debate 2: the posthuman present

  1. Alexander Dunst introduces the debate, asking what  it means to be, or become, human in our posthuman present. “How can we live with technology, as we so evidently can’t live without it? Do we need to rework the traditions of humanism, or strive to undo them?” Read more: Alexander Dunst: The Posthuman Present. An Introduction
  2. James Burton returns to the writing of Philip K. Dick to question our understanding of the android and the human: “[F]rom another, more Dickian perspective, one could argue that it is the android that precedes the human, or has historically coincided with it—and that to become posthuman would require first coming closer to the non-androidizing, life-fostering form that the ‘human’ has historically claimed for itself, but seldom attained”. Read more: James Burton: Posthuman or Postandroid. Philip K. Dick’s Androidization
  3. Fabienne Collignon takes up Burton’s inquiry into human versus posthuman to seek an escape from the latter’s violence in a poetic inhumanity. As she writes: “a space of dependency and, yet, indetermination, in terms of the unintentional, incalculable things I might hear and which could, in turn, lead to any number of radical, dangerous intimacies”. Read more: Fabienne Collignon: The Posthuman and Inhuman: To Lend an Ear, to Fall