I spent 2 days getting through the intro and 2 or 3 chapters of Braidotti's book and it was difficult to put my understanding into a post. Questions such as 'who or what counts as a human today?' (or any day, I might add) are the basis of my work, I guess. Or, how do we live on this planet, in harmony? So the subject matter resonates greatly. Yet my understanding was as my notes. Fractured quotes as starting points for an essay. It was much better to watch a lecture. Firstly, Braidotti is very entertaining and engaging. Secondly. it is not easily explained. The concept of posthuman knowledge is a convergence between posthumanism (a crtique of 'man') and post-anthropocentrism (a critique of anthropos) and its a ziggity zaggety path where the two don't (necessarily) meet.
So to expand on posthumanism, it is like a paradox defined by what is 'not'. Thinking about what defines humans is NOT what posthumans are. To further complicate things, it's kind of where everything is under scrutiny and in quotation marks; 'reality', 'truth', 'humanity'. In Posthumanism 'we', 'universal', 'human condition', etc. Got it?
And anthropos? My understanding that its the belief that all species are above everything else such as environment, world peace, etc.
For my purposes, I heard enough to know this me and if it isn't yet, it's a guide to what I want to be. To lead me and call me to task when I fall into preconceptions. A bar on which to test my ideas. And I just need to find a point of entry into the discussion. I think its art?? Frankly, I don't know what that means right now. But things I'd like to note of particular interest to me, things I'd like to return to as 'touchstones' are:
- The multitude of humanities discourses that bang on differences between them, when the commonalities are greater (like Grayson Perry is saying in 'The vanity of small differences'...well, I guess like Freud (was it Freud?) said.
- Humanity is failing in an environment where technology is booming. We know soooo much more than ever before, yet.....
- We need to find a collaborative morality - embodied and embedded, non-unitary, but relational and effective.