The Relevance of Michel Serres’s Idea of Bodily Hominescence for a Convergence of Posthumanism and Transhumanism: A Trans/Posthuman Body

• 作者: Orsola Rignani
• 来源期刊: 哲学研究:英文版
• 学科: 数学
• 关键词: TRANSHUMANISM POSTHUMANISM body CONVERGENCE Michel Serres hominescence
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（2）
• 页码范围: 119-126
• 页数: 8页
• 分类号: O17

摘要

Faced with the challenge of arguments about the relation of post-,and trans-humanism,putting forth questions on their“antagonism”,or“convergence”,I propose to(re-)evaluate/highlight the relevance of the thinking of Michel Serres for posthuman debates.It specifically seems to me that Serresian idea of bodily hominescence can be read as a suggestion of“convergence”of post-and trans-humanism.Starting from the assumption that the body is a crucial node of both of them in that its consideration by one and the other marks a major front of their divergence(tool body according to transhumanism,dimensional body according to posthumanism),I seem to grasp,within the Serresian theme of the hominescent body as totipotent/virtual,the idea of bodily virtuality as a point of their convergence.Following Serres’s argument that,due to its virtuality/potentiality(intended as the totality of the possibilities),the body,though always involved in(technological)hybridization processes,is difficult to be artificially reproduced and to be reduced to information,I assume virtuality as an“operational concept”capable of“producing”convergence of post-and trans-humanism.Such a concept allows me,in fact,to read the body(re-)invested,by technology as an infiltrative agent,of a dimensional role as hybridizer(and in this sense normalized).Through virtuality,therefore,I think to be able to understand the body as a meeting ground between trans-and post-component,in the sense that technological“intervention”no longer constitutes an enhancement of the body,but a hybridizing event not implying dis-incarnation but rather normalization of body’s dimensional value;precisely such,due eminently to hybridization with otherness within a process of technological infiltration.The body normalized by such a technology is therefore a trans-posthuman body,in the sense of being contaminated by technological processes keeping it in its dimensionality.In order to better illustrate this idea,I propose to examine Serresian metaphor of the bod