Literatura científica selecionada sobre o tema "Postumanism"

Abstract The present study aims to encapsulate the emergence of the posthumanism (and of the posthuman, implicitly), seen as profoundly human, in Radu Vancu’s Transparenţa. The starting point for selecting the characteristics of such a posthumanism peculiar to Radu Vancu is represented by his literary study Elegie pentru uman: o critică a modernităţii poetice de la Pound la Cărtărescu. From his analysis upon the antihuman side of modernity’s project, I extract the four typologies through which literature has fought against (the social, political and artistic) dehumanization: corporeal, confessional, maximalist and sacred. Following at the same time Elegie pentru uman and Transparenţa I reach the conclusion that Radu Vancu uses in his novel all the aforementioned typologies in his project to restore the human. In other words, Elegie pentru uman, in its first part, is, in a way, an ars poetica, a drawing in nuce of the forthcoming novel. To this group of four typologies enlisted by Radu Vancu, I will add one more, peculiar to his writing, which emerges from the study as well as from the novel: poeticality. The fifth category looms in the novel’s writing and in the reference to Ion Mureșan within Elegie pentru uman. Ion Mureșan described literature as the immune system, while the poets are seen as the antibodies of society. Thus, the poeticality within the novel is an immune system which helps the restoration of the human, becoming a key element of the posthuman fiction in Radu Vancu’s text. The second part of the study will focus on the close reading of the function of some fictional objects in the posthuman narrative of Transparenţa. The selected fictional objects are the ones which are vital for the human salvation from the dehumanizing ghosts of recent history. Such fictional objects are: the body, the light, the text, the reader, Mega, Sibiu etc. Seen through the filter of a posthumanism deeply human at its core, the novel presents the story of a narrator who whishes to restore his lover and, implicitly, the whole world. To conclude in Dostoyevskian terms: humanity will save the world.

Le texte présente quelques avenues possibles pour situer la pensée de Deleuze et Guattari en regard du postumanisme. Les thèmes des machines, des devenirs non-humains et des forces cosmiques de déterritorialisation y sont notamment discutés.

Abstract The present study aims to analyze the conceptual perspective on the metamorphosis of the human under the process of duplication and the restitution of the robotic hypostasis. Following the posthumanist theories, this paper focuses mainly on the literary manifestations that envisage the many-sided topic about the human identity’s surcease, namely Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Machines Like Me. In both cases, the central function of restructuring reality through the symobol of technological alterity is emphasized; the simulacrum comes within the purview of building versions for a universe where creation does not lead to progress, but, to a certain extent, to destruction and the entanglement of human conciousness. This fact implies that the fictional robots have to be interpreted as an integrant part of a system that ecompasses the lost sense of self. Essential for understanding the cited narratives is the questioning of the Cartesian belief that animals do represent a mechanical behaviour. I argue that the reconstruction of a techological identity bears a double scheme of approaching empathy and identity and accordingly the existence is to be interposed within new frames of thought.

How can the human self face the paradigm shifts that posthumanism mobilizes? We intend to answer this question setting out from the concept of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self. According to this hermeneutics, the self is capable of action, self-reflection, called by Ricoeur “attestation”, and of the fact that it can be accompanied by the moral values acquired. We will notice that Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self can be reduced to an ontology of the self deeply engraved by three dialectics, self-reflection, identity, and the relationship between the self-as-another and anothers-as-self. We will subsequently infer that the self holds ontologically the condition of being a self constrained by the manner of being as orientation. This condition represents the fundamental limit of consciousness which, consequently, contributes significantly to an epistemlogy of the consciousness that sketches out the project of a hermeneutics which places both language and consciousness at the centre of the process of differentiation between the posthumanist narratives about life and death.

Oggetto del presente contributo è una riflessione di carattere bioetico sulla medicina anti-aging, nella particolare declinazione di quelle ricerche volte all’allungamento indefinito della vita umana (human life-span extension). L’analisi che ci proponiamo di svolgere si articola in tre parti, secondo una metodologia che prevede una prima ricognizione scientifica delle tecnologie biomediche coinvolte, un inquadramento di tipo antropologico, dal momento che tali tecnologie intendono intervenire in modo significativo sulla condizione e sull’esperienza umana dell’invecchiamento, e infine una valutazione di tipo etico che è possibili guadagnare a partire dalla discussione delle parti precedenti. I punti decisivi che richiederanno una particolare attenzione sono: - l’esame dell’interpretazione dell’invecchiamento come una condizione patologica e indesiderabile, che ne giustificherebbe il superamento per via medica; - il confronto fra la medicina volta al longevismo e il dibattito sullo human enhancement e le filosofie postumaniste; - l’approfondimento del concetto e del valore antropologico dell’immortalità terrena. Dallo studio proposto emergerà la rilevanza decisiva delle premesse antropologiche: se infatti l’invecchiamento è interpretato alla stregua di un limite patologico ne conseguirà l’obbligazione morale di rimuovere sia l’età anziana che la mortalità; se, invece, esso verrà considerato come “naturale” fase della vita della persona cui restituire valore e senso, allora il fine da realizzare sarà quello di accogliere i bisogni propri dell’età anziana, anche attraverso una medicina orientata alla conservazione della miglior qualità di vita possibile. ---------- The article intends to lead a bioethical reflection on anti-aging medicine, particularly on the field of research in human life-span extension. The analysis is divided into three parts, following a methodology that includes a first scientific survey of biomedical technologies involved in the topic, an anthropological overview, since these technologies intend to significantly intervene on the meaningful experience of human aging, and finally an ethical evaluation that which can be obtained from the discussion of the previous parts. Crucial points in the investigation are: - the examination of interpreting aging as a pathological and undesirable condition, which would justify medical removal of aging; - discussion on the relation between medicine aimed to longevism and debate on human enhancement and posthumanism; - the analysis of the concept and the anthropological value of “earthly immortality”. From the study proposed the decisive importance of the anthropological premises will emerge: from understanding aging as a pathological impairment it follows a moral obligation to remove both old age and mortality; if, instead, aging is considered as “natural” phase of person’s life with value and meaning, then the aim will be to welcome the needs typical of old age, through medicine oriented to the preservation of the best possible quality of life.

The present study aims to map the links between posthumanist theory and contemporary Romanian poetry, as well as the socio-political, economic and philosophical contexts that have made possible the emergence of a “new sensibility”, since the generation 2000 exhausts its transitive, violent-existential poetics, focused on radically biographical writing. In order to understand the dynamics of posthuman coordinates in contemporary poetry, I will analyse the two poetic trends that have evolved from a focus on the posthuman environment and from close links with digital culture to an assumed critical perspective on the exclusionary forms of humanism. My analysis is meant to highlight the posthumanist (empathetic and supportive) viewpoint, in the volumes that address identity issues both in relation to the tradition of dehumanization exercised by the canonical, white, male and heteronormative man, but also in relation to the new digital existence, and the eco direction, concerned with the ecological crisis, not just the political or social one. My interpretation approaches the way in which the “new sensibility” functions as a legitimizing principle for the posthuman/ist collective, in solidarity with marginalized, sexualized or racialized communities.

I giocattoli con tratti fisici non antropomorfizzati in letteratura, specie quando rivolta a un pubblico infantile, si rivelano come un utile strumento per riflettere sulla distinzione tra ‘umano’ e ‘non umano’. Il corpo artificiale del giocattolo e la caratterizzazione animale incarnano, infatti, in modo evidente il concetto di alterità rispetto all’idea stereotipica di umanità. Ispirati dalle vicende narrate, i giovani lettori possono trarre degli essenziali insegnamenti, quali le capacità di empatia e di resilienza ai traumi di piccola o grande entità che ciascuno può incontrare nel corso della vita. L’introduzione critica a queste riflessioni è completata dall’analisi letteraria circa la caratterizzazione dei giocattoli in alcuni testi per l’infanzia: il giocattolo-coniglio in The Velveteen Rabbit (1922) di Margery Williams, i giocattoli-topi in The Mouse and His Child (1967) di Russell Hoban e il giocattolo-orso in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) di A. A. Milne.

Romanian criticism has tended to use generational framing to delineate the boundaries of local poetic paradigms, which has also been the case for the Generation 2000 and Generation post-2000. If in the 1980’s a discussion about a Romanian postmodernism was put into debate, in 2018 the question regarding the emergence of a Romanian poetry metamodernism arises. In this context, I intend to trace in this paper the nuances of generational debates in order to outline to what extent this methodology succeeds in describing the mutations and the characteristics of recent poetry. With the posthuman turn and the possibilities for the emergence of metamodernism being debated, my paper addresses, on the one hand, the viability of metamodernism in recent poetry, and, on the other, possible points of conjunctions of posthumanism and metamodernism. The posthuman turn encompasses the post-2000 generation, while local discussions have also proposed metamodernism as a label for the post-2000 generation. The question I start from is to what extent, theoretically, is our local poetry metamodernist in its sensibility and specificity, and to what extent does posthumanism fit into a metamodernist heuristic label. Although the debate remains open insofar as the Romanian theoretical field seems rather refractory to transnational theoretical fictions, what I observe in this article is that metamodernism, as theoretically proposed, can be a viable alternative to the crisis of critical discourse.

Attraverso l’indagine della proposta postumanista, il saggio presenta un’analisi della condizione odierna della corporeità e della soggettività. La prospettiva postumanista è cioè assunta quale ambito di riflessione privilegiato per tematizzare la problematica del corpo e del soggetto nella contemporaneità caratterizzata dall’imporsi delle cosiddette bio-tecnologie. Muovendo da questa prospettiva la tesi sostenuta consiste nel riconoscere che i modelli di soggettività proposti in maniera più o meno esplicita dal postumanismo sono incapaci di evitare una squalifica totale (e inconfessata) dell’umano, a tutto vantaggio di pratiche di controllo e condizionamento strumentale rispondenti ad una logica di dominio eteronoma. Viene quindi individuato come modello di soggettivazione alternativo quello desumibile dal pensiero di Gilles Deleuze. Infatti, seppur nel riconoscimento del profondo debito che la riflessione postumanista ha nei confronti della filosofia deleuzeana, tuttavia l’impegno ontologico di quest’ultima viene caratterizzato come irriducibile al postumanismo e, dunque, viene affermata la possibilità di considerare l’ontologia deleuzeana come foriera di una concezione della corporeità e, quindi, della soggettività, alternativa alle proposte postumaniste.
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the issues of body and subjectivity as they are framed within contemporary society. To that effect, the posthuman perspective is presented and investigated as an opportunity to reconsider the body and the problem of subjectivisation through (and in relation to) the spread of bio-technology. The claim is that posthuman perspectives are not able to provide a model of emancipated subjectivity due to the fact that the domain of bio-technologies reduces the posthuman subject to just one more object of knowledge, through the substitution of the body with a technological bio-power construct. To support this claim, an alternative model of subjectivisation is here offered; one which is capable of accounting for an emancipated subjectivity and which can be found in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical work. Posthumanism’s undeniable debt to Deleuze’s thought is not here denied, but an in-depth analysis of Deleuzian ontology shows it to be an irreducible alternative to the posthuman stance.

Attraverso l’indagine della proposta postumanista, il saggio presenta un’analisi della condizione odierna della corporeità e della soggettività. La prospettiva postumanista è cioè assunta quale ambito di riflessione privilegiato per tematizzare la problematica del corpo e del soggetto nella contemporaneità caratterizzata dall’imporsi delle cosiddette bio-tecnologie. Muovendo da questa prospettiva la tesi sostenuta consiste nel riconoscere che i modelli di soggettività proposti in maniera più o meno esplicita dal postumanismo sono incapaci di evitare una squalifica totale (e inconfessata) dell’umano, a tutto vantaggio di pratiche di controllo e condizionamento strumentale rispondenti ad una logica di dominio eteronoma. Viene quindi individuato come modello di soggettivazione alternativo quello desumibile dal pensiero di Gilles Deleuze. Infatti, seppur nel riconoscimento del profondo debito che la riflessione postumanista ha nei confronti della filosofia deleuzeana, tuttavia l’impegno ontologico di quest’ultima viene caratterizzato come irriducibile al postumanismo e, dunque, viene affermata la possibilità di considerare l’ontologia deleuzeana come foriera di una concezione della corporeità e, quindi, della soggettività, alternativa alle proposte postumaniste.
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the issues of body and subjectivity as they are framed within contemporary society. To that effect, the posthuman perspective is presented and investigated as an opportunity to reconsider the body and the problem of subjectivisation through (and in relation to) the spread of bio-technology. The claim is that posthuman perspectives are not able to provide a model of emancipated subjectivity due to the fact that the domain of bio-technologies reduces the posthuman subject to just one more object of knowledge, through the substitution of the body with a technological bio-power construct. To support this claim, an alternative model of subjectivisation is here offered; one which is capable of accounting for an emancipated subjectivity and which can be found in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical work. Posthumanism’s undeniable debt to Deleuze’s thought is not here denied, but an in-depth analysis of Deleuzian ontology shows it to be an irreducible alternative to the posthuman stance.