Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

"Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains"

I'll be presenting a paper in a session on "Humanity and Post-Humanity" at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Annual Meeting being held in San Francisco, March 27 - 31, 2013.

Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains

I distinguish post-humanist politics of planetarity (environmental crises, global diaspora, panurban convivialities, imbrication in media, financial, surveillance, activist networks) from the futurological politics of post-human advocacy, of either superlative transhumanism's "enhanced" homo superior or supernative bio-conservatism's "posited" homo naturalis. I distinguish in turn post-philosophical discourses of critical theory from futurological discourses (originating in speculative market futures and culminating in science fictional think-tank scenarios authorizing neoliberal developmentalism), promising prophesy rather than understanding, confusing making bets with having thoughts, diverting attention from the open futurity inhering in the diversity of stakeholders in/to the present with "The Future" as a screen on which parochial fears and fantasies are projected, deranging power from the experience of potential, peer-to-peer, into a brute amplification of instrumental capacities, the consummation of what Hannah Arendt described as "earth alienation."

2 comments:

Chad Lott said...

I would show up in the audience with an air horn and a number one foam finger for you if it was that kind of shindig.

Good luck.

Dale Carrico said...

Perhaps I should wear a toga for the occasion.