipulation. Since the body for the posthuman is seen as materiality and therefore they are not embedded to only exist within it, the vampire likewise is able to exploit the body in order to accomplish its purpose. Next for the posthuman, transcendence is the way they not only become immortal, but also how they move from identifying as individuals to identifying as part of a larger community. For the vampires in the Stackhouse series, their consciousness lies in their information and not in their material bodies, thus they are able to situate themselves within the larger network with other vampires, humans, and non-humans. And lastly the connection through the exchange of blood, which for the vampire is a literal connection, but for the posthuman is instead an ideal network which removes individuality.

Posthumanist rhetoric is informed by developments in the sciences and the humanities which suggest that mind and body are not distinct from each other and, therefore, claims of humans’ superiority over other animals based on cognitive differences may not be justified. Posthumanist rhetoric, then, seeks to re-imagine the human and its relationship to the world. Though “post-” implies after, like other “post-” terms, posthumanism also coexists with humanism. This dissertation develops a concept of posthumanist rhetoric as questioning humanist assumptions about subjectivity while remaining entangled in them. The destabilization of the human subject means that new identifications between humans and nonhumans are possible, and the ethical implications of the rhetorical strategies used to build them have yet to be worked out. Identification, a key aim of rhetoric in the theory of Kenneth Burke and others, can persuade an audience to value others. However, it can also obscure the realities of who does and does not benefit from particular arguments, particularly when animal suffering is framed as human-like trauma with psychological and cultural as well as physical effects. I argue that a posthumanist practice of rhetoric demonstrates ways of circumventing this problem by persuading readers not only to care about others, but also to understand that our ability to comprehend another’s subjectivity is limited and that acknowledging these limitations is a method of caring. his dissertation locates instances of resistance to and/or deployment of posthumanist critique in recent works of literature; identifies language commonly used in appeals that create identifications between humans and animals; and analyzes the implications of these rhetorical strategies. To that end, I have selected texts about human and animal suffering that engage particular themes of identification that recur in posthumanist rhetoric. The chapters pair texts that develop each theme differently. Most undermine human superiority as a species, but many reify the importance of certain qualities of the liberal humanist subject by granting them to nonhumans. The points of identification created between humans and nonhumans will inform how we re-imagine the human subject to account for our connections, and therefore our responsibilities, to other beings.

The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with biology. The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of human enhancement that approach life expansion. In doing so, the thesis constructs an inquiry into historical and current attempts to append human physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering emerging and speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal identity as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement, a new axis is sought that identifies the transhuman and posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life expansion. The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement that explicitly pursue extending human life? This question centers on the potential of the study’s proposed enhancement technologies in their relationship to life, death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders that need to be mediated between them. The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and design, technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of life expansion. The critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders between these interconnecting forces by bringing to light issues of sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns, including morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the thesis’ interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative technologies. 4 The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation: qualitative interviews with experts of the emerging and speculative technologies; field studies encountering research centers of such technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the heuristics of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view of the human use of technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the research is a theoretical framework for further research in artistic approaches to life expansion.