Posthumanism in Practice

265 Pages·2023·27.12 MB·English

by  Christine Daigle, Matt Hayler

Posthumanism in Practice
Posthumanism in Practice
Series editors: Matt Hayler (University of Birmingham, UK), Danielle Sands
(Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) and Christine Daigle
(Brock University, Canada)
Ways of thinking allied with “posthumanism” have received increasing interest
across a number of disciplines, predominantly in philosophy and the humanities,
but also in biology, law and ethics, and art theory and creative practice. Indeed, we
contend that the field’s potential implications extend to the majority of academic
disciplines. Focusing on emerging trends, cutting-edge research and current debates,
Posthumanism in Practice presents work in and across multiple disciplines that
investigates how posthumanism can effect change.
The questions that posthumanism raises, of what it means to be human, the
nature of our relationship with the world, our relative importance, our obligations,
entanglements, potentials and limitations, speak to every aspect of life. This series
will address questions such as: What are the implications and entailed effects of the
revelations of contemporary science and philosophy? Can our laws, societies, and
egos hold up to our becoming less special? What can we do, and how might thinking
differently enable us to act differently?
Works in this series will pose these kinds of questions and offer practical answers,
suggestions and provocations. The aim is to inspire work that isn’t occurring often
or loudly enough, and to promote a wide variety of voices which are left outside of
the arenas where they might be most usefully and importantly heard. Disciplinary
conversations also often remain siloed, but posthumanism is inherently an
interdisciplinary concern; the field questions (but doesn’t necessarily reject) the
usefulness and stability of existing disciplinary boundaries. As such, this series will
prioritize works which bring insights across those boundaries and which demonstrate
the real-world potential and/or risks of posthumanist ideas.
Editorial Board:
Megen de Bruin-Molé (University of Southampton, UK)
Emily Jones (University of Essex, UK)
Yoriko Otomo (Director of Global Research Network)
Pedro Oliveira (Independent Researcher)
Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
Isabel Galleymore (University of Birmingham, UK)
Craig N. Cipolla (Tufts University, USA)
Stefan Herbrechter (Heidelberg University, Germany)
Simone Bignall (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)
Olga Cielemęcka (University of Turku, Finland)
Dominique Chen (Waseda University, Japan)
Mickey Vallee (Athabasca University Canada)
Posthumanism in Practice
Edited by
Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2023
Copyright © Christine Daigle, Matt Hayler and Contributors, 2023
Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension
of this copyright page.
Series design: Ben Anslow
Cover image: Fairy, glowing mushroom (© janiecbros / iStock)
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Theory into praxis Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler 1
Section I Science and Technology
1 Engineering the posthuman: Conceiving handedness and constructing
disabled prostheses Stuart Murray 17
2 Posthuman(izing) biomedicine: The role of microbiota in Parkinson’s
disease research Aaron Bradshaw 31
3 Posthumanism and the limits of multispecies relationality Bryan Lim 43
4 Alien embodiment and nomadic subjectivity: A speculative
report Steve Klee and Kirsten McKenzie 57
Section II Art and Curation
5 Sympoietic art practice with plants: A case for posthumanist
co-expression Lin Charlston 79
6 Kneading bodies Madaleine Trigg 95
7 Circus as practices of hope Marie-Andrée Robitaille 114
8 Posthumanism in play: Entangled subjects, agentic cutscenes, vibrant
matter, and species hybridity Poppy Wilde 133
9 Posthumanist interfaces: Developing new conceptual frameworks
for museum practices in the context of a major museum technology
collection Deborah Lawler-Dormer and Christopher John Müller 147
10 Affirming future(s): Towards a posthumanist conservation in
practice Hélia Marçal and Rebecca Gordon 165
Section III Education
11 Water, ice, and dead ‘tadpoles’: Discovering within undecided
boundaries in early childhood education for sustainability
research Debra Harwood 181
12 Reflections on a language teacher education praxis from a posthumanist
viewpoint Laryssa Paulino de Queiroz Sousa and Rosane Rocha Pessoa 198
vi Contents
13 Unlearning to be human? The pedagogical implications of
twenty-first-century post-anthropocentrism Stefan Herbrechter 212
14 Posthumanism and postdisciplinarity: Breaking our old teaching and
research habits Christine Daigle 227
Index 241
Contributors
Aaron Bradshaw is a biological scientist whose PhD and postdoctoral research
focused on the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2020 he has been
working as an Independent Scholar with interests in the role of microorganisms in
neurodegeneration and environmental issues. His forthcoming article in Environmental
Humanities discusses how humans and microorganisms might form new relationships
to collaborate on pressing environmental issues.
Lin Charlston is an independent researcher and a practising artist whose conceptual
artist-books are represented in over forty public collections including Tate Britain and
the Environmental Library at Berkeley. Her PhD at Manchester School of Art, MMU
(2019), developed a sympoietic art practice with plants informed by posthumanist
ethics. For Charlston, the artist-book is part of a collective, adaptive work which
manifests during the co-expressive process. The artist-book I buried my arm (2018)
relives a performative gesture of connection with the underground plant world.
Christine Daigle is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Posthumanism
Research Institute at Brock University. She has published extensively on existentialist
thinkers such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Beauvoir, including her latest monograph,
Nietzsche as Phenomenologist: Becoming What One Is (2021). She also co-edited the
volume From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism (2022) and is completing a
monograph on the theme of posthumanist vulnerability.
Rebecca Gordon is a freelance researcher and writer in modern and contemporary art
and has taught in the History of Art Departments at University College London and
the University of Glasgow, as well as guest lecturing at the University of Amsterdam
and New York University. Her current research focuses on care and emotional labour
of social practice artists, a posthumanist ethics of care and the conservation of
contemporary art as a counter-extinction activity.
Debra Harwood is Professor of Early Childhood Education at Brock University, Canada.
Her research is situated within a framework of challenging the social, political, cultural
and historical forces that have shaped central ideas such as care, professionalism,
child agency, place and intra-active pedagogy. Her most recent project involved a
study of young children’s entanglements within a forest, specifically examining how
relationships with the more-than-human world might foster educational practices that
support a more sustainable planet.
viii Contributors
Matt Hayler is Associate Professor in Contemporary Literature at the University of
Birmingham, and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures. His past work has
looked at electronic reading via cognitive science, post-phenomenology, and the
philosophy of technology (Challenging the Phenomena of Technology (2015); Ambient
Literature (2022)). His current work looks at the implications of posthumanism for human
enhancement projects, digital cultures, and moral responsibility (see e.g. ‘Posthumanism
and the Bioethics of Moral Responsibility’ in Bioethics and the Posthumanities (2022)).
Stefan Herbrechter is a writer, researcher and Privatdozent at Heidelberg University.
He has published widely on English and comparative literature, critical and cultural
theory, and cultural and media studies. His main publications related to his current
research focus, posthumanism and its critique, include Autoimmunities (with Michelle
Jamieson, 2018); Narrating Life (with Elisabeth Friis, 2016); European Posthumanism
(with Manuela Rossini and Ivan Callus, 2016); Posthumanism – A Critical Analysis
(2013); Posthumanist Subjectivities (with Ivan Callus, 2012); Posthumanist Shakespeares
(with Ivan Callus, 2012); Posthumanismus – Eine kritische Einführung (2009);
Cy-Borges: Memories of the Posthuman in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges (with Ivan
Callus, 2009) and Discipline and Practice (with Ivan Callus, 2004). He is Director of the
Critical Posthumanism Network (cri tica lpos thumanism .net) and General Editor of its
online ‘Genealogy of the Posthuman’ project (cri tica lpos thumanism .net /gen ealogy).
Steve Klee is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Lincoln, and an artist
and theorist who explores the philosophical relationship between aesthetics, politics
and natural science. The through-line here is the question of human agency: how do
biological and socio-historically constrained subjects act upon their world? What are
their potentials and limitations? Exhibitions include a solo show Between a Rock and a
Hard Place for Five Years gallery, London (2015), and involvement in Concrete Plastic,
LAM Gallery, Los Angeles (2016), as well as Perpetual Liquidity at No.1 Smithery, Kent
(2016). He has published on Jacques Rancière, and myriad contemporary artists, and
is currently developing articles on the relation between science, new realist philosophy
and aesthetics.
Deborah Lawler-Dormer is a research manager at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Her work is transdisciplinary and often engages art, science and technology in
collaboration with industry, tertiary and community partners. She is the lead curator
for the exhibition Invisible Revealed (2022) developed in partnership with Australian
Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. She is also a visiting Research Fellow
with the Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre at the University of New South
Wales and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western
Sydney University. Recent publications include a chapter on ‘Critical posthumanist
practices from within the Museum’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism
(2022).
Bryan Lim completed his PhD on human–HIV relationalities at Goldsmiths,
University of London. He is interested in probing the limits of current debates in social
Contri butors ix
theory regarding the scope and extent of our relations with non-human others and
more broadly, the pragmatics of radical pluralism, and how practices of thinking,
knowing and living differently might be encouraged to flourish.
Hélia Marçal is Lecturer in History of Art, Materials and Technology at the University
College London. She was the fellow in Contemporary Art Conservation and Research
of the research project ‘Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the
Museum’, at Tate, London (2018–20). She is the coordinator of the Working Group on
Theory, History and Ethics of Conservation of the Committee for Conservation of the
International Council of Museums (ICOM-CC) since 2016.
Kirsten McKenzie is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of Lincoln.
Her current research has two main themes; the multisensory processes underlying
body representation and spatial awareness in healthy individuals, and the cognitive
and perceptual processes leading to somatic misperception in people with medically
unexplained symptoms and other clinical disorders, such as autistic spectrum disorder.
She uses a variety of techniques including MIRAGE virtual/augmented reality, fMRI,
EEG and other psychophysical measures, structured patient interviews, physiological
assessment and eye-tracking. She is also Athena Swan Assessment Panel Member for
the Equality Challenge Unit.
Christopher John Müller is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Media at
Macquarie University, Sydney. His work focuses on the intersection of technology,
social constellations of power and the deceptive ‘immediacy’ of feeling. He is the author
of Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2016), and his articles, translations and reviews have appeared in Parallax,
Thesis Eleven, CounterText, TrippleC, Textual Praxis and Modernism/modernity. Chris
is part of the editorial team of The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism (2022)
and co-edits the Genealogy of the Posthuman, an open access, ISSN accredited online
platform on www .cri tica lpos thumanism .net.
Stuart Murray is Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film in the School of
English at the University of Leeds in the UK, and Director of the University’s Centre
for Medical Humanities. He has published widely on issues on cultural disability
representation and his latest book is Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology
and Cultural Futures (Liverpool UP, 2020). He is Principal Investigator on the Wellcome
Trust-funded research project ‘Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures’, running
between 2020 and 2025, and Joint Principal Investigator on ‘LivingBodiesObjects:
Technology and the Spaces of Healthcare’, a Wellcome project that will run between
2022 and 2025. His next book is Medical Humanities and Disability Studies: In/Disciplines,
which will be published by Bloomsbury.
Rosane Rocha Pessoa is Full Professor of English at the College of Letters (Faculdade
de Letras) at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil. She is currently a voluntary
professor at the same university, teaching courses in the areas of language and