Summary of Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman (Part 3)
(read part 1 here, or part 2 here, if you want)
Chapter 3
The Inhuman: Life beyond Death
Braidotti opens the chapter with a brief tracing of the concept of “the inhuman”, starting with Marcel L’Herbier’s film L’Inhumaine from 1924, and concluding with Lyotard’s The Inhuman, published in 1988. She notes that the concept of the inhuman, over the last century, has transformed from the inscrutable and eroticized “other” presented in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis into Lyotard’s vision of the inhuman as “the alienating and commodifying effect of advanced capitalism on the human” (108). The rapidly changing technological landscape has transformed the relationship between humans and machines from one of “self” and “other” into one of mutual interdependence, as machines become increasingly implicated into the definition of the subject. With this in mind, Braidotti announces the project of this chapter as a defence of the position that “the current historical context has transformed the modernist inhuman into a posthuman and post-anthropocentric set of practices” (109). Braidotti advocates a shift toward a “matter-realist” vitalism based on a Spinozist monistic substantial universe to radically shift the discourse on death and mortality in our technologically bio-mediated present and future.
As the previous chapters have demonstrated, a Zoe-centric turn provides a new set of rhetorical tools with which we can identify the exploitation of “other” bodies through the uneven dynamic of power in the globalized economy, but this rhetoric is not always used for positive change. For example, the recent emergence of neo-conservatism and religious fundamentalism in the U.S., which often speaks explicitly of valuing life (i.e., “pro-life” protests), has produced a political regression of rights for women and the LGBT community. Zoe-centric rhetoric, then, emerges as a force for both positive and negative progress. Similarly, the rhetoric surrounding issues like climate change often speak of “disappearing nature” in the face of civilizational expansion, thus problematically reasserting the dichotomy between “nature” and “culture”. This rhetoric produces, in the human subject, a deep anxiety about the rapid disappearance or destruction of “nature”, as well as a misguided understanding of nature as something separate from humanity. The public morality is unable to fully internalize the notion that we are literally a part of nature, and that its mortality is inherently tethered to our own. What is needed, argues Braidotti, is a more sophisticated understanding of death in the posthuman turn, such that progress can be made toward more sustainable and empathic public policy. The recent fascination with death in popular culture (as evidenced by the unrelenting popularity of forensic investigation dramas or video games that simulate the unreal glory of combat missions in war-torn countries) speaks to the urgent need to re-evaluate and rigorously redefine our understanding of what “death” means in the posthuman present.
Braidotti suggests that an emphasis on the vital self-organizing nature of Zoe would work to blur the distinction between “life” and “death” for individual subjects, arguing that “[t]his vitalist materialism rests solidly on a neo-Spinozist political ontology of monism and radical immanence, engendering a transversal relational ethics to counteract the inhuman(e) aspects of the posthuman predicament” (115). That is to say, a focus on Zoe reinscribes the individual subject within the whole of the substantial universe. In this way, humanity can work toward a solution to the “posthuman predicament”, which is Braidotti’s term for the “significant changes in the status of the structure of the inhuman and inhumane practices” (116). This would include, for example, schools of thought that encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own physical fitness and well-being. While these practices productively encourage a greater awareness of each of our posthuman bio-organic existence (thus, ultimately, rejecting naturalism), it problematically “perverts the notion of responsibility towards individualism” (116). Institutions like national healthcare can be dismantled on the misleading grounds that they function as “handouts” for individuals who refuse to take responsibility for themselves (The U.S. conservative media’s overwhelmingly negative response to “Obamacare” is a very bleak example of this). This kind of fuzzy logic problematically excludes those for whom the products necessary for a healthy lifestyle (i.e., healthy food, medication, a good education) are financially inaccessible, thus those who are already marginalized within society become further marginalized, and can now be blamed for their own marginalization. In this way, argues Braidotti, the posthuman predicament goes beyond the model of bio-power described by Foucault, as the bio-mediated structure of advanced capitalism effectively replaces anthropocentric individualism with a model in which humans are understood as a trend-oriented set of data points, which, crucially, does not account for all people within the system, but rather, those who can be reliably catered to as consumers. As Braidotti explains: “[b]ecause genetic information…is unevenly distributed, this system is not only inherently discriminatory, but also racist at some basic level of the term” (117). In this way, the political policy is designed specifically to promote the sustained life of those who are deemed to be the “healthy” normative core of society and implicitly necessitates the death of those deemed unhealthy. The necro-political aspect of this model inherently embeds the corpse within the embodied self, as individuals come to understand nonconformity to normative societal values as synonymous with their own death. For this reason, a central insight of Foucault’s bio-power remains valid in today’s technologically bio-mediated society: “bio-power also involves the management of dying” (119).
Braidotti then turns to examine the nature of contemporary bio-politics. She points to political scientist Achille Mbembe’s observation that “Bio-power and necro-politics are two sides of the same coin” (122). That is to say, the management of bio-power for specific privileged groups is inherently tethered to the instrumentation of death for other groups. For example, Braidotti looks at the posthuman face of modern war, in which unmanned drone strikes have greatly (and unevenly) increased the mortality rates in targeted populations. Drone strikes are hailed, by Western leaders of industry, as a safe and clean way to conduct combat operations, regardless of the fact that these drones regularly kill unidentified civilians. In this way, warfare has increasingly become another avenue for commercial privatization, such that death has literally been reduced to another commodity. Braidotti observes, “[m]any contemporary wars, led by Western coalitions under the cover of humanitarian aid are often neo-colonial exercises aimed at protecting mineral extraction and other essential geo-physical resources needed by the global economy” (123). Braidotti follows this with what she calls a “techno-bestiary” (124), or a description of the robotic technologies that are increasingly characterizing the face of modern warfare. The dominant trend amongst these technologies is non-locality, as they are generally monitored by remote human operators, but, crucially, Braidotti points out that “by-passing the human decision maker is already technologically feasible” (125–26). Increasingly, technological advancement is changing the way we think about death and accountability.
Braidotti goes on to point out that death as a concept is caught in a sort of contradiction. On one hand, it is a central component of political practice, as the rapidly expanding technological repertoire of killing techniques increases human vulnerability. On the other hand, death is under-examined within critical theory and social governance practices, where the emphasis is decidedly focused on Life and bio-power. Fortunately, posthuman theory is uniquely poised to provide new insights into critical understandings of death. For example, Patrick Hanafin suggests that “renewed interest in necro-politics, coupled with a transversal vision of posthuman subjectivity, may help us provide a political and ethical counter-narrative to ‘the imposed bounded subject to liberal legalism’ ” (128). Hanafin argues that death should not not be understood as the teleological conclusion of being. For Hanafin, death as conclusion translates into a “bio-political regime of discipline and control of bodies” (129), as individuals become increasingly focused on their own survival, potentially to the detriment of the public or planetary good. Instead, Hanafin advocates a shift toward “singularities without identity” who relate primarily to each other and their environment. Essentially, Hanafin is advocating a shift away from Western individualism, and toward a Woolfian notion of thinking “as if already gone”. The central aspect of this model, as Braidotti points out, is the reimagining of a life-death continuum, not as it relates to the individual, but as it relates to Zoe.
Braidotti then turns to directly confront the question of a posthuman theory of death. As she points out, “[o]ne’s view on death depends on one’s assumptions about life” (131). For Braidotti, this refers to her matter-realist view of life as a generic force of “cosmic energy”. The death of the individual, then, cannot be seen as the teleological end of life, because life is not an inherent property of the individual, but rather the opposite: the mortal individual is best understood as a kind of temporary echo chamber for zoe, the temporality of which inherently means that death has always already occurred. That is to say, because the individual is tethered to her mortality, death is not a limit that she approaches, but rather a threshold that she transgresses. For this reason, “death as a constitutive event is behind us; it has already taken place as a virtual potential that constructs everything we are” (132). Because of it’s unavoidability, death is understood by consciousness as a precursor for existence. The actual event of death is just an iteration of the potential that has always already existed. Death is not an indifferent and inanimate state of matter, but rather a position on on the spectrum of vitality. For this reason, “Death is the becoming-imperceptible of the posthuman subject and as such it is part of the cycles of becoming, yet another form of interconnectedness, a vital relationship that links one with other, multiple forces” (137). That is to say, both life and death are impersonal, generic expressions of zoe, and understanding them as such has the potential to, ultimately, transgress ego and dissolve the boundaries between subjective individuals, such that the primary focus of each individual becomes the sustained existence of Zoe. As Braidotti opines: “Sustainability does assume faith in a future, and also a sense of responsibility for ‘passing on’ to future generations a world that is liveable and worth living in” (138).
