Attached Paper Annual Meeting 2024

Foucault's Critique in a Posthuman World

Papers Session: Unacknowledged Subjects
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

            Foucault’s use of critique is valuable for posthumanist scholars who reject established ideas of what it means to be human. Posthumanist scholars suggest that human identity is not as fixed as many would suppose. One’s treatment as human often depends on what one is “doing” rather than one’s “being” human. Similarly, Foucault’s discussions on biopolitics further elaborate on the ambiguity of human identity. Biopolitics reflect biological existence merely in terms of political existence. Due to the recent invention of man and its indefinite historical precedent, Foucault argued that the notion of man could easily cease to exist in the event of a possible critique.[i] I suggest that posthumanism has offered such a critique. Specifically, its cultural concern with technology has emphasized technological reconstructions that are changing what it means to be human.

 

[i] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon, 1971), 387.