Posthuman citizenship

ABSTRACT

Citizenship and the posthuman have not been often theorized together. In this paper, I want to think about their coalition both as a new episode in the efforts of politics for citizenship, including knowledge politics, and as a source of rebalancing power against governmental and corporate interests in citizenship politics. Here, I seek to address two questions: (1) What is posthuman citizenship? (2) What does posthuman citizenship bring to analysis of intersectional, complex, and multi-layered struggles of citizenship? Section I of the article addresses possible conceptual connections between citizenship and posthumanism at the posthuman political system level. Section II concentrates on a posthuman genealogy of citizenship to show why posthuman citizenship is a much-needed ontopolitical praxis. Section III details the main principles of posthuman citizenship with respect to mediation of rights, political agency, and political responsibility. The paper contributes to the understanding of politics of/for citizenship with two concepts: augmented political responsibility and posthuman deeds.

KEYWORDS:

• augmented political responsibility
• posthuman citizenship
• posthuman deeds
• posthuman genealogy
• posthuman political ecologies
• posthumanism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and thought-provoking feedback. I am also grateful Priyank Chandra, Cansu Ekmekçioğlu, and Randolph Haluza-DeLay for their suggestions on the earlier versions of the paper. For the purpose of open access, I have received support from Yorkville University's Support for Scholarly Activity Funding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to Isin (1997), they have never been so.

2. The ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe people are located across a large area that spans from the Great Lakes region and extends westward (occupied first by the British, then by Canada and the US). For details, see Legal Aid Saskatchewan (n.d.).