Posthumanist Pedagogies: Toward an Ethics of the Non/Living

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Notes

1. These questions constitute the core of feminist new materialisms, represented by such theorists as Barad, Kirby, or Alaimo, among others.

2. As demonstrated in the work of Haraway, Braidotti, or Barad. However, there are many posthumanisms. Following Rossini (2006), I distinguish posthumanism as a critical strand of thought which rejects anthropocentrism and sees human and nonhuman as always already entangled in the multiplicity of mutual relations, from transhumanism, a current in contemporary theory and art which reinforces the old humanist narratives on human enhancement (yet, achieved through techno-pharmacological means), as it becomes clear in the work of Bostrom (2005).

3. This may best be explained through Barad's (2007) notion of ethico-onto-epistemology.

4. A contestable character of life may be exemplified by viruses—whether they count as living or non-living is still being discussed.

5. Founders of The Tissue Culture and Art Project.

6. These procedures consist mainly in contaminating the sculptures with bacteria, viruses, and fungi transferred through touch.

7. As the cultured tissues do not constitute autonomous organisms.

8. While engaging with Actor-Network Theory, Wolfe puts an emphasis on “thickening and deepening, rather than flattening” of ontology. There are qualitative differences between different forms of life; what happens in biomedical research matters more to a mammal used in this research than to a flea on her skin or a cage she lives in (p. 83).