Table Of ContentPOSTHUMOUS LIFE
CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES
CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES
Jami Weinstein, Claire Colebrook, and Myra J. Hird, series editors
The core concept of critical life studies strikes at the heart of the dilemma that
contemporary critical theory has been circling around: namely, the negotiation of
the human, its residues, a priori configurations, the persistence of humanism in
structures of thought, and the figure of life as a constitutive focus for ethical, polit-
ical, ontological, and epistemological questions. Despite attempts to move quickly
through humanism (and organicism) to more adequate theoretical concepts, such
haste has impeded the analysis of how the humanist concept of life is preconfigured
or immanent to the supposedly new conceptual leap. The Critical Life Studies series
thus aims to destabilize critical theory’s central figure, life—no longer should we
rely upon it as the horizon of all constitutive meaning but instead begin with life
as the problematic of critical theory and its reconceptualization as the condition of
possibility for thought. By reframing the notion of life critically—outside the orbit
and primacy of the human and subversive to its organic forms—the series aims to
foster a more expansive, less parochial engagement with critical theory.
Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016)
POSTHUMOUS LIFE
T H E O R I Z I N G B EYO N D
T H E P O ST H UM A N
EDITED BY JAMI WEINSTEIN
AND CLAIRE COLEBROOK
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weinstein, Jami, editor.
Title: Posthumous life : theorizing beyond the posthuman /
edited by Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2017. |
Series: Critical life studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041871 (print) | LCCN 2017000837 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231172141 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231172158 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231544320 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical anthropology. | Human beings—Forecasting. |
Evolution (Biology)—Forecasting.
Classification: LCC BD450 .P5857 2017 (print) | LCC BD450 (e-book) |
DDC 128—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041871
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover image: © Jason deCaires Taylor.
All rights reserved, DACS 2016.
Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor
CONTENTS
Preface: Postscript on the Posthuman ix
INTRODUCTION: CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES
AND THE PROBLEMS OF INHUMAN RITES
AND POSTHUMOUS LIFE
JAMI WEINSTEIN AND CLAIRE COLEBROOK
1
I. POSTHUMAN VESTIGES
1. PRE- AND POSTHUMAN ANIMALS: THE LIMITS AND
POSSIBILITIES OF ANIMAL-HUMAN RELATIONS
NICOLE ANDERSON
17
VI(cid:3)CONTENTS
2. POSTHUMANISM AND NARRATIVITY: BEGINNING AGAIN
WITH ARENDT, DERRIDA, AND DELEUZE
FRIDA BECKMAN
43
3. SUBJECT MATTERS
SUSAN HEKMAN
65
II. ORGANIC RITES
4. THEREFORE, THE ANIMAL THAT SAW DERRIDA
AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT
87
5. THE PLANT AND THE SOVEREIGN: PLANT
AND ANIMAL LIFE IN DERRIDA
JEFFREY T. NEALON
105
6. OF ECOLOGY, IMMUNITY, AND ISLANDS:
THE LOST MAPLES OF BIG BEND
CARY WOLFE
137
CONTENTS(cid:3)VII
III. INORGANIC RITES
7. AFTER NATURE: THE DYNAMIC AUTOMATION
OF TECHNICAL OBJECTS
LUCIANA PARISI
155
8. NONPERSONS
ALASTAIR HUNT
179
9. SUPRA- AND SUBPERSONAL REGISTERS
OF POLITICAL PHYSIOLOGY
JOHN PROTEVI
211
10. GEOPHILOSOPHY, GEOCOMMUNISM:
IS THERE LIFE AFTER MAN?
ARUN SALDANHA
225
IV. POSTHUMOUS LIFE
11. PROLIFERATION, EXTINCTION, AND AN
ANTHROPOCENE AESTHETIC
MYRA J. HIRD
251
VIII(cid:3)CONTENTS
12. SPECTRAL LIFE: THE UNCANNY VALLEY IS IN FACT
A GIGANTIC PLAIN, STRETCHING AS FAR AS
THE EYE CAN SEE IN EVERY DIRECTION
TIMOTHY MORTON
271
13. DARKLIFE: NEGATION, NOTHINGNESS,
AND THE WILL-TO-LIFE IN SCHOPENHAUER
EUGENE THACKER
295
14. THINKING LIFE: THE PROBLEM HAS CHANGED
ISABELLE STENGERS
325
List of Contributors 339
Index 343
PREFACE: POSTSCRIPT ON
THE POSTHUMAN
CLAIRE COLEBROOK AND JAMI WEINSTEIN
T
here is a very real sense in which the posthuman should be the last
question we pose for our times—a postscript to the story of the
human. Given that the human species is now beginning to change
the scale of thinking by reference to a framework of deep geological time—
to a time and place before human beings existed and began to scar the earth
permanently—and, for the first time in its brief history, starting to imag-
ine a future in which it ceases to exist, we must wonder: What questions
would a being who arrives after humans have wanted us to pose? Is it not
the height of hubris, myopia, narcissism, megalomania, and denial to talk
about the various senses in which the human has been surpassed (whether
by way of the end of human exceptionalism or by enhancing and exceeding
the limits of human life) precisely when humans have been given various
prognoses regarding the sixth great extinction, the end of the human spe-
cies, or at the very least the end of liberal personhood and “man’s” current
age of affluence and favorable conditions (Mulgan 2011)? Let us imagine,
as geologists are beginning to do, that if there were something or someone
able to view the planet Earth after human extinction, it would be able to
discern that a species event occurred of such magnitude that the planet
ceased to be a stable living system. This thought experiment of the Anthro-
pocene, imagining not just a world without us but also a readable geolog-
ical archive that testifies to our once forceful existence, opens a new mode
of historical reflection that is literally after humans while simultaneously
