Transcendence up for sale: cracking the onto-existential codes for Übermensch

ABSTRACT

More than ever, technology governs human life, sociality, politics, and culture in general. This article examines transhumanism, a relatively new entry into the political economy of life, for its overarching impact on humanity, history, and the market. I first review foundational accounts in the philosophy of technology conducive to the discussions of human, technology, and the body, before unpacking the ever-elusive terms: transhuman(ism) and posthuman(ism). Subsequently, this essay facilitates moral and ethical reflections drawn from postphenomenology. I also offer implications and future research orientations in three areas: choice, matter (materiality), and transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Transhumanism
• posthumanism
• biotechnology
• artificial intelligence
• morality
• ethics
• postphenomenology

Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. (McLuhan 1964, p. 51)

Introduction

The peril and promise of nanotechnology and synthetic biology, along with artificial intelligence, leave a bittersweet aftertaste for consumers of transhuman technologies (i.e. gene therapy, RNA interference, cybernetics, mind uploading, etc.) because of the inevitable vulnerability of these technologies to “biohacking.” Here, biohacking is understood not as a set of DIY self-enhancement practices but as the criminal activity of hacking into someone’s body and mind (Pettit 2020). The newly identified yet potentially omnipresent risk is that hackers will target a human body and brain (potentially through brain implant technologies, such as Neuralink) rather than targeting software or a server. Raising this possibility is not to say that another episode of Black Mirror (a Netflix original that depicts a dystopian future propelled by new technologies) will be produced in a reality-show format, but to cautiously imply that we might have already passed the point in time we used to call “future.”

As such, living in the current time and space motivates consumers and marketers to develop a multitude of trans- and posthuman scenarios that intensify individual imaginations of bodies and lives in the palpably near future (e.g. Belk 2016). Posthumanism is generally recognized as the label for approaches and ideologies that advocate alternatives, possibilities, temporalities, imaginations, compromises, and especially, post-anthropocentric views when it comes to defining the (future) human (e.g. Graham 2002; Haraway 2016; Pepperell 2003). In lay terms, transhumanism is a more specific philosophy and practice than posthumanism that leads humans to recognize posthuman conditions, mainly through the use of biotechnology and artificial intelligence. This unprecedented, techno-enabled, ongoing, and future empowerment of humans has spawned distinguishable versions of transhumanism and posthumanism, such as democratic transhumanism, libertarian transhumanism, sigularitarianism, and extropianism¹ (e.g. Bostrom & Savulescu 2009; Brooks 2002; Ferrando 2013, 2019; Hughes 2004; More 1990, 2003, 2013). These views have identified ambitious transhuman opportunities while expressing reservations and apprehension.

In the marketing field, and consumer research in particular, there has been a critical acknowledgment of the arguably obsolete notion of Cartesian dualism, namely, the mind–body distinction that tends to obscure epistemological progress in trans- and posthumanism studies, especially in the West (Giesler and Venkatesh 2005). Correspondingly, Sherry (2000) recognized convergence and resonance, as well as the blurring between material/body, myth/technology, and means/end, and even alluded to “inter-object-subjectivity.” The ongoing transformation of the consumer subject, from “not-machine” to body-machine and soul-computer, has also been documented in the light of posthumanist literature (Venkatesh, Karababa, and Ger 2002). Some studies have brought posthuman epistemology into consumer research to recognize ongoing erasures of the boundaries between nature and culture and to transcend the traditionally anthropocentric orientation of such research (e.g. Campbell, O’Driscoll, and Saren 2010). More recently, life itself (entangled with nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive science), as opposed to stock discourses based on Cartesian techno-anthropology or philosophical anthropology, has been analyzed to provide different categories of life-technology that ultimately lead to transhumanism (Belk, Humayun, and Gopaldas 2020).

The trans- and posthuman approaches in the literature, however, share some common features that demand further clarification (e.g. Belk et al. 2020; Botez, Hietanen, and Tikkanen 2020; Campbell et al. 2010; Giesler and Venkatesh 2005; Lai 2012). First, although these approaches recognize the inexorable critical departure from dualism and modern dichotomies, there remains a tendency in the literature to dichotomize between humanism, on the one hand, and trans- and posthumanism, on the other, at least in an epochal sense. However, the unwarranted interchangeability or careless amalgamation of these two philosophies – transhumanism and posthumanism – could cause trouble for future theorizations of the transhuman market and transhuman marketing. Second, although Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto (1985, 1991) has served as the staple metaphoric ingredient in most trans- and posthuman studies, the literature does not sufficiently recognize her account as being more cultural than material, more idealized than concretized, and more exquisite and eloquent than perceptible in the lifeworld. Finally, a utopian-dystopian dichotomy persists on the surface or in the subtexts of the existing literature.

The lifeworld and human experiences have been lived and embodied by producing, maintaining, and innovating various and varying degrees of hybrids, which in turn problematize the very modern teleology and axiology to choose one or the Other (e.g. Latour 1993). Being hybridized has been the mode of being and living; therefore, it appears ineluctable that we move beyond the self-perpetuating, essentializing, binary-ridden perspectives of the discursive convention that insists on “zoning” in time, space, and culture. Amid this unending hybridization (Latour 1993), the practice of marketing has advanced its role in society from merely offering tactics to sell products and services to providing a mechanism for various market actors to collectively design and perform a “better” life (Dholakia and Firat 2019). At this juncture, then, it is imperative to engage in discourses and practices that specifically address the increasingly elusive and contested concept, human. Indeed, we could be at a point of technological singularity wherein we transcend our biological limitations and rewrite the nature of self-identity to allow transcendental identities that obscure the distinctions between divine/human and biology/technology (Kurzweil 2005).

Recognizing the transformative nature of human in the future market as a critical sphere of life, this essay anatomizes and articulates trans- and posthuman(ism) to aid consumer researchers – especially in the field of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) – to navigate this new sociotechnical milieu where “becoming-other” and “accepting the third,” as Deleuze (1995) had it, will become core values to be preserved. This article also aims to collectively envision how CCT scholarship can better engage with new humans in the times to come. This effort is, however, not to suggest or establish an obscurely renovated, monolithic account re-presenting a stance hardly discernible from those of the past, or one that contributes to the historic lack of success in “breaking out” of totalizing, homogenizing, and self-perpetuating models (i.e. paradigms, approaches, perspectives, etc.), as Botez et al. (2020) admonished. Instead, the aim is to initiate a dialogue to collectively envisage the future, transformative market system that hybridizing technologies and hybridized humans will likely demand. Indeed, bio-synthetic technologies are unlikely to allow fossilized but still dominant idea(l)s or orthodox images of the human body to persist.

In the following sections, the background of trans- and posthumanism is first presented to introduce perspectives in the philosophy of technology that are potentially unfamiliar to the consumer researchers who will theorize the future market dynamics of hybridized bodies. This discussion is also necessary to better position this essay among various discursive traditions; though inexhaustive, it navigates among different ideas and theories that are potentially incommensurable yet that are critically pertinent to the evolutions of trans- and posthumanism. An outline (Figure 1) of the historical context and “topography” of the relatively new discourses precipitating transhuman market(ing) is also presented. The subsequent sections illuminate historical and theoretical properties and qualities of transhumanism vis-à-vis posthumanism as well as transhuman research in marketing, before examining postphenomenological morality and ethics pertinent to transhuman technologies. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Figure 1. Philosophy of technology and the transhuman market.

Discursive positioning to (re)ontologize and contextualize trans- and posthuman(ism)

Working definitions of trans- and posthumanism are necessary to provide a broader yet detailed portrayal of trans- and posthuman(ism) in the remainder of the essay. However, such definitions are not yet settled with any scholarly erudition or accumulated knowledge in the relevant fields. These definitions from the literature are provided to ease navigation through the following historical accounts and critiques of trans- and posthuman(ism) that inform and galvanize researchers (especially in CCT) to conceive how to engage in the new sociotechnical environment.

With a relatively Pollyanna-ish and humanitarian overtone, Max More, one of the prominent figures in the transhuman movement, offers a definition of transhumanism he shares with other transhumanists:

Transhumanism is both a reason-based philosophy and a cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition by means of science and technology. Transhumanists seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. (More 2011, p. 137)

While this definition is agreeable, it can also be viewed as based on an Elon Musk-style techno-utopianism that tends to avoid critically acknowledging the negatives of transhumanism, such as issues of equality and ethics.

The most articulate definition of posthumanism can be drawn from the philosophical posthumanism tradition (e.g. Braidotti 2013; Ferrando 2012; Pepperell 2003). Based on this view, posthumanism can be compiled as:

the philosophical position that, through unconventional, unorthodox, stigmatized, and historically unimagined couplings and unions of human(s), non-human, and technology, human(ism) will progress toward a different (arguably The Next) stage of human history in which post-anthropocentrism, post-dualism, post-centrism, post-exclusivism, and post-exceptionalism together help rewrite the condition under which all humans have (to) become deconstructed as both the center and the periphery. (e.g. DeLashmutt 2006; Fernandez-Armesto 2004; Ferrando 2019; Haraway 2016)

Given the labyrinth posed by these two philosophies, this section provides a “lineaged” summary of essential accounts in the philosophy of technology that have (in)directly brought about the idea(l)s of human beyond human and that beg more questions than answers as to what constitutes trans- and posthuman(ism). For example, the transhuman incantation, “Are we good enough? If not, how may we improve ourselves?” (Bostrom and Savulescu 2009, p. 1) is almost certainly among the most familiar of such questions, as poignantly visualized in the movie GATTACA. Whereas most people would answer the first question negatively, the second question is more challenging. The intricacy of the methods humans may adopt to improve themselves tends to provoke mixed feelings and blur visions of the future.

The literature, accordingly, lists some “strings attached” to the trans- and posthuman market, such as the perceptible violation of the notion of “human purity” (Lai 2012), along with general fears about biotechnology and ethical considerations (Belk et al. 2020). Such considerations always appear as an ideological and practical battle between Rocky and Drago taking place inside one’s mind (in the film Rocky IV, Rocky trains in nature, but Drago uses machines and technologies to prepare for their boxing match). Can education, rigorous training, and self-improvement fulfill human desires to be better, or must science and technology be extensively employed for humans to be better than ever imagined? The philosophy of technology provides a platform to address these possibly cliché inquiries. It should be noted that only some significant figures in this literature will be discussed to provide succinct yet sufficient information for (de)construction of the essay. In doing so, the relevance of their work to trans- and/or posthuman(ism) is reviewed for a more lucid juxtaposition of the two in the later section. These notables should also provide a foundation and valuable insights, including postphenomenology, for the later discussion on morality and ethics and future research.

Heidegger and transhuman(ism)

Heidegger’s distinction between zuhanden (ready-to-hand) and vorhanden (present-at-hand) inculcates an early conceptualization of technology in Being and Time (1927 [1996]). Technologies are imperceptible and separate from our lives until we experience a malfunction or obvious obsolescence. Technology then becomes overly significant to our lives: vorhanden (present-at-hand). Whether determinedly or guardedly, Heidegger critiques the Cartesian convention of demarcating between the knower (subject) and the known (object) by arguing that modern technology is not merely a tool or instrument but a mode and method of “revealing,” “challenging (Herausfordern),” and assembling the world in which Dasein (experience of existence) is intermingled with known externalities; hence, “being-in-the-world,” or more precisely, “being-alongside-the-ready-to-hand-within-the-world.” This approach connotes that technology is not a means to an end. Rather, technology brings something into appearance. However, if transhuman(ism) penetrates Dasein, humans no longer need to identify with their bodies, because even death becomes a mere episode to the body rather than the self (e.g. Bailey 2014). This idea of death is only sensible because one of the forms of transhuman transcendence is immortality (e.g. Bostrom 2005).

For Heidegger, technology is enframing (Gestell), which signifies a process by which any-thing and every-thing (i.e. beings in the world) are bestowed with a meaning. The potential of technology as enframing can also invalidate traditional boundaries and allow one to re-construe oneself. As the world seems to emerge from enframing, Heidegger (1977) also sees a danger of potentially homogenized being without other possibilities. That is, enframing as a constant ordering process may change human relations with our own existential modes; therefore, we join “standing reserve” to be (re)ordered by technology in the world. In relation to transhuman(ism), technology as enframing informs and allows one to understand the potential benefits and costs of be(com)ing transhuman. In the transhuman tradition and dogma, the body is enframed and externalized to become a technologically improvable and customizable thing (Bailey 2014). From such a perspective, humans and our bodies become more and more irrelevant to our identities as embodied beings.

This relational and co-existential deconstruction of human/technology and subject/object divides in the Heideggerian account is relevant (at least tangentially and implicitly) to developing the notion of technological mediation (Ihde 1990) and network ontology (e.g. Latour 1999; Riis 2008) with some potential irreconcilability, which will be further discussed. However, it is worth noting that Heidegger’s work has been questioned for its obsession with “being” in a more or less anthropocentric and pre-modern sense. This observation casts his approach as so anti-technology, or at least as so much less technology-friendly, that applying his ideas to imagine multiplicity of being in and with technology simply romanticizes the past.

Ihde, Stiegler, and Verbeek

Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Don Ihde offered a theoretical development of the body-machine and human-technology relationships. Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) analyses call attention to the body as a conduit and vehicle (the ultimate mediator) to the world; the body needs objects (technology) to organize and make sense of the world. Inspired by Merleau-Ponty, Ihde (1990 1993) views technology as a “postphenomenological” extension of the body, which he calls an “embodiment relation,” in which technology is embodied but divorced from experience and consciousness. He proposes that one analyze and interpret technology as it is – that is, in a more naturalistic, material, and practical manner – instead of relying on the philosophical classics (e.g. Heidegger) that focus too much on “Technology” and that tend to blind one to the actual and empirical use of technology. The same technology can be used and applied to various practices in very distinct ways, which sustains the stability of the technology in a form Ihde (2009) called multistability. When the plurality and multiplicity of technological engagement and experience in a lifeworld are materialized (embodied), the mediation function of technology begins to render an image of technology that is neither that of the user (subject) nor someone(thing) else, but of alterity.

The relationship between postphenomenology and transhumanism can be seen as counterintuitively estranged, as evidenced in Ihde’s (2008) disapproval of transhuman ontology. The nature of his dissatisfaction with transhumanism is found in his notion of a technofantasy that “overlooks the transformational effects, which are necessarily tied to human-technology relations’ (Ihde 1990, p. 75). While Ihde does not refute the potential for human enhancement, he is more concerned with “unintended consequences, unpredictability, and the introduction of disruptions into an ever-growing and more complex system” (2011, p. 132). Ihde tends to stay politically and philosophically neutral to transhumanism. However, he enunciates the absence of natural embodiment as a result of the widely available technological enhancement that can accelerate an abysmal, irrevocable transformation in the lifeworld.

With or without transformation, our consciousness and body are continuously mediated by and shared with technology as the Other. This manner of viewing human-technology relations can also be found in Bernard Stiegler’s (1998) notion of prosthetic beings, which postulates that humans are never perfect or complete beings.

This proposition necessitates co-creation and co-evolution of humans and technology (e.g. Roberts 2005). Stiegler (1998, p. 17) also questions the almost taken-for-granted aporetic difference between humans and technics; he claims, “As a process of exteriorization (locating some experiences of life in technics), technics is the pursuit of life by means other than life.” However, in his lecture series (2016–2019), Stiegler warns of the transhuman agenda, which can be seen as a mere attempt to limit “natural” selections to market criteria that circulate “technopopulism” based on neoliberal ideology (e.g. Ross 2020). For him, ready-made bodies and identities in the market can only pro tem satisfy insatiable players in the modern market system at the expense of diversities in bio-, social-, and intellectual spheres of life.

Ihde’s (1990, 1993) and Stiegler’s (1998) accounts of technological mediation and co-evolution are further analyzed by Verbeek (2005), who underscores human-technology relations rather than subtracting the performance of technology in constituting a lifeworld. In Verbeek’s view, a considerable portion of the validation of human existence is done by technological artifacts that enable humans to act and experience. For him, the world can only be interpreted into an intelligible reality, and subjectivity is constantly (re)positioned and (re)contextualized in the world, with technology partaking in both metaphysical endeavors (Verbeek 2008a). Verbeek (2005) rejects the “distanced” and “alienating” approaches that aim to keep things separate from mind with intentionality or from the realm of consciousness because of the potential demonization of technology. He instead envisions that humans can/should create technologies that improve lives. His concept of hybrid intentionality between human and technology does speak to the transhuman projection of the coupling between mind and machine, which also corresponds to the cybernetic (to be discussed in a later section) arrangement of all relations. Nevertheless, such a vision can be another type of romanticization, as Verbeek criticizes previous perspectives that idealize a “perfect” world of humans versus machines.

Feenberg and Virilio

The recurrent structure-agency debate still attends to the ongoing theoretical development of human-technology relations. Adopting social constructivism, Andrew Feenberg brought into view a new aspect of the world as co-constructed by wo(men) and machines. Feenberg (2010) analyzes the underlying workings and makings of power and control of the system (constituted of technology and machine) that may create biases and inequalities in the lifeworld by shaping identities and experiences. His interpretation, however, is centered more on the delicate but efficient relationship between the system and lifeworld, which is the core of his instrumentalization theory. He introduced a two-level analysis into the theory. On the first level, machines and artifacts are “de-worlded” (dethatched or decontextualized) from human lives and experiences (Feenberg 2010, p. 72), but on the second level, they are “re-worlded” (contextualized). This second level, on which the social and the political play significant roles to re-connect the system to lifeworld, distinguishes Feenberg’s account from many previous ones.

Feenberg does not endorse any dystopian projection that tends to attribute many inadequacies in society to the mere presence of technology. Nor does he adopt any casual utopian inspirations. Instead, he expects a more livable world created through more conscious and intimate social interactions that include technologies as at least quasi-agents. However, Feenberg does not necessarily accept Latour’s (2005) idea of “symmetry of humans and non-humans’ because of its anti- or trans-modern foundation. More specifically, he expresses a more-than-offhand bafflement about posthumanism, which sets up assemblages and networks of persons, things, and technologies as onto-epistemological foundations (Feenberg 2000). For Feenberg, it appears redundant and even obstinate to acknowledge that all boundaries in assemblages and networks must/can be redrawn, including the one between the social and the natural, as if the two have been demarcated.

In War and Cinema, Paul Virilio (1989) prospectively addresses Feenberg’s (2010) relatively neutral position vis-à-vis technology and Latour’s (2005) view on object agency. Virilio (1989) criticized and warned of the techno-apocalypse, in which subjectivities become devoid of reality and agency is transferred to technologies. His concerns for modern technologies and the human relationships with them arise mainly from the fetishization of speed and the loss of “richer” and more “meaningful” life experiences to technologies. However, according to extropianism (e.g. More 2003; More and Vita-More 2013), as well as libertarian and democratic transhumanism (e.g. Bostrom 2005), Virilio’s view can be readily contested because it tends to almost entirely discount the emancipating, progressing, and democratizing functions of new technologies, regardless of their actual purposes and applications.

Wiener and Hayles: cybernetics

A move away from the human-technology relationship and its impact on different domains of life, control and communication emerged in the mid-1900s as a new focus and significant scientific endeavor. The new technological movement pursued speed and accuracy in a feedback loop. By calling the entire field of control and communication theory cybernetics, Norbert Wiener (2013) helped visualize a system that would eventually inherit properties and characteristics from both the brain and from computing machines. He viewed information as a separate, stand-alone (meta)physical element, stating, “Information is information, not matter or energy” (Wiener 2013, p. 132). The ramifications of this scientific and philosophical stance have been alarming and at the same time inspiring to many relevant fields of study because of the unuttered and unintended potential of a “cybernetically organized mankind” based on Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) integration (Malapi-Nelson 2019, p. 65) – a model well-aligned with the tenets of transhuman(ism). This coupling of mind and machine has intensified the collective yet egocentric impulse to improve “the human” (Malapi-Nelson 2017).

As such, Wiener (together with other figures, such as Claude Shannon and Alan Turing) performed a significant role in introducing the “philosophy of information” vis-à-vis the philosophy of technology. Wiener’s cybernetic ambition essentially disseminated the idea that boundaries were constructed, not naturally specified, and that cybernetics could reconfigure them. Cybernetics’ re-ontologization of the body as an informational system inherently required extensive reworking of embodiment that involves dematerialized material.

N. Katherine Hayles (1999, p. xi), who deciphers Wiener’s cybernetic decentralization of the body in How We Became Posthuman, observes, “[A]t the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment is performed so that “intelligence” becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human life world.” Such an informational ontology relocates the body to the infosphere inhabited by inforgs (informationally embodied organisms) (see Floridi 2013 2014 for inforgs). Her critique and analysis of cybernetics also highlight that the enacted body and represented body can no longer be intelligibly decoupled in the cybernetic circuit. In an interview by Arjen Mulder in 1998,² Hayles laid out the intricate yet incontestable entanglement of the enacted and the represented that eventually transforms the “liberal subject” (the autonomous, self-regulating, and agentic human inherited from the Enlightenment) into the posthuman.

Hayles (1999) observes a peril or at least uncertainty to this transformation, however, recognizing that informatics and cybernetics might cause an entropic trauma to existing systems because all closed systems tend to move from the least to the most probable state. Entropy, in such a cybernetic scenario, would mean more chaos and sameness without much organization and differentiation. The sameness here is the most troubling, as in this context it could mean cybernetically “cloned” bodies. In this fashion, the newly imagined body in cybernetics continuously (re)shapes the posthuman discourse with hopes and doubts; as Hayles (1999, p. 112) acknowledges, “[N]o person, even the father of a discipline [cybernetics], can single-handedly control what cybernetics signifies when it propagates through the culture by all manner of promiscuous couplings.’ Her recognition of the promiscuousness of the body, the technological production of identities, and reflexive feedback loops resonates with the “cyborgian account” that has developed a theoretical platform for a better articulation of the posthuman body with “others’ and “in-betweens.’

Latour and Haraway

As argued by the aforementioned thinkers and observed via technological advances, historical boundaries between body-machine and human-technology, as well as the metaphysical and practical distinctions between subject and object, have been eroded. Linking, merging, and crossing-over have inevitably replaced previously accepted territorial views of the world. By calling such classical accounts “ontological zones,’ Latour (1993) problematizes humans’ (subjects’) exclusive possession of agency. He argues that all are hybrid, which is the very reason the modern project has never been properly embarked upon. For Latour, it is only cultural and philosophical obstinacy to cling to the less critical perspective that ostracizes mixes, hybrids, and in-betweens. This argument provides an opportunity to reimagine a lifeworld that fosters interdependency and even a symbiosis between human and technology, which responds to both trans- and posthuman ideals. Latour (2004) in fact theorized this idea by introducing assemblage or a collective (on a more empirical level) of humans and non-humans. His theorization can seem rather radical for many reasons, but the concept of non-human actants (c.f., human actors) is what makes his contribution highly contested yet influential. This innovative approach acknowledges the agency of objects in much more relational terms. One question to be addressed is how the assemblage can be reconfigured to sustain itself when social and political issues intervene in the assembling process, as Andrew Feenberg inquires. In other words, it is unclear how all these hybrid beings (human-non-human, nature-culture, actors-actants) can be organized and represented in theory and practice.

Hoffman and Novak (2018) provide a recent framework based on object-oriented ontology to diagnose the current state of consumer experiences with technology (i.e. Internet of Things). They recognize the “objective” autonomy that consumers face from a quite “transactional” standpoint without much consideration for the ontological challenges that humans share with technologies in the market. Other scholarly endeavors in consumer research (e.g. Bajde 2013; Epp and Price 2010; Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Lugosi and Quinton 2018; Martin and Schouten 2014; Thomas, Price, and Schau 2013) are also highly noteworthy for their shared view that omnipresent non-human actors necessitate a revised understanding of consumers, their lived experiences, and the overall market system. However, these accounts are still rather “anthropo-” in the sense that all such phenomena can still be characterized with a Heideggerian romanticization of the lifeworld and “objectification of objects.’

Haraway (1991) prospectively responded to the question raised by Latour’s ontological ideal, precipitating a multitude of endeavors in consumer research in a rather stark and contentious manner by advocating a “border-free” world. She also emphasized resistance and revolution to reconfigure and reconstruct a system free from Westernized modes of organizing and interpreting the relationships between humans (and genders) and between humans and non-humans. In her mythological and metaphorical notion of cyborg, she not only refutes this calcified dualism but also promotes trespassing and even transgression as a means to liberate all the identities and designations used to reinforce past and current hierarchies. The “victim mentality” prevalent in the public and in the literature, which identifies technology as an actual threat to humanity, becomes no longer relevant in this account. Instead, Haraway stresses mutual responsibility between humans and machines.

Echoing Stiegler’s call to recognize humans as prosthetic beings, Haraway (1991, p. 303) is also cognizant of the challenging yet consequential epistemic condition wherein “mind, body and tool are on very intimate terms.’ Although her contribution to the overall discourse of human(ism) is often fallaciously reduced to animal studies because of its obvious presence in her work (e.g. Haraway 1989, 2003, 2008), recently culminating in the notion of Chthulucene³ (Haraway 2016), Haraway never ceases to concede to the reality whereby non-human species mean more than biological beings. She, along with Hayles (1999), questions whether technology (i.e. cochlear implants, prosthetics, pacemakers, crutches, canes, etc.) already belongs to the once exclusive realm of the body as a (potentially cybernetic) system to be designed and shared with “companion (non-human) species’ (see Haraway 2003). For Haraway, we are already cyborgized with Others, purposefully yet often unconsciously.

Who/what to call trans- and posthuman(ism)?

Previous discussions of the overall trajectory of philosophical progression and intermittent regression, when it comes to technology and the relations between humans and non-human entities, present a few indelible themes to the ongoing discourses in trans- and posthuman(ism). The Heideggerian view of technology as a particular way of “revealing,” along with Cartesian dualism, postphenomenology, network ontology, object-oriented ontology, and Harawayian sensibility together epitomize the increasingly labyrinthine collection of possibly commensurable but often dissociated theoretical stances to be constantly juggled to better situate our understanding of ourselves and our bodies.

This section discusses trans- and posthuman(ism) relative to their seemingly (fundamentally) common yet fundamentally (seemingly) distinct properties and qualities based on a historical and cultural understanding of the relevant technologies and the philosophy of technology in general. Nonetheless, one must recognize the evanescent nature of these discussions of ideology, technology, politics, and practices around the new forms of life, and expect that humanity will emerge and oscillate between connection/disconnection, convergence/divergence, continuity/discontinuity, and creation/destruction (Lee 2019). The only element that will be consistent in any future discussions is transformation. Therefore, this section provides some material with which to consciously imagine the “texture” of a transhuman(ist) market that can become an “organically” sustainable system.

What follows here is a clear juxtaposition between transhuman(ism) and posthuman(ism) to (1) minimize unjustified, inadvertent interchangeability of the two philosophies; (2) identify intersections among current biotechnology, market(ing) capabilities, and consumers’ biological and sociocultural aspirations and reservations; and (3) accordingly suggest research orientations in the transhuman market that can arguably serve as the foundational premise for posthuman projects, albeit with a marked gap when it comes to viewing human-technology relations.

Fukuyama and his perceived danger

The most conservative and aphoristic stance toward trans- and posthumanism is found in Fukuyama’s (2002) contribution to the pertinent discourse. By amenably invoking the genuinely confrontational concept of posthuman, Fukuyama questioned the essence of humanity, which he called Factor X. He consistently warned of the predictably relentless commercial influence on life throughout his work. His most provocative forecast was that DNA will possibly become a public good that can be later privatized, or vice versa. Fukuyama (2004) presented yet another apocalyptic projection of life and humanity by reemphasizing the danger of the compromise between Factor X and commercial agendas. While continuously raising the alert about commercialized human enhancement through biotechnology and the newly forming politics around life (viz. biopolitics), Fukuyama showed little interest in conceptualizing and articulating what is meant by trans- and posthumanism. Rather, he used the terms quite interchangeably. For some, including Fukuyama (2002, 2004), defining these terms and distinguishing between the two is a case of gesture politics, meant to introduce, familiarize, and embed these ideas and practices in the current culture by camouflaging them with morphological freedom for transcendence that can be highly marketable by corporate elites and current incumbents (Mazarakis 2016).

(A)political juxtaposition and anamorphosis

From a critical standpoint, transhumanism and posthumanism share the idea that human is a malleable and transformable condition (Ferrando 2013). However, the most significant divergence between the two philosophical, onto-existential, and cultural-historical perspectives is found in their views on technology (e.g. Hayles 1999). Transhumanism relies on technology and science in assembling its tenets and communicating the micro- and macro-level human projects, as seen in the Enlightenment’s promotion of progressivism and rationalism. This techno-scientific approach renders the transhuman orientation that can be encapsulated as, “[by transhumanism] humanism is not only reaffirmed but radicalized” (Ferrando 2019, p. 33). As such, the transhuman tradition tends to subscribe to a human-centered worldview and prescribe an instrumental slant on technology, which can inversely fuel the current frenzy in society based on a new market doctrine that corporate capitalism “parasitizes’ (e.g. Giesen 2018), namely, the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

What ideologically divides transhumanism and posthumanism in a subtle, yet unmistakably intelligible, fashion is posthumanism’s adherence to praxis: the ineluctable entanglement between practice and idea(l)s (e.g. Ferrando 2013). Arguably, transhumanism still espouses a dualistic conception of human(ism) and the subsequent proposal for relevant practices (Ferrando 2019). That is, whereas transhuman theories, conventions, and ideals collectively recognize libertarianism and democracy to ensure individual freedom and the right to enhance oneself, as well as equality and diversity (e.g. Bailey 2005; Hughes 2004), the basic practice of transhumanism can still be seen as “hyper-centering” or “re-centering” the human in relation to technology. Posthumanism, instead, marginalizes (in a relative sense) or, more precisely, neutralizes the human to retroactively and proactively include the historically marginalized (including technology, non-human, and other hybrids) in the discourse. Posthumanism embraces a multitude of centers rather than focusing on only one: the human (Ferrando 2013). From the posthumanism standpoint, then, transhumanism is highly “anthropo-technological” and promotes specific but provisional forms of the human. From transhumanism’s viewpoint, posthumanism is the ultimate end state within which transhuman ambitions can be fully realized (e.g. Braidotti 2013; Broderick 2013). More pronounced throughout current discourses of the two approaches to be(come) human in the unprecedentedly tentative techno-political environment is their mutual anamorphosis. Both can view and acknowledge each other but only with a special device from a specific angle: human-enhancing technology and optimism (c.f., Hayles 1999).

Departure from each other and potential reunion

Although one can argue that it is less essential to discernably define transhumanism and posthumanism, the extant literature provides sufficient material to at least nascently conceptualize them for the CCT scholarship. In general, transhumanists see gene editing (i.e. CRISPR-Cas9), genetic engineering (for “designer babies’), and biotechnology in general as opportunities that humanity can wholeheartedly embrace for the sake of human enhancement and as a right that anyone can exercise (e.g. Tegmark 2017). Areas of such enhancement include memory, mood, physical performance, and even morality. With the biological, socioeconomic, and political goals of overcoming mortality, improving quality of life, and eradicating discrimination (Vita-More 2020), transhumanism will rewrite the meaning of life and alter the traditional forms of life. The corollary will be to replace Darwinian evolution with biotechnologically updated ancient ambitions of eternal life that require improved human “features’ (Savulescu and Persson 2008). As such, transhumanism tends to stay active, positive, and practical.

Posthumanists have rather profoundly proposed only one (if any) way to move beyond the ever-obfuscating transhuman debate. In their view, humans cannot be defined by what they are not (Halberstam and Livingston 1995). Refuting Cartesian dualism and pursuing a more monistic rendering of what is ahead for humanity, posthumanists generally focus more on redefining human and much less on the (bio)technologies that may or may not facilitate or obstruct the process. Posthumanism takes a more anthropological approach by being less, if not anti-, anthropocentric, which is the paradoxical twist in posthuman discourses (e.g. Badmington 2001; Graham 2002). The quintessential division between the two discursive trajectories of transhumanism and posthumanism, if one were to identify it, arises when posthumanists remove technological determinism⁴ from their visions of the new world. Posthumanists also tend to embrace posthumanism as a new condition, one still transitory and subject to further (r)evolution, for humans to face (Pepperell 2003). This view also highlights the significance of intrinsic self-awareness rather than attempting to unpack the inherited baggage of potentially irreconcilable human-nonhuman relations. Most posthumanists regard both transhumanism and posthumanism as fluid ideologies without much political or philosophical criticism or prejudice toward the former. However, they see transhumanism as preceding and catalyzing the posthuman condition if “era-mentality” is still pragmatic for discursive development (e.g. Ferrando 2016; Fukuyama 2002; Pepperell 2003; Stock 2002).

Posthumanism does not brand previous versions of human(ism) (i.e. Enlightenment humanism and Renaissance humanism) as archaic but helps recognize a multitude of identities and support constructive differences (Halberstam and Livingston 1995). Otherness is the keyword for posthuman discourses, albeit still quite encrypted. Others in posthumanism include human, animal, machine, and all hybrids (Botler 2016).

Border crossings among conventionally separated entities and compartmentalized aspects of life are assumed and encouraged by posthumanism to resist the dominant ontological prescriptions and politics of identity that hierarchize ethnicity and gender and that disqualify non-humans from the realm of humanity (Haraway 2004). It is a constant blurring of the edges of all beings previously designed and redesigned. Posthumanists, represented mainly by Haraway, are determined to genealogically understand the politics, processes, and underlying conditions by which humans have (to) become posthumanists instead of precisely elucidating the meanings of posthuman(ism). The possibly most misconstrued property of posthumanism, however, is its allegedly glorifying picture of the future, which proposes new structures, orders, and relations that undermine the traditional and the current in the pursuit of utopian ideals (Gane and Haraway 2006). Whether or not it is a proper appropriation of posthumanism, it always intensely engages with politics, which makes it seem more progressive and even dissident. Figure 2 provides a visual summary of theoretical relationships among transhumanism, posthumanism, and transhuman marketing.

Figure 2. Transhumanism, posthumanism, and the transhuman market.

Which one is for us now?

Although transhumanists recognize that the ultimate state of human(ism) will be posthumanism, with which the critical marketing tradition and literature (e.g. Firat and Tadajewski 2009; Tadajeweski 2010) may resonate well, at this point in the discursive trajectory, it is evident that the transhuman vision provides more action-oriented (“proactionary” rather than based on the precautionary principle); specific (in terms of risks and benefits compared to posthumanism); practical (from simple diet and exercise programs to psychological self-improvement techniques); and theorizable (relative to artificial intelligence, robotics, and bio-medical products and techniques) ideas and opportunities for CCT scholarship than posthumanism (e.g. Belk et al., 2020; Bostrom 1998; Lilley 2013). Those opportunities further include enhancing human capabilities, developing more human-centered technologies in the all-inclusive network, introducing neuromarketing practices, revealing new relationships between objects and consumers, and commercializing transhuman rhetoric (e.g. Belk 2014; Corbett 1998; Reinares-Lara, Olarte-Pascual, Pelegrin-Borondo, and Pino 2016).

The extant marketing literature has recognized potentialities⁵ of human-enhancing and boundary-breaking biotechnologies and advanced computing capabilities; traced the relevant politics, cultures, and history; cautioned about inherent consumer resistance; and inquired about “what the future holds’ (e.g. Belk 2013; Belk et al., 2020; Botez et al., 2020; Giesler 2004; Hoffman and Novak 2018; Lai 2012; Schweitzer, Belk, Jordan, and Ortner 2019). Other studies support such a focus on transhuman opportunities by presenting empirical cases and observations made in the current market. Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are one of the most familiar and fast-growing transhuman technologies in the market. Takhar and Houston (2021) view ART as a marketplace icon that deserves more attention from the field for its liberating yet obfuscating nature. While in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a widely used type of ART, the documented, unknown known is the stigma, as well as the emotional, mental, physical, social, and financial trauma, that IVF survivors are forced to face, arguably due to structural and regulatory laxity (e.g. Mimoun, Trujillo-Torres, and Sobande 2022; Tsigdinos 2022; Zoll and Tsigdinos 2013). Another readily accessible representative transhuman technology is wearables. Through self-extensions to wearable technologies, consumers unconsciously join the transhuman movement through the quantification of the body and mind, which inevitably brings both advantages and concerns to consumers (Akdevelioglu, Hansen, and Venkatesh 2022).

There are also other empirical studies that elevate the discussion of transhuman phenomena in the market to a metaphysical level. For example, Lima, Pessoa, and Belk (2022) analyze biohacking as a manifestation of love, which mirrors the story of Prometheus. However, the study also recognizes the potential tragedy in the story, namely human commodification. Indeed, the transhuman body is always fluid and “in transition” because of the constant oscillation between losing control and regaining control of the body. Cheded, Liu, and Hopkinson (2022) discuss consumers’ lived experiences of such precarity due to their at-genetic-risk bodies that complicate the maintenance of consumer sovereignty, which in turn can be upheld by transhuman biotechnologies.

Transhuman technologies are, however, always subject to a critical reflection with regard to ableism, equality, and ethics. The point of departure for the reflection is to recognize that “too often discussions of bodily health focus solely on individuals and their decision-making, obscuring the powerful role played by structural and environmental forces’ (Almeling 2020, p. 476). One of the most under-realized and under-discussed structural “prescriptions” for a certain group of individuals can be found in communities of the disabled. The politics surrounding disability has normalized the idea that technology can/will provide the disabled with a “solution” or at least an opportunity for an improved life, which has become the default for many (e.g. Goodley 2020). While it is not untrue that the disabled may benefit from transhuman technologies, this view fails to appreciate the rich culture of the disabled, which presents special sensibilities, lifestyles, and even languages (e.g. Adams, Reiss, and Serline 2015). That is, with transhuman ideology embedded in the system, technocratic institutions disable people without disabilities from realizing that they are also victims of ableism. This acute realization becomes much more severe when equal access and stigmatization issues surface, which naturally call for ethical consideration as well.

As such, transhuman(ism) allows sufficient potentiality for further theorization and practicality as to not overwhelm or distress the literature or the market by engaging with the market’s current offerings. With the qualities and properties of transhuman(ism), the current market system could critically transform itself to reorganize a new sociotechnical environment wherein classes, races, genders, historical categorizations, and human limitations are constantly problematized.

Based on the prospect of synthetic biology, Church and Regis (2012) book, Regenesis, outlines unique possibilities for the marketing discipline and identifies the advantages of accepting the new portrayal of humans in the manner we have seen in history: “The industrial revolution that the Luddites tried to prevent in 1811 has brought us enormous benefits’ (p. 241). Considering the rate and coverage of the current biotechnical breakthroughs that must be internalized first by the market and consumers, the level and scope of criticality required in any post-anthropocentric discourse (e.g. Belk 2016) in consumer research will inevitably emerge in concert with inquiries and proposals by transhumanism (e.g. Belk et al., 2020) – which will eventually be contested and advanced by posthuman criticality.

Therefore, the transhuman market is expected to embrace the organizing principles and practices in the new market environment based on philosophies and values that help enhance human potential, improve life conditions, reduce risks, protect human rights, support the well-being of all beings, promote multiplicity, and advocate morphological freedom with the utmost emphasis on ethics and responsibility. Accordingly, transhuman marketing can nurture techno-socio-cultural activities to design and innovate human-enhancing and -emancipating technologies; help set practical and responsible standards for relevant products and services; educate consumers and stakeholders; monitor threats and assess risks; and critically engage in enabling and empowering all humans (both natural and enhanced) to pursue better, healthier, and longer lives by acknowledging their agency to modify and improve the body and the mind through a variety of bio-synthetic technologies in conjunction with sophisticated computing. Such a prospective view of the transhuman market and marketing is rather transient and remains inarguably pliable.

Recognition and inclusion as transhuman morality and ethics

Levinas (1969) introduced the concept of the face to explain the historical persistence of antagonism when discussing ethical issues. He saw the nature of our being as inherently that of a terror or at least violence to others because of the competitive nature of our lives. Ethics in this sense signifies that the justification of one’s own being must precede the justification of the Other. Surely, the Other ought to recognize the same, leading the discussion to what Derrida (1999) called undecidability, which itself resonates with the notion of indeterminacy (see Dougherty 2016 for indeterminacy). Derrida argued that there is a tendency to call for more trouble by trying to decide anything in ethics. Ethical decisions will always involve oppositional ideas and conflicting values, which is not discursively ideal.

In all scenarios of the transhuman future, biopolitics (c.f. Foucault 2008) is expected to serve as a dividing force among the populace. It will be gloriously surprising if global corporations choose not to manipulate societal divisions to maximize their profit and jockey for current and future control of the transhuman market, as seen in the agricultural and natural resources market. Divisions are anticipated between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to transhuman products/services, between proponents and opponents of the idea, between the public and intellectuals, West and East, the global North and South, governments and their people, current and future generations, the enhanced and the natural, the celebrating and the critical, and possibly between marketers and consumers of enhancement (e.g. Bostrom and Savulescu 2009). Consequently, moral and ethical concerns will haunt humanity and the market with a barrage of dystopian and apocalyptic prophecies that will prioritize “how to be” over “what to be.”

As in the traditional market(ing), the transhuman market(ing) presents risks to all stakeholders of society and to consumers in particular (Stanton et al., 2017). The term consumer carries an enormous historical and theoretical baggage but no longer exclusively signifies human-centricity, nor relates to human purity (e.g. Feathersone and Burrows 1995), as recognized in the prospective view of transhuman market(ing). Among all the perceived risks to consumers, the existential one will be particularly dreadful because most individuals have never faced or conceived an ontological experiment on this scale, either to themselves or to humanity as a whole. A few transhuman(ist) scholars, such as Bostrom (2001, p. 1) and O’Connell (2017), have elucidated the immanent and potentially imminent existential risk as one that can bring “global” and “terminal” consequences, which could include the annihilation of mankind and the mass destruction of civilization. More specifically, Bostrom (2001) lists dreadful scenarios that describe human extinction and different versions and levels of posthumanity in which we lose ideals and values to varying degrees. He also underscores the unavoidable interface between transhumanism and moral and ethical dilemmas that tend to involve inequality, mass homogenization, and bodies as public goods.

Existential risks need to be discussed and understood with the awareness that, to a certain degree, any existence will become a co-existence of multiple identities and entities. This demands one struggle with “co-existential biontology” (bi as in two and bio as in biology) within oneself, and another struggle in relationships with “the third” or the Other – so-called enhanced or modified humans (e.g. Gunkel 2018). No further emphasis can be given to morality and ethics when technologies for “synthetic beings’ and/or “organic machines’ are marketed and become part of our daily lives without us knowing what constitutes human in the future. It is also apparent that ethical concerns have been the most popular issues in trans- and posthuman discourses, not necessarily because they are the most critical considerations (although surely they are among them), but because there is nothing to (or that can) be irrevocably decided. The core feature and underlying condition of transhuman ethics may be ethical indeterminacy, which connotes a conflict within an agent with complete moral and ethical statuses. Acknowledging such an intrinsic characteristic of morality and ethics, this section unpacks the intricacy of the moral dimension of transhuman marketing through a postphenomenological perspective.

At the same time, in the context of the current essay, a juxtaposition (albeit brief) of transhuman ethics to that of posthumanism is also warranted. Posthuman ethics relies on (power) relations, forces, and affects to challenge the human-centeredness and exclusivity of morality and ethics (MacCormack 2016; Mulcahy 2022). More precisely, it problematizes negativity and rejection and endorses affirmative values (i.e. emancipatory, creative subject-formation and the contingent, nomadic process of being and becoming) for “transversal subject assemblages’ (Braidotti 2019, p. 41). In relation to NBIC integration, posthumanism finds affirmative ethics to be the counterbalance to capitalism’s relentless encroachment on the ethical domain of life. In alignment with the canon of posthumanism, affirmative ethics embraces “immanent inter-connections and generative differences’ for “minoritarian subjects’ that have been unaccounted for in the discourse of ethics (Braidotti 2019, p. 52). In essence, posthuman ethics approaches a critique and even a rejection of the historically normalized version of ethics bound solely to morally normative human nature, which does not necessarily crystallize a specific ethical “jurisdiction or constitution” compared to relatively more sensible and effectual transhuman ethics.

In what follows, a potential moral and ethical (re)positioning of the transhuman market(ing) is sought mainly through postphenomenology. It should be noted that this is not an attempt to engender prescribed, systemized, or grandiose morality and ethics as seen in Arvidsson’s (2009) blueprint for an ethical economy that transcends the current neoliberal market economy with virtue and positivity, which Zwick (2013) later critiqued for longing for utopian ideals without sufficient practicality.

Postphenomenology for transhuman ethics

As previously observed, Ihde’s (2009) novel approach to the philosophy of technology with a newly coined term, postphenomenology, speaks directly to the eternal oscillation between irreconcilable terms and perspectives. Ihde’s (2009) new account advanced the overall discourse of morality/ethics and (in) technology by expanding a few critical propositions and sensibilities. His idea for more specific discourses of morality relative to technology is linked to the Heideggerian rejection of the idea that “mind” can/will allow the subject to experience the world without being situated (Heidegger 1927 [1996]). Merleau-Ponty (1962) furthered this view, claiming that technology (tools or objects, such as eyeglasses or hearing aids) conditions and shapes the way we perceive and experience the world (even without our approval, as in the case of the disabled). Inspired by these views of technology that create “embodied relations’ to the world, Ihde (2009) also recognized “hermeneutic relations’ that enable us to “read and interpret” the world through technology (e.g. Fitbit, barometer, and citation indexes). As such, postphenomenology “extrapolates’ phenomenological traditions centered on lived experience and embodiment with more material and practical things and technological artifacts.

Because postphenomenology still attends to lived experience, it also attends to the critique of agency that is always relative to and interlaced with other actors and systems (Verbeek 2011). Postphenomenology also considers that technology and systems are used and perceived in a multitude of contexts and with distinguishable purposes (e.g. Ihde 1993; Selinger 2006). These two characteristics of postphenomenology allow one to recognize the moment at which human relations to and interactions with technology naturally effectuate a context with a high moral overtone (e.g. Verbeek 2011). A famous story by Bruno Latour repudiating the National Rifle Association’s rhetoric, “Guns don’t kill people, people do,” poignantly reveals that objects and technologies are impregnated with agency to be hybridized with that of man, hence the word gunman (Latour 1999, p. 176). They (the gun and the man) kill people together, never alone. Technology can (im)moralize humans; the opposite is also said to be true. Verbeek (2008b) further scrutinized this intricate moral relation, questioning technologically mediated lived experiences (akin to Idhe’s hermeneutic relations) as “distorted morality” per se. To better understand Verbeek’s account, it is necessary to consider his renowned example of obstetric ultrasound. The visualization (through technology) of the fetus makes the fetus an object subject to a decision that can be overwhelmingly objective or subjective as well as highly (im)moral. The parents’ (and doctors’) worldviews, intentions, and values are ethically tested because of the technology that scientifically urges them to make the decision, similar to the situation in which a (wo)man is a holding a gun and confronting the choice to shoot or not to shoot him/herself or others.

Through these perspectives and examples, postphenomenology demonstrates that morality and ethics can be(come) a new competitive environment of the transhuman market. The decision-oriented view of morality and ethics (which makes it possible to analyze the moment of choice as a mere snapshot, providing the rubric and metric of a moral framework and ethical enactment) tends to reduce the moral and ethical domain of life to a subsystem of responsibility. In this view, reckless accessories and involuntary co-conspirators are “not guilty” or are at least “commutated” (e.g. Vaughan 1996). What the postphenomenological perspective suggests for transhuman ambitions is that one question the structures, systems, sensibilities, and practices that co-constitute morality with our agency and that one be aware of the sociotechnical processes by which morality is embodied and enacted to project something more than responsibilities and consequences (e.g. Latour 2002). The something here has tended to be an uncannily compelling principle/state and, at the same time, the most elusive ideal of all time, which only compounds the previously mentioned notions of indeterminability or the undecidability of morality and ethics. However, what needs to be avoided at all costs is being blasé about being at an impasse. Constant interest and proactive participation from transhuman marketing in the process of revising morality and ethics will help further positivize the new market.

Virtue, possible?

Rather than essentializing transhuman marketing ethics within the positive ethics tradition, postphenomenology again presents insights aligned with virtue ethics, as a classical ethics theory that problematizes the decision- and consequence-laden nature of the sedimented ethical perspective (positive ethics) typical in business and STEM fields (e.g. Verbeek 2011). In practice, particularly, and in the absence of contemplation, it should be clear that conventional ethical codes will be casually violated in the market and that new ones will arrive at the expense of the meanings, values, sensibilities, traditions, and institutions humanity has developed. However, the concern is not the loss of ethics to which we have adhered but again the process of writing new ethical codes. Transhumanism will inevitably accelerate the emergence of new hierarchies that inadvertently promote unequal representation and uneven opportunities for different(iated) populations (e.g. MacCormack 2016). It is imperative to recognize that the “cleansing” function of ethics may have reached its term. The renewed ethics will stress the “inclusion” feature, especially when transhuman ideologies, practices, and actors become embedded in the market system. Postphenomenology, recognizing the entanglement among our (moral) agency, our varied individual relations with technology (i.e. embodied and hermeneutic relations), and the teleological variations of science and technology, retracts the discursive string of ethics in the transhuman market(ing) back to the moral character and potency of the person (e.g. engineers, doctors, marketers, consumers, and policymakers), as emphasized in virtue ethics (e.g. Verbeek 2008a, 2008b, 2011).

Understandably, some might question the arguably idealistic and even Panglossian stance of postphenomenology equipped with virtue ethics that one can hold while expecting transhuman market(ing) to be “just fine” in terms of moral judgment and ethical performance. This is only a valid concern when considering the prevailing attribution of moral judgment and ethical performance by irresponsible or nonchalant, if not immoral, parties (i.e. marketers and consumers) to externalities. What is crucial to know, however, is that transhuman technologies and marketing practices will considerably differ from current ones in that morality will become more acute in individual interactions. Ethics as a collective and organizational delivery of morality will hinge on actors’ moral agency and performance in the new sociotechnical environment (e.g. Fukuyama 2002; Harris 2007; Hughes 2004).

Despite such a recognition, it is conceivable that disapproval toward excessive bodily mutations would be less severe and profound than that toward (parents of) designer babies or biohacked individuals. Unequal distribution of wealth will be treated as far less concerning than unequal access to superior genes or more sophisticated brain implants. Owners (partners) of different types of sexbots will possibly be judged in comparison to sex offenders. Cyborgs, humanoids, and other hybrid forms existing between nature and culture will face a struggle for their rights, as have humans throughout history. Although this new reality only augments moral dilemmas, many of us still can recognize and sympathize with these Others, as demonstrated in a recent example: a centipede-looking military robot (which the soldiers had named) was programmed to wander into a field and detonate land mines until all its legs were blown off. The Army commander terminated the mission, calling the human act to the robot “inhumane” (Heller 2016).

Recognizing the Other is deemed the prerequisite to constitute the new reality. However, it can hardly be denied that resistant, if not repulsed, is usually the first word that comes to mind when describing the public’s general sentiment toward extensive modifications to and control of the body, such as human cloning. The obscure ethical dimension of these technologies is such that both the technology and the cloned human being are subject to morality. To assume that the products of what humans do and make cannot disrupt morality and ethics, which are expected to calcify over time, is quite an “externalist” perspective (Verbeek 2011). We can and should moralize and “ethicize” the human-enhancing and -transforming technologies and the system that permits them, but not the outcomes that already do and will exist. The technologies in the market intended to embody morphological freedom and the pursuit of transcendence will remain controversial relative to morality and ethics. Transhuman market(ing) will be incessantly asked to respond to moral debates and ethical questions. An engaging and self-reflecting approach must be taken to uphold the value of inclusion.

Discussion and implications: From everyman to the Übermensch.⁶

As indicated by the notion of extropy, biomaterialism, as the ultimate version of materialism, is burgeoning (More and Vita-More 2013). Bodily materials and artifacts (the transcendentals) are up for sale. Body and mind have become subject to constant modifications, to the extent that one may no longer recognize oneself. One can unhesitatingly argue that the transhuman market is the very site of this undertaking. Thus, further efforts to bring more relevant discourses to transhuman market(ing), accompanied by theoretical and pragmatic considerations, are imperative to critically engage with this understudied environment.

Given the complexities arising from philosophical concerns, theoretical dispersiveness, moral/ethical stickiness, socio-political uncertainties, cultural eccentricity, and practical variations of transhuman idea(l)s, future research should delve further into the ways in which transhuman marketing can better partake in the proliferation of transhumanism as an emblem of Regenesis (Church and Regis 2012) through sociocultural, politico-historical, and onto-existential provocations to “democratically confining” conceptions of body and mind. To address such complexities, a few virtually assumed, if not highly ossified, concepts need to be carefully examined.

Choosing choice

First, what is choice? How can we re-conceptualize and better comprehend this centuries-old term critical to explaining what humans do as consumers and marketers with agency? Is choice simply the opposite of (bio-genetical) chance in the transhuman market, as Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler (2000) problematized, or is it a socio-political reflex to the potential (dis)advantages or premonition of new grand narratives? Whether one or all of these alternative explanations, choice has become a (s)word more encompassing and penetrating than ever imagined; as not merely a (un)conscious action but a mode of being, it can iron, ripple, or rend the socio-politico-cultural fabric of society.

It is important to discuss whether any choice will still be made by a sovereign subject exerting agency to claim an identity. Psychoanalysis adds to discussions on choice by pointing to it as the cause, consequence, and solution in the current narratives and discourses about consumption (e.g. Chatzidakis 2015; Cluley and Dunne 2012; Gabriel 2015). Lacanian psychoanalysis identifies a trinity of reality: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real (Julien 1994). The symbolic consists of language-mediated norms, rules, expectations, traditions, morals, ethics, religious doctrines, and laws. It has been regarded as more or less “untouchable” or “stable” for individuals with desires that must be reconciled through the imaginary and the real to constitute reality. The big Other, which has always existed in the symbolic realm of reality, is embodied and becomes relevant only when the subject acknowledges its existence (Zizek 2006). That is, individual choices may have always been an epiphenomenon of collisions between the big Other and the collective imaginary, regardless of the individual’s belief in sovereignty and agency. Bio-synthetic technology will inundate the market with (too) many choices for identities rooted in modern fantasies and primal desires. This inundation can only amplify the illusion of free choice and nourish the capitalist market society that tends to require neoliberal consumer subjects be “on their own” when it comes to their choices and their consequences. Ergo, the market system (currently the big Other) may become the “Bigger Other” that procreates deifying tools and techniques for more and better control of the populace in collusion with democratic institutions.

The seemingly narrow but bottomless crevice between “agentic” choices and “false free choices’ can be seen in some starkly oppugnant views of bio-synthetic technological possibilities: “Death is, to me, an obscenity, . . . and illness, disability, and senescence is biological slavery” (Young 2006, p. 15, 40), as opposed to “the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding” (Sandel 2007, p. 85). Speculatively, choices regarding body and mind may no longer matter because one will be able to advance, defer, and/or retrospectively/prospectively alter their consequences. The choices we tend to think we are making can also be subsumed under the intentionalities, capabilities, and agency of bio-synthetic technology, a case not dissimilar from the notion of “algorithmic disappearing of marketing” (see Darmody and Zwick 2020). Morality and ethics also have always been an integral aspect of choice, but probably never to this extent. Consequently, another question arises: Is choice in the transhuman market still recognizable as the same, even when, in this context, an individual choice can disrupt the entire system (imagine a covert operation using gene drive)? Drugs, guns, and gas-guzzling vehicles have been consumed at one’s individual choice and pleasure under a wearisome moral overtone. Evidently, one of many potentialities for reconceiving choice is to simply regress back to a choice model based on the neoliberal responsibilization of consumer subjects (e.g. Coskuner-Balli 2020; Giesler and Veresiu 2014), which may help justify the profit-driven and control-ridden experiment occurring in the market. Future research may show us other options.

Matter

Are (do) body and material still matter without one another? In marketing and consumer research, materiality has been externalized as something economically, socially, and culturally effective (e.g. Chitakunye and Maclaran 2014; Huff, Humphreys, and Wilner 2021). It is embodied to present (not necessarily represent) a type of matter lacking the dynamism of inter- and intra-active becoming. Undoubtedly, network ontology and object-oriented ontology have supplemented such a view on materiality in the literature. However, in the transhuman market, materiality is expected to be more cellular and protean, which inevitably redirects us to the stealth notion of the “denial of the materiality of the bodily self” in some (if not many) postmodern theories that only recognize the body as cultural material (Braidotti 2000, p. 160). At the same time, and to a certain degree, transcendental humanism still overshadows the transhuman market, in the sense that humans can transcend the material self and defy the choices of nature (chance). The new materiality in the transhuman market, therefore, will need to be treated in a less paradoxical manner, potentially embracing the concomitant denial and pursuit of the materiality of the body. In response to this convolution, new materialism can offer some insights into how one can explicate the concrete, yet fluid, materialized mind and corporal matter sought in the transhuman market. Butler’s (1993) poignant criticism of the failure of materialism may well be the preamble to invite new materialism into the current discussion.

The “process of materialization” (Butler 1993) can help transhuman marketing proactively engage in the upcoming transformations in humanity and in the market. The process is an interplay of actors that does not prioritize One over the Other, neither the process itself nor the materialization in a mechanical sense. Instead, the process is discursive and normalizing forces called matter. A new sensibility is required to stay in the process and appreciate the bodies and materials coming together, as this process “stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter” and always destabilizes what has been done (Butler 1993, p. 9). Matter also cuts across materiality as new materialism aims to critique its singularized representation of matter (Dolphin and Tuin 2012). New materialism makes micro but consequential incisions to the traditions of dualism and dialectical materialism, such that materiality matters as it proscribes multiple representations of matter (e.g. Zizek 2014). That is to say, objects, technologies, humans, hybrids, and many Others in the transhuman market all (become) matter as they (re)present what they are and what they traditionally are not.

With respect to the new sensibility and matter, the predictable struggle the market will undergo is that of harboring both stabilization and destabilization processes. The once subject-centered humanism has been destabilized by newly formed ideals and ideologies that attempt to (re)enlighten and (re)emancipate humans, which creates an immense opportunity in the market. It is now time to stabilize some anticipated reverberations and even agitations in the market. The agential realism Barad (2007) introduced can be crucial to reconceiving and reorganizing the market for transhuman(ism) because it can also offer some practical reflections and future research avenues. Based on a relational ontology, agential realism helps recognize all kinds of matter (e.g. bodily materials, objects, biotechnologies) as agents that are interdependent with everyman, Übermensch, and every -thing and -body, as well as everything in between. Although it might be more germane to posthumanist perspectives, acknowledgment of non- or less- human actants and their agential performativity is still relevant in the transhuman market because of the ontological and practical entanglement between the creator and the created. Humans have allowed technology to develop to the point that they continue to be apprehensive that tomorrow may differ greatly from today. Humans are innately antagonistic (in varying degrees) to differences, and transhumanism proposes the ultimate difference: a different me and different others who used to be like me. This anxiety and tension, which can manifest into real-world complications, necessitate a system that can provide potentialities. Future research can/should initiate a more relevant discourse in the search for potentialities.

Transformation

Transformation – one of the most overworked concepts when it comes to various topics (networks, transformative consumer research, communities, consumer responsibility, etc.) in consumer research (e.g. Epp and Price 2010; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Price, Coulter, Strizhakova, and Schultz 2018; Tian et al., 2014) – has faced its own transformation in relation to transcendence as a characteristic, the end state, and/or an ideology espoused by transhumanism. Transhuman transformation is radical(ized) in many ways. Politics, sociality, power relations, and the current cultural landscape will be challenged, with the compelling likelihood that all bio-synthetic-technological transformations may be transcendental in personal (bio-evolutionary), cosmic, and/or religious spheres of life. When transformation in the transhuman market still signifies a reorganization, escape, progression, (r)evolution, and sometimes resolution, the resulting transcendence can be more than bodily and personal. If it merely remains corporal and private, this transcendence will be a transgression of the future of humanity portrayed by transhumanism. This is not to suggest a grand vision of civitas that connotes justice, equality, progress, virtue, civility, and citizenship, in the sense that Hughes (2004) once imagined that civitas transcendence would bring about perfectible bodies and the perfectible world. Rather, what we need here is a new lexicon with which we can theorize the extremely precarious relationship (balance?) between transcendence and transgression effectuated by transhuman transformation. It appears almost certain that neither transcendence nor transgression but some state and condition that we can only call future will ask future research for vocabulary to better appreciate and conceptualize the subtleties and nuances of the “transformed” transformation.

Conclusion

It can be painful to admit that we have lost or forgone the meaning of human (nature) once agreed upon as something complete and not a work-in-progress. Many react to this loss or desertion with a fin-de-siècle sentiment that presages numbness and decadence in literary conventions. However, transhumanism is more real and imminent than commonly described, in the sense that we will soon live trans-lives in a variety of modes and with discernible levels. Technologies are not programmed to wait. They advance themselves as actants with an intentionality that is potentially incongruent with that of the human developer. Technologies will favor those in the “right” bodily categories with coordinative minds. The transhuman market can/should house the dual meaning of inclusion: accepting all bodies and respecting all minds. That is, this work should help acknowledge different stances (minds) one (researchers and consumers) can take in this new world that offers unlimited possibilities. A liberatory view, a celebratory mode, a participatory approach, and critical engagement vis-à-vis transhumanism will co-exist. It would be imprudent and futile to identify the stance that most will take, but the curiosity, reflection, resistance, optimism, pessimism, nihilism, solipsism, opportunism, and critique around transhumanism can be integrated into a creative process and system that benefits all. At this turn, the only difference is that the integration process involves actors and actants (corporeal, virtual, material, and hybrid) that thus far have been nonexistent.

The perceived threat to the market is that promoting transcendence may be the only role it is expected to perform because all other roles may become irrelevant, or at least they may be performed by what we have not yet encountered. The market will still exist without its traditional roles that once embodied experiences, facilitated better lives, and cherished interactions and relationships. The market system and its performance may be passé when it comes to championing the transcendentals without transcending its own properties and qualities. This may be equally true in terms of the relevant scholarship. Nonetheless, this essay does not feed on the residues of palatial visions, grand narratives, and clashes among old and new perspectives. It instead aims to prospectively “feedback” into the history and literature with transhuman substance. Shaping transhuman market(ing) will be onerous, both theoretically and practically, but tolerance and acceptance will help us (all inclusively) reconfigure the market for our new flesh and spirit.

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Soonkwan Hong

Soonkwan Hong is an associate professor of marketing and the associate director of the Institute for Policy, Ethics and Culture at Michigan Technological University. His research focuses on sociocultural and ideological aspects of consumption, which should facilitate our understanding of a variety of consumption practices, consumers' lived experiences, and stylization of their lives. Currently, he studies algorithmic consumer culture, transhuman marketing, and sustainable consumption. His research interests also extend to the globalization of popular culture. He has published in many international journals and recently published a co-edited book, Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Are Transforming Everyday Life.

Notes

1 Extropianism is developed based on the Principles of Extropy, where the concept of extropy is defined as the extent of living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement. The Principles of Extropy consist of a handful of principles (or values or perspectives that codify proactive, life-affirming, and life-promoting ideals supportive of transhumanism. (More, 2013, p. 5).

2 To access the text, I have to perform various physical actions – turn on the computer, call up the program, open it, etc. My body-as-a-verb can be understood, then, as the incorporated practices through which I interact with the computer and CRT screen. We can call this body the enacted body, because it is produced through the actions I perform. On the screen is an image of a body, which we can call the represented body. This body exists, however, only because of the intelligent machine that is mediating between the represented and enacted bodies. It is important not to underestimate the importance of the intelligent machine as an active agent in this process; exactly what kind of machine it is, and what kinds of programs it runs, will have very significant impacts on my reading experience, from the way the represented body is imaged to how long it takes for the programs to load. My reading, then, is really a collective action performed through complex interactions between the enacted body, the intelligent agents running various programs in the machine, and the represented bodies in the text I am reading. Where is the “I” in this process? (https://v2.nl/archive/articles/how-does-it-feel-to-be-posthuman).

3 In general, the Chthulucene is an era (with no time nor history) in which the human race will confront its arrogance and “superiority”. More specifically, “The Chthulucene is the era in which humans will make kin with tentacles, spiders, bacteria, different ways of perceiving, living and dying, and becoming-with in n-dimensional time-spaces” (Shields 2018). https://www.spaceandculture.com/2018/04/25/donna-haraway-staying-with-the-trouble-book-review-by-juan-guevara/.

4 Technological determinism projects a condition under which technology can/will answer all questions, which creates non-human conditions (Ellul 1964).

5 Potentialities call for moving beyond simply challenging and criticizing the dominant forms of organizing and emphasize that all such efforts remain constructive by demonstrating an imagined vision of what they could be (e.g. Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman 2009).

6 Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch (the Overman or Superman) is found in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The superiority of the man is never his physical ability but his moral determination to break from the prescribed morality in society and create a new one for the betterment of humanity.