Posthumanous Subjects

Thinking the posthuman is not a matter of thinking the human ‘after’ the human. Rather, it is a matter of thinking outside of the human, presenting alternatives to current human-centric modes of thought. Being alive has unquestioningly been seen as central to our understanding of the human. Yet this does not mean that life is in any way a simple matter, or that the boundary between life and death is easy to determine, or a trivial matter. In the summer of 2004,

Reconstruction

published a special issue dedicated to the posthuman. Caused by a revealing typo, the call for papers eventually morphed into an investigation of the posthumanous, tentatively defined as:

Post·hum·an·ous (pst-hymən-nəs) adj. 1. Occurring or continuing after the death of the human:

a posthumanous writing.

2. Published after the death of the author:

a posthumanous book.

3. Born after the death of the patriarchy:

a posthumanous child.

4. Any activity which presumes the fatal limitation of the rational-humanist subject

.

(Smith, Klock & Gallardo 2004, 2)

Now, ten years later, I wish to resuscitate the term to suggest that one way of thinking the posthuman is by thinking life/death in more complex terms. Too easily the dichotomy of life/death slips into the well-known dichotomy of presence (life) versus absence (death). Yet death is never fully absent, but is instead deeply embedded in questions of the right life and the rights to life.