Table Of Content

POSTHUMOUS 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, political, 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 imagine 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 species, 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 geological archive that testifies to our once forceful existence, opens a new mode of historical reflection that is literally after humans while simultaneously