Take as a presupposition that man is a recent invention (1650-1800) and that this

figure is destined to disappear.

The Post Human
an object of knowledge (fixation/obsession)
our corporeal understanding
History of Humanisms
Popular culture
Dont talk about yourself.
F. says it is not the end of God that took place in the twentieth century but the end
of Man. This understanding of the disappearance of man, of a philosophical posthuman era, comes from an historical analysis, from an historicized consciousness.
In a sense, we could say that where goes History, there goes Man.
History and Humanism go hand in hand.
Humanism is made possible only by a sense of historicity.
A post-human era means an era without history. But our memory is firmly
recorded. Our historicity is multiple and self-reflective. It has reached a complex
state, like imbricated Chinese boxes. We see ourselves making our history. It is a
new kind of freedom in self-fashioning. We can edit and re-interpret at will.
There are different froms of historicity proper to different objects of investigation.
1. sciences (Foucault)
2. cultures (Marshall Sahlins)
3. technology. What is special about the historicity of technology and how
does it dovetail with human history.
Is the history of technology tied in with a history of man, or not?
What kind of history/historical consciousness corresponds to the post-human?
The model of Evolution / Progress / Golden Age / Cyclical within these forms of
history: let us determine the form of historicity of each culture (and ask ourselves
if this is applicable to technological culture?)

cumulative
circular
progressive

subject to regulating fluctuations

capable of spontaneous adjustments
subject to crises

Question then, if we consider the history of man and the history of technology (or
science?) together, as a single narrative thread, shall we or shall we not subscribe
to an evolutionary model? (Steven J. Gould, The Pandas Thumb)
The question then becomes: Are we tending (inevitably or not) to ever more
higher degrees of complexity and perfection?
Re: Ethnology. It is a general problem regarding the relations of continuity or
discontinuity between Nature and Culture. p.377 F. How about relations of
continuity or discontinuity between man and machines? What is that?
Cybernetics? So the history of cybernetics
I believe that there must be an urgency in our words when we chose to speak
publicly. It is not an apocalyptic taste that lends to this assertion so much as a
recognition of necessity for occasion, the need to be fully present in thought (very
Heideggerian).
Almost 40 years ago, Foucault examined the rise of the Human Sciences between
1650 and 1800 and concluded that now, in the modern era Man is in the process
of disappearing, 385 Foucault.
He wrote this in 1966. Can we mark that date, then, as the advent of the Post
Human?
F. says it is not the end of God that took place in the twentieth century but the end
of Man. This understanding of the disappearance of man, of a philosophical posthuman era, comes from an historical analysis, from an historicized consciousness.
In a sense, we could say that where goes History, there goes Man.
Writing as an archeologist of knowledge, the kind of disappearance Foucault
was predicting was a philosophical one, an epistemological shift. This was the
sense Foucault gave to his prediction, that when the historical conditions between
1650 and 1800 that gave rise to the study of human sciences changed, it was
probable in a future age that the Human would simply cease to be intelligible or
recognizable as a category of knowledge and thus would cease to be an object of
scientific curiosity.
One can certainly wager, he wrote, that man would be erased, like a face
drawn in sand at the edge of the sea. Foucault, 387. One wonders if we are to
read his wager in a jubilant tone or delivered with a melancholy sigh? The

historian does not judge the desireability of his predictions, the tone is entirely
irrelevant. But to us, the reader, the question is imperative, and more pressing
everyday: Is our process of disappearance something to be FEARED or
DESIRED?
History and Humanism go hand in hand.
Humanism is made possible only by a sense of historicity. So we can say that
Man is nowhere to be found without History. Where goes History there goes
Man. The end of History is the End of Man.
A post-human era means an era without history. But our memory is firmly
recorded. Our historicity is multiple and self-reflective. It has reached a complex
state, like imbricated Chinese boxes. We see ourselves making our history. It is a
new kind of freedom in self-fashioning. We can edit and re-interpret at will.
The Chinese box we now find ourselves in would appear to be infinitely
imbricated. Figures of labyrinths, spheres within spheres, parallel universes,
black holes, paradoxes of all sorts involving Time engendering Time are the
structural scaffolding upon which our epistemology precariously founds its
knowledge of knowledge. The possibility of Knowing Thyself (Socrates) can
only, henceforth, be contemplated through the necessarily distorted lense of a
historcized image.
So let us remember that we are never in possession of the WHOLE storyat
most, when it comes to conceiving of a totality of human formwe are in the
realm of reflected glimpses of parts of our bodies and behaviors. I mean that we
can never see ourselves but only reflections of ourselves off other surfaces. All
we can do at best is carefully piece together the fragmentary shards, the mythical
patches of knowledge that our body presents to us in the form of historical
snapshots.
And now, coming to now, it pleases us to imagine ourselves surpassed and yet
IMPROVED at the same time.
There are different historiesthis is the ruband these narrative lines, threads
pulled through the weave of our recuperated or conserved or invented past is
perforce knotted, uneven, irregular, discontinuous, shattered, incomplete, and
most tragically UNPOLISHED. Should it please us to demand a whole image,
the labor involved in creating a reflective surface capable of providing an
adequate source for the whole image will, necessarily, in any case, be an image of
an image, and a distorted one at that. We will always be one step behind
ourselves. We will always present monstrous aspects, even if that aspect is in
angelic form.

Such are the limits of post-modern reflections. We have chosen to create these
limitsthey were never thrust upon us. The Islamic world knew wisely from the
beginning not to allow any representations of human forms. Contemplation of the
human form is ugly. Landscapes and animals maybe. Better abstract geometrical
forms.
So our fascination in the West with knowing ourselves and our nature and our
limits lies not only with the Socratic tradition but also in the Christian tradition.
We were put right from the start in an Edenic confinement, with a Tree at the
center, and the prohibition not to touch it. Why? Why this story of temptation,
transgression, punishment regarding the desire to know thyself? The Golden
Bough. Because the limits to knowledge are coextensive with the limits to
knowledge of self.
Now? What shall we know? What do we want to know about ourselves? The
entire mapping of the Human Genome, is that enough? What do we DARE to
know about ourselves, our species nature, our most horribly dangerous tendencies
toward self-destruction.
Geek Love, cutting off members, you ask yourself how self-mutilation can be a
fetish, but it is, there are clips available on the Internet, people cutting off their
fingers, and balls, and penises, because its their body and they can do what they
want with it, cant they?
So our desire to know ourselves seems invariably connected with our desire to
self-destruct. Thats scary.
Dare to know, dare to die. Or mutate. Our self-knowledge then becomes
internalized as a curse, whose operation is most akin to a time bomb. The more
we know, the more we disappear from the possibility of knowing at all. This is
the nature of the Chinese box we have chosen to construct around our
epistemological consciousness.
There are different froms of historicity proper to different objects of investigation.
1.sciences (Foucault)
2.cultures (Marshall Sahlins)
3. technology.
What is special about the historicity of technology and how does it dovetail with
human history?
Is the history of technology tied in with a history of man, or not? And if so, in
what way? Homo Faber.
What kind of history/historical consciousness corresponds to the post-human?

Ultimately, neither the philosophical nor the natural catastrophe nor the more
colorful forms of self-destructiveness really engage our interest. What really
interests us are the consequences of physical interventions to the human body by
use of technological instruments and knowledge. And can we say that
modification of the human form in a permanent way (I mean fooling around with
DNA, stem cells) is the ultimate technology, the only one that really counts,
because the Nature / Culture opposition, the Observer /Observed distinction
collapses in that. Self-experimentation. Horror.
If we focus on that particular post-human, most succintly represented by the
promises of bioenginering and artificial intelligence, we arrive at the core urgency
of the questionDo we want to merge with our machines and our synthetic parts or
do we want to stay just as we are?
The debate generally falls on one of two sides: we are dabbling in techniques we
are insufficiently skilled at and the consequences are too tremendous to risk; or,
we are carrying ahead a scientific program that began in the seventeenth-century
with the rise of modern scientific method, and the potential benefits not only far
outweigh the risks, it is our duty to continue investigating.
The other question that seems important to explore is why technology has played
such a fundamental role in creating a post-human? And why is it that
technological progress is taken for granted to be at cross-purposes with beliefs in
a greater power, a god, when according to history technological improvement of
the human has always existed and was sought after as a way of exceeding the
boundaries of human to obtain some superhuman power, knowledge, or state of
being?
But it wasnt always that way and thats why its interesting to record the
AFFECTS associated with technology, which in the period Im familiar with
were: DELIGHT and WONDER. No terror, no fear, just plain old CURIOSITY.
OK. So Permanent alterations in the Human Genome, p 89 Mount Dragon, thats
the scariest thing of all. Dont forget Vico and his description of the age of
barbarism.
So we can say that Man is nowhere to be found without History. Where goes
History there goes Man. The end of History is the End of Man.
Its nobodys fault but our own if we are destined to disappear , as Foucault
predicted some 40 years ago, from the field of our own sciences. We like to
imagine it that way, that we are SO DANGEROUS, that knowing ourselves will
lead to us to self-destruct. Better not to know, or to know God, or to know nature,

or ourselves as part of nature, but not distinct from it, because that would be
dangerous too, leading to ecological disasters.
So there are several axes we can use to plot the coordinates of our self image. We
collect data on a time axis, a linear one, then, then, now, and place historical
snapshots of what we were saying about ourselves then, what were our boundaries
and confines, the things we wanted to go beyond, and by joining the dots we
attempt to describe a line. If we apply a mathematical analysis to this diagram,
what will come of it?
A linear curve turning upwardsthis is progressor downwardsthis is decay,
degeneration, pessimism, self-hateor a sharply plummeting solution that drops
to the starting point, when the amoebas starting splittingthat is the apocalyptic
versionor a non-linear, fractal type scattering of points that escapes
APPARENT predictability but really catapults our understanding of self into the
realms of mutations or unsolveable equations or multiple solutions, or solutions
with imaginary numbers. Thats the historical plotting.
Then theres the axis of improbable conjectures that lead to unexpected
conjunctures. Setbacks like the burning of the great library at Alexandria (which
revisionist history tells us wasnt that great a library anyway the last I heard, so it
was ok after all). Or the recovery of the ancients through the ARabs, or the
mutation of a gene. Or the Pandas thumb, in other words, some evolved feature
that only finds a use for itself after its already appeared. Weird but true.
These improbably conjectures would seem to make the history of technology an
inherently unpredictable one. And whatever is unpredictable is uncontrollable
and therefore potentially dangerous or even catastrophic.
So our desire to know ourselves is catastrophic ultimately, it would seem, now,
and our love of tinkering around with nature and our DNA is potentially
catastrophic and our imaginings of the workings of nature are potentially
catastrophic in their consequences, the nuclear level, its explosive if fallen into the
wrong hands. Knowledge is Power and were back to Politics. Terrorism.
What will happen when we assume we will disappear? Can we
herald/announce/confirm the disappearance of man and finally put to rest these
fears?
Because FEAR, I believe, is the key to understanding our ambivalence toward the
confines of our knowledge about ourselves. A monster can only exist when there
is a confine that defines the non-monstrous, the normal human. Take away that
confine, allow the monster out of the machine, or rather, allow that WE, our
mateiral being, these bodies are not just simply machines, and the monstrous
lineaments will dissolve on their own.

Where there is no fear, there are no confines. But confines are what keep us safe.
From ourselves, like Adam and Eve found out. They could have been mortal and
safe if they had kept safe from themselves.
Then there are the temerious heros of science, the Dr. Strangeloves and Dr.
Moreaus and Dr. Mengele, and all those Magi of yore whose very temerity in the
face of this fundamental taboo about knowing thyself made monsters of
themselves. The evil scientists. The indispensable figure in all biotechnology
thrillers, whose lineaments more often than not resemble Bill Gates (round baby
face with thick-lensed spectacles, mild-mannered yet ruthless pirate in pursuit of
inconceivably vast wealth who wants nothing more than to IMPROVE the human
condition, albeit by taking risks that the majority would prefer not to run.) Hes a
freak all in his own category.
So fear, then, of regressing, fear of progressing, fear of staying the same.
Do we want to disappear? Or do we want to see ourselves? We want to see
ourselves. We strain to crate more precise, more micro- and macroscopic divices
to understand what we are made of and where we came from. But not to know
where we are headed because that is a matter of choice, of checks and balances, of
controlled folly, private enterprise straining at the bit to conduct stem cell research
while government authorities, the publics representatives, tug and pull in alarm,
crying out for caution.
If a genetically-modified tomatoe, or rice, or corn is acceptable, why not a
genetically-modified human? Because we are not OF nature. This is our
underlying assumption. We are not, ourselves, part of nature. Whatever errors in
coding the tomato may lead tounexpected blights due to decreased biodiversity,
etc., those tomatoes are still under our control. We continue to master nature, but
not being of nature ourselves, how can we be expected to set up adequate
prophylactic measure against what we are not?
Which brings us to viruses, biological weaponery, the arms race, straight to
questions of power and political domination. Apocalypse and catastrophe again.
That is why our words need to be urgent, to convey a sense of the importance of
the issues at stake in order to be heard at all amongst the rising sense of panic and
imminent annihilation.
So I will speak quietly but urgently. I am a mere historian. I provide images of
the past as best as I can recuperate them and interpret them in their indigenous
context. And then I try to patch them together, however faultily, even if it
fragmentary nature necessarily results in a distorted monstrous image of self.
Perfection lies only in the futures, in a promised land of genetic mastery, Gattaca,
where DNA sequences can be split up and recombined with impunity. This is
what we want. Far from disappearing, we want beauty, eternal youth,

immortality, this is what we want: goodness, niceness, an inbred ethical sense

capable of being inherited and passed down. Genotopia. Thats where were
heading, thats where we want to be, and its just a matter of time before we get
there and some are more impatient and more willing to take risks than others to
get us there.
OK. Then lets go in the other direction, allowing ourselves to disappear as an
object of knowledge. That means allowing the confines between our natural and
cultural origins and make-up to dissolve. Dissolving them altogether.
I shall accept my protheses, my artifical knees, and hips, and heart valves, and
skin and bionic eyes with no fear. I shall be grateful to merge with my
technological creations because we are all part of the same family: the family of
carbon, and oxygen, and hydrogen, and that mysterious thing still called energy
for want of a better more precise name. I shall not fear my disappearance! I shall
simply think of it as a sea-change. Because no matter where I go, no matter what
form I mutate into, it is where I already come from.
Now heres a regressive blip on the evolutionary screen: self-mutilation. The
willing self-nflicted, severance of limbs. Back to the womb, to the pre-formed,
helpless, amoeba-like creature, no longer responsible for mobility or action or
change.
There is nothing in our nature that is unnatural, goes the Augustinian creed. What
IS, is surely what the Creator willed it to be. So I shall not fear what is different
or apparently different or grotesque.
Everything is fine. It will all come out right once we understand who we
REALLY are.
MODES OF DISAPPEARANCE
We could disappear in our corporeal understanding of the definition of a human
being by adding inorganic parts to our bodies, or enhancing those parts with
machine elements, bionic improvements, or simply with mechanical simulacrums.
We could accept mutations or birth defects, extend the height or weight
allowances upwards or downwards to such an extent that no creature, no matter
how grotesque or apparently unable to communicate with the social majority
would be considered inhuman. People who have lost half their brain and still
function perfectly, for example. People who are born without limbs. People with
impaired mental faculties. No more monsters, no more geeks, no more rejects.
We could enter the era of the post-human by throwing out all the definitions based
on two arms, two legs, two eyes, one nose, ten fingers and toes.

We could allow that intelligent machines are good enough copies of our selves to
be considered conscious beings and then change the legal definition of the human
to include all beings displaying self-conscious capacities, capable of learning, and
endowed with their own principle of self-motion.
We could develop extrasensory capacities or believe in those capacities and live
by them enough to make them real, so that we could be superhuman.
We could disappear by negating the importance of humanity, by encouraging an
anti-anthropocentric outlook. We could view the rise of Humanism in 14th century
Italy as an arrogant moment of hubris, when the species decided that we could
rise above our fallen natures and aspire to a sort of greatness that would not
offensive to the avenging and jealous God. We could view that period as just one
more moment in the exaltation of our species that was destined to give rise to
great works of political statecraft and technological invention but which we must
regrettably and inevitably deplore for its negative consequences on our
environment. Capitalism, the rise of the Nation State, they were all outgrowths of
humanism. We can simply historicize humanism and understand it to be nothing
but another form of delirium, one that leads to fascisms, and racial superiority
theories. We can happily just say no to human supremacy and disappear that
way, by becoming one of the many life forms teeming and toiling to survive on
this planet. Humanism can be cancelled out as an aberration, a mistake, a
narcissistic pose.
We can disappear in our own popular imagination: sci-fi movies about aliens who
are superior in all things except forms of human weakness (emotional and
empathetic capacities, artistic and aesthetic needs).
We can brutalize the bodies of our women and children by making sexual objects
of them, proliferate pornography, snuff films, bestiality, self-mutilation as an
erotic pass-time, until being human ceases to have a practical value in
distinguishing between objects of use and subjects of mastery.
We can use piercing and tattoing and branding and liposuction and botox and
whatever else it takes to make our designer bodies so that we disappear as a
natural object and become entirely a cultural sign.
We can disappear by killing ourselves off, either accidentally or willingly in some
mass-psychosis. We could all become convinced that we come from the stars and
that the time has come to shed our mortal monkey bodies, limitations now to be
surpassed, in order to join our cosmic cousins in another dimension and commit
mass-suicide.
Or we could allow ourselves to die off more gradually by allowing epidemics and
diseases to rampage and ravage across the have-not countries until its too late to
stop them in the have countries.

We could be hit a meteorite, or a new Ice Age, or by global warming, until our
planetary conditions are no longer hospitable to our species. Given enough time
to adapt to the changed environment we could evolve into something sufficiently
different to make humanity a fuzzy and outmoded concept.
We could tinker with our genetic code and create creative hybrids between
ourselves and other animal and vegetable species until we could no longer
distinguish between them.
We could disappear by genetically modifying ourselves out of existence. We
could re-engineer our appearance and by doing so, engineer our disappearance.