EPTC/PRI 2024 panel

Posthumanism and the Human-technology Nexus

June 17, 2024 – Birks 105, McGill University

Chaired by Christine Daigle (Director, Posthumanism Research Institute, Brock University)

The Posthumanism Research Institute (PRI) at Brock University hosts a variety of local and international members who are interested in tackling questions pertaining to our contemporary state of multiple crises. If a Humanist worldview—with its human exceptionalism, binary thinking, and oppressive hierarchical patterns—has driven us to our current situation, which is often the starting point for posthumanist thinkers, what might be pathways to thinking ourselves differently? This entails exploring the multiple relations and entanglements in which we exist and reflecting on the nature of these relations and the thriving of entities involved.

It is in this context that this year’s EPTC/PRI panel decided to explore the human-technology nexus. Since our human and nonhuman existences are permeated by various degrees of technologization, it is important to think through that particular entanglement. Our panel seeks to generate a reflection on emerging questions in the human-technology relationship, identifying dominant narratives, worldviews, and social structures that facilitate Humanist tendencies. As posthumanists, we are interested in leaving a Humanist conception of the human behind, not the human itself. What of that human itself and how it relates to technology? In what way has technology contributed to our evolution and to the shaping of our identity(ies)? What are the ethical implications of embracing accelerated technological developments such as AI and advanced computing? What potentials lay in such developments for mutual thriving?

 Agenda

14:00 – 15:00

Maya Karanouh (Brock)

“The Morality of Machine Minds: Generative AI, Misinformation, and Privacy in a Posthuman World”

The introduction of Generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, in 2022, has instigated a multitude of ethical concerns and challenges globally. This paper, through a posthumanist framework, sheds light on distinct ethical issues related to Generative AI in regards to the issues of morality and agency behind machine intelligence. Rosi Braidotti’s post-humanist framework of the zoe/geo/techno assemblage provides a lens to discuss the concerns of the ethics of intentionality of Generative AI. Posthumanist theory of the entanglements additionally provide a different ontological framework to discuss the ethical repercussions of Generative AI models agency when used by malicious agents. Who holds the agency and moral intentionality – the machine, or the human – when it comes to misinformation and privacy in a posthuman world due to the malicious use of Generative AI and whose agency and intentionality should be held accountable?

Alan N. Shapiro (Bremen/Lucerne)

“Creative Coding and Posthumanism”

Posthumanism is the understanding of humans as embedded in complex social, cultural, narrative, and technological circumstances. Our co-existence and ethical partnership with – on the one hand – nature, animals, plants, and our environmental ecology, and – on the other hand – with self-aware technological beings and processes, engenders alternative utopian projects. I outline the history and principles of Creative Coding. How can the writing of software code become an expressive media? What is the difference between existing computer science’s concept of code and that of Creative Coding? Can Creative Coding influence the future of computer science? Rather than a dualism between algorithms and morality, there should be an embedding of ethics into the heart of code. How can computer science become a conscious and creative cultural practice as well as science and technology? Software code must become poetic, ambivalent, and musically resonant. It must go beyond the discrete logic of conventional programming languages.

15:15 – 16:15

Ananya Punyatoya (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

“Exploring ‘Intimate Publics’ and the Formation of Solidarity, Mourning One’s Own Death, and the Digital Afterlife of Online Illness Narratives”

This project will examine the enmeshment between humanity, technology, and illness narratives in the digital era. Framed within affect studies and guided by Lauren Berlant’s concept of “intimate publics,” the study delves into illness narratives sourced from Facebook groups and Reddit subs, as well as the blog turned book Late Fragments by Kate Gross. The investigation extends beyond emotional connections to include themes of thanatography, terminality, and the digital afterlife of these narratives. This study aims to reveal how the posthumanist paradigm manifests within online communities dedicated to sharing experiences of terminal illness. By leveraging affective solidarities and ties formed in these online communities and Berlant’s intimate publics framework, the project tries to conceptualize the online audience who engage with these narratives and form solidarity communities as offsetting the humanist paradigms and participating in a digital “planetarity.” Additionally, the project also will examine how individuals navigate themes of death, mortality, and the digital afterlife within their narratives, shedding light on the evolving human-technology nexus.

Amanda Van Beinum (York University)

“Opting-in to neurofutures: human-technology entanglements in the use of brain stimulation for treatment of mental illness”

Whether and how human-technology relationships replicate the idealized human or support emergence of new forms of posthuman subjects is an important site for critical inquiry. This paper explores these questions in the context of neurotechnologies used to treat mental illness. I interviewed people using two common brain stimulation devices: trans-cranial magnetic stimulation and deep brain stimulation. Users’ narratives reveal how invasive and non-invasive brain stimulation technologies simultaneously re-produce/unsettle prevailing conceptions of the human. Successful interventions appear to facilitate freedom from debilitating symptoms of mental illness for some users. However, effects are often paired with distinctly posthuman vulnerabilities such as limited battery life and the need to continuously tinker with device settings. Acknowledging the situated and relational complexity of the human-technology relationship emerging at the intersections of mental illness and brain stimulation treatments permits a nuanced understanding of how technology simultaneously reinscribes the human and makes space for new posthuman futures.

16:30 – 17:30

Ralph Mercer (Independent Scholar)

“Creating a Practical Application of Posthumanist Reading through Causal Layered Analysis”

The presentation aims to position Posthumanist Reading (Herbrechter and Callus 2008, 95) as a way of interpreting texts that challenge and question the humanist notion of technology and what it means to be human. This approach embraces posthumanism as the foundational praxis to examine, describe and offer a distinctive approach to the complex interplay between human culture and technology that recognizes technology as an inherent trait of humanity, intrinsic to our development and entangled within our social, economic, and political fabric. The paper will demonstrate the use of CLA as a method to read the text through a critical posthumanist lens to reveal the foundational humanism assumptions and values that construct the values, norms and dependencies that constrain present thinking.

Christine Daigle (Brock) Closing Commentary