Posthuman Ethics

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Chapter 1

o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e Posthuman Ethics a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . Posthuman w Ethics w w m o c . e t a g h Posthuman Ethics s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w Posthuman Ethics Posthuman Bodies m c o e . t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s Posthuman a . w w Ethics w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w

Posthuman Ethics

Posthuman theory asks in various ways what it means to be human in a time tim e where philosophy has become suspicious of claims about human subjectivity. Those subjects who were historically considered aberrant and our future lives becoming increasingly hybrid show we have always been and are continuously conti nuously transforming into posthumans. What are the ethical considerations of thinking the posthuman? asks not what the posthuman is, but how posthuman theory creates new, imaginative ways of understanding relations between lives. Ethics is a practice of activist, adaptive and creative interaction which avoids claims to overarching moral structures. Inherent in thinking posthuman ethics is the status of bodies as the site of lives inextricable from philosophy, thought, experiments in being and fantasies of the future. examines certain kinds of bodies to think new relations that offer liberty and a contemplation of the practices of power which have been exerted upon bodies. The privileged site of is historically and philosophically the oppressed site of life which does not register as entirely viable within humanist operations of knowledge, power and majoritarian systems. Michel Foucault states: ‘I wonder whether, before one poses the question of ideology, it wouldn’t be more materialist to study rst the question of the body and the effects of power on it’ (1980, 58). could have been called in reference to the crucial status of bodies in posthuman philosophy. The body, reconguring relation and ethical emergences of bodies beyond being received through representation, external and within consciousness negotiating reality through representative perception, is the foundation and the site of the event of the posthuman encounter. Thought and esh, the distance between bodies, and ethics constituted through aesthetics are three trajectories along which attempts to delimit prescriptive relations to formulate joyous extensions of expression and force by encounters with and events of alterity. Benedict Spinoza’s ethics directly challenges the Cartesian necessitation of the bifurcation between mind and body which act upon each other in turn. Whichever turn precedes the other, their alienation is complete and thus the distribution from internal body to the body of the polis as the state imposing upon docile bodies and obedient or resistant bodies acting upon the state failed to account for some basic but foundational tenets of the post-human: that there is no body without the mind and that they are not separate, because they are not separate they cannot be ordered hierarchically, that the mind as corporeal thus proves consciousness is not given, thereby will and affects are never entirely accounted for, predictable or discrete. Spinoza pre-empts the posthuman body which exceeds humanism, metaphysics © Copyrighted Material

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and God but in its most ethical emergence reminds us all we are is bodies with the m o c . capacity for experiencing more and less benecial affects and degrees of appetite. t e a g In Spinoza, will comes from the mind, appetite from the body, but these h are s a . w different ways of expressing the interactions which occur within and uniquely for w w each thing. The desire to persist is all that constitutes constitut es a thing and that which makes o m c . t e the thing unlike any other, which gives the thing its essence. Between athings the re g h s is no commonality except a harmony which enhances joy or exerci ses a . destruction. w Things are specic unto themselves and each interaction between w wthings creates further specicity. The endeavour to exist denes the existence of c . o mthe thing but the t e a nature of its existence is not transparent. t ransparent. Taking Taking the central notion of desire around g h s a . which much Continental Philosophy resonates, will of the mind – at once clear, w w w distinct and confused – and appetite of the body: m

o c . e t a g h is, in fact, nothing else but man’s essence, from the nature s of which necessarily a . follow all the results which tend to its preservation … w wfurther, further, between appetite w m and desire there is no difference … whatever increases or diminishes, helps or o c . t e hinders the power of activity in our body, the idea thereof increases or diminishes, a g h s a helps or hinders the power of thought in our mind. (Spinoza 1957, 36) . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m 1 o Posthuman Ethics c . e t a h g s a . 1 w w w Seigworth points points to the mistranslation mistranslation of affect, affect, which, which, in most English English editions of Spinoza o m translations is ‘emotion’. He describes the failure of singular emotion to account c . e for a taffectio and affectus and then the soul, which, from two to three become ‘multitudinous g h s affectivity’ (160) as described by Deleuze. Spinoza denes desire (from which all affects a . w w come) as already at least three by which all other emotions arise (1957, 37). It is clear

Gilles Deleuze summarizes Spinoza’s contribution by stating ‘what is action in the mind is necessarily an action in the body as well, and what is a passion in the body is necessarily nece ssarily a passion in the mind. mi nd. There is no primacy of one series over the other’ (Deleuze 1988b, 18). A thing’s essence comes from its capacity to act as a form of preservation. Preservation is developed by a thing’s sustenance of its essence. Preservation is essence and the capacity to act the freedom of the t hing as an involution of esh and mind. The tendency to preservation is what makes each thing a singular event of life, but preservation is of life alone, over its inherent nature or quality. Preservation is active as expressive and is separate from any notion of the preservation of a thing’s sameness to itself. For Spinoza thought is a thing’s power to increase, that is, to alter, transform, develop and expand, so the differentiation of the thing directly correlates with its liberty. Ethics as a system of relation makes each thing’s essence come from preservation irreducibly independent from conrmation of similarity to itself at each moment. The gift of liberty is allowing the power of the other to expand toward unknown futures. To diminish the other’s capacity to multiply and extend its capacities is in Spinoza hate. Hate is a form of pleasure – ‘he who conceives the object of his hate is destroyed will feel pleasure’ (1957, 41). Thus all force, both love and hate, is desire. And all force is affect. But further will base ethics on


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the premise that all conception is hateful ethics, in a deliberate truncated reading o m c . of Spinoza’s claim this book will claim that ‘he who conceive s the object destroys t e a g h s the object’, imposing a claim upon a body conditional on monodirectional a . w w exertions of perception as conception, limiting expressivity without limit. w Ethical encounters are different to Kant’s morality of benevolent totalizing c . o mascension t e a without qualication for which aesthetics (and thereby a certain denition g h s of representation and perception) is responsible. The distance, w a .even though w w unknowable, between things by which Kant and Hegel operate, m even taking into o c account Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s claim natural beauty is co e . equivalent with t a h g spiritual and artistic, is closed with Spinoza’s intimacy of organisms liberated or s a . w oppressed by expression of the other by the self and the openings to joy which w w 2 seek to expand through thought without knowledge. Serres opposes perception o m c . as a war waged against creation as an act of love: ‘The g a t etext on perception ends h s with conception’ (Serres 2000, 38–39). Further to this a . Spinoza says ‘ the world w would be much happier if men were as fully able to w wkeep silence as they are to o m speak ’ (1957, 30 original emphasis). Bodies in inextricable proximity involve a c . t e a g threefold ethical consideration – the critique of hthe detrimental effect a claim to s a . knowledge of another body perpetrates; address w as creative expressivity opening w w the capacity for the other to express; acknowledgement and celebration of the m o c . difcult new a-system of bio-relations as an t e ongoing, irresolvable but ethical for a h g desire. Fèlix Guattari calls this ‘sense being so, interactive, i nteractive, mediative project of s a . w w without signifcation’ signifcation’ (2011, 59), a language of sensation between. w o m c . t e a g h s a Unspoken Friendship . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m Seigworth, Deleuze and Spinoza each account for desire as expressivity, power, passion c . e t and g aaction while attending to its inexhaustible and mysterious multiplicity and mobility. h s a Primarily after Deleuze, Deleuze, a new vitalistic vitalistic triumverate of ethics ethics has been developed developed of . 2 w w wSpinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche.

‘As the colour of the human soul as well as the colour of human becomings and of cosmic magics, affects remain hazy, atmospheric and nevertheless perfectly apprehensible to the extent that it is characterized by the existence of threshold effects and reversals in polarity’ (Guattari, 1996b, 158). Just as Spinoza claims perfection is the nitude of the human mind whereas ‘nature does not work with an end in view’ (1957, 79), the liberated soul apprehends very well the perfection of something without needing to have made an exhausted judgement. Perfection is found in encounters with the nature of things and their nature is their expansive quality that therefore expands the qualities of thought of we who encounter. For Guattari, this ethics of perfection comes from threshold effects. The liminal encounter with the luminal body both expands a thing’s expressivity and allows the other to be without nitude, that is, without knowledge diminishing a thing’s capacity to preservation through its own essence free from the bondage of another ’s


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claim to know that essence. Ethical encounters with liminal bodies (of which our m o c . own is also always one) are good for both things. It is an act of love between things t e a g based on their difference. Thingness itself is hazy, hazy, atmospheric and fuzzy s hbut is a . w connected with and belongs harmoniously to all other planes of expression; ‘To w w assume that there was a power of being affected which dened the power of being bei ng o m c . affected of the whole universe is quite possible’ (Deleuze 1997, 9). a t e g Importantly Deleuze calls Spinoza’s a practical practical philosophy; philosophy; that is a . s ha philosophy philosophy w w of practice3, where ethics takes us away from the God toward which humanist w metaphysics aspires – be that capital, logic or religious dogma – c . o mtoward the esh t e a which constitutes life. The posthuman as an ethical practice is a hpractice toward life g s a . emergent without itself, or rather, lives – real, singular and connective, uniquely w w w predictable predictable development development and directly directly addressed addressed lives for which we seek to expand m o c . the capacity to express. ‘Spinoza projects an image of the t epositive afrmative life, a g h which stands in opposition to the semblances that men a sare content with’ (Deleuze . w 1988b, 12). For humanism’s compulsion to taxonomy w and hierarchy in science w m and religion, philosophy and art, semblance often c oemerges as resemblance. The . e eld of posthuman Ethics deal with life which g a tresembles nothing except itself h s and not consistent with itself temporally, only w a .tactically. Posthuman ethics sees w w as it acknowledges the inevitable the dividuation of life in opposition to identity, o mof ethical address and, in a seeming c connection between living bodies as the point . t e a g postmodern postmodern conundrum, conundrum, the individu individual al is constituted consti tuted only by its its connectio connection n to other h s a . w individuals. The connection is from where the ethical activation of the body is w w delivered from its place in the taxonomy matop which rides the human occurs. No body o c . e connection, no connection without another without mind, no individuality without t a g h s dividuated life with its own concomitant reality, no affect without expression, will as a . w w appetite beyond consciousness and, w perhaps most importantly, no thought or theory without materiality. Resonant with Spinozan ethics is Guattari’s emphasis on the o m c . e t a body as site site of machinic machinic operation operation between between knowledge knowledge and and esh. Guattari Guattari calls the the g h s a . act of interpretation interpreta tion or ‘knowing’ a body the massacre of the t he body. He writes: w w w o m c . the desires it produces that we wish to liberate from It is the body and t all e a g ‘foreign’ domination. It is ‘on that ground’ that we wish to ‘work’ for the h s a . w liberation of society. society w . There is no boundary between the two elements. I oppress w myself inasmuch as that I is the product of a system of oppression that extends o m c . to all aspects a t eof living... . We can no longer allow others to turn our mucous g h s membranes, a . our skin, all our sensitive area into occupied territory – territory w w controlled w and regimented by others, to which we are forbidden access. (1996a: 30–1) c . o m t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e 3 Writing Writing on Deleuze’ Deleuze’ss inuence on political activism is increasing. increasing. For a number a g of a . s hexamples of the interface of the political, activism and Deleuze see Svirsky’s edited w w collection of Deleuze Studies: Special Issue Issue on Deleuze and Political Activism (2010).


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As a post-structural invocation Continental philosophy’s emphasis on desire o mas c . constituting the expressive affects of subjectivity replaces volitional will from a t e a g h self-knowing human with the innite series’ of relational forces. Desiring a . sbodies w do not seek an object, but as an ethics of desire, interactive forces seek w w the best m o opening possible affects, those which bring joy. Liberty for the other is the joy of c . t e a the other’s capacity for expression without conditional attribution of equivalent g h s a . qualities which match the self or are subjugated through a failure of w equivalence. w w the territories If deconstruction challenges and critiques the machines that occupy m o c . of our appetite-esh then ethics seeks to resist that compulsion toward the e t a other. Maurice Blanchot describes ethics in this passivity s h g that is constituted a . w not by absence or powerlessness but friendship. Against responsibility for the w w other that needs to know to what we are responsible, friendship is the response o m c . t e a friendship unshared, without condition: ‘it is in friendship that I can respond, a g h s without reciprocity, friendship for that which has passed, leaving no trace. This a . w w is passivity’s response to the un-presence of the unknown’ (Blanchot, 1995: 27). w m o Passing and passivity evoke encounters beyond demand and within an absolute c . e t present/presence with a context deant of any h g apositive/negative possibility of s a . emergent qualied presence, just presence as un-presence, and thus t hus passivity, passivity, open w w w to unknowability, is the ethical activity of passivity. Their subtle relation is of the m o c . co-emergent and indivisible. Describing passivity as active shows the dynamism t e a g h of ethics and the quiet magnicence of grace. Charles Stivale’s interpretation of s a . w w[Blanchot’s] unpredictable” then, would force as affect states: ‘The force of “this w serve paradoxically as much as a potential for grasping the friend’s thought as it o m c . e t 72) Just as many Continental philosophers does to limit that accessibility’ (2008, a g h have associated creativity creativit y, thought w a . sand subjectivity beyond subjectivity beyond subjectication with a w kind of madness (schizoanalysis, wdelirium) Blanchot states:

o m c . t e a g but when ethics goes mad s hin its turn, as it must, what does it contribute if not a a . w safe conduct which allows w our conduct no rights, leaves us no space to move an w ensures us of no salvation? It allows only the endurance of a double patience, for m o c . patience is double too patience. (1995: 27) t e – speakable, unspeakable patience. a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w our o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w

Posthuman Ethics share in Continental philosophy’s end of master and metanarrative discourse, where the end of discourse opens up to life. In as much as Posthuman Ethics are ‘about’ certain forms of life, they are ultimately about the end of speaking of life as the beginning of lives being ethically open to living. Opening to bodies considered de-human, devolved, aberrant or outside requires a speakable patience which speaks only its own patience. The other is outside discourse therefore unspeakable. Our own human need for rights to equal some kind of equality pay-off which the other neither wants nor needs if it requires fullment of human criteria are need, not that of the other othe r. Blanchot points out that ethics is the madness of the doing/not doing, of passivity of a certain kind as activism, silence as allowing the other to be heard. Posthuman Ethics attend to the turn in Continental philosophy that when we speak of the I/Other we are speaking © Copyrighted Material

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of the self as its own othered multiplicity, that dialectics have little relevance and m o c . I/ opposition is discarded as inherent in the ethical turn. The space between the t e a g Other is one of inevitable connection and we are always and already othered/ h s a . w otherable, whether we belong to the bodies explored in Posthuman Ethics. w Indeed w it must always be remembered while reading Posthuman Ethics that any and all o m c . t e references to the other body refers to our bodies as those others othered. a My use of g h s the external referent is only onl y to avoid essentializing collectives. coll ectives. To To be afriend to esh . w w involves being friend to self, if the posthuman body is i s always taken w as specicity, neither lacking nor reducible to its perceived intent, but a kind c . o mof remembered t e a present which is also renewed as dissemblance. This act of friendship is to be friend g h s a . to subjectivity as concept. Experimenting the subject (both was self and concept) w w constitutes the third and most crucial of Guattari’s three ecologies, the others being o m c . social relations and environment (2000: 28). Guattari maligns signication as a t e a g h The desire for asemiotic social(ogical) terror slaughtering the body (1996a: 29). s a . w bodies and revolutionary consciousness means ‘we want to open our bodies to the w w m bodies of other people, to other people in general. cWe W o e want to let vibrations pass . t e among us, let energies circulate, allow desires to t o merge, so that we can all give free a g h s a reign, to our fantasies, our ecstasies’ ecstasie s’ (1996a: 34). bodie s lived in . Guattari sees the bodies w w w reality as material of desire because of their materiality; because they can bleed, m o c rupture, suffer and die and because signication can hurt while it oppresses. He . e t a does not see aestheticized bodies as more s h g or less revolutionary than minoritarian a . w bodies but part of similar tactics. The posthuman ethical body, body, ours and others, w w others as ours and all salient oscillations, need neither be object, problem nor m o c . even self-expressive subject but are a t eonly and always connectivities. This can be h g s explored through Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the concept when referring to the a . w w Other Person. w o m c . t e a The concept of The Other Person as expression of a possible world in a g h s a . consider the components of this eld for itself in a perceptual eld leads us wto w w new way. No longer being either subject of the eld nor object in the eld, the m o c . other person will become the condition under which not only subject and object e t a are redistributed but h g also gure and ground, margins and centre, moving object s a . w transitive and substantial, length and depth. (1994: 18) and reference point, w w m o c . t e a g h s Ethical Time a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w and m o c . t e a h g s a . w w

The prex post- seems to make little sense in contemporary culture. When all is post, post reduces all to a beyond that is both immanently immanently graspable graspable and imminently imminently aspired aspired toward, the human limiting hope against a gainst Spinoza’s denition of nature. Post theories establish a future-now. Post is what is to come what interrogates what has been what and what is. It is duplicitous of and treacherous to its seeming dependence on time. As post takes narrative and linearity as one of its hostages this is not an unsurprising treason. Post is inspired by many frustrations in philosophy – impatience impati ence at the speed © Copyrighted Material

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with which novelty may be introduced, a need not to further established trajectories o m c . but multiply multiply and fracture fracture them, a leap over a chasm for which no paths have yet a t ebeen g h s built toward a territory territory with which no one is familiar. familiar. In this renegade movement a . w w post also interrogates interrogates its motives for moving – demarcati demarcating ng the the blind blind spots win theory theory m which are presumed unimportant or non-existent, acknowledging and c . oreworking t e a the conditions under which knowledges emerge, decentring the homogenization g h s a . and unication of the ordering of ideas and perceived truths. By deconstructing the w w present present and being the nomadic, nomadic, parentless parentless destiny it refutes refutes taxonomy taxonom my w, genealogy genealogy and o guaranteed futurity. In its generative, reconnective comings post t e c .seeks to disorder a h g Lyotard’s seminal the ordering of thought converted to knowledge. Jean-François s a . w The Postmodern Condition traces the critics of post, in the case w of postmodernism, w m as crying out for a demand – the demand for a referent, objective reality, sense as o c . t e 73). What amalgamates transcendence, addressor, addressee and consensus (1984, a g h the disparate critics and their various, not necessarily a . scommensurable demands, w w is their need for order which expresses as desire for unity, identity, security and a w m o of post already arises here – consistent public perception (1984, 73). A conundrum c . e t a g the criticism of post is already postmodern in its disparity. One of the tactics these h s a . critics use is, rather than stand and ght, they liquidate the strengths of the affects of w w w postmodernism postmodernism’’s commitment commitment through through mixing mand merging merging postmodern postmodern experiments experiments o c . Lyotard cites the assimilation of the and creativity into a homogenous tepid dilution. t e a g avant-garde heritage by transavantgardism t ransavantgardism a s has one example. Again post conundrums . w w emerge. The mixing process Lyotard sees as destroying the avant-garde could be w perceived perceived as resonating resonating with the mixing process post culture performs performs through through some o mprocess c . e t of its key buzzwords – bricolage, hybridization, multiplicity. Lyotard’s is a crucial a g h s a warning. Even in its disparity critics . are unied, even in the multiplicities created w w w diluted and unrecognisable, even in a pseudothrough assimilation radicalism is m address through so-called new e c . otrans movements creativity is purged, and even t a g though the avant-garde has a heritage, its temporality is neither neit her genealogy nor linear. h s a . w This small example from Lyotard establishes a key premise of post – there is nothing w w necessarily post in post-theories, and there is nothing inherently inherent ly anti-post in histories o m c . of thought. In this t his way, there is no time in i n post, or, rather, post offers a different time. t e a g Time continues to a . s h haunt theories of the post. Katherine Hayles’ ubiquitous w w study of the posthuman is deantly retrospective in its title ‘How We Became w m o PostHuman’, which coalesces the ironic turn in posthuman theory with the c . e t a perversion of tracing a retrospective history where the post had already passed. h g s a . The nal chapter of Hayles book is where we receive the denition of the (being w w w where she asks ‘what nally are we to make of the posthuman? of) posthuman m o c . At the beginning of this book … at the end of the book …’ (283, my emphasis). e t a h g Some theorists doubly inverse post theory by their reinvention of (and potentially s a . w nostalgia w for) humanism and modernism. George Myerson sees ecopathology – a w kind o mof committed new reason deconstructing the destruction of ecologies, from c e . to self – as ‘a radical potential for an alternative modernism’ (56, original t earth a h g s emphasis). He titles his book Ecology and the End of Postmodernism. Time is a . w w wclearly a spectre which haunts post theories through our insistence on reversing © Copyrighted Material

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it in our posthuman futures, what we seek to be we have already become, and m o c . ending it in order to think anew through what we already thought we had ended. t e a g While time is not a major theme of this book, its persistence elucidates that in h s a . w all criticisms of and questions about the now is the postmodern splintering of w w grand narratives that have been and, importantly, threaten to be. This comes with o m c . t e the shocking realization that these narratives have always been postmodern in a g h s their disagreements and our post futures are not guaranteed to deliver us from a . w w unifying discourses but at worst smugly seduce us into seeing anything post as w m beyond what has been. The ordering of things does not cease c . oin our criticisms e t a of it. Time is not necessarily an important element of post theory, but it seems h g s an important element in how we think we should think w a .about post theory. 4 w w From what hopes does this belief come? Here is raised some of the not entirely o m c . denable, denitely non-exhaustible, perceived differences in denitions of the t e a g h primary posts which concern posthuman theory. theory. While aHayles sees the posthuman s . as already been this should not vindicate, or forget, w w wthe irrefutable compulsion m namely what has come to to a very specic kind of futurity in posthumanism, o c . t e be called ‘transhumanism’. Many cyber-theorists, and organizations, such as a g h s a Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist . Organization) which attempt to w w w think transhumanist futurity such as that of Extropy ethically and accountably, m o c embody (or disembody) a commitment to the t he . human which has overcome human e t a g ness primarily through overcoming nitude. In this way time also ceases to be a h s a . w spectre, but this futurity necessarily repudiates the now beyond its usefulness for an w w innite tomorrow(ing). Extropy could mbe described as the cyber-biotechnological o c . e version of humanist, transcendental a tpractice, while Humanity+ exhibits anxieties g h s about asymmetry in access, distribution and manipulation. mani pulation. Just as certain theorists a . w w see the posthuman as coming from w an outside imposed upon the base material of the human, so transhumant theory insinuates this cannot be enough, as if there o m c . e is an inherent aw in human g a tmateriality. A paradigmatic equivalence could be h s a . made here between phallogocentric economies of lack, where the absence of the w w w phallus or its threatened truncation or castration misses entirely the multiplicity m o c . and metamorphic morphological mucosity of the vulva (Luce Irigaray) and e t a alternate ways of reading the body at all (Antonin Artaud and Deleuze and h g s a . w Guattari).5 The symbolic to asignifying genitals (addressing sexual difference w w as the rst step away from the majoritarian human) seem almost quaint when o m c . thinking the new a t egrand narrative of the human hum an itself, thinking it in order to unthink g h s it, expunge it from its relationship with the humans who, at worst, question the a . w w category of the w human only in order to exclude any limitations or accountabilities in reference c . o mto immanent existences of other lives, including other ‘human’ lives, t e a be they considered majoritarian human or minoritarian esh. In the deication deicati on of g h s a . w w w 4 o m The main alternative to thinking time beyond deconstruction is found on the large c . t e of work on Bergson body Bergson and Deleuze’s Deleuze’s Bergsonianism. Bergsonianism. a g h s 5 For an attempt to resolve the apparent antagonism antagonism between between Irigaray’s Irigaray’s two lips and a . w w Deleuze and Guattari’s becoming woman see MacCormack’s ‘Becoming-Vulva’ (2010).


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biotechnology the cyborg’s cyborg’s attractive elements which can be found in the most o m c . rudimentary feminist, queer, post-colonial studies – the incomplete, the hybrid, t e the a g germinal through denial of access to signifying systems – are offered as a a . s hfuture w w made design for the innite human. It is as if all the very characteristics which w m o adamant minoritarians abject have been apprehended by biotechnology with an c . t e a forgetting of their former use as tools of oppression. g h s a . the cyborg. Why signifying systems hated the minoritarian is why they love w w w This is primarily due to the fact that both repudiate the human. Donna Haraway’s m o c inception of theories based on equivalences between cyborgs and e . women and to a t a g speciesist extent, animals) shows that suddenly the monstrous s hhybrid chimera and a . w the offspring that has no parents because its qualities do not conform to or obey the w w rules of the human(ist discourse), morally, logically, religiously, religiously , phallocentrically phallocentrical ly,, o m c . t e reproductively. Those who were the aberrations of society are now those the a g h s human seek to become. a .

w w w o m The [Haraway] posthuman is a means to substantiate and anthropomorphise c . t e a g the technological other into something that can h be embraced (and embrace s a . back) in light of the ‘building out’ of skill which characterizes technological w w w development. The resulting ‘loss of consent’ which occurs only serves to m o c . highlight the ‘incompleteness’ of our bodies t e … posthumanism places achieving a h g our full humanity (or full embodied awareness) as conditional to our ability to s a . w w that denes us) – information that can understand our own information (the data w m only be uncovered through the right c o technological system … the right means of . e t ‘full’ humanity. interface as a condition to achieving humanity. (Miccoli, 26, 40) a g h s a . w w w m c o e . t Our Posthuman Future s h g a a . w w w Our destiny [is] as creatures who modify themselves … it is thus impossible m o c . to talk about human a t erights – and therefore justice, politics and morality more g h s generally – without having some concept of what human beings actually are like a . w w as a species … human beings are free to shape their own behaviour because they w m o are cultural animals capable of self-modication. (6, 128) c . e t a h g s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s obligation is not conditional, but categorical; nor does it condition. Even when a . w w taken as an ‘effect’ of pure will, it cannot in turn be the ‘cause’ of an effect, of w

The main difference is a difference entirely premised on transcendental and thus pre-post discourse – that of human free will as dening its own self and its future. In Francis Fukuyama claims:

The issue of time is raised again. In Fukuyama’s post-theories will (as transcendent intent, not Spinoza’s conscious version of appetite) is retrospective – the regulation of already established technologies – and antagonistic to Lyotard’s suggestion of an ethical time. Fukayama, like many post-theories, reduces the future to the way the present present deals with technologies technologies already already established established – technically technically then the past – as directly and causally necessary as our only possible unfurling destiny. Lyotard Lyotard states:


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© Copyrighted Material an act for example which would result from it. Causality through freedom is m immediate, that is, without mediation, but also without recurrence … it will t e c . o a be said You ought to awaits a sequel, whether it is obedience or not, and thus h g s a . sketches out something possible to come, or a future. But this is also the case w w for w many phrases of other regimens … for instance, for cognitive phrases subjected m o c . e t to the procedure for establishing reality. reality. (1988, 126) a

g h s a . w w w m o c . e t a after h g s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e I am able to a g h s a . w w w o m c each in their own way . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w Posthuman o m c . e t a Ethics g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w

Post theory’s manipulation of and confusion over time grapples with this way of thinking the future beyond prescription. Dawne McCance, explains ‘[The Differend deals] with the problem of writing or speaking , that is, without any given rules’ (43). Time is an immanent now and the obligation to reection about which one can never speak and the authenticity of which one cannot verify, though speak and verify one must nonetheless do. The event is not the axis, but the denition of speech and verication metamorphose. ‘Our Posthuman Future’ is somewhat anathema. In posthuman theory we do have an obligation, but it is never what we think it is, because the ethical event cannot be known in advance. Similarly we are not aware of what we are capable of (Lyotard’s ) in reference to the obligation-capability event but Lyotard emphasizes pure ethical time obliges and enables one within the event of obligation – a singular and unique event – . This beautifully simple pure ethics of exceptional moment of the, this, one obligation as acknowledgement of and creativity toward connection coalesces will with ability, thus refuting the idea of human will as coming from a consistent idea of humanness and subjectivity, and obligation with condition, which seems particularly apt in the posthuman terrain where we do not yet know of what we are capable in specic reference to the ways in which we emerge with and as technologies of unpredictable futures. However, and here is both Lyotard’s Lyotard’s profound posthuman intervention and the premise of , this is already the case. Each entity is already that will based on precise ability which cannot be transferred to another entity and which is never clear to the entity itself until the moment of the event of obligation which in turn has never before been witnessed or required. The most ‘primitive’ or ordinary bodies operate in ethical time as a time never been before which is a postmodern, if not posthuman, apprehension of duration as rupture over chronology. chronology. Our anxieties about post theory come from their rapturous effect, so more than displacements, perhaps they are reminders of all the bodies and abilities of entities which the enlightenment, transcendental essence and modernity have needed to repress in order to maintain the integrity of the phantasy of their completion, a future which has not yet but will arrive. Posthuman will, after Lyotard, is that which de-establishes the human as a site both of a certain reality and the way the concept of the human has been privileged in constituting all reality at the expense of those who do not count as human. Ethical time resonates with post theories’ confusion, but confusion creates a consistency of ethical creativity and surprise as accountable demand that is not reduced to right or wrong response, correct operation of the awaited sequel, obedience or disobedience, or lament at non© Copyrighted Material

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foreclosure or resolution. We do not know what will happen and how we will o m c . respond. If posthuman theory has seen this as both a celebration and an anxiety t e a g h s then via Lyotard’s ethical time, our celebration may be of incommensurabilities a . w w of entities (including the incommensurability of an entity as to how it perceives w itself) as ourishing jubilant diversifying potentiality and anxiety as a c . o mhope for t e a the best possible force and consequence of creating new openings hwhich allow g s obligation events that access entities beyond their agreement with w a .categories of w the human. Put simply, if, as Fukuyama suggests posthumanism m wis embraced as o c . if we were not a power of human freedom (217) then we must ask, what happens e t a g h counted as human in the rst place? s a . w In one sense Fukuyama’s argument could not be further wfrom post-theory. His w conguration of the biotechnological human sees going beyond the human as a o m c . t e an obedient , sufcient, human right, human modication as an imperative of being a g h s normal human, and humans as inherently free, thus freedom should focus on further a . w w freedom found in extension of capabilities capabil ities and life. Where Fukuyama’s theories are w m o post is that the only thing humans should be thinking c . about is how to not be mortal e t a humans any longer by being eternal organisms. In h g stating humans are not hing more s a . than the freedom of force to shape what they are w(as a pre-ordained templat e rather w w than Spinoza’s non-conscious preservation m as essence), his elliptical argument o c . risks locating itself in an address to human a t erights dened by those who have the g right to dene humans by their capacity to a s halter them. The evolutionary imperative . w w of nonhuman animal to woman to man wto cyborg is explicit – how can a human expect human rights if a human does not o m see the development beyond humanity as c . t e For those who are yet to achieve the status what compels one to be a free human? a g h s a of human as it is dened legally the . idea of having access to technologies which w w w liberate the human enough to count, in Fukuyama’s denition, as human is utopian. o m c Fukuyama advocates biotechnological advance being in the power of the state in . t e a order for it to be used well. Nothing in Fukuyama’s argument demarcates it from h g s a . w enlightenment thought in its w essentializing of human subjectivity and those who w know best being those who dene that subjectivity, its limits and development. o m c . Where Lyotard asks ‘to t e what end’ Miccoli suggests ‘the more obvious critical a g h s posthuman answer would be ‘to achieve full embodied awareness’ (Miccoli, 75). a . w Miccoli’s argument w wis committed to an ethics of rights and his concept of bodily m awareness is not c . otranscendental humanism which happens to be trapped in or e t a Rather for him corporeality is simple and evident in that it is limited by a body. h g s all we are and w a .the very site where what we are is contested in brutal, oppressive w w ways. Full embodied awareness is absolutely present in Fukuyama’s dream, but m o c . as antagonistic to that dream – we must become posthuman so we can forget that t e a h g is esh, that bodies can feel cold, pain, hunger, suffering and ultimately all we are s a . w cease us w to be. Miccoli’s bodily awareness is not what a human body is, but that w it is o m and thus other humans have bodies which express and which affect each c e . Their essential qualities and nature do not make up bodily awareness, but t other. a h g s the a . devastatingly simple fact that we should be aware we are bodies is integral w w wto thinking rights, be they human or not. Lyotard’s differend embodies the body © Copyrighted Material

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that cannot speak in the language of the master, thus cannot be legitimized as m o c . a body. If that body speaks in the master’s language it concedes to the master t e a g ideology. Fukuyama places the use of biotechnology in the hands of the s hstate. a . w The minoritarian has no viable body in the eyes of the state. Postmodernism w w demands multivocal languages be legitimized, and far from making osure these m c . t e many vocalities are heard, it accepts understanding leads to legitimation through a g h assimilation, so the best we can do is our ethical best to negotiate a . s(for Lyotard w w through gaming) multiplicity premised on misunderstanding as creativit y between w m o vocalities. In terms of ‘sharing’, humans share nothing beyond c . what they can t e a hazard they might share, which, in decidedly posthuman ways, they also share g h s a . with elements and lives outside of what is considered human. In this sense the w w w posthuman is ethical e thical because it sees the human category as a purpose rather than o m c . a thing, and far from wanting to count as human, posthuman ethics seeks to count t e a g h the human or humanity, everything in spite of and in i n order to liberate life from, from , not s a . w but the effects of constituting, manipulating and continuing the category, category, taxonomy w w and genealogy of the ‘human’. The central question c o m‘what is the posthuman’ does . t e not ask what it is. We need a new verb, as yet g unthought. The posthuman ‘is’ a h s a everything that is not ‘human’, but it is also a reason the posthuman is a motive, a . w w w need, an opening movement. o m c . t e a g h s a . w On Afrmative Vitalism w w m o c . e Posthuman Ethics t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . Posthuman Ethics w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w Ethics o m c . vis-à-vis t e a h g s a . w Posthuman Ethics w

phrases phrases many of its suggestions suggestions tracing rst a path along a negative trajectory, or the trajectory of ‘not’. As arguably the germinal emergence of post-structur post-structuralism, alism, deconstructio deconstruction n delimited delimited monism and constituted constituted a reactive force against the Cartesian bifurcation of the organism and the Hegelian dialectic tradition, elucidating them as arbitrary constitutive forces in the expression of power. The residual gratitude to deconstruction gives through the trajectory of ‘not’ does not seek to validate a philosophy of negation. Posthuman Ethics’s ‘not’ seeks to create afrmative vitalistic distributions which, by their nature, demand the unthinkable. The deconstructive turn to ‘not’ is one necessary indicator of what is at stake, how it has been constructed and why – leading to the ethics of ‘why not’, not as a question but as the reason for ethics. ethic s. For each trajectory of ‘not’ I have attempted to forge in the following chapters a potential thought. Ideally the ‘not’ would have a ‘not-not’ suggestion but the necrophilosophy of some deconstructive ‘not’ is a lamentation at turns indulgent, or over emphasizing the intervention of sovereign power and the impossibility impossibility of ethics within within that power beyond a reconstitution reconstitution of the other through a new overvaluation of the ‘I’ that mourns its incapacity to act but which attempts to do so nonetheless. Impossibility is a key element of Posthuman but one one which which results results in imaginatio imagination n and creativity creativity where where ‘sufci ‘sufcient ent enough’ enough’ address isn’t enough ( Levinas), and joy comes from both becomings (monster, queer, modied, ecstatic) and from grace (the leaving be of nonhumans). In many ways, the arguments of which encourage the leaving be © Copyrighted Material

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of the other epistemologically and ontologically results in, for human bodies and o mfor c . art, irresistible connections with those bodies and materialities, and for nonhumans, t e a g liberty for the other by breaking the dialectic of debt of Levinasian-Derridian a . s h ethics. w w Posthuman Ethics is the jubilant afrmative now-here but wnowhere m o virtualizations unthought make imperative. The population of Posthuman Ethics c . e t a parasites – angels, monsters, art, ecstasies, abstracted planes of esh, gracious h g s a . and the dead – are ‘what-not-nots’. With responsibility, in afrmative ethics, w w w unpredictable comes activity, affectivity, creativity and the solicitation of the m o c . but responsible, expressivity of other incarnations of life. It is non responsorial e t a g h thus accountable, address. It is Nietzsche’s call to create the bridge over the goal, s a . not knowing what will be on the other side, but knowing w wthere is a reason to w m extend one’s own side and remap the cartography ca rtography of n dimensional non-Euclidean o c . t e rhizomes. Posthuman Ethics follows a theoretical trajectory which is mediative a g h s ethical encounters with of, but in other ways particular to, new assemblages a .of w w bodies and entities. Immediately Im mediately when one thinks ethics in a post world based on w m Continental philosophy Levinas is foregrounded. c . oFor reasons elaborated below t e Levinas will not be utilized in Posthuman Ethics h g . aBut this book will also heavily s a . critique other favoured philosophers in order, w wnot to refute their inuential and important contribution to the oeuvre, but to m woffer a different conguration of o c . ways in which certain assemblages and interpretations of ethics can liberate the e t a g h already-not-human from the traps of human perception, whether that perception s a . w w is deliberate or incidental. I am not suggesting this can be done and, in some w messianic way I am the one to do it. c o m Certain philosophers are more adamant in . e t their attempts to challenge the inevitable operation of human perception, especial ly a g h s a those philosophers who are not afraid of giving up perception altogether without . w w w giving up interaction and mediation. Just as Lyotard’s ethical time knows it can m c o neither succeed nor fail, yet must be executed, the time of my conguration of e . t a philosophers and bodies is one h g which cannot predict its success and it is the very s a frightening imperative that w wis . the reason for ethics itself. Posthuman Ethics shows w we cannot ‘do’ ethics, and evaluate whether something was as ethi cal or not as we m o c . 6 would hope. Perhaps this t e is why certain parts of the book may even seem mystical, a g h s due to their abstraction which takes the posthuman, like the ecstatic, outside of a . w w time into a place of w encounter with the imperceptible but materially affective m o outside. Perhaps also this is why the book will be guilty of what Carey Wolfe Wolfe states c . e t a of ‘That paradoxical observability of the unobservable, the communicabili ty of the h g s a . incommunicable … [which] ought to sound familiar to students of romanticism’ w w w Foucault the romantic: ‘A manifest truth’ writes Foucault (xxxii). Enter m

o c . e t a g h s a . w w w 6 c . o m Mystical is delivered in Posthuman Ethics from its religious associations. While t e a some have criticized mysticism as irretrievable from its sentimental Christian associations g h s a (see Braidotti 2006, 258) preferring terms such as spirituality, Posthuman Ethics will . w w wattempt to express mysticism as a secular cosmic force.


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© Copyrighted Material disappearing not when it is replaced by another one that is fresher or sharper m but when one begins to detect the very conditions that made it seem manifest; t e c . o a the familiarities that served as its support, the darknesses that bought about its h g s a . w clarity, and all those far away things that secretly sustained it and made it w ‘go w without saying’. (1994, 447) m o

c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . e t a h g s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w 7 o m c . t e Posthuman s h g aEthics a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a Avatar Bodies g h s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s Posthuman Ethics a . w w w m o Posthuman Ethics c . e t a h g s a . par w w w m o c . e t 7 Coincidence or epistemic training may be to blame, blame, but these, as myself, are all a g h s Australian feminist theorists. For more on this phenomenon see MacCormack, Patricia a . w w (2009) ‘Feminist Becomings: Hybrid Feminism and Haecceitic (Re)production’.

Foucault’s claim balances the wonder of the Romantic imperceptible, embracing Outside, with the required acknowledgement that the way real ity is constituted, and by whom, is a awed result of regimes of power and masquerades of observable exteriority. Wolfe tends toward Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Bruno Latour and what could be argued a more ‘American’ theoretical framework. Wolfe, in his discussion of the place of ethics in posthuman theory, explores the status of biotechnology and media in the United States now and this direct application is itself an ethical turn in its material encounter with issues of obligation, neither judgemental (as I perhaps am) nor unconditionally celebratory. Many other posthuman theorists tend toward Levinas, Derrida, Latour, Haraway and Hayles while interestingly those theorists who are more aligned with my framework, such as Rosi Braidotti, Anna Hickey-Moody, Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook and Felicity Colman seem to shy away from posthuman theory or are more critical of it, emphasizing French feminism and the Nietzschian, Bergsonian, Spinozist as a committed work on esh and Deleizio-Guattarian line. and embodiment as a prime site of contestation in a posthuman world does not resolve the disparate tendencies but does take a very specic interpretation of the posthuman – those who were already not quite human – and argues it is these bodies which are the matter of another way to think posthumanism. In reference to the Romantic turn in posthumanism, once again time emerges as an issue, and the time and geography of various movements create their own productive ruptures and ssures. Anne Weinstone’s Weinstone’s (2004) is one of the many posthuman texts which exploits the mobility of the concept to bring in seemingly unrelatable elements – here ancient Eastern ideology or theology – to create what she calls an esoteric and exoteric spiritual posthumanism. It does not resound with Orientalist fetishism but acknowledges and delights in its development of proximities of ideas that may be considered with less sympathy by those who wish to maintain a semblance of discursive discretion. Romanticism does share consistencies with posthuman theory especially via Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Bataille and other key theorists for but chronology has been perverted, so this cannot be a criticism. Mysticism, esoteric and other philosophical blasphemies populate , but, like avatar bodies, it is hoped it will be no less philosophical for doing so. Returning to the question of ‘why not Levinas?’ Weinstone calls him ‘the philosopher of no contact


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excellence’ (153). Evoking the transhuman, Barry Rutland (2004) suggests o m the c . postmodern ethical subject is a transject. Yet Yet as Levinas, he remains committed t e a g h s to the ethical as responsorial based on the address of the obligation as a demand a . w w coming from the face. As privileged plane of subjectivity, even and increasingly w in posthuman theory animal subjectivity, the face makes an ethics c . o mbased on t e a difference, incommensurability and imperceptibility impossible. Simultaneous g h s a . with the issue of time, Levinas’ work raises the issue of space. Posthuman ethics w w is a negotiation of distance in the ways relation is structured, or m w destructured. If o c . an entity can face another entity, it can perceive that entity as t enot it, not part of a h g it and so constituted as perceived by it. Levinasian ethics offer many features s a . w of postmodern philosophy’s readdressing of encounters with w alterity. His claim w that transcendence comes from the encounter being based o m on the fact one can c . t e perceive another (without nomenclature of the other), that the other is sufcient a g h enough to count by virtue of being recalls a kind of a . salmost phenomenological w w differend. Levinas dees ethics based on equivalence and conversion. His w m refusal of chronocentric causality in the ‘face’ of c . o the immanent innite at the t e a g encounter of the other is an ethics of time and certainly verges on mysticism as h s a . Posthuman Ethics does. The main reason Levinas w cannot be justied as integral to w w posthuman ethics is what (or whom) he considers as counting. The very question m o c . of what/who counts or more precisely, never t e asking for the what or who, is what a h g Levinas’ counting other or negotiates underpins this book. Whether one validates s a . w w it to further include others that may count, this is still a nuanced and rened but w nonetheless exclusory ethics of external o m other, even while one loses subjectivity c . t e the other (141). It would be ridiculous to by placing the self in the position g of a h s a write Levinas off and I do not do so, . but there are ways in which his work diverges w w w from ethical posthuman encounters. I would not claim any of those theorists who o m do inspire Posthuman Ethics e cwould be any better should they be interrogated . t a in reference to, for example, h g difference feminism or abolitionist animal rights, s a . w but theory t heory is, for post theory, theory ma kes of it, and doing theory t heory is creating w , what one makes w theory in posthumanism o mwhere esh and thought, activism and philosophy are c not bifurcated. For this a t e .reason Continental philosophy, corporeal feminism and g h s ecosophical experimentation refutes Baxi’s understandable anxiety that ‘“Theory” a . w w remains a suspect w term for many social movement and activist folk’ (IX). She denes theory as c . oa m ‘task of analysis’ (4) divided into producers and consumers. t e a This creates a false diachrony between theory/practice or theorists/activists. Baxi g h s argues writing w a .on the posthuman from theory is difcult to decipher, and then it w w defaults to readings of pop culture and sci- (201–2). Can ethics evade this false m o . system of t e cantagonism she sets up between theory/activism by the perilous but a h g task to act with theory and theorize with activism? Again we return to compelling s a . w the system of relations which is reoriented in Deleuzian/Spinozan ethics. Deleuze w w explicates Spinozan ethics through the concept of common notions. o m

c e . t a h g s In short a common notion is the representation of a composition between two or a . w w more bodies, and a unity of this composition … For when we encounter a body w


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© Copyrighted Material that agrees with ours we experience an affect or feeling of joy-passion, although m we do not adequately know what it has in common with us… (1988b, 55, 56) t e c . o

a h g s a . w affects are the becoming inhuman of man w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w Spinoza suggests a completely different way, linked o mto common notions; being c . t e , by the affections of which will be dened by their capacity for being affected a h g they are capable, the excitations to which they a . sreact, those by which they are w w w unaffected, and those which exceed their capacity and make them ill or cause m o c them to die. In this way one will obtain a classication of beings by their power. . e t a g (1988b, 45) h s a . w w w m o c . e t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w

If ‘ ’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 169) then man must pass through inhumanity toward ethics. Crucial to Deleuze’s denition of ethics borne of common notions is that each element or entity does not come to the relation already xed in their qualities which will therefore either be or not be clearly commensurable with the other. Deleuze emphasizes that a dening element of the experiencing of affects of joy comes from an encounter even when we do not (or cannot) know the commonality from which the affects arise. This requires we think carefully what is meant by ‘commonality’. Rening this ethic, commonality can be interpreted not as resemblance but by the openness of each element to experiencing the other as self and thus self as other. ‘Now rejecting this way of dening by kind and specic difference’ explains Deleuze

Dening, signifying, classifying and placing into a hierarchy certain kinds of subjects is an act which is based not on the quality or essence of an entity but by the powers which constitute the capacity to dene. Enriching ethical encounters are also expressions of power. Affective expressions which elicit joy and novel passions emerge through each entity’s capacity to act and be affective not as what they are but that they are. By virtue of openness to the alterity of the other, commonality is reduced to the majestic but simple notion of openness itself. Encounters are not conditional based on pre-conceived denitions of the other to which one comes. This would mean the other is experienced before the event of experience and thus the other as a singularity is denied their specicity. An encounter with the pre-conceived is no encounter, but a reication of self through conrmation of opposition or commonality based on structures that by their very denition cannot locate two entities without one subsuming the other through exertions of the power to dene. Ethical encounters are jubilant, joyous encounters of both affectivity and liberty. While earlier I mentioned anxiety is also present in ethics, these two passions are the wonders of ethics in its non-dismembered consistency. consistency. A number of constellations constellati ons initialize this t his emergence. There is anxiety anxie ty in forsaking privileged positions and annexations to reliable signications but there is also anxiety in jubilance, trepidation in liberty and in the cliché of fear of the unknown the fear is as exhilarating and creative as the jubilance is frightening by facilitating an encounter with a beyond. Jubilant may sound idealistic and redemptive, anxiety a kind of capital hysteria. The passions and affects of ethics © Copyrighted Material

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are extensive, rather than leap to overcome them we reel in that we thought o mwe c . should avoid, because, especially for the oppressed other, there is no luxurious t e a g h s avoidance of diminishing affects. The aim is aimless, the act matters and the a . w w matter of the ethics. w m o Alterity and openness, relinquishing reliance on pre-existent signiers to c . e t a become lost in the ows of affectivity, affectivity, are essential to ethical encounters. Alterity h g s a . recognized of other catalyses alterity of self. Simultaneously commonality is not w w wpresent but not through identical resemblance but by a common com mon intensity which is m o c . is commonality, transparent in its meaning or capacity capac ity for apprehension. Difference e t a g h commonality a differing and sameness which is imperceptible. If we include s a . desire as an integral part of the ethical conguration alterity w wis seductive because w m it is not complementary in its opposition. This would afrm sameness of self to o c . t e self. Difference is desirable because it is difference which cannot be subsumed, a g h s a position occupied and because it is mobile as a protean experience rather than a . w w dened by the other. Desire is neither dialectic nor reiterative of self and other. It w m is an event upon which we can only reect eetingly c . oand which c annot be repeated t e nor predicted. Ethical desire cannot operate in h g athe positioning of two entities s a . aware of themselves as closed subjects. The occupation of space as something is w w w resistant to the mobile affectivity of forces which interact as a mediation of desire m o c . and where passion and joy come from the not-knowable of self or other. Yet it is t e a g h problematic to offer this constitution constit ution of ethics as an exploratory future without a s a . social contextualization of the effects of w w wpowers of discourse on others in history. Just as ‘good’ ethics seeks to enhance cjoy o m and passions, so ‘bad’ ethics emphasizes . t e those affects which exhaust or enclose the other, exacerbating their capacity to a g h s express. In terms of reections on w a .specic entities whose capacity to effect have w w systems, the bodies and been oppressed through signifying signifyi ng a nd entities in Posthuman m c o Ethics have been selected for their being at and as the limit of address. e .

t a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w m o c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w o m c . t e a g h s a . w w w


Posthuman Ethics

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